Después del programa vol. II: Barcelona, París y Praga

I'm hoping that I can remember all that I've done in these places because it seems like this month has just been flying by. After leaving Spain a bit ago it feels like I've been a different place every single day and it's incredible, but also incredibly tiring because you want to make the most of every place while you're there. Don't get me wrong I've been extremely fortunate to be where I'm at, doing what I'm doing, but it can be quite a tiring experience keeping up with different cultures/customs/foods/things to see and so on. With that, I'll jot down some of the main things that have stuck in my head since about a week ago and we'll go from there.

Barcelona: Segunda Vez

So, if you have been keeping up at all on these blogs or have been in contact with my family back in the States you will have already known that I went to Barcelona once. I loved it, but the thing is it's damn near impossible to visit that size of a city in one day and I think we missed out on a lot that makes this Mediterranean city so special.

We arrived at the hostel on el Passeig de Grácia that Maggie recommended we stay at and it was easily one of the best hostels I've stayed at. In fact, it may have been nicer than some of the hotels I've stayed at. But I didn't come to Barcelona to stay in the hostel so we got all of our things together and went to grab some dinner and find out where we could watch the Super Bowl and boy did we find it.

The sign outside looked promising haha.

So we got ourselves a couple liters of Spanish beer and watched in disgust as the Super Bowl proceeded to be one of the least interesting football games we've ever seen. It was so bad that we actually just played pool the second half because the only interesting part was the huge, drunk Seahawks fan that would scream after every first down/interception/touchdown so we still got our updates. 

The next day we woke up to the sound of construction at 8AM sharp and momentarily decided that this was the worst hostel in the world. But we then got free breakfast and all was right in the world. We bummed around a bit and decided to go to Parque Güell, a park designed by the wonderful Mr. Antoni Gaudí. We didn't actually pay to get into the part that has some of his craziest buildings, but we took a nice stroll and climbed on top of the mountain to soak in how awesome and massive the city is.

On top of the hill overlooking the city.

We then made our way to Camp Nou, or FC Barcelona's home stadium. I had gone there once before with my family so that Pete and Charlie could see it, but we decided to walk through it this time. It was such a cool experience and made me want to go to a game really bad, but unfortunately that doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon. We got to walk through the press room, press box, on the pitch, one of the locker rooms and other parts of the stadium. The amount of trophies and the whole culture of the team was pretty insane to look at and the only comparable thing in the States is college football I would say. I wish I could make it to a game, but it just wasn't in the cards!

After getting pushed out of the hall we went back to the same bar and met Katie and Michelle before they went home. We just talked and shot some pool and then made our way back to the hostel once again.

The next day we went to the old city and saw the old gothic cathedral and the beach. We walked along the beach for a while and I couldn't believe how warm it was in the middle of February. It have to imagine it wasn't much less than 65 degrees, sorry everyone at home that has to read that haha but it was fantastic. After that we basically just hung out for our last couple hours and made sure we had all of our plans together for the next parts of the trip.

Paris 

Before I talk too much about what we did in Paris I have to issue a disclaimer of sorts. I don't know why, but I didn't really have high hopes for this city. Maybe it's because it was one of the first countries in a while that I wasn't able to communicate with anyone or maybe it was just because Paris is such a huge city, I don't know what it is. And on top of that it kind of reached those low expectations, not quite surpassing them. I felt like sometimes I found myself doing things to say that I did them rather than actually being interested enough to do them. This is one reason I didn't see the Mona Lisa. YES I KNOW IT'S THE MONA LISA, but to be honest art doesn't interest me enough to get packed into a room with a thousand other people to take a picture of a little painting after paying $25. I don't know, it could just be me, but I find other things a bit more important to me than just catching a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, for example.
Aaaanyway, following this beautiful day in Barcelona we touched down in Paris where it was chilly and just moments from raining at any given time. We tried to get some bearings of where we were so we walked around a bit by our hostel and then took a nap because we were a bit tired and a touch sick. We decided to only do one thing that night and that was going to the Eiffel Tower. It was one of the things I really wanted to see while there and we actually ended up going on top of it to see the whole city!

