El corazón de España

I currently am on a bus back to Bilbao from Barcelona and it is a really, really long ride, so I guess it's time to post on here! Barcelona was amazing and I am so glad that I had the opportunity to visit this beautiful city. 

Barcelona is in the autonomous community of Catalunya and it has two official languages: Spanish and Catalan. I thought it was so interesting when we arrived there and I saw all the names of the streets, which seemed more French than Spanish, but they were actually Catalan. I also found it cool that I could mostly read the signs that were in Catalan because it is so close to Spanish. Barcelona is a really big city - massive compared to Bilbao! It has 11 metro lines (or more, I just didn't see any lines numbered higher than 11) so it was a bit difficult at first to figure out public transport, but we got the hang of it.

We stayed at a hostel in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. I had never stayed in a hostel, so it was a new experience! I think it could be a really fun way to meet new people from around the world if we stayed for a long period of time, but we were out exploring the city for most of the time. Anyway, I'm glad that I got to see what all that was about for future reference.

Our first day there, we woke up and headed over to the Picasso museum, which was really close to our hostel. We got in for free with a student ID, which was a huge plus, and then explored the museum, which was the perfect size for a morning excursion. I was surprised to see some of the works that Picasso had done that looked like photographs, they were so realistic - I didn't know much about Picasso before, and I had never seen any works that weren't "quintessential Picasso." It was cool to see! After that, we explored some of the shops in the Gothic Quarter, which were really unique and cool. We also strolled down Las Ramblas, which is thought of as the heart of Barcelona. There were so many touristy shops, and I was blown away by the number of people speaking English. I know Barcelona is a tourist destination, but I don't think I encountered a single store employee or waiter in that city who didn't know any English. Most of them had impeccable language skills and would speak to us in English, even if we were speaking clear and understandable, although accented, Spanish. 

We also explored the Born for a little while at night, which is the medieval part of the city next to the Gothic Quarter. I was impressed by the nightlife, which was extremely vibrant. I like Bilbao, but I'll admit that the city isn't really hopping at night - there are very few nightclubs and many of the bars close at midnight. Barcelona was a totally different story. Even late, there were many people out and the restaurants were packed.

The next day we had in Barcelona was awesome. We woke up in the morning and headed over to the Parc Guell, which was designed by Gaudi. The lines were extremely long, but we got tickets! The outside part of the park is free and open to everyone, so we looked around at a few interesting structures and went up to a high point where we could see the city skyline. When we entered the monumental zone of the park, I was pretty impressed. Many of the sculptures you would have to see to believe!

After the park, we found some food and headed over to the Sagrada Familia, which was also designed by Gaudi. I was totally blown away by the level of detail on the outside of the cathedral. The stone was carved literally everywhere, and the inside was even more amazing. The ceilings were soaring and the light coming through the stained glass was beautiful. The cathedral was also huge. You could spend an hour or more exploring just the basilica - we did! I think it is so interesting that this cathedral has been in progress for around 130 years. Gaudi spent 14 years of his life designing it, and you can tell! You can still see the parts of the basilica that are unfinished, and apparently the building is financed entirely by donations and the money from buying a ticket goes toward its completion.

We also had the opportunity to go up into the Nativity Tower, which was awesome. You could see the entire city, although the way down the long winding staircase was not my favorite! 

After that, we took the metro to Plaça Espanya to see the Magic Fountain. I felt like I was in Disneyworld! It was so crowded since people had come from all over to see the light and water show, It was so beautiful and a perfect end to the day. 

Today, before we caught the bus back to Bilbao, we went to see the modernist buildings near Passeig de Gracia - more Gaudi! I was just happy to see the one that I've seen in so many photos, though the other one was covered up for some reason. 

Finally, we went and lounged on the beach and waded in the Mediterranean Sea for a while. Again, the water was beautiful and clear, although it was probably the most crowded beach I have ever seen in my life! No wonder, it was really hot out. Barcelona is a bit more representative of stereotypical Spanish weather!

Anyway, great weekend I would say! I can't believe that in just a few days I will be flying back to the United States!

Un paseo largo

Hello all!  I haven't posted on here in a while because things have been sort of the same.  I have been going to class and enjoying Bilbao, but I hadn't gone to any new and exciting places until today.  This morning, a friend and I took the bus to Bakio so that we could make the hike to San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (a mouthful, I know!).  Although we disagreed on how long the walk actually was, I believe that it was roughly 8 kilometers.  It was mostly uphill, too, so I really got a workout!

