“You weep like a woman for what you couldn’t defend like a man”

WEEKEND TRIP!!!
The above quote was from the Moorish king’s mom as Boabdil (the king) looked back leaving the city (Granada) after the surrender. The poor guy was only about 13.

This weekend we went to Granada and Toledo, which turned out to be a great experience. We left early Friday morning and after a 5-hour bus ride arrived in Granada. First stop was the Cathedral, which was absolutely amazing. I’m not sure that I was able to close my mouth the entire time.
According to Rick Steves’ the Cathedral in Granada is one of only two Renaissance churches in Spain (the other is in Cordoba which I am hoping to stop by at some point after classes are over) and is the second-largest after the Cathedral in Sevilla. The thing that is nice about the Cathedral in Granada opposed to other ones is that it’s very spacious and bright in comparison to the Gothic-style churches that we’ve seen so far. I’m not quite sure why, but I think that this was my favorite church that we’ve seen so far.

After the Cathedral a few of us were willing to pay again to see the Royal Chapel, which is where Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand are buried. For those of you who need a quick historical recap, these were the “Catholic Monarchs” who successfully finished the Reconquista (aka reconquered lands occupied by the Moors, Granada being the last) and it was here in Granada that Christopher Columbus made his bid to travel to the Indies since the Reconquista was finally over. They chose to be buried in Granada because it was the last Moorish capital and their greatest victory. We weren’t able to take pictures, but to give a quick overview there was a small chapel on which Isabella and Ferdinand spent a fourth of their wealth on so to say the least it is lavish. There are actually four royal tombs, Isabella, Ferdinand, Philip the Fair and Juana the Mad (the heirs to the throne). There was another burial there, I believe it was a son of Isabella and Ferdinand who died at age two. There is more, but if you’re interested I’m sure you can look up more. Click to see pictures of: what lies over the tombs and what the coffins actually look like

After seeing the burial chamber, we spent most of our time wandering the streets, which was an experience in itself, but eventually ended up in the Alcaiceria, which is a neighborhood near the Cathedral which once was part of a Moorish silk market. This place was really neat, because it was the first place that we got a chance to see Morrocan and true Moorish influences in Spain. A lot of the architecture is Moor/Islamic inspired (via the Alhambra mentioned later, the Islamic sultans ruled this city as their capital when under Moorish rule) mixed together with Christian influences. This means lots of horseshoe arches, geometric designs and Arabic writing in the midst of crosses, tightly weaving streets and a lot of decorative tiling. After wandering around a bit we headed up to the Albayzin which was the Moorish quarter and stopped in an area known as St. Nicolas’ viewpoint which is where we watched the sunset on the Alhambra and took a group picture. There were a lot of gypsies in the city which was a bit of a change from the cities that we’ve visited so far. It was a bit annoying actually, near the Cathedral women tried their best to give you a sprig of rosemary and then demand a tip or try to read your fortune. After having rosemary shoved in my face for about 5 minutes I finally snapped at a lady “NO!” and she left in a huff, but we didn’t get bothered anymore, so while an annoyance, harmless.