Changing the selfie game every day. Also, yes, the Eiffel Tower is sparkling.

I'm not going to lie, for some reason the whole time that we were going up this thing I just thought about Rush Hour 3 when Jackie Chan slides down the Tower at the end. I don't even know. 

So I've got something short to share really quick because I was convinced that Paris was out to get us when we went on our walking tour the following day. We stayed in the Oops! Hostel in Paris which is a strange name in general. No worries, the beds were comfortable and whatever but when your tour guide is then named Onno...oh no. You just can't make that up. Regardless of all this and the rain on top of that, the tour was great. I saw a lot and learned a lot about the city and actually my initial feelings changed and began to like it a lot more. We saw the Louvre, the Latin Quarter, the Notre Dame, and a ton more but were pretty soaked by the end of it. Nothing that a little Chipotle didn't fix though.

Inside the Notre Dame

 Lock Bridge.

The Louvre with the guys.

After the walking tour, Robert, Aleks and I headed up to meet Mauro and Tyler and we made our way to get a better look at the Arc de Triomphe. The weather finally cleared up and we started to dry out as well.

The last thing we did was go to the older part of the city and we climbed up to see Sacre Coeur, an old cathedral on one of the highest points of the city. We took the metro most of the way there and went in side this gorgeous, white church. The inside was just so crisp and clean because of the white stone and was just as impressive as Notre Dame in my opinion, possibly because of the fact that it was on top of a small mountain. 

Prague

Prague was one of my favorite cities I've gone to since being to Europe and I would highly recommend it. Katilee talked about it to me before I left and I have to admit she couldn't talk it up enough. The bars, the castles, old city, opera house; the place has it all! We arrived pretty late at night so we didn't do much but eat dinner which was muuuuch different from what I've become accustomed to in Spain. I had roasted pork knee with mustard and horseradish with a nice half pint of a local stout called Kovel. On top of it being hearty it was cheap (like $7 total!) and extremely filling. Right away I could tell I was going to like this place.

The following day we set out on another free walking tour with a fantastic guide who I'm going to call George due to his impossible Czech name. He took us all over the city and gave us cool anecdotes about everything we saw. Most were making fun of Nazis and no one can resist those, so we had to tip him a bit more than our other "free" tours.

The Charles Bridge, also a car and a presumable Czech Family.

Neo-Gothic Church in the Prague Castle

The Astronomical Clock

Some of these pictures are actually from the following day when we went through a few of the parts of the Prague Castle on a tour but who really cares, right? Anyways on this same tour we were shown a statue of a few men that I wouldn't have noticed unless our guide said something and to be honest, I kind of nerd-ed out it for a second.

With no help from the lettering underneath the two gentlemen, this is Tycho Brahe and Johnnes Kepler. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but they were some pretty big-name astronomers that lived in the 16th and 17th century that did a lot of their work in Prague. Actually Brahe's buried in Prague somewhere but due to time constraints I wasn't able to go see the grave. I completely forgot that they were in the Czech Republic and to be honest I think that I was the only person in our tour group that had any idea who they were. This was made kind of evident when I asked the tour guide some questions about him and everyone just kind of just called me a nerd. No matter, I was pretty pumped for some reason. 

I know that every post on this one is pretty short, but it took me forever to write these because I've been putting it off/traveling/watching Netflix instead. I've actually been to two other cities since writing about these three and at this rate we'll see if I even post about those ones before I get home. It maybe that I'm just forgetting a few things or just being lazy but I just ask me sometime if you want to get bored by my stories here haha. I'm missing home and it's crazy that I'll be back in like two weeks. Looking forward to seeing all of my family and friends again and I hope that everyone is doing well. It's so bittersweet leaving some place I've called home for the last six months, but it will be so great being in a place that I've called home for the last twenty years. Let me know at all if you want to skype or something soon but otherwise bundle up and keep warm in the Polar Vortexes and I'll keep trying to get by in the 60 degree weather haha. Look for some possible posts about Munich and Venice coming soon enough!