We took this long, winding dirt road up through the mountains.  We were walking along cliffs that dropped off into the Bay of Biscay, and unlike a lot of the other tourist-type sites that we have visited, it was peaceful and quiet - there weren't many people hiking.  The only sound that I heard frequently was the ringing of the church bells at San Juan.  We walked past fields with farm animals, through forests, and up rocky terrain.  The water was so clear, I could see every rock at the bottom of the bay where the water was shallow, even from the mountaintop.  I counted my blessings that at least I am young and in shape.  I cannot imagine going out there if that wasn't the case.

When we reached the top of the mountain, there was an extremely expensive restaurant, which was surprising, since it had been mostly secluded on the way up - although, there are roads for the cars to drive up the mountain.  There was also a playground and some other civilization, which was a bit strange to see after a long hike through the wilderness.  Finally, after our long uphill hike, we had to descend back down toward the bay, where the islet San Juan is connected to the mainland by a long bridge.  The trek down was even worse than up because there were barely any footholds, but we made it!  I felt like I was on some sort of religious pilgrimage.  Once we reached the bridge, there were many stairs and stations of the cross were positioned all the way up.  After we climbed the stairs onto the islet, we were able to see the church.

Yes, we climbed all that!

The church from the mountain

Apparently, the church on San Juan is dedicated to St. John the Baptist and the site on the islet was originally a hermitage that was built many centuries ago - wiki says 9th century :) I definitely felt as though I had stepped back in time.  We went into the church and were also able to ring the bell.  The view from there was gorgeous.  I think it even topped Biarritz!

Eventually, after admiring the scenery for a while, we headed back down to Bakio and caught the bus back. We could have gone to the beach there, but we were so hot from hiking and the tides weren't good for swimming, so we skipped it.  After doing that hike, I feel inspired to someday do some sort of backpacking trip, but that will have to wait for the future.  It was a perfect prelude to tomorrow's trip to Barcelona!

Vamos a la playa (otra vez)

It is so bittersweet to say that at this point, I have officially passed the "less than two weeks left in Spain" marker.  I'm definitely enjoying the time that I have left here, though.  One really great thing that happened is that we finally booked our tickets to Barcelona!  I have a feeling that the bus ride won't be a good time, since it is really, really long, but I have heard that Spaniards consider Barcelona to represent the heart of their culture, and also that it is an incredibly beautiful city, so I am excited.  We still need to book the hostel, hotel, whatever we end up doing, but we're going!

The last couple of days have been sort of uneventful since I've been writing essays and reading books about postmen in Chile (I know, exciting), but I did make it over to Bidezabal yesterday.  Another beautiful beach!  One nice thing about Bidezabal, other than it being closer to where I live than Plentzia, is that there is a scenic point that you can walk out to and see the sea and the city from it.  My friends and I walked to the end of it at sunset.  Here is said sunset:

The sailboat adds to it....

I love how easy it is to get to the beach by metro, and I'm going to miss it a lot!  Here's me by the water while we were walking out to the point:

La mer

Yesterday, the day trip into southern France finally happened, and I am so glad it did - the town of Biarritz is incredible.  We woke up super early and caught the 7:30 AM bus across the border.  It is roughly a 2.5-3 hour drive to Biarritz, which is still considered part of the Basque country.

On the way there, I was staring out the window, where the mist was hanging low over the mountains.  The pictures I took do not even halfway capture the beauty, but it gives you an idea:

Also on the way there, we drove alongside the sea for a while.  When we arrived in the town, the first thing we did was walk down to see the water.  I love it here, but I have to say that this beach put all the others that we have visited to shame!  It was a beautiful day, too.

A couple other people from the group that went came with me to the top of a lighthouse.  I thought I wasn't going to make it all the way up the stairs at one point, but it was so worth it from the top.  I could see the entire town of Biarritz from that point, and probably miles across the sea.  We took some photos at the top, then came back down from the lighthouse and went out to the beach, where we relaxed for a little while.

