Honestly, I forgot about my blog for the last couple of months. Well, I didn't really "forget," as much as it just fell really low on my list of priorities. But now as I'm preparing to leave Spain in a month I realize I really need to record my favorite moments of the semester. As much as you, my handful of dedicated followers, might believe I'm writing this blog to keep you informed of my comings and goings, it's also for myself to have a way to remember details that always become blurred over the years. Of course, some might say I should buy a real journal to write in rather than posting my activities to the increasingly searchable, not so private, everybody has an opinion and wants you to know it, cyberspace. And to that I say, this is easier, I'm far too lazy to actually pick up a pen and write things down, and aren't we all slightly more narcissistic these days thanks to Facebook and social media? I mean, the whole world wants to know about how awesome my life is, right? It's really a better place for it.
So. Let's pick up where I left off which was.... March....No, April.
Semana Santa
The week before Easter is like the Spanish Spring Break. Knowing this, I invited two friends, Kim and Ashley, to come visit me during this week. As luck would have it, Nadia also wanted to visit the weekend before Easter, so for a couple of days, I had three of my favorite people with me in what has become one of my favorite places. I don't think I had explored that much by then, with all of my travels at the beginning of the semester I had somewhat neglected Barcelona, but the best part about people visiting is that it gives me a reason to explore and try all those places that have been recommended to me. I got to act like a tourist and see some of the things (mainly Gaudi related) that I had been putting off. Plus, it just really makes me happy when my friends from different parts of my life get to meet each other. I actually get really excited about it because how often does that get to happen the older you get? In college it was easy, just throw a party, but it now that I travel so much and all of my best friends are spread out all over the US/world it is much more rare. To have Kim and Ashley finally meet Nadia, and all of them meeting my roommate Alexandra (who has been a huge influence on my experience here in Barcelona) made me immeasurably happy.
During the week, Kim, Ashley, and I flew down to Granada to see a city that many Spaniards themselves have described as their "favorite" and most beautiful city in Spain. I really wanted to go during Semana Santa as well because southern Spain is well known for its religious parades during the holy week. And let me tell you, these things are intense....and numerous. Before we went we wondered if we should find a schedule to tell us when and where to find the parades but on our first night there as we were racing against the impended death of my phone to find our Airbnb, we found ourselves navigating through two such processions. We quickly realized, a schedule would not be necessary, and probably averaged about three processions/day for the rest of our time there without ever trying to find one. I think the word "procession" conjures up more accurate imagery than "parade," they are really such somber, religious, events. From what I remember, the procession always consisted of two floats, usually one depicting the Passion of Christ and the other the Sorrow of the Virgin Mary, with each float accompanied by a marching band and marchers. Google tells me that these marchers are all part of a Cofradías or brotherhood/fraternity which have been in charge of these processions and floats for centuries. The floats, are really quite incredible. They're heavy, that's easy to see, and are carried through the streets by dozens of men hidden behind large curtains.
Granada is also home to tapas. Yes, you can find tapas everywhere in Spain but not like they do them in Granada. There, you buy a drink, you get tapa. Really hungry? Buy more drinks, you'll get more tapas. We only really stayed in places for one drink and moved on, "tapa crawling" our way through the city, but when we did stay for multiple drinks and tapas, the experience was that the second tapa was always better than the first. It's a fantastic business model and by far my favorite thing about our trip to Granada.
Of course, you can't talk about Granada without mentioning the Alhambra. My one recommendation for anyone going to Granada, buy your tickets to the Alhambra VERY early! We waited until the night before out flight left and after much searching, the only thing that we found was for our last day on a guided tour for about twice the price of a normal ticket. We bought them anyways because we really felt that it would be sacrilege to go to Granada and NOT see the Alhambra, many people had told me that it's one of the most beautiful buildings they've ever seen. So we went, and the tour ended up being OK. It is a very beautiful building, I mean the Islamic architecture and design is absolutely beautiful. However, I think overall, if I go back to Granada, I would not go back to the Alhambra. I much preferred walking around the city, especially the old Moorish quarter where we stayed, eating tapas, and viewing the Alhambra from the bottom of the hill (Though it's not very nice on the outside, it's still pretty striking to see perched on the hill. Especially the way it gets lit up at night).