Chau!

Después del programa: Santiago de Compostela y San Sebastián

            I told you I was going to try to post a bit more so here’s my first post on my one month trip all over Europe. I promise that these posts won’t be as long and will have more of my favorite pictures that I took. Again, I’m traveling with my friends Mauro, Aleks, Tyler, and Robert and they’ve been a joy to be with the whole three days of our trip. We have some high hopes for the next three and a half weeks here and here’s just some short posts of our past two day trips.

Santiago de Compostela

            So we took a RyanAir flight (really cheap discount airline) up to Santiago de Compostela on the last day in January after sleeping the night in the hotel. Needless to say we were pretty tired when we arrived there at eight in the morning. We walked about around the city and got a quick breakfast because we couldn’t check into the hostel but didn’t really see much. We checked-in and took a nap before anything else because the flight just really killed us.

            We woke up and tried to wade through the rainy city to la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela. This is an ancient church that was constructed after the pilgrimage of Saint James. If you’ve ever heard of el Camino de Santiago this is the ending point to the path and is where a lot of pilgrims end up. It’s situated in the center of the city and without a doubt is the most important part of the city. There’s a gorgeous plaza outside of it with a hotel (I have to imagine extremely expensive) and town hall right nearby. It’s an old Roman-style church so it is pretty but it can be kind of boring as well and to be honest I was a little disappointed with it. That being said, I was blown away by the inside and the gold-plated altar area.

Unfortunately, it's undergoing maintenance.

  

            Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to see in Santiago. The city reminded me a lot of my times in Ireland and England because it just seemed to continue raining and everything was ridiculously green. It may also be that way because Cáceres is quite possibly the driest climate I’ve ever lived in so anything that gets rain more than six times in 6 months seems wet. I will say that the seafood here was absolutely phenomenal. Tyler and I split this delicious plate of steamed mussels and another plate of calamari. It was super fresh and it just was succulent, no way around it. I really enjoyed it here, but I will say that I’m glad I only spent one day there. 

San Sebastián

            After a ten-hour train ride through the mountainous northern coast of Spain we arrived at the beautiful Basque city of San Sebastián. And yes that is 10 hours, let’s just say we made due playing euchre and hearts and it didn’t seem to be that long. We arrived and couldn’t quite find the hostel after forgetting to write down any kind of information to find it. On top of that it was raining and pretty dark. Not one of our better ideas. We finally got to the hostel, dried out and headed out for some pinxos (pronounced "peenchos", tapas essentially). The pinxos were phenomenal: cod cooked with honey, mushrooms and raisins and cod with ali-oli, caramelized onions and toasted bread. We went and checked out the beach quick but didn’t feel like getting rained on too much more, so we decided to go to bed.

            This is a quick sidebar before the continuation of my time here. San Sebastián is part of Basque Country which is a region of Spain that also wants independence from Spain; so much so that they had a terrorist group until a few years ago. Actually some of the convicted terrorists have recently been released from prison based of off some European human rights law that says that no one can be kept in prison for more than thirty years, even if they killed hundreds of innocent people and were convicted for multiple life sentences because that just not humane. It’s kind of a big deal here, but regardless they’re still a bit nationalistic and they like speaking there own language, blah blah blah.

            There was a bit of rain in the morning when we went to the sea and we noticed that there were was a lot of caution tape up. We didn’t think much about it and continued down a side road to get a better view of the Ondarreta Beach.

My friend Robert and I at the side of Ondarreta.

