Whatcha thinkin'? BARCELONA.

[pretend the font is Trebuchet]

I could not have planned a better way to spend my last full week in Spain than I did this past week! Monday I actually don't remember anything about...oh, it was a pretty normal day. Class, shopping, FHE. Tuesday I went into Madrid in the morning to do some souvenir shopping because I was wa-hay behind on that. It was SO fun to have some solo-time in Madrid, that is such a wonderful city. I don't know very much of it but what I do know, I love. In one of the souvenir shops, the guy working there (Martín) and I got talking and he apparently lived in Connecticut for a couple years! He would go down to Orange, NJ because his friend played piano at a jazz club there. He plays guitar in a band and they were gonna play in a bar that night in Madrid, but I had to politely decline the invitation:) Oh, Spaniards. After a couple of hours of shopping (and picking up the tickets for MUSE this Wednesday!!! Ahhhhhhh!) I went home for lunch. Jenessa, Pepita, and I planned out what meals we want before we go home, so that day we ate a LOVELY tortilla de asparagos. Ooooh man. I am gonna miss all this olive oil. After lunch, Jenessa and I were right out the door to go with a group back to Madrid for more shopping. Man. Such. Great. Shopping. Later that night, a few of us went out with the group director for tapas at a supa-swank restaurant in the Fifth-Avenue-type section of Madrid. Tapas are a tradition we definitely need in America.

Okay okay. Madrid is great, but last week we went on THE best excursion we've gone on, hands down. Manos. Abajo. Wednesday and Saturday were mostly lost to travel, but we still managed to get a lot in. We stopped in Zaragoza for a rest to see the cathedral there-as amazing as Burgos was on the outside, this cathedral is just a beautiful on the inside. Wow. There were two twin baldaquinos, the canopy type structures, that were modeled after Bernini's in Saint Peter's Basilica. There was so much beautiful stonework and intricate carvings and detailing. It was phenomenal. From there we went to Montserrat, a mountain near Barcelona with a monastery. We spent quite a bit of time there before we could get dinner, so it was nice to not have to rush through everything. The weather that day was pretty awful so we couldn't see any of the surrounding landscape which is apparently phenomenal, but it was pretty sweet to be that high in the mountains and surrounded by fog. We were literally in a Spanish cloud. Being enveloped by such thick tinieblas, it literally felt like the edge of the world. Because we were at the edge of the cliffs, the land just drops off and the fog was so thick it created a pure white backdrop. Really great for pictures:) I have six weeks at home with nothing to do...so pictures WILL be coming. Promise:)

Thursday: BARCELONA. Oh man!!!!! The city of Gaudí. We started out the day with a guided tour of el Parque Güell, a park designed by Gaudí. Honestly, I could never get enough of his architecture. He was a very religious man, so his art hearkens back to nature. There are no straight lines in nature, so you are hard pressed to find prominent straight lines in any of his designs. To start, the columns supporting the covering over the pathway were inclined to provide greater functionality and formed from irregular stone, all to integrate itself into the nature around it. At one point, there's a carob tree just growing out of the middle of the path. Architecture: consider yourself integrated.

We saw the park backwards, but at the entrance of the park, there is a huge, beautiful, tile-covered lizard sculpture and the sweetest front staircase ever. At the top of the stairs in the entrance to the park there is a patio supported by columns (the Sala Hipóstila, or hypostyle, meaning lots and lots of columns, á la Egyptians), and the bottom half of these columns are covered in mosaics formed from irregular ceramic mosaic tiles. To greater emphasize the feeling of light and darkness, the tile pieces on the columns closer to the back wall are smaller and closer together, while the tiles on the front columns are gradually larger and less dense. Ther is so much symbolism in his work, and most of it is applied by the viewer. He didn't always design with specific symbolic representations in mind. In keeping with the light theme, there are four suns, one for each season, and several moons in the ceiling. He used broken ceramic dishes for his tiles, and in some places on the ceiling there are whole plates or teacups or whatnot just shoved in there.