Semana Santa
The week before Easter is like the Spanish Spring Break. Knowing this, I invited two friends, Kim and Ashley, to come visit me during this week. As luck would have it, Nadia also wanted to visit the weekend before Easter, so for a couple of days, I had three of my favorite people with me in what has become one of my favorite places. I don't think I had explored that much by then, with all of my travels at the beginning of the semester I had somewhat neglected Barcelona, but the best part about people visiting is that it gives me a reason to explore and try all those places that have been recommended to me. I got to act like a tourist and see some of the things (mainly Gaudi related) that I had been putting off. Plus, it just really makes me happy when my friends from different parts of my life get to meet each other. I actually get really excited about it because how often does that get to happen the older you get? In college it was easy, just throw a party, but it now that I travel so much and all of my best friends are spread out all over the US/world it is much more rare. To have Kim and Ashley finally meet Nadia, and all of them meeting my roommate Alexandra (who has been a huge influence on my experience here in Barcelona) made me immeasurably happy.
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| Parc Ciutadella |
Granada is also home to tapas. Yes, you can find tapas everywhere in Spain but not like they do them in Granada. There, you buy a drink, you get tapa. Really hungry? Buy more drinks, you'll get more tapas. We only really stayed in places for one drink and moved on, "tapa crawling" our way through the city, but when we did stay for multiple drinks and tapas, the experience was that the second tapa was always better than the first. It's a fantastic business model and by far my favorite thing about our trip to Granada.
Of course, you can't talk about Granada without mentioning the Alhambra. My one recommendation for anyone going to Granada, buy your tickets to the Alhambra VERY early! We waited until the night before out flight left and after much searching, the only thing that we found was for our last day on a guided tour for about twice the price of a normal ticket. We bought them anyways because we really felt that it would be sacrilege to go to Granada and NOT see the Alhambra, many people had told me that it's one of the most beautiful buildings they've ever seen. So we went, and the tour ended up being OK. It is a very beautiful building, I mean the Islamic architecture and design is absolutely beautiful. However, I think overall, if I go back to Granada, I would not go back to the Alhambra. I much preferred walking around the city, especially the old Moorish quarter where we stayed, eating tapas, and viewing the Alhambra from the bottom of the hill (Though it's not very nice on the outside, it's still pretty striking to see perched on the hill. Especially the way it gets lit up at night).
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| Wine on our terrace with the Alhambra in the background...also our Christmas card photo for the year |
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| Tapa crawling |
All in all, I really loved Granada and highly recommend it for anyone vacationing in Spain. Most beautiful city in Spain? That I don't know, I haven't been everywhere in Spain, but I'm sure it is very close to the top of the list.
April
As for what I was doing in Barcelona during April, I don't really remember. A mixture of school and going out with my roommates I suppose. For several weekends I did not travel at all which was a nice change of pace compared to the previous months. It was during these months that my roommates and I found "our places" around the city... our paella place by the port, our cava place for cheap local bottles, our craft beer place with an owner we nicknamed "maestro" because he always helped with our Spanish, our coffee house that doesn't care if you only order a tea and sit and work for hours, our tapa place with 5 euro bottles of house wine and a delicious mixed tapas platter, and recently I found a place that makes a great martini (among other delicious cocktails). It's a new place to me now, but I think by the time I leave the bartenders will be recognizing me. And of course, we can't forget my terrace, unofficially the best place in the city to sit and chat at night over a bottle of wine. So yeah, that was most of April. Yes, school was mixed in there a bit, but since I only had a few actual classes of school a week and the rest, self paced work on my own for a project, it was easy to divide my time between work and play.
At the end of April I took a trip to the Netherlands to visit everyone else in my master's program studying at the University of Delft. I've been to the Netherlands before, but only to Amsterdam. This trip I liked immensely more than that one, not that I didn't like Amsterdam, I did, but for this trip to the Netherlands I definitely Dutched it up more. It was awesome to see all my friends there, and they seemed to appreciate it because it gave them a bit of an excuse to relax from school. It was, however, disheartening to me to see the stark differences between our school semesters. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I chose the wrong focus for my master's and I'm very much excited about my year and my courses in London next year. However, I do wish my semester here had been a but more challenging and well, less self study. I have learned several things from my time here but the biggest thing is that I DO NOT like working on technical projects by myself. It's much nicer to have a peer to bounce ideas off of and to confirm or challenge your line of thinking. For me, my only peer was Google, and well, Google sometimes can take a long time to get to the point. Seeing all my cohorts in Delft talking about their classes and projects really drove this home for me.