            We headed toward the Old City where there was also a “mountain” to climb to get a viewpoint of the whole city. Here again we found a lot of yellow tape and a ton of people. One of the bridges was closed off due to the amount of sand and the fact that one of the walls facing the ocean had fallen into the river. After talking to a few locals and looking up on the news what had happened. There apparently was a huge storm that had waves just slamming different parts of the city and wreaking havoc on the man-made structures. There were many streets in the old city that were closed down and a lot destruction from the eight-meter-high waves that were crushing the shore.

           

            We climbed the Monte Urgull to one of the ancient costal batteries. The view of the city was, once again, indescribable. We could see both Ondaretta Beach, la Playa de la Concha and all of the snow-capped mountains that surrounded the city. With the sun-shining, blue skies, and the mocha-colored white caps I knew that I had fallen in love with Northern Spain.

            We walked the long path back down to the hostel and watched the crashing waves as close as we were allowed due to the closing of the street. The waves were still splashing meters into the sky and they sounded like a jet rolling in. I tried to capture the sound with my camera but I don’t know if it was possible. We honestly sat there just watching waves for like 20 minutes, it was just so beautiful.

            We grabbed some great burgers with goat cheese and blueberries and headed off to the train to Barcelona, which is where we currently are. I loved San Sebastián and I wish we had one more day to see some of the other parts of the city and get some more pinxos, but I can always come back. I would definitely recommend coming here if you’re in Spain, especially in the summer.  With that I will bid you adieu and hope you enjoyed a shorter post. I’m having a great time and I hope you’ll look forward to my coming adventures in Barça and Paris.

Adiós!

Las vacaciones (por fin)

Madrid

So, I started out this long vacation in Madrid by myself for a day. We rented this uh, well, “cozy” apartment for Christmas in the Plaza de Santa Ana. When I arrived it was gorgeous outside and all of the restaurants in the Plaza had they’re tables set up outside and waiters welcoming me to come in for a menu of the day special. It was a very lax day because I had already seen some of the things I wanted to in Madrid and I also had to figure out how to pick up the family and such. Regardless of the slow day, I did go to the Reina Sofia Museum, which is one of the three big art museums in town. This one in particular is important because it has one of the most important pieces in Spanish history which was created by this little-known guy named Picasso. The piece is called “Guernica” which is the name of a town that was bombed in northern Spain during World War II. I didn’t know what to make of it, but what was really interesting was that they had pictures of the stages of its painting and you could see how many times Picasso switched things before he finished his masterpiece. The rest of the museum was too abstract for me and I peaced out before I hit the third floor.

            The following day was the 24^th and I went to pick up my family! I was so happy to see them after 4 months. Skype is a wonderful invention, but there’s nothing like seeing someone you love in the flesh. After a great little breakfast in my favorite restaurant with the fam we headed out to kill the town! Except we didn’t at all. Jetlag hit hard and everyone paid homage to the Spanish culture and took a four hour siesta. We went out for a bit to look at the Christmas markets going on in the Plaza Mayor and other small little plazas but the rain put a damper on that. We also went to the Mercado de San Miguel which is this cool little indoor market where you can buy a bunch of different fresh baked goods, olives, and of course, wine. We grabbed some cheap wine and went back to flat to dry out and watch the Schultz family classic, Elf.

            Christmas day came and Charlie, Pete and I got these really nice sweaters from my parents. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fit mine in my luggage to London so she’ll be waiting for me back in the States. We headed of to mass at la Iglesia de San Sebastian, which is the most I’ve understood at a Spanish mass so far. The priest talked about how we need to find the light in our life like the Magi found Jesus and other things that I had a tough time completely translating to the fam. After that, we just kind of bummed around the city in a light rain until we met up with Marina, Charlie’s Spanish friend from a couple years back. We stopped into a nice little café and caught up whilst having some café con leche (coffee with milk for you n00bs). After that we made our way to an Argentinian steak house and had an awesome Christmas dinner. Nothing welcomes baby Jesus to the world like a perfectly-cooked Kobe steak.