Just outside the entrance to the park is one of Gaudí's little houses. It felt like a Dr. Seuss house! It was vibrant and multi-colored on the outside with a brilliant blue on the inside. No straight walls, of course. It's all just so intriguing and beautiful. We were diggin on Gaudí after the park, but from there we went to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's cathedral. I am SO going back in 2026 when that sucker is done, it was AMAZING, even in its incomplete form. In the morning we just saw the exterior but we went back later in the afternoon to see the interior. The outside is SO breathtaking! Having seen soooo many traditional cathedrals by this point, it was interesting to see one that diverts do far from the norm. Construction on the cathedral began in 1882, but you would NEVER know to look at it. When Gaudí was beginning his cathedral, he was in an age where if a cathedral wasn't finished, it was very very nearly finished. Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals take centuries to complete, so Gaudí really broke new ground by starting a new one. One key difference that I noticed is that the rose window, the artistic focal point of the Gothic cathedral and the symbolic representation of Mary, is covered on the outside by sculptures. In Gothic cathedral, the rose window shed the most light into the cathedral and was by far the most important source of light. From the inside, however, we could see the stained glass perfectly! Such beautiful colors. Interestingly enough, there are no figures in the stained glass. Just pieces of colored glass, their light reflecting brilliantly on the floor. There were a few windows with glass partitioned for stained glass, but it was all clear. Maybe they will be colored later? Maybe they will stay clear? The dust in the air from construction beautifully accentuated the rays of glorious sunshine beaming through the windows:) We paid eleven euros to get in, and it could not have been better spent. We helped pay for the construction of a cathedral! We witnessed history literally in the making. When my kids are taking art history to fulfill their humanities GE their first year of college, I'll be able to tel them that I was there before it was done, I remember when those windows still had no glass and there wasn't even a choir (although...who knows what Gaudí has planned by way of a choir...). We've seen a lot of cathedral construction, but that was all to repair what has now fallen into disarray. This one isn't even finished, I can't even tell you how AWESOME that is to me. SO. COOL.

We were also fortunate enough to see the Casa Milá, an apartment building designed by Gaudí. You can only see the main foyer area, one apartment, and the terrace, but it was all so amazing!! Magical, really. The terrace was RIDICULOUS, straight out of Dr. Seuss. Well...without the color. So Dr. Seuss's version of Tatooine. It was like a stone playground, I just wanted to run and jump and play hide-and-seek. We were pressed for time tho bc the museums and such all closed at 8, how lame is that? Spain is like the king of night life but the cool stuff closes early. We did make it to everything (including the Barcelona futbol stadium) that we wanted to tho! Except the Picasso museum...but we would never have had time to do it justice anyway. Also, it was raining when we went to el Parque Güell, so it would have been nice to go after the sun came out.

Dinner that night-wait, I haven't talked about lunch! Yikes. Gaudí is probably one of the few things that can make me forget about food. Lunch that day was with the group, we went to this amazing tapas restaurant and basically gorged ourselves. Well, I could have eaten more, but when can't I? There was more of a Basque influence in the cuisine so it was a fun little change. Not terribly different, I'm not educated enough to compare them point by point, but it was SOOOOO GOOD. One was topped with tomato and a soft, white cheese, one was like a tiny hamburger, one was a mini seafood shish-kebab with mushrooms, one was some sort of fish, one was a sort of sausage...the difficulty in describing Spanish food is our lack of American equivalent. But trust me. Phenomenal. Dinner that night was ALSO phenomenal! Getting there was not...finding dinner in an unfamiliar city is a nightmare. But! We finally found this little hole-in-the-wall, mom and pop place with a menú (two plates and a dessert from the list) for 10 euros. I tried gazpacho! It's a cold soup of pureed vegetables...doesn't that sound icky? That's the reason I avoided it. I was wrong. Ooooohooo how I was wrong. Gazpacho=amazing. It had a fresh cucumber taste with tomato and a little carrot. I can only imagine how delicious it would be for lunch on a hot day in the Spanish sun. I am going to miss this Spanish sun...it's been good to me. I had some sort of amazing salad similar to something Pepita makes that was just as delicious as hers and then we all ended up with steak. Yummy, yummy steak with yummy, yummy fries made in olive oil. Ooooh olive oil. Oh! I bought this great little dish made out of olive wood to sit on my desk and hold little things. I was so excited! Spain produces the most olives out of any country in the world, AND my mom brought home a little olive wood nativity when she went to Jerusalem during college so I wanted an olive wood SOMEthing while I was here. But back to that meal, it was so good! They were winding down for the night so some of their buddies were in there and they were just chattin it up, shooting the breeze as it were. The building was who knows how old so it was kinda sketch, but the bathroom was agreeable and the service was impeccable, so it was a fun night:) Also fun that night: going to sleep by midnight. OHH man. We definitely did not do that the next night. Before bed we watched Boy Meets World (Yo y el mundo) and Dinosaurs on Disney Channel. I haven't seen Dinosaurs in FOREVER, probably since I was 6 or 7...do they play that in the states again?

