Besalú and Vic

On Saturday, 450-some IES students went to Besalù and Vic, two medieval towns near Barcelona in Catalonia. It was pretty much the most yuppie-touristy thing I've ever done. Here you can see the crowd from just two of 9 or 10 busloads of people that traipsed through the cities:



Besalú is an important historical site because of its Jewish quarter and how well the buildings have been preserved. The river that runs near the town is water that comes from the Pyrenees, and apparently over time it filled up some of the buildings and preserved them. One of those buildings contained a water purification bath. Here's a kind of crappy picture of it:



Apparently men and women had different schedules for purification; that is, women had to enter the bath more frequently than men to rid themselves of sin. There was some interesting numerology behind the number of steps, but I forget the details.

Later in Besalú we saw a church that survived not only time but also fire during the Spanish Civil War. It was pretty impressive inside. There were some restored pillars near the alter, and you could tell which ones were restored and which were original: the originals were scorched black by fires and chipped by gunfire during the Guerra Civil. Unfortunately, none of my pictures from inside the church turned out too well.

We got some free time to go walk around Besalú after the tour, and there were a lot of really pretty, old buildings. Outside of a shop on our way out of the city, a man was offering samples of cookies sold there. I asked him what they were like, and after he described them to me he asked where I was from. When I told him "los Estados Unidos," he immediately lit up and said, "Ah! Do you prefer Bush or Obama?" I told him Obama, and he seemed pretty pleased.

Vic wasn't quite as pleasant an experience as Besalú. While it was pretty chilly in Besalú, it was even worse in Vic because it rained pretty much the whole time we were there. The tour was fairly interesting, in spite of the cold. Here are some pictures from Vic:


Main plaza in Vic. The arches on the buildings date back to medieval times when they were constructed for the markets that were held in the plaza.


Roman temple, or the reconstruction of a Roman temple that used to be on this site.


Inside of a beautiful church.

The trip was interesting overall, but the weather was pretty much the worst weather ever for tourism in Spain. On the way home, we had to be let off the bus away from our point of origin because there was a huge protest against the Israeli strikes in Gaza. Streets were blocked off, police were everywhere, and there was a helicopter circling the plaza where the protest was held. Powerful stuff.