Valencia

            The next morning we figured out the Metro to get to our train. I must say, I was extremely impressed by the high-speed trains in Spain. We were cruising at a cool 180 MPH and it didn’t feel like we were going much faster than 60. No matter how we got there, we arrived to our hotel in the old part of the city and found some breakfast. It may have been the fact that we were in the Old City or it may have been the first blue skies we had seen since my family arrived but Valencia was gorgeous. It was filled with beautiful little plazas, each with their own little churches and orange trees. Again we took a nice siesta after walking about the city while I tried to figure out my iPhone situation. After the failure which continues to be getting a new iPhone, we headed down to the more modern section of town with the Oceanarium and the Museum of Natural Sciences and Sports. These buildings are ridiculous in both size and form. I don’t know how to explain the time in Valencia, but the city was gorgeous and the pictures that Charlie and Pete will/have put up will be a testament to that. We ended up in this nice little restaurant off the main strip of the old town and got some paella. Valencia is supposed to have the best paella in all of Spain and I have to agree. It was easily the best paella that I’ve had in my time in this country.

            After dinner we ate some helado (it’s just gelato, but Spanish) and walked down to the Town Hall. They had an ice rink out and boy did we have some fun watching these Spaniards try to skate. The best way to describe it was tiptoeing on blades and somehow catching enough of an edge to lose balance. We then grabbed a few more drinks and talked for a while before heading back to the hotel. Charlie, Pete and I headed out to a Cien Montaditos, which is a small little chain restaurant with cheap food and just talked a bit.

Barçelona

            Barcelona was an awesome city, there’s no denying that. Unfortunately, I don’t think we saw all of the things it has to offer. The only thing that was saw worth seeing was la Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family), and boy was it worth it. If you’ve never heard of this church it’s been in construction since the late 1800’s and it is the masterpiece of a catalan architect  named Antoní Gaudí. I don’t quite think I can do it justice so I’ll just put up some pictures of the amazingly complex things that he was able to think of.

  

These pictures really don't show how beautiful it is.

            We went through the little museum inside the church and we read about some of his inspiration for La Sagrada Familia and he seemed to much more than just an architect. He studied the forms of a bunch of plants and took their best and most rigid aspects and was able to incorporate them into the church and some of the other buildings and parks he made in the city. For example, the inside of the church looks like a canopy in the Amazon forest and he took some ideas from trees and other parts of nature to make this image really come out. Some people think that the church is just ugly, and I think if you didn’t know what Gaudí wanted to with it you would think that too, but after you understand his thinking you realize just how incredible it really is. I’m planning to be back in Barça very soon so I’ll write some more after being there.

Zaragoza

           

            Zaragoza was a complete surprise to me. I asked multiple people, including my host family and my professors here, but no one knew much about it. It’s located right in between Barcelona and Madrid, so you’d have to figure it was a pretty important city. On top of that, one of the most important artists in Spanish history was born here named  Francisco de Goya AND there’s a church where Saint James saw the Virgin Mary come down from a pillar. All of that is in this tiny town in Aragon and no one knew anything about it!

            It was a gorgeous day with blue skies and plenty of sun when we arrived. We made our way from the train station to our hotel and along the way we saw many museums and actually one of the first bull fighting rings that has a retractable roof. Cooler than any of this was that we were situated just outside of the Old City of Zaragoza and was only about 5 minutes in walking. We got some helado and some coffee and then made our way into that old part to explore. We quickly found ourselves next to Nuestra Señora del Pilar (Our Lady of the Pillar), which was a massive and stunning church on the river. We went inside and saw some of the early paintings of Goya and some by Velázquez, many of which were being restored. What was amazing was seeing a part of the pillar that St. James saw Mary come down from during his pilgrimage but to be honest where the altar was, was stunning. It was all carved wood so it was dark, which was in stark contrast to the rest of the very bright church.