The next morning we drove about an hour and a half to Port Aventura, a theme park not far from Salou. We had NO idea we were going to a theme park until we got on the bus to Zaragoza two days before so we were all SOO stoked. Of course, it was cloudy and overcast, but that wasn't gonna stop any of us! In fact, it was perfect theme park weather because we weren't broiled alive and it didn't rain until about five minutes before we left the park anyway. We hit the three main roller coasters, one of which was voice-crackingly incredible, one was fun-loopy-flippy-happy, and one was a wobbly wooden coaster with racing cars. All very enjoyable:) The first one we went on, Furious Baco or something, was by FAR the best. We waited in line for an hour and a half but it was SO worth it! Hoooooly guacamole it was incredible. It goes SO fast and it corkscrews and loops and stuff...maybe it doesnt loop. But it was sooo fun! I was screaming so loud the whole time that afterward my mouth was dry and my voice was SHOT, hence "voice-crackingly incredible". Have you ever been on a roller coaster that gives you a hard-core adrenaline rush for like twenty minutes afterward? It's one of those. Man-oh man-oh. Leaving the park we were all worried about the weather for the beach, especially once we drove into Salou. Our hotel was literally a 30 second walk from the beach. That beach connected us to the MEDITERRANEAN SEA. I still can't believe I went swimming in the Mediterranean. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The hotel was beautiful! We had a balcony and a great view of the water...it was heaven. Well, a cloudy, overcast heaven. We all changed quite rapidly an were down on the beach in no time. After oohing and ahhing at the shops and the palm trees and the sand and the water, we finally got in. It wasn't freezing! Having only swam in the Atlantic, that cold, cold Atlantic, I was in love. And then I got some in my mouth. Just thinking about it makes me shudder. Sooooo salty. So not pleasant. Just so gross. I learned the hard way to keep my mouth shut and not touch my mouth with my hands. Or let me hair blow in my face. After splashing around and chasing some waves, the sun started peeking through some clouds! It was amazing! Before we knew it, the clouds were gone and the sun was out and the beach was CRAZY packed with people in a matter of minutes. We were the only ones there at the beginning and all of a sudden-wham! People. It was amazing! I only really got in the water the one time, it's much easier to enjoy that Mediterranean sunshine while dry. We really lucked out, had the sun been out all day it would have been SO hot at the beach. That would have been fun in its own way, but it was nice to just walk around and feel the cool breeze and play in the sand without melting. We stayed for probably 3 or 4 hours before we had to go back for dinner. I ate as fast as I could and then went right back out to do some shopping and walk along the beach one last time. I never liked the ocean until that day, lemme tell ya. The Jersey Shore is tons of fun, I enjoy the beach, but getting in the water? Blecch. I had no idea it could be that amazing. I now want the cliche honeymoon of the beach-side resort and white sands...sigh. The sand wasn't white, of course, but it certainly was soft. I could have walked along the water for hours that night. Instead we played cards. Also fun:)

Saturday was again lost to traveling. Once we got home, I officially started packing. Ugh. Packing. Not only is it a nightmare, it means that our days here are numbered, and that number is five. In all honesty, I'm excited to go home, but if I were here for two more months, that would not be a bad thing:)

Muse on Wednesday! Oh and PS. The title of this post comes from the musical Company by Stephen Sondheim. There's a song called Barcelona. It was running through my head ALL week.

The Theatuh, The Theatuh [and] I Left My Heart in Burgos

Hey sooo I realized I'm behind on my blogginz and I'm about to embark and the excursion of all excursions: BARCELONA. So if I don't write about last week tonight, I am going to forget allll about it. Lame.

So last week! Wednesday night we went to the Prado to discuss Goya. We went the day before to discuss Velázquez, rounding my Prado trips out to about five:) Maybe six? Oh I think it's six. Hopefully I'll get to go one more time before I go, but I leave in a week and two days. Waaaaay too soon. Anyway, after the Prado on Wednesday we went to Rodilla to get some lil' sandwiches (each sandwich is basically a half sandwich on Wonder bread...but better) before we headed over to the theatre to see La Moza de Cántaro, a play by Lope de Vega. I had forgotten just how much I love and miss great theatre. Can't wait to take advantage of that when I'm home! :) But this production was soooo brilliant! It was the national, classically trained, super-great acting troop, kind of a Spanish equivalent to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it was just so great. Luckily the plot was relatively simple because it was kind of difficult to follow, especially considering I fell asleep for about ten minutes...it was really dark, and those seats were really comfy. Man, that was SO fun. Lope de Vega wrote something like 1,500 plays. I'm not even kidding, he just cranked 'em out. And he wrote poetry.