After an AMAZING night of sleep and a ridiculously nice hotel with gourmet brunch, the following morning we headed to the Alhambra, which contains the Palacios Nazaries (Moorish palace), Generalife Gardens, Charles V’s Palace as well as the Alcazaba which was in old fort.
First we explored the Generalife Gardens which were absolutely amazing and a lot of fun to walk through. This was the sultan’s summer palace and official royal garden which grew fruit and veggies. Something that was neat about it, is that it is one of the oldest/longest-lasting European gardens being planted more than 600 years ago with paintings showing it very similar to the way that it appears currently.
After the gardens we headed to see the other sights.
Charles V’s palace turned out to be basically a large circular courtyard surrounded with marble columns etc. Apparently it was meant to have a domed roof, but Charles V’ son didn’t want to finish the construction and built his own palace. The palace:
The Alcazaba was a fort with some neat views and shows some ruined soldiers quarters. View from the fort of Granada:
The Palacios Nazaries were the main attraction, and quite fairly so, there were a series of rooms that are the best possible look at the Moorish civilization that still exists in Spain. The common theme was incredible molded plaster designs covering all surfaces, decorative ceramic tiles and filigree windows.
The only drawback was that it was entirely empty, but it was kinda neat to imagine sultans chilling on cushions many more brightly colored rugs etc. like the ones that we saw in the previous silk market. For more of a description of the palace.
After leaving Granada we started the bus ride to Toledo, but Miguel was nice enough to get the bus driver to stop in La Mancha’s Cansuegra which is where Don Quixote’s joust with a windmill was inspired. (In Spain it is illegal for a bus driver to drive for more than 4 hours without a break for 30-45 min so this was a nice change opposed to the truck stops we’d previously been staying at) It was actually pretty cold and windy, but still a really neat experience. It was just an incredible change from the previous scenery because it was vast…and flat. Everywhere else it’s been mountainous and hilly at least, but this was something different.
We arrived in Toledo later, grabbed some dinner, had a brief outing and crashed for the night. New hotel and sunset as we arrived:

The following morning the group split with 6 going to Madrid and 12 staying in Toledo. Since I’m pretty sure that I’ll be staying in Madrid for at least a day or two via Mom and Jack exchange, I decided to stay in Toledo and see the more historical capital of Spain. Toledo is unique because it is a very historical city for Islam, Jews and Christians. The assumption is that the capital was moved to Madrid in 1521 to separate politics and religion, but it is not actually known for sure.
The first thing that we did was to go to church at the Cathedral. It wasn’t the main/high altar, but rather a side chapel, but it was still neat. The priest wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the one in Valencia though ☺. I may have actually understood a little more of the mass this time around though! Next was ride the Zocotren which was a really touristy and cheesy “train” ride around the city, but it was awesome. We got to hear the “secrets of Toledo”, which were actually some interesting stories and got to see some beautiful panoramic visuals of the city that we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten to see.
After that we made a brief stop in the Santa Cruz Museum which was basically a bunch of El Greco paintings since the museum was under construction. But it was free and it was neat to have a quick overview of El Greco’s work so it was a nice stop. The after some lunch in the Arabic quarter (and seeing some gypsies steal an iPod from the restaurant…hmm..) we headed over to the Cathedral. Some took a siesta, the rest of us went and found a sword shop to be mentioned later and we regrouped at the Cathedral.
While it had an overpriced entry fee, it was still definitely worth seeing although I do think that I liked the Cathedral in Granada better. It was hard to see the exterior because the streets are so narrow it was impossible to see the entire structure, the interior was ridiculous to say the least. It took over 250 years to build so it’s a mix of styles, which was kind of neat. The thing that I didn’t like much was that it seemed almost crowded the way that it was set up.
(And the fact we couldn’t take pictures, but to see some online go the interior or the high altar or the choir )
The other thing that I found frustrating was that this Cathedral was decorated in the style of everything having an iron grille in front of the altars. Historically this was so that the common layman couldn’t see what was going on during the mass etc (the Greek Orthodox church still does this I believe), but it was very distracting as far as seeing the sights. I know this was the purpose of them, and although ornate and beautiful themselves, but the grilles also made me feel further away that I actually was and so it was harder for me to have a personal connection with whatever was presented in the chapel, altar or decorations. Despite all this, the Cathedral was absolutely amazing. My personal favorite part of it was something called the Transparente, which was behind the high altar. In the 1700’s a hole was cut out of the ceiling to let some sun brighten mass, but decorating it became a masterpiece in of itself.
Picture shown here
While absolute chaos, it was the brightest, happiest and absolutely intriguing part of the Cathedral. Apparently it was also the favorite area of two cardinals as well because they had their red hats hanging from the edge of the hole. (A cardinal gets to choose a burial place in the cathedral and hang his hat over that spot until the hat rots away. Many of these hats were still hanging throughout the Cathedral, which was somewhat of a constant reminder of just how old, and how many people had come before you.
After the Cathedral we headed to a plaza, had an helado break and while some headed back for a second siesta, four of us walked along the river and messed around taking pictures and exploring the old bridges and towers nearby.
We met up for dinner and though some headed out to the bar for a drink or two the rest of us relaxed at the hotel before calling it a night.
This morning we had a quick breakfast and the girls and I did some window-shopping and ended up meeting up with the others at a sword shop run by Mariano Zamorano, who was easily one of the neatest guys that we’ve met so far. He’s lost a couple fingers to his swords and knifes, but unlike the other shops that we came across this was the first place that we had the chance to see the people making the sword/knifes, could tell us about them and their design. The other thing that I liked about his place was that he was very laid back (gave us all very good discounts) and was just happy that people were interested in his work. He didn’t try to make his shop “polished” or pristine, it was just the way that he felt displayed his workmanship the best and loved what he did. All in all, we spent a long time hanging out and chatting with him.
After a lot of purchases, we headed to a Simian shop to see Damascene, which is the name of the intricate gold inlaid plates and decorative jewelry etc that can be found in every store in the city. This workshop was neat because we did get a chance to see how things were made, and rather than simply selling machine-made pieces, this place sold master-made, apprentice-made jewelry and pieces as well. The people were relatively nice, and happy to help you pick something out so it was a nice stop. It also didn’t hurt that they gave us a 20% student discount.
After that relatively quick stop at the shop (I came back and made my purchases later), Matt and I went on to Santo Tome church which contains El Greco’s “most beloved” painting: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. While I think the entrance was overpriced, it was one of those things you should just see if you’re in Toledo, which was nice. (It’s over 400 years old and still where the artist placed it which is also pretty cool.) Although neat, I was glad that afterwards we stopped by the church itself which was small (in comparisons to the Cathedrals certainly, but still actually a decent size), but had some nice features. It was just very down to earth. It was also exciting for Matt and I because it was the first place that we found that we could actually light a candle. In the Cathedrals and large churches you can’t light candles but you can make a donation to see a “candle light” go on. I think they look kinda lame personally (and expensive), because somehow it’s just not the same as the physical action. Anyways, after make some purchases we headed back to the hotel and hopped on a bus to go back to Alcoy ☺And after some dinner, and a birthday cake for Joe-Mike (his 21st was Saturday) some people watched Aladdin and all tried to avoid the thought of having to go back to school tomorrow :)

