Oh Barthelona! Definitely my favorite city thus far.
After a wonderful afternoon of strolling and haircuttery, we piled into some taxis to take us to the airport for Madrid. I had a ticket mishap... and paid for it dearly... not a fun event. But the plane ride was quick and we landed in Barcelona about an hour later.
After getting turned around in trying to find our hostel, we finally made it and got settled in (with the help of some of the friendliest, kindest hostel staff EVER), and promptly went out to "Nasty Mondays" at club Apolo. Twas a good time.
The next day, despite being out until approximately 3am, Christina and I awoke at 9am and found a nice little cafe to have breakfast. We waited for our friends to wake up, then around noon all 6 of us headed out to explore. We walked down the Arc de Triumph walkway (name??) in the beautiful sunlight and gorgeous day, then made our way down the the beach and soaked up the sand and salt for an hour before making our way back up to some little shops. We also saw a movie being filmed in a small alley, that was really cool. Found some gifts in an adorable shop. Then we headed back to the hostel to commence dinner making! Pasta with chicken and broccoli and wine, with strawberries dipped in melted chocoalte for dessert! Inexpensive and a really fun and different dinner. Some people had found a small jazz bar that they wanted to go to that night, mainly to contrast the intense club we were at the night before. We headed downstairs to the cozy bar the hostel had and enjoyed 2 cocktails for 7 euro before grabbing some taxis to the bar. Two castle kids (Pat being one of them!) got to play onstage with members of the band, which was awesome and so cool! Didn't go to bed until about 5am. I love Barcelona time tables :)
Wednesday was our last day in Barcelona. Christina and I woke up early for another glorious day, and we met Patrick and Z in town. Pat, Z and I got brunch, then headed to La Sagrada Familia. Wow. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, both inside and out. It's incredible to think of how it was designed, every detail carefully thought out with precision. I will be back there someday when it's finished. Wow.
Then we took the metro to Gaudi's Parc Guell which was also absolutely beautiful! We walked around the entire park, going up into the mountains... the view of the entire city of Barcelona is something I'll never forget. After 3 or 4 hours there, we went back to our hostel and made dinner again :) Rice, chicken and cashews... with wine. There was talk of going out again, I woud up going to a few bars before winding up at Club Apolo again. Crashed back at the hostel for 45 minutes (woken up by some annoying Irish students) before waking up for real at 6am to catch our flight to Rome.
Barcelona was wonderful and I want to go back!
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Spring Break part one- Madrid!
Since Spring break was 10 days long, I'm going to do three separate posts about each of the three cities I visited.
So, we started in Madrid with an academic excursion with our professors and OSA members (the people that take care of us at the Castle). We awoke bright and early last Friday morning to head to Amsterdam International for our flight. Once we landed, we stored out things in our hotels and had an early walking tour with different professors. Mine was with Dulcia, the head of the program and an Art History professor. She's really knowlegeable and clearly studied in order to provide us with information about the city. We walked around the old parts of the city, studied different buildings and learned a bit about the history of Spain/Madrid.
After, we were released for lunch, and a bunch of us wound up at a cafe that had wondeful Paella... it's my new favorite dish. (I can't wait to go to Valencia and eat some more this weekend!). Lunch was quite rushed however, because, as it turned out, they didn't plan this trip very well. It was the Castle's first time to Madrid, so the staff was learning how thigns worked as we did, but it did prove for some scheduling mishaps: Our second activity on Sunday was cancelled because the director didn't look up the times of the museum, and the second activity on Monday was also cancelled because they booked too early a flight back to the Netherlands. Little things like that made the trip disorganized, but it wound up giving us more free time to explore the city which was GREAT since our other days were so jam packed they were almost hard to enjoy. So Friday night consisted of a Flamenco bar, which just had cool Flamenco music playing while we enjoyed drinks and each others company.
Saturday we were split into gruops and went to different museums according to class. I went to the Museum of the Americas for Contemporary World History. Mainly Mayan and Aztec artifacts. Then after lunch we all took a bus an hour outside of the city to look at the palace of King Philip II, which also had a huge library, a monestary and museum inside. It was huge! The views of the nearby towns were gorgeous as well, and on the drive there we saw Franco's huge cross marking his monument of Fascist soldiers. It was really cool to accidentally see something we'd learned about in class. Saturday nigth was a CRAZY 7-story club called Kapital. Insane. By this point my feet and shins were killing me because we'd been walking from 9am-at least 2am every day and it was not fun.
