and here we go.

Hey everyone! I'm sorry I've been such a sporadic updater lately. Things have been pretty crazy with midterms, my research project, and (of course) spring break. I also took a trip to Granada the weekend of 27th, which was one of the coolest trips I've taken yet this semester (although to be fair, most of them have been pretty amazing).

Granada is a wonderful city. I loved it for its small(ish) size and the atmosphere--it's very different from the style-conscious city that is Barcelona. I felt more at home there, if only because people weren't dressed to the nines while walking down the street. It seems like a really nice university town, and I found myself sort of wishing I'd studied there for the semester. But Barcelona has many of its own charms, so that wish wasn't too strong. After arriving via overnight train on Friday, I spent most of the day just exploring the city. I wandered around the Albaicin (an old, windy, and beautiful neighborhood in the city) for a while.


View of the Albaicin and the Muralla Arabe (Arab Wall)

I spent a ton of time at the Alhambra, an Arabic palace and fortress with some beautiful gardens in the same complex. I booked a ticket for Saturday and spent six hours just walking around, enjoying the views of everything. But since six hours just wasn't enough, I ended going back on Sunday--I was actually trying to find a park that a friend recommended I visit, but since it was closed and I was near the Alhambra anyway, I went in again. Here are a couple pictures:


Patio de los Arrayanes in the Palacio Nazaries


Palacio del Partal


Me next to the Palacio del Partal (which you can't see, but is to my right), with the gorgeous view of the Albaicin in the background

There are more Granada pictures here and here.

After Granada was a stressful week in which I tried to get a lot of work done on my research project. I managed to get two interviews done, even though I didn't have enough money for the train fares to and from the school where I did the interviews. But that's another story.

On April 3rd I left Barcelona for Italy. I flew into Venice and spent one night and one day there until John met me on Saturday the 4th, when we went to Rome. We spent three and a half days in Rome, and it was incredibly surreal the whole time to be visiting places like the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican, and the ruins of this one old Roman port city called Ostia Antica. Rome itself is full of fun things to do (and tourists doing all of those things), and it was really cool to see all kinds of stuff that fascinated me when I learned about them in my high school World History class. We also saw some amazing art and ancient artifacts in museums (the Vatican museum has a sweet collection of ancient Egyptian stuff!).

From Rome we went to Cinque Terre, a beautiful series of five villages on the northwestern coast. We hiked quite a bit the one full day we were there; we went from the first village (where we were staying) all the way to the last village--a hike of around 9km! It was challenging, but a lot of fun. There were some beautiful views of the coast and the different villages from the path, and fortunately I didn't fall off the cliff-like paths like this one poor guy who was on my program...

After Cinque Terre, we headed off to Florence for a quick visit and ended up seeing some really cool stuff. I wanted to see Dante's house (which is actually just a house near where he probably lived) because of the Medieval Lit seminar I took last semester in which we read the Divine Comedy and learned about Dante's obsession with Florence, his hometown, but the museum turned out to be not-so-great. We did see a lot of really cool things, though, and I had the best pastries of my life for breakfast one morning. So that was nice.

Our last stop was Venice (again), since we were both flying out of the Venice airport. Those few days were cool; we saw some nice, quiet neighborhoods away from the claustrophobia-inducing crowds of tourists, ate some delicious (and cheap) pizza, went to the Correr Museum, and saw St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace (at the Palace I learned a lot about Venetian history). I looked hard for the Basel Bank on St. Mark's Square, but I don't think it actually exists (it was featured in Casino Royale, and was kind of the main reason I wanted to go to Venice...).

Here's a picture of the Grand Canal in Venice, taken from the Accademia Bridge the day I spent alone in Venice:



One cool thing about Italy was that I could generally speak to people in half-Spanish and they would understand me. I even understood a lot of Italian--knowing a little bit of Catalan in addition to my Spanish really helped with that. It makes me want to study languages forever and ever. Too bad I don't have time for more language classes at Grinnell...

All in all, Spring Break 2009 was a great success. We ate a ton of delicious food, and for once I wasn't forced to eat a million tortilla española sandwiches! I took over 800 pictures, which will all be up on my Picasa account at some point in the near future.

Now it's back to the grind of getting all my work done for finals and my research project--all of which will be over by May 1st. It's incredible to think that I only have 17 more days here (I have a countdown). There is so much to do on top of all the work--things I haven't seen or experienced in Barcelona yet. And then after that, it's off to London and Scotland until May 12th. I'll be home on May 14th! Weird!

the palau

Yesterday night I went to a concert at the Palau de la Música Catalana. The Sofia Sinfonietta (from Bulgaria) performed three pieces by Beethoven: the Egmont Overture, Piano Concerto No. 5, and Symphony No. 5. Their performance was, in the end, eclipsed by the beauty of the Palau itself. Here are some pictures that I wasn't technically supposed to take:


View of the stage from my seat.


The stained-glass skylight.


Close-up on the skylight. According to Wikipedia, the women make up a choir that surrounds the sun.


Lights and mosaic arches on the second floor, as seen from my seat.


Close-up on the right side of the arch over the stage. The sculpture is meant to represent the ride of the Valkyries in Wagner's The Valkyries.


The Sofia Sinfonietta after concluding their performance of Beethoven's 5th.