La Cruz Grande!

Forgive me for not posting regularly this week, we've had a busy few days!
Tuesday: Basically everyone worked on the paper all day, not too much happened, but I did get a chance to mail some post cards!

Wednesday:
Today we had shortened classes and then had an excursion to La Font Roja Natura, which is a natural park in the area. We went on roughly a 6km hike up to the top of the park and then back down, around and back up to the main building. We had an amazing lunch at a somewhat fancy place and then we made SOAP! Haha, we had an educational/instructional class on the native herbs and medicinal plants in the area. It was interesting. We also made "aromatic bags" though I'm not quite sure what is in them.

The view was absolutely amazing!
On the hike:
Having some fun while waiting...you can see in the background that there was a walkway that went all the way around the main building. You could see through the floor though which made a lot of people nervous, it was a long drop!Making soap....Mine is in the shape of a fishy!
After the hike we went to this amazing house that was converted into a hotel by the current owners. It was a little random, but absolutely stunning...we kind of just wandered around and played with "The most beautiful princess Carly" a lot :) Carly is Professor Schmid's daughter.


After all that we all went back to the dorm, Kathryn and I went for a run and then Rocio, Bayo and I watched Step Up 2 after dinner! (Quality movie...)
Thursday:
Today was a normal day as far as classes and food goes. Everyone did a few errands and then we went on a hike to the cross at the top of Alcoy. It was pretty heavy duty intense climbing, but it was worth it, the view was fantastic and we got some really great pictures.
On the way up:
We made it!All the girls :)I do have to admit that it was one of the coolest things that we've done so far in my book. It was just so incredibly peaceful. From the top to the right of the chapel was a completely quiet area that looked like a natural park, but to the left you could look out and see all of Alcoy. I'm not quite sure how long of a hike it was, but I will definitely interested in doing it again.
Tomorrow we leave for Granada on an early bus! I'm really excited, it's going to be an intense weekend, Granada for a day and a half and then heading to Toledo, with a day trip to Madrid most likely on Sunday. Wish us luck!

