Barcelona, Toledo, Lisbon, and Paris!

Okay I know it’s been forever. 4 weekend trips, in fact. (That’s how we count time here, in weekends.) I have an excuse though, because we’ve been having ridiculous internet problems here. We supposedly have wireless in our classroom building, but we’ve been without internet for probably a total of 2 weeks out of the 4 I haven’t updated about. So when last I wrote, I was about to go to Barcelona to meet up with my friends from ND. Tim and I ended up taking the overnight bus because the train was sold out (it was a holiday weekend here in Spain) and that was definitely an experience I would not like to repeat. We got into Barcelona around 8am and trekked to our hostel, which wouldn’t let us check in until noon, so we dropped off our stuff and went to have breakfast next to Sagrada Familia. We met up with Jessica (studying in Rome) and some of her friends from Rome, Shauna and Kelly, at Parc Guell. We had a disastrous adventure trying to meet up with Rebeca (coming in from London) and then had lunch at Sagrada Familia and then finally met up with Rebeca and checked into our hostel. We spent the evening walking along Las Ramblas and had a ridiculously expensive tapas meal with a horrible waiter and then met Eileen, who had just gotten in from London. We entertained the idea of going down to the beach, but instead we just went to bed. Saturday we went to the Picasso museum and then the chocolate museum and then had lunch at Barcelona’s Arc d’Triomph and Eileen, Rebeca, Tim, and I went to tour Sagrada Familia while Jess, Shauna, and Kelly went shopping. We met up again at the beach and walked through various parts of Barcelona before having another disastrous dinner. We finally got to see the Agbar tower, which Tim really wanted to see because it’s on the cover of one of our textbooks.

The next weekend I stayed in Toledo, for the first weekend since the first weekend we were here, because I kind of needed to study for midterms. I had a great time wandering around Toledo and seeing the parts I hadn’t walked through yet.

Midterms week was stressful as usual, but a little more so because I’d had up until that week a very laid back work schedule, and so all my work came in a rush. I think I did well on all my midterms and papers (I get them back this week, so we’ll see.) I added stress to the week by moving out of my host families house because we weren’t really getting along that well and I was sick of the hour-long commute each way to the classroom building. The weekend after midterms Tim and I went to Lisbon on the overnight train and met up with Tricia and Caitlin, who had traveled separately but were staying in the same hostel. Portugal is so much more different from Spain than I expected. I usually had no idea what people were saying when they spoke in Portuguese because it sounds so different from Spanish, but almost everyone we encountered spoke some English or Spanish, so we got around pretty easily. Our first day Tim and I participated in a 3-hour free wine tasting before lunch and then we all climbed up to a castle in the heart of Lisbon. This trip felt more like a vacation than any of our trips within Spain, so it was really relaxing after midterms. Saturday we went to the Thieves’ Market to look around and then out to a little town outside of Lisbon called Sintra, which was described to us by the woman running our wine tasting as “like a fairytale.” It was full of castles and completely gorgeous. We spent the day there touring a castle and just walking around and then came home. That night Tricia, Tim, and I went to Café Luso, which is famous for its fado (a Portuguese singing style.) We had a great time listening to fado and sipping on sweet port. Tim and I still had most of Sunday since we were also going back on the overnight train, so we spent Sunday wandering the area of Belen and going to the puppet museum and generally enjoying Lisbon’s gorgeous weather.

This weekend Tim and I went on our last trip together before the end of the semester (which is coming up so fast!) to Paris. Spain had a long weekend this weekend because of All Saint’s Day, which is a solemn religious occasion or an opportunity for travel, depending on to whom you talk. Halloween isn’t really celebrated at all here except a little bit by very small children and of course by the American students. I dressed up on Wednesday as a mudejar tower, which is an architectural style we’ve been studying in my art history class. Friday Tim and I left for Paris on the first flight I’ve taken since I got here. We got to Paris around 9pm and walked about two hours from where the bus from the airport dropped us off to our hostel past all the tourist attractions. On Saturday we went to Versailles and spent most of the day there. When we got back into town we went to the Eiffel tower (for the second time) and then headed back to the hostel and had great Italian food for dinner. Sunday we had actual amazing Parisien croissants for breakfast and then went to mass at Notre Dame (I was embarrassingly wearing a Notre Dame sweatshirt by accident). After mass we saw some more sites and then went to the Musee d’Orsay and then up to Sacre Cour. That night we finally actually went up to the top of the Eiffel tower and I was almost exactly 6180 kilometers from my house. Monday was our travel day, but we got to see some things in Paris before we left, like a $16,800 dress in Ralph Lauren.

This week is super busy because I have a couple of papers to write, but this weekend I’ll be staying in Toledo and I’ll be able to relax a little.
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