Sunday was a [tired, hungover] morning at the Prado museum. Unfortunatley our guide was really quiet and didn't know where she was taking us so it wasn't engaging at all. After a relaxing afternoon of shopping and eating, we had Flamenco lessons! I was SO excited for them, since I'd learned a little bit when I was younger. We actually learned the sequence called Sevillanas that I'd learned when I was 14. I had an absolutely blast, but I know it was really ahrd for others to learn. Such a fun night for me! After that, I wound up going out to dinner with Patrick, Tim and all the OSA members, plus a professor, Rob, and a member of the kitchen staff who was along on the trip, Stephan. Had a wonderful time, and got a free dinner and 2 rounds of drinks. A wonderful last evening spent in Madrid.
Monday morning we were split into groups to tour around the gigantic Parc de Madrid, and I had Dulcia as my guide once again. She wanted to show us the only statue of Satan (that she knew existed) and she said, "There's a statue of Satan. Let's go pray to it"... that woman! We saw some beautiful landscaping, went into a musem that had modern Dutch artist (from Eindhoven!) Rene Daniels works (which I absolutely LOVED), and just wandered around the beautiful park. We were set free to go have lunch, and everyone wound up at the huge market to buy Paella and fruit (yum!). Christina, Pat and I foud a salon nearby and got a haircut! Ha! Definitely needed and a nice addition to Madrid. Then we had some gelato and it was time to leave for the Airport to catch our flight to Barthelona....
So, we started in Madrid with an academic excursion with our professors and OSA members (the people that take care of us at the Castle). We awoke bright and early last Friday morning to head to Amsterdam International for our flight. Once we landed, we stored out things in our hotels and had an early walking tour with different professors. Mine was with Dulcia, the head of the program and an Art History professor. She's really knowlegeable and clearly studied in order to provide us with information about the city. We walked around the old parts of the city, studied different buildings and learned a bit about the history of Spain/Madrid.
After, we were released for lunch, and a bunch of us wound up at a cafe that had wondeful Paella... it's my new favorite dish. (I can't wait to go to Valencia and eat some more this weekend!). Lunch was quite rushed however, because, as it turned out, they didn't plan this trip very well. It was the Castle's first time to Madrid, so the staff was learning how thigns worked as we did, but it did prove for some scheduling mishaps: Our second activity on Sunday was cancelled because the director didn't look up the times of the museum, and the second activity on Monday was also cancelled because they booked too early a flight back to the Netherlands. Little things like that made the trip disorganized, but it wound up giving us more free time to explore the city which was GREAT since our other days were so jam packed they were almost hard to enjoy. So Friday night consisted of a Flamenco bar, which just had cool Flamenco music playing while we enjoyed drinks and each others company.
Saturday we were split into gruops and went to different museums according to class. I went to the Museum of the Americas for Contemporary World History. Mainly Mayan and Aztec artifacts. Then after lunch we all took a bus an hour outside of the city to look at the palace of King Philip II, which also had a huge library, a monestary and museum inside. It was huge! The views of the nearby towns were gorgeous as well, and on the drive there we saw Franco's huge cross marking his monument of Fascist soldiers. It was really cool to accidentally see something we'd learned about in class. Saturday nigth was a CRAZY 7-story club called Kapital. Insane. By this point my feet and shins were killing me because we'd been walking from 9am-at least 2am every day and it was not fun.
Sunday was a [tired, hungover] morning at the Prado museum. Unfortunatley our guide was really quiet and didn't know where she was taking us so it wasn't engaging at all. After a relaxing afternoon of shopping and eating, we had Flamenco lessons! I was SO excited for them, since I'd learned a little bit when I was younger. We actually learned the sequence called Sevillanas that I'd learned when I was 14. I had an absolutely blast, but I know it was really ahrd for others to learn. Such a fun night for me! After that, I wound up going out to dinner with Patrick, Tim and all the OSA members, plus a professor, Rob, and a member of the kitchen staff who was along on the trip, Stephan. Had a wonderful time, and got a free dinner and 2 rounds of drinks. A wonderful last evening spent in Madrid.
Monday morning we were split into groups to tour around the gigantic Parc de Madrid, and I had Dulcia as my guide once again. She wanted to show us the only statue of Satan (that she knew existed) and she said, "There's a statue of Satan. Let's go pray to it"... that woman! We saw some beautiful landscaping, went into a musem that had modern Dutch artist (from Eindhoven!) Rene Daniels works (which I absolutely LOVED), and just wandered around the beautiful park. We were set free to go have lunch, and everyone wound up at the huge market to buy Paella and fruit (yum!). Christina, Pat and I foud a salon nearby and got a haircut! Ha! Definitely needed and a nice addition to Madrid. Then we had some gelato and it was time to leave for the Airport to catch our flight to Barthelona....
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