The next day, Thursday, we left for Burgos:D We made a stop on the way...somewhere. Dang it, where did we stop? Wow. I can't even think of what we did when we stopped. Probably ate. Oh yeah! We stopped in Lerma. There was a gorgeous view from the old Roman(?) gate and we stopped and ate some food. No. I had already eaten my sandwich...we bought snacks for the bus at a supermercado:) Anyway, glad that's cleared up. Driving up to Burgos was a moment I hope I always remember. There is a BEAUTIFUL Gothic cathedral in Burgos, the exterior is almost more impressive than the inside, so seeing that as we drove up was nerdily exciting for me. When we got to Burgos, we had a few hours of free time in which I fell in LOVE love love with Burgos. I officially have a favorite city we've visited. I've loved everywhere, but this is the city that reached out, grabbed me in the face, and laid a big one right on the mouth, I tell ya. We went to this gorgeous park and just enjoyed nature and the view of the city (we basically climbed a mountain to get there...soooo many stairs) and after we of course got ice cream. No. It was too hot for ice cream. We got granizados, an Icee type slush thing. But probably better than anything you've ever tried in that genre. Dang. Then!!!!!!!! This was seriously one of my favorite things of the whole trip. We went to a monastery somewhere not terribly far from Burgos, but on the way we stopped near a canyon (the bus literally dropped us off in the middle of the freeway) where there were eagles everywhere. It was so neat! But the BEST part, there was a concrete path and a railing down in the canyon so we got to spend time exploring. I got down first of the group and I was crazy full of energy (from belting Disney songs with half the girls the whole bus ride to Burgos:]) so I literally ran ahead to see where it lead. It was just the freeway again, a little further down, but it was so neat! I can't explain it very well, especially without pictures, but it was sooo neat to be down in the canyon and hearing the water and feeling the cool air and seeing some eagles and such. From there we drove to the monastery, took a tour, and then got to sit in for their evening Gregorian chantings!!! Legit Gregorian chant from some Spanish monks. When I was in the Gregorian chant choir for a month of fifth grade, I never would have imagined that. It was so neat! After returning to Burgos for dinner in the hotel (Paella. I made a friend of my little lobster guy and subsequently could not eat him. Also we drank La Casera, a reeeeheeeeeaaally delicious slightly-flavored sparkling water:]), we had even more free time! So we went and hung out in front of the cathedral. I taught the group Ninja:) The next day we had a guided tour (from a VERY Spanish man-Spaniard. Great dresser) of the city a bit and then to the cathedral. =O That cathedral is GORGEOUS. I love Gothic architecture, I tell ya. This was sooooo amazing. After our tour of the cathedral and learning all about El Cid, we drove to somewhere else...where someone is buried...oh. No, it was a Carthusian monastery. The Carthusian monks take a vow f silence, and yet they still have a choir. Doesn't that seem a bit oxymoronic? I meant to ask about that...at any rate, we had more free time after we got back to Burgos and we actually went BACK to the park:) Still gorgeous, but we weren't there as long. We was huuuungry. So we got some greeeat food for lunch (garlic soup, blood sausage, a fried egg, and flan. And lots of bread) and did a lil shopping. I bought a little necklace charm of a shell, the symbol of the pilgrim, because Burgos is a stop on the Camino de Santiago (a camino I very much want to take myself someday). Not only is it a constant reminder of Spain and all its glory, but it's from Burgos, my favorite city, and it reminds me to work toward my very real goal of doing the camino someday. Second honeymoon? Eh? Eh? :) On our way out of Burgos (sad) we stopped at the church where El Cid had to leave his wife and children when he was exiled. His horse is buried there! Babieca.

I'm sure there's so much more I'm forgetting, but the most important things is this: Burgos is amazing. Tomorrow: Barcelona!!! In the rain. Claro.

La corrida

Before I dive into this post, I just need a moment of silence for the fact that I only have SIXTEEN DAYS left in Spain.