Madrid

This past weekend, I went to Madrid with three girls from my program. Despite the cold and occasional rain, it was a good time and we saw pretty much everything we had planned to visit.

We took a bus from Barcelona at midnight on Friday and got to Madrid around 7:30am on Saturday. We went straight to our hostel, checked in, and then went out to do some sightseeing. Here are some pictures from Saturday, when we went to the Museo del Prado, el Parque del Retiro, and Plaza Mayor (among other things).


In front of El Prado. We weren't technically supposed to take pictures inside the museum, but I snuck a few . . .


. . . this one included. It's Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Sons." I was particularly interested in seeing this one because a friend from school (hi, Mer!) has a print of the picture and we learned about Goya in Spanish 4 in high school. It was smaller than I expected, but still really cool.


After El Prado, we went to El Parque del Buen Retiro. It was really, really beautiful, complete with a large pond and a "Palacio de Cristal" (a glass palace).


Palacio de Cristal

Later we went to Plaza Mayor. It was quieter than I expected it to be, but that's probably because we went in the afternoon on a chilly Saturday. I think it's supposed to come to life at night. It's pretty touristy, though, so there wasn't too much to see except souvenir shops and some restaurants.


Plaza Mayor


Plaza Mayor

It was kind of gross out on Sunday (rainy and too cold to walk very far without losing all sensation in my feet). The tour of Palacio Real, the main thing we did that day, was mercifully indoors. It's an enormous, old, decadent palace that housed several generations of Spanish kings. Like at El Prado, we were forbidden from taking pictures inside the building, but I snuck a few anyway.


In this huge courtyard thing.


Beautiful ceiling (almost all the rooms had painted ceilings).


The throne room. The image quality is kind of crappy, but whatever. It's the THRONE ROOM.


There is a room called the Stradivarius Room. I didn't realize it would be full of actual Stradivari until we got inside and I saw glass cases with beautiful violins and cellos inside.

(Like always, there are more pictures here.)

All in all, the trip to Madrid was a good one. The experience of eating in Madrid, however, emphasized just how hard it is to be a vegetarian in Spain. In 2 days, I ate 3 tortilla española (basically, an omelette with potatoes and onions inside) sandwiches as main meals. I'm really glad I decided to live in an apartment in Barcelona.

This weekend I'll be in Barcelona, probably going back to Parc Güell and walking around the city some more. There's still a lot I haven't explored, but which I really want to see.

a lot of things

Okay. So I've seen a lot of really interesting sights since I last updated: La Sagrada Familia, El Torre Agbar, the sea (!), and a whole lot of windy old streets lined with beautiful buildings.

I'll give brief summaries of each thing; there are tons of pictures here that I won't post, but which anyone can browse if they so desire.

Last Saturday (the 17th) I went to see La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí's last project which is STILL not finished (it's been under construction for over 110 years). A lot of the work on the Sagrada Familia since Gaudí's death has been designed by other artists/architects. So while it's not all Gaudí, it is still impressive. Here are a few pictures:


The nativity facade. The angle is all weird because the building is MASSIVE and I am short.


The passion facade. Like a good deal of the rest of the cathedral, it's still under construction. The sharp, linear figures in the scenes aren't of Gaudí's design, and the artist who created them has received a lot of criticism because they are so unlike true human forms, in a way.


In Spanish, "La Sagrada Familia" means "the Holy Family." On a bunch of the corners of the building are the names of the members of the family.

After circling the Sagrada Familia for a while (I didn't go inside that visit; I'm waiting until it's free) I decided to go on a walking tour of El Born. The route was planned out by a guidebook my dad gave me, and turned out to be really cool.

One of the coolest things I passed was the Santa María del Mar. Its doors were open, so the classmate I was with and I went inside to take a look.







* * *

On Sunday, I took another guided walk from the same guidebook but this time through El Poblenou. I saw El Torre Agbar up close, and in my wanderings I had some delicious lemon ice cream and eventually found a beautiful park next to the sea. Here are some pictures from that walk:


Torre Agbar.


La Rambla del Poblenou


Nom nom nom. Delicious lemon ice cream from El Tío Che, an apparently famous ice cream and turrón shop. It's pretty cool that it's warm enough here (sometimes) to eat ice cream.


A path in the pretty park I found near the sea.


View of the sea from the park.

That's it for now. More pictures can be found at the link above. This weekend I'm taking a bus to Madrid with some friends from the program. I'm excited to see some more of Spain, especially since the regional differences here are apparently quite clear.

Casa Batlló

On Tuesday I went with a friend from class to see Casa Batlló, one of Antoni Gaudí's most famous creations. It's located close to the IES centers in a really upscale neighborhood, and stands out as one of the most interesting buildings I've ever seen (granted, I haven't seen the Sagrada Familia yet).

We took a tour of the building with audioguides.


Casa Batlló from the outside.


Close-up on the windows.


Close-up of a really beautiful chandelier on the second floor.


Awesome window in the main room.


Beautifully tiled floor on the first roof (there are two!)/patio thing.


The uppermost hallway looks like the inside of a whale. The blinds that are built into the windows are designed to let in a lot of natural light without letting people outside the building see in.


On the spiral staircase going up to the roof!


The top roof is awesome. It has a great view, and some amazing mosaic chimneys. There's also that curvy-spiny thing that looks like the spine of a reptile, and for that reason a lot of people think the building is meant to represent St. George fighting the dragon.

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.