After all that, we went to some "American" restaurant for lunch (sad, I know) and looked around in some of the shops.  Everything was very expensive because it was a tourist town.  Also, it was extremely strange to not know what anyone is saying.  I'm not fluent in Spanish, but if I listen, I can typically pick up what is being said.  I feel like I can function in a Spanish-speaking country - I can ask for directions, I can order food, I can ask how much things cost, and I can typically hold a conversation if the person is understanding that I am not a native speaker.  In France, a lot of people were kind enough to speak English to us, but otherwise I didn't know how to say anything except bonjour, pardon, merci, s'il vous plait, and a couple other words that weren't very helpful!  I also knew how to ask for the restroom, but I wouldn't be able to understand the response!  In short, that was a bit of a shock, but I totally want to learn French - it is really a beautiful language, and it was so nice to hear it spoken everywhere.  In spite of the language barrier, I had an awesome time, and I had this amazing croissant!

I'm not putting up many pictures today because I really can't decide which ones are the best - I took nearly 100 photos yesterday, but I will be sure to show them to anyone who wants to see them.  Today, my friends and I are going hiking at Plentzia, which I am super excited for.  Au revoir! 

El Correo de Los Toros

This past Wednesday, my study abroad group went on an excursion to Pamplona and San Sebastian.  I had to wake up at 4 AM, but it was so worth it!

When we arrived in Pamplona, it was pretty obvious that people had been partying for several days, and even though it was a Wednesday, it was completely packed.  Apparently, the Program couldn't even take us to San Fermin on a weekend because it's too much of a liability!  They also made us sign like a zillion papers saying that we wouldn't run with the bulls, but some people are going back tomorrow to do the run.  Oh, dear.

The running of the bulls started at 8 AM, and we had to run to get to our seats in the arena in time.  We got there and watched the bulls and the (mostly) men running on the big screens, and it was such a shock when they burst into the arena and the show went live!  After that, there was this sort of competition where the people in the arena try to touch the bull, but apparently they cannot pull the tail because it is considered unfair.  It was actually pretty violent, but not the revolting sort of violent where it's hard to watch.  I thought it was really interesting, and it was sort of a quintessential Spain moment!

A man trying to touch the bull

Where the bulls emerge from for the race

After all of that excitement, we left the arena and explored Pamplona a little bit.  I bought the red scarf to go with my white shirt, since that's traditional.  I also had the traditional churros con chocolate!

We loaded up in the afternoon and drove all the way to San Sebastian - it was a cool town and I wish we could have had more time.  I really wanted to go to the beach there, but it was cold.  At least it stopped raining, though!  Also, the stores were really cute, and everything didn't cost an arm and a leg, which was nice.

Beach at San Sebastian

A man making sand art

Cathedral in San Sebastian

Finally, I came back home and I completely crashed for many hours!  Anyway, I'm so glad that I was able to see San Fermin, it is definitely one of the most interesting things I have seen, and I'm also excited that my friends and I are going to southern France tomorrow - updates to follow!

¡Qué guay!

"¡Qué guay!" translates to "how cool!" in English, as we learned in my Hispanic Literature class.  It's one of the first slang terms that I have learned here.  "Guay" is pronounced like "guy," but with a "gw" sound at the beginning of the word.

Updates!  The newest place that I visited on my cumpleaños was Gernika, which is a small, historic village near Bilbao.  It is in Urdaibai, which is a collection of small communities that are dedicated to preserving Basque culture and language.  It was a pretty cool birthday, I’d say – first we visited a government building, and we saw a tree stump that was significant because it was super old and the kings of Spain used to take an oath by the tree saying that they would respect the Basque laws and customs.  To be honest, I was too far away to hear most of what the tour guide was saying, but it was still nice.

Super old oak tree stump

Then, we went to a museum that was dedicated to maintaining peace.  Apparently, Gernika was bombed in 1936 by forces attributed to both Hitler and Franco.  The village was mostly obliterated – a notable exception was the tree stump.  In the museum, it was a little hard to understand what was going on because I didn’t know any of the history, so after the guided tour when we had time to explore, most people just went outside and enjoyed the sun. 

sitting outside the museum

After all that, we went to a restaurant where we got more paella (seriously considering learning how to make this) and a sweet ricotta cheesecake with blackberry sauce – I know, yum!  Finally, my favorite part was when we went to the beach.  The beach sort of reminded me of Plentzia, but it wasn’t quite so tame.  Apparently, the beach at Gernika has the best “left wave” in the world (whatever that means), so surfers come from all over to visit.  The waves were pretty big, but the shallow part of the sea stretched out really far, so I was able to wade and collect seashells. 