Valencia: "Increible, pero cierto!"

First off, courtesy of Jesse (thank you!), for those Wall-E lovers out there (or those who know how much of one Wall-E fan I am) I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was when I opened up this link

Note: Some language that appears to be Spanish in this (names etc) is Valencian so if you're confused....you should be. :) Also to see bigger versions of the pictures, simply click on them.
Friday:
So this past weekend was our first 4-day travel weekend and we went to Valencia. Friday we had to be up and ready to go in order to catch an 8am bus (which was pretty rough considering the majority of people had very little sleep) and got on our way to Valencia. Once there our first stop was the Aquarium where Rocio and I had a lot of fun getting super-excited about pretty much everything there. ("Tiburon! Tiburon!" somehow it's more fun to say "fishy" than "pez" though..)Dolphin show!Apparently it is the biggest Aquarium or "L'Oceanografic" in Europe, which was pretty neat. It was set up as a series of buildings and the exhibits were both inside and outside. It's one set of buildings in a series of ultra-modern buildings (named the City of Arts and Sciences) that were designed by Santiago Calatrava. They are also situated on another neat feature of the city; there once was a river that ran through the city, but with flooding and the sporadic nature of it, the people of the city decided to divert it to another route. This means that there is a large strip of land that runs though the city (which once was the river bed) that has been converted into a large extensive series of parks and recreational areas. For a map of Valencia click here
The next thing we did was go to La Lonja de la Seda, it was what was once the silk market place cerca 14th century or so. It was very ornate and extravagent. Apparently it was the Valencian silk market place which individually financed the majority of Christopher Columbus' excursion.
Across the street is the main marketplace of the city (Mercado Central), which was also HUGE. This is a picture from the inside.After the market place we had a little bit of lunch at a montadito's restaurant (aka mini sandwiches on mini french loaves like small bocadillos) and headed to the Conjunto Catedralicio in the Plaza de la Reina. This was an absolutely beautiful Cathedral which is said to contain the Holy Grail within. It definitely could have been one my favorite places in Valencia.
This is at the top of the bell tower: 203 steps according to Bayo!The next few pictures are from the City of Arts and Sciences. We ended up going to L'Hemisferic to see an IMAX film on the first sucessful excusion of rafters to go the length of the Blue Nile from source to the Mediterranean Sea. It actually ended up being pretty good. We also had the chance to try Orxata or Hortchata from a street vendor. Orxata is a drink made from tigernuts that is one of the things that Valencia is known for. The following are pictures from the City of Arts and Sciences:
After the movie pretty much everyone was getting pretty tired so we grabbed some quick food from a pizza place and crashed for the night. Our room at the hostel! It was actually a very nice hostel, although it was quite annoying that our rooms didn't have any normal lights. Just one red tinted light which made it very hard to find things at night....View from our balcony:Saturday:
We woke Saturday and grabbed some food in the the Plaza de la Reina and did a little shopping around in the little shops and then took a historical bus tour around the city. We ended up getting off at the Palacio de Congresos (Political center) and walked through the Jardin de Polifilo where we stumbled across some orange trees. So of course we had to try them....

I didn't think the one I tried was too terrible, but they were very sour:
After that we jumped back on the bus tour and saw some other areas of the city that we normally wouldn't have gotten to.
After some food while the majority of the group hung out at the hostel for some siesta, about six of us headed to Torres de Serranos which was once a guard tower and the main entrance to the city. We had seen it from the bus tour and decided that it was worth investigating. We wanted to go to a museum as well, but we ended up getting short on time because we had to leave for the futbol game!
We conquered that guard tower:
Super Tony!The Valencia soccer game was a lot of fun. We were split up basically into three groups of 4-5 so the seating worked out well. It turns out since it was a post-season game it wasn't necessary to buy the tickets so far in advance and we got jipped a bit on the price, but at least we had the peace of mind going into the game that we had a ticket. AND Valencia won!