            We took a short time to rest after shopping and walking around during dusk and headed out a bit later. I was so surprised how full the streets were in such a small town, especially because it seemed like there was barely any people during the day. For dinner we went to a tapas bar that had Michelin star ratings only to find it was full. This is was no problem because right next door was another tapas bar that was just impressive, yet another problem: the kitchen was on fire. So with our tummies rumbling and feeling as if we were never going to find a restaurant my mom said that she saw some place that had some promise. It was phenomenal, we had many different types of croquetas, seafood, ham and clams and it was amazing. We left full and decided to go find a quick bar as it was my last few hours with my family. We chatted for a while and made our way back a bit late in the night and I caught a quick nap before I left in the early morning.

London

            London was insane. We stayed in a hostel right next to St. Pauls’ Cathedral and it was extremely impressive. It didn’t matter that it took me close to 12 hours to get there from Spain, I was just happy to see many of my friends again from all over world again in one place. It’s hard to categorize what we did during this week long experience so I thinks it’s just easier to list them and then you’re welcome to ask me about it later:

• Saw the fireworks during NYE behind the London Eye (it was such an awesome show, one of the best I’ve ever seen!)
• Went to Shakespeare’s Globe (unfortunately I didn’t have the cash at the time to go in)
• Walked over Tower Bridge
• London Tower
• We went to Fly Emirates Stadium (Arsenal Football Club’s stadium and Aleks went to a game…)
• Attempted to go the Winston Churchill War Rooms
• Buckingham Palace
• Saw many of the homes of the English Royalty
• Went through the British Museum (I FORGOT THE ROSETTA STONE WAS THERE AND DIDN’T SEE IT)
• Trafalgar Square
•  Parliament and Big Ben
• Westminster Abbey

There were a few other smaller things that we did, but I can’t remember them off the top of my head. It was just so amazing to see Parliament on the River Thames and more or less just see the river. Since there aren’t many bodies of water where I’m staying in Spain, I get excited when ever there’s one running right through the city.

That more or less caps off my Winter Break adventure. I just finished up my exams and my large cultural research project this month. There were a few times I didn’t think I was going to finish everything in time but some people got me back on track. I’m now sitting here with a mere 1 day left in Cáceres and I can’t believe it. Five months seemed so long on paper and now I’m packing my suitcase and not coming back in any foreseeable future. I feel like I’ve made my second home here, and possibly a second family. Between my friends from Kalamazoo struggling and succeeding here and the family that I live with, Cáceres will always be a part of me and I’ll always make sure to visit it if I happen to be in Spain. I couldn’t be happier to spend my time abroad here.

With all of that being said, I still have a month of travel here so be ready for some more frequent blogging. I’m traveling until March 2^nd with my friends Mauro, Aleks, Tyler and our English friend, Robert. Although we don’t have everything set in stone, I’m thrilled to get to spend my last month with these guys and seeing places that I’ve always dreamed of seeing. Keep your eyes on facebook or this page to see if I’ll post anything new! Also sorry Kate, I know you told Charlie to tell me I need to post more and I did the exact opposite, but I hope this helps! One more thing: I just bought a camera so I'll have more pics and more of my own more importantly!

           

           

           

Dublín, Mérida y Trujillo

In a radical attempt to not do my homework I'll let you all know about my long weekend in Ireland and a small day trip I had with my professors from Kalamazoo.

Dublin

A couple of weekends ago, Mauro and I went to Ireland to visit Maggie my cousin. She is studying abroad in a small city outside of Dublin called Maynooth where we stayed with her in her flat. On Thursday we flew out of Lisbon and after many delays and long taxi rides we made it to her place and talked for another 3 hours. It was good, and really weird, hearing so much English spoken around me even if it was in an Irish accent.