After we arrived back in Bilbao, the rest of my day was not overly memorable, but my July 4^th was quite exciting, so I needed a rest anyway.  On that day, my friend and I went and explored some of the shops in Bilbao and we got churros with chocolate – delicious!  We also took the metro to the student gathering in a city called Areeta that night.  Thankfully, the venue didn’t mind that a bunch of college students were singing American patriotic songs quite terribly.  When my friends and I were going back on the metro, they sang Felíz Cumpleaños to me at midnight, which was awesome.

Anyway, I’m pretty excited because I think it is FINALLY supposed to stop raining this week, and I can’t wait to hit the beach and hike on the trails at Plentzia.  Also, my friends and I have a tentative date to visit southern France, and we are currently looking into a longer weekend trip to somewhere else!  Hooray!     

¡Felíz día de Independencia!

Hello again, and happy July the Fourth!  I have been busy with classes and just exploring the city, which has all been very exciting.  Since I have so many pictures of Bilbao, I decided to put up a couple of posts.  Even though there are skyscrapers and whatnot in Bilbao, as you can see from my last post, the original part of the city is medieval.  Here are some pictures of the Old Quarter:

My street

Random other street

Lucky me, I get to live here!  There are so many plazas and cathedrals around where I live – I literally walk down the street one block and I’m standing in front of a beautiful old cathedral (not to mention a delicious pastelería with friendly staff!).  This is not the cathedral I live by, but it’s pretty awesome anyway:

One thing that is so different about here is how many stairs there are.  I suppose there are so many here because we live in a valley (el bocho), and some of the staircases here never seem to end.  All I know is that I am going to have some calves of iron by the time I’m home.

Taken from halfway up the stairs

The school that I am attending here is about a 25-30 minute walk down the river from the Old Quarter.  Here is a picture of the University of Deusto library.  It is sort of hard to see – I had to surreptitiously take pictures because I wasn’t sure if that was allowed or not, but the library has bookshelves that stretch to the ceiling (three stories), and at each level, there is a small walkway with a railing so no ladders are needed.

Although the University isn’t so impressive from the outside, the inside is gorgeous – it was built in the 1800’s and includes a beautiful gothic-style chapel and painted ceilings in the auditorium.  I finally decided to take an Advanced Grammar and Translation course in addition to the Introduction to Hispanic Literature course.  I was so excited that the professor for the other course that I considered was from the United States!  However, I just couldn’t make myself do an 8:30 AM class with a half hour commute when it is normal here to eat dinner at 11 PM.  That, and some other issues with transferring credit, but I’m happy with my decision.  For the literature course, we are reading three actual books – the one we are working on right now is called Como Agua, Para Chocolate, which translates to Like Water, For Chocolate.  Apparently it is about forbidden love, and when all the professor informed us of the book’s content, a loud, unanimous sigh arose from all the men in the classroom :)

Backtracking a little bit, we visited the Guggenheim Museum this past weekend.  It was probably one of the coolest art museums I have ever been in – it focuses on modern art, but it wasn’t just paint splatters that looked like one of my “paintings” from kindergarten!  The first exhibit we saw included a bunch of LED columns running from floor to ceiling in front of a large opening that you could enter.  Down the columns ran several phrases which were sort of creepy – things like, “I smell you on my clothes, I hear you, I follow you,” you get the idea.  They were in English, Spanish, and Basque.  According to the audio guide, the exhibit is meant to contain several universal themes – love, death, etc, but it focuses on AIDS somehow. 

There were also several rooms filled with artwork by Georges Braque, who apparently was extremely prolific!  There must have been hundreds of paintings by him, and I thought it was so cool how much variety he had in his work.  He had some paintings that were extremely dark and abstract, while others were totally the opposite.  He apparently drew much of his inspiration from various African art pieces, and his art was greatly affected by the social climate (i.e, war time).

There was an interpretive dance exhibit, which one of my friends participated in, kudos to her!  There was also a tree exhibit that I participated in – people walking by could hang messages from the branches.

My contribution: How beautiful is life

 Here is Puppy, a well-known flower sculpture in the city of Bilbao.  It is constructed entirely of fresh flowers and city maintenance keeps it up.  It used to be an exhibit in the museum, and the people of the city fell in love with it, so it was moved outside.  The only downside: Spanish pronunciation is "Poopy."  ¡Qué pena!

A strange spider sculpture that is front of the museum - I see it on the way to school every day.  While we were visiting the museum, some people were having their wedding photos taken.

Anyway, I’m getting a little behind on this blog, but I guess that means I’m just having fun, right?  Tonight, the people from my study abroad program plan to celebrate Independence Day – as much as we like it here, I think everyone misses the USA just a little bit.