After the game people regrouped and headed out to see the dance clubs etc, but after getting lost for a while and it getting late I called it a night and headed back to the hostel to crash.
Sunday:
Sunday I woke up early with hopes to book a Sunset sailboat excursion for the group, but since the weather wasn't really looking to great it it turned out not to work out, but the company also has boats in Alicante so it is certainly a possibility for later. After that others met me at 11:00 for mass at the big Cathedral. We were worried about being under-dressed since no one had thought of having super nice clothes for mass at a Cathedral, but it turned out that they let tourists walk through sections of the Cathedral while mass was going on so we didn't feel quite so bad. While most of his humor was lost on those of us speakin English, the priest was fantastic. He was very animated and had an awesome way of running mass. Rather than saying "Rise" or "Stand" he kept saying "On your feet!" and also was not afraid of making a few jokes during the service.
After mass we met up with the others and, after some confusion on how to get there, most of us headed to the Marina/Beach.
For those of you who don't know, Valencia played host to the America's Cup in 2007. Which is a pretty big deal in the sailing world. If you're interested in learning more about it click here, and that will give some basic information. Or here for the 2007 website for a more in depth information.
In front of the North Harbor!
Jenna was nice and humored me by taking picture for me while the rest of the group headed straight to the beach since they didn't have much interest of the harbor/marina etc.


It's hard to tell, but I thought this was a neat picture because you can see part of the City of Sciences and Arts rising up on the skyline behind the boats. It's not "Falcon" but it certainly is close!After some beach time the rest of the group headed back for a siesta and some showers back at the hostel since the weather wasn't the best (It drizzled a bit and was overcast for most of the morning). I wanted to see more of the port so I stuck around and walked along the North Harbor just looking at boats, enjoying the sights etc. but I also had a project: Jack had mentioned at one point how neat it would be to get someone to rise the Notre Dame flag in Valencia. So I while I was wondering around I also was keeping at eye out to see if there was anyone who looked like they might humor me. I eventually came upon the catamaran which made the boat trips we were considering doing that morning though I didn't realize it at the time. They didn't look like they were up to much of anything so I asked the two guys on the deck, but they said that they didn't know what the company rules were and had to ask the Captain. So I waited about 5-10 minutes while the Captain to finish up something below deck with low hopes, but when he came up and I explained what I wanted to do and why he just said "Si, claro!" (aka "Of course!"). This picture has the flag backwards, but it meant that I could have the North Harbor behind, there are plenty of other pictures with the ND in the right direction, but I won't put them all up right now.

Well after I got the picture taken with the flag up I got to talking with the guys and they asked me if I would be interested in coming out with them if other people showed up for the (next) 6:00pm outing. It was 5:20pm at the time, but I figured I wasn't doing anything else and it would be a neat thing to do. At 5:55pm just as I was starting to think that it wasn't going to work out a group of 10 people showed up! The Captain (Emil) wouldn't let me pay, which was really nice....I'm pretty sure the other customers thought I was a little sister or working for the company as well because they definitely started asking me about what and wasn't allowed on the boat :p. We were doubly lucky because just before that the sky started to clear up so I got some really beautiful pictures:Once we were out of the harbor we but up the ND flag again, but this time with another... Long and short it turned out to be a pretty amazing afternoon. I also got some more information on the best places to go sailing and diving near Alicante with promises that if/when I/Jack and I come and I contact Emil that we won't be charged for whatever we decide to do :) Pretty amazing! After that I headed back to the hostel to meet up with the others and grabbed some quick food.
At midnight some of the group really wanted to go on a pub crawl and essentially the rest of us got talked into joining. I don't think it was quite as much fun since it was a Sunday and everywhere was pretty empty, but I did practice some ballroom-style dancing with Bayo and overall had a good time.
Monday most of us headed back to Aloy early after some breakfast with hopes that after we got back, settled we'd be more likely to start some serious work on our research paper. And do some laundry in my case. So I better get to it, but it was a absolutely awesome weekend. And we have some great activites planned for this week!