The following day we all took a train to another small city called Howthe that's on the other side of Dublin. We hiked all through this small peninsula and saw a bit of those beautiful Irish cliffs. On top of that we were able to talk with a bunch of local townies and they were extremely friendly much like the people in Cáceres, but I could actually understand everything they were saying for once. We had lunch at this pub in the middle of the trails and had this amazing chowder, aptly named Howthe Chowder. It may have been because we had been hiking for a while or that I was still tired from sleeping, but that chowder was phenomenal. It had two or three different types of fish and other seafood in there and then with a big pint of milk...couldn't ask for something better.

 That night, Maggie took us into downtown Dublin to the Temple Bar district with one of her flatmates. The Temple Bar district was exactly what I had imagined drinking at pub in Ireland to be like. It was where I had a my first true Guinness among other things. The whole district was packed, which added to the fun. Towards the end of the night we stopped by and got some taco chips (stellar french fries) and headed back on the 40-minute-long bus ride to Maynooth.

The next day Mauro and I woke up relatively early and made our way back into Dublin to tour the Guinness Storehouse, and boy did it deliver. There were seven stories talking about how it's made and all of the advertising over the years. One of my favorite parts were in the taste testing room where we got a mini pint and were told what to look for when drinking Guinness. It was really cool because they had this fog machines that had a concentrated version of the esters, hops, malts and other things that are evident in their beer. It helped pick out some different tastes, but the thing is, Guinness just tastes different in Ireland. It's so strange. It's just smoother and, well, tastes better. After looking through all of the other artifacts they had, Mauro and I received a free pint to continue 'taste testing.' It was amazing obviously and I thought it was just an awesome experience. Also on the way back we talked to a bunch of teenage Irish kids who wanted to know anything and everything about the States. They were in that funny age where they want to be super cool but are still really cute with how excited they are to meet foreigners haha.

The Black Stuff

We had a pretty chill time, just watching Christmas movies and making some enchiladas before we headed out. Lisbon was a trainwreck again getting back, partially because the Portuguese refuse to speak Spanish. Imagine that! We got back to Cáceres fine but I wish I could've stayed for longer. 

Mérida y Trujillo

This past week we had twelve or so professors from K come to Cáceres and eat at our houses and go to our cultural project sites. I never had any of them for class, but I have talked to the two chemistry profs before so I was able to meet a ton of awesome people. Everyone that came was very excited to be there and see some of us that they knew.

Their last day we went to two towns that are very close: Mérida (the capital of Extremadura, the "state" I live in) and Trujillo (a small town somewhere around here). Mérida is very rich in Roman history with many of their structures still standing and it reminded me a lot of Rome. No matter where you dig in the city there are Roman ruins and a lot of the city is under constant excavation due to that. We visited the amphitheater, the theatre, and an old Roman bridge. Up until recently, cars were still driven over the bridge but they stopped doing that to try and preserve it. After an exquisite three course lunch of paella, pork and chips, and a homemade cake we made our way to Trujillo for an hour and half.

Trujillo appeared to me to be much more interesting for some reason. It was very foggy and damn near nighttime but we toured a bit of the old city. The thing that I found to be the coolest part was that this city was the birthplace of Francisco Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana. For those of you who can't remember history of the Americas, they were two of the fiercest conquistadors who conquered the Incas and traversed the Amazon River, respectively. We saw what they're wealth was able to build with them and how there lives were beforehand. For example, Pizarro went from living in a small home in the old city to constructing a massive palace on the Plaza Mayor because why not? Our guide told us that these guys were basically insane, but I have to imagine you had to conquer a people over an ocean away that you didn't even know existed 20 years before. I just love being in cities where there's history even semi-related to the us and I thought it was surreal walking through the same streets as these men.

Well after these cool little cities we went to tapas with the profs and got to know one another even more over some drinks. Although I didn't know these people that well beforehand I hope that I can get into some of their classes if I have free time in my last year. 

All in all, I'm doing well and excited to see my fam that's coming next week. Miss everyone and if you still want a postcard, let me know!