Week 13: Climbing the Walls

Hi everyone!

This week was pretty boring. I had my Prado midterm on Tuesday [which I found out I got an A on, phew!], and I got a package from Mom and Liz on Wednesday or Thursday! Which, I know I've said thank you billions of times already but once more can't hurt! THANK YOU!!! I got some great pictures from home and two new dresses!

The weather in Madrid has been pretty gross, cold and rainy for pretty much the past month [it's seriously rained pretty much every day. I think the sun has only popped out, like once]. But! I'm happy to say that this weekend, we finally hit the 70s and 80s! Springtime is finally here!

This past weekend was my program's overnight trip to Extremadura. Extremadura is a region of Spain that is above Andalucia and next to Portugal.

While we were there, we say 3 cities: Merida, Caceres, and Trujillo. The main claim to fame in Extremadura are all of the Roman ruins. We left Madrid on Saturday morning to to go to Merida. We were supposed to leave at 8, but because one of the people in my program was running late we ended up waiting 40 minutes for them to show up; which was kind of a pain because it cut into the free time we had in the city.

Once we got to Merida, we got to see some really awesome ruins. We got to see an amphitheater, the stadium where gladiators fought, and where chariot races were held. We also got to see the Alcazaba, which was the castle of the monarchs in Merida.

Ruins in Merida

After grabbing some lunch in Merida and visiting the Museo de Arte Romano [The museum where all the artifacts/art from the ruins is kept], we headed to Caceres. Caceres was really cool. We checked into our hotel and then we headed to the historic area. On our way, we passed through Caceres's Plaza Mayor. It was really cool, there were tons of people in the street botelloning and there was a band playing music. I really wanted to ditch out on the tour and join in with everyone in the streets.

The historic district was amazing. It is basically a preserved medieval city. It was really cool to see the differences between the architecture in Merida [which was strictly Roman] and Caceres. Caceres had a lot of Latin American influence in their architecture [because most of it was built after the discovery of the New World]. After we toured the historic district, we went on to dinner which was prepaid by our program [yay!]. Now, Spaniards love to eat, and when they eat it usually spans like an hour and a half, maybe two hours. But we sat down for dinner around 10 and we didn't finish until almost 1 in the morning. There were seven courses...SEVEN! They just kept coming and coming and coming, I seriously felt like I was going to explode. It was delicious, but so so so so much food!

The next morning we got up nice and early and did another tour of the historic district and another museum before attempting to head back to the bus. Little did we know, but there ended up being a marathon going through the city when we were trying to get back to the buses. They had completely blocked off the Plaza Mayor and a lot of the streets. My program ended up having to play a game of frogger with sixty people trying to cut through the marathong [while there were no runners, of course] while being yelled at by the people running the marathon. Once we cut through the race path, we ended up having to walk in a giant circle around the city to get to where our bus was. Needless to say, in the 45 minute bus ride between Caceres and Trujillo, we all passed out.

Catedral in Caceres

Another amazing view!

My friend Jake's and my reaction to the server bring out more food

After the craziness of Merida and Caceres, I think our tour guides [Pablo and Ricardo (Ricardo is my prof for my Prado class)] noticed how exhausted all of us were, and not to mention we were a solid hour and a half behind schedule. So instead of dragging us all over Trujillo, we stopped in the Plaza Mayor, they pointed out some architectural things and turned us loose on the city. My friends and I ended up going up the castillo [castle] and we basically acted like a bunch of kids. We were climbing up walls, running through the ruins and taking lots of silly pictures. The views from the top of the castillo were amazing. Before getting back on the bus, we grabbed some lunch at a cute little cafe.

View from the Castillo

Another amazing view!

Just messing around on the wall

Another view

And so wraps up another trip. It's hard to believe that as of today, I've been in Spain for 3 whole months. I'm amazed by how quickly time has gone by, but it also makes me sad. I know I've still got a solid two and a half months left, but it feels like it's going to be tomorrow and there's still going to be so much I want to do and see here--but hey, at least that's a reason to come back...right?

I'm also really excited to say that my friends Ray, Amber, and I have officially booked our trip to PORTUGAL! We're going for 5 days right at the beginning of May, I can't wait! That's all for now, next week: Barcelona!

XOXO,
Kelsey