Anyways, Delft is a very cute, very beautiful little city. The city center is situated around several canals and I think it takes about 15 minutes to walk across. But of course, nobody walks in the Netherlands, they all ride bikes. I'm pretty sure the Dutch come out of the womb riding bikes. I was lucky because my friends had an extra bike so I was able to do as the Dutch do. They make it so easy there! My biggest qualm about riding bikes in cities is the lack of bike lanes and being around cars. It makes me nervous, my biking skills are not what you would call "strong.". But the Netherlands have bike lanes everywhere! Hell, you can bike from one city to another without ever leaving a bike lane. It's magnificent. In fact, on one of my days there I did just that, I biked to the beach which took me about three hours round trip. Now to cyclists that may not be impressive, but for me it was a milestone, to actually use a bicycle as a mode of transportation and not simply for exercise. It is something I can see myself doing more often.
The beach in the Netherlands is pretty cool to see, from a coastal engineering point of view you can really see the Dutch have their act together, HUGE beach in front of a promenade/seawall/large dune. It's also just a really nice area in general. Side note, I love that I can go to a beach and call it "research," best major ever.
I was in the Netherlands for their national holiday "King's Day" celebrating the king's birthday. It's a pretty simple holiday, wear orange and celebrate with your friends and family by eating and drinking in the city center. At least that's how we spent it although there was far less orange than I expected. Maybe that's primarily an Amsterdam thing?
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| Canal in Delft |
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| Central Plaza decorated for King's day |
May and June
Wohoo! I'm almost up to date! (I started this blog post on June 3 by the way, just for reference on how slow I am at writing these)
I have primarily spent May and June enjoying Barcelona. After the Netherlands, my school work finally started to pick up some which unfortunately also coincided with the weather in Barcelona becoming perfect. However, it's probably a good thing. I'm pretty sure that if I could work on my computer on the beach, I would have been there everyday after school and I am far to fair skinned to be at the beach that often.
Also, I don't know if you heard, but FC Barcelona won La Liga, La Copa del Rey, and the Champions League, a treble. No, I have not become a huge football fan while over here, but of course I cheer for Barca whenever there's a game and even I don't have to be a huge fan to understand that this is a very big deal to Barcelona. Of course, I couldn't be oblivious even if I wanted to because every time Barca won one of these trophies, this was the scene outside of my room....for HOURS:
It was pretty cool to see all the celebrating after the Champions League win. It really reminded me of when UT won the National Championship while I was in school. I think almost the whole population of Barcelona migrated to the city center just to celebrate the win.
It's kind of a strange reaction, no? The team you support wins and your first reaction is, "Let's get in the car and drive around honking because we're so happy!" or "Let's walk to the city center singing because we're so happy!" I mean, people really aren't doing anything except walking in big groups, singing, and celebrating but it's funny that's an international reaction. It happened when UT won the National Championship, we all went to campus and people were jumping in the fountains and chanting the fight song over and over, and it happened when I was in Chicago two years ago and the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup. People just like to be in big crowds when they're celebrating. Even if you're not a huge fan, it's hard not to be swept away by the energy and join in.
School is pretty much done for me now. It was supposed to be done earlier this week but got a bit delayed due to some frustrating changes to one of my school projects. All in all, this semester has overall been a bit frustrating. Some of my classes I really liked and others you could just kind of tell the professors did not want to be there. I learned some, but as I said before, I like to be challenged and, well, this was not a semester of challenging material. However, all was not lost because I do feel like I have gained some good contacts with all the professors I've worked with here, and of course, I got to learn and improve my Spanish. I would say I'm now "tourist proficient," as I can order in restaurants, ask questions, have simple conversations about the day, etc. I have definitely improved since February and have a LONG way to go but I really plan on keeping up with my Spanish education even if it's just watching shows and movies in Spanish and practicing with Rosetta Stone.
So there you have it, my last three months in a nutshell. I only have a couple of weeks left in Barcelona and it's depressing to think about. I really love this city and I have adapted well to the Spanish life style. Plus, it's that same sadness that always comes when you're leaving new friends without knowing when you'll see them again.....however, I still have a couple of weeks before that sadness really sets in and until then I plan on making the most of my time here. Plus I have much to look forward to in the coming months. In July, before I fly home, I'm taking a trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, a place I've wanted to visit since before it was King's Landing. I'm really looking forward to getting this last stamp before I have to renew my passport this summer. And on July 13th, after almost a year away, I will finally be coming home to Texas for two months. I am really excited to see my family and friends but not going to lie, I'm also really excited about the queso, tacos, and BBQ I will consume in excess those first days back. Put your boots on Texas and get ready to two-step, I'm a comin' home!