Vale. I always think Noche de Hogar can never get any better here in Spain, what with the Prado, the Reina Sofia, Flamenco classes, row boats, and Magnum ice cream, but I was wrong. This week we went to a corrida de toros, a real Spanish bull fight! I remember learning about bull fights for the first time, at least in any sort of detail, my Freshman year of high school. Fourteen-year-old Kelly would NEVER have imagined twenty-one-year-old Kelly ACTUALLY attending one. Never. And yet there we were, standing outside the stadium/arena/ball park. It did feel oddly like a baseball game when we first got there. If soccer is their football (rather, fútbol is their football), then bull fights would totally be their baseball. Although...don't they have baseball in Spain...? Baseball is more like their soccer. Whatever. I don't do sports. But I do apparently do bull fights! And it really was such a great thing to see. As bull fights go, it wasn't a very good one apparently. One of the toreros was only 19 years old, and none of them had very much experience. But it was ridiculous how huge and fast those bulls were and how close they got to the fighters! Okay I gotta start from the beginning.

The way the fighting arena is set up, you can buy tickets in the sol or the sombra, sun or shade. We got the cheapest tickets we could (16 euros) and of course were in the sol. The sombra seats were over twice as expensive. It was an interesting conflict, bc with the sun beaming in our faces I needed my sunglasses, but with my sunglasses I couldn't see the blood. Soooo I didn't wear my sunglasses. I did, however, use my sa-weet Spanish fan that I bought for 3 euros in Córdoba as a semi-visor. So it wasn't too bad. It was pretty hot tho, man alive. Anyway, we walk into the arena, assuming we'd be in the nosey-nosebleed section, but we were only about halfway up from the bottom! It was amazing! We really did end up with great seats. Also, the arena is a lot smaller than anticipated. I wasn't exactly expecting baseball stadium size, but at least bigger than what it was. There was a big old tarp in the middle of the dirt ring, and I cannot even begin to describe how excited I was when they pulled that away!!! There were guys with brooms out at one point and I wondered if they came out and danced to YMCA at the seventh inning stretch. They didn't after all. But they did clean up a lot of bull blood mud.

Each corrida consists of three fighters, each taking on two bulls a piece. A fight could last anywhere from 20-30 minutes, so the whole thing was about two and a half hours...maybe closer to two. When the bull is first released, there are three or four fighter guys with pink capey things to antagonize the bull. After he's sufficiently irritated, two guys on horses come out. I don't know what it is about those horses, but those bulls do NOT like them. The bull will charge at the horse and just SLAM into it. Luckily, the horse is heavily armored and blindfolded, so the horse just takes it like a man. As the bull slams into the horse, nearly lifting it off the ground and tipping it (but unfortunately never actually felling a horse...lame), the rider stabs the bull in the neck/spine area with a long spear thing. Then the bull keep butting his head into the underside of the horse, getting blood alllll over the armor. Okay, not alllll over. A good fighter minimizes the blood as much as possible, so in general it really isn't terribly graphic. Pues. Then, the pink cape fighters come and lure the bull away from the horse so they can exit the ring. After some more teasing from the pink guys, the reall torero comes out. He has the smaller red cape and the gorgeous pants and packet. Seriously. These costumes were amazing. The goal for the torero is to keep the bull's attention as long as he can. THe more times he can get the bull to run around him chasing the red cape, the better. It was like a dance, these toreros are weirdly flexible. After some fancy footwork, the torero whips out a sword, gets the bull to charge, and has to embed the sword into the bull in one swift motion, minimizing both the blood and the time of death. Knowing that, we really didn't see a very good fight. No one got the sword in on the first try that I can remember, and the bulls all definitely took awhile to die. Maybe not the first one...they all run together. But!!! The second torero was gettin panicky, so to get it over with he just stabbed kinda willy-nilly and ended up stabbing the bull through the lungs. Apparently, when a bull is stabbed in the lungs, blood just poooours out of his mouth like a fountain. I won't go into detail, but let's just say, I didn't realize bulls had soooooo much blood in them. Blerg. He did the same thing when he fought in the second half too!! They carried away the bloody mud/dirt/sand stuff in baskets. Baskets of blood mud. Okay, maybe too much detail. Ugh. I still shudder just thinking of it, let alone typing about it. ::shudder::

All in all, it was SUCH a cool experience! I probably don't need to go ever again, but it was definitely an experience I'll remember for a long time:)