Ronda & Malaga

This past weekend I traveled with my program to the Spanish cities, Ronda and Malaga. We first stopped in Malaga and saw the famous bridge connecting the two sides of the city, toured the Ernest Hemmingway gardens overlooking the Spanish countryside and saw the remains of an Arabic bathhouse. Ronda was small but quaint and beautiful, a great day trip complete with the first good pizza I have had in Spain! That night and all Sunday we spent in Malaga. Malaga is double the size of Granada and is situated on the Costa del Sol of Spain, right across from Morocco. While in Malaga we toured the Alcazaba, an old Moorish fortress that housed the palace of the governors back in the day. And right outside this fortress sits an old roman theater that is currently being restored to its former glory. Luckily after the tours we had some free time to go and sit by the sea and enjoy a nice lunch and drinks. All in all it was a great weekend and the last of my six consecutive weekends of travel. Now time for a week of studying and rest before we head to Morocco on the 28th!

                                                        Dinner in Malaga

                                                               Ronda Bridge

                                                               Malaga

                                                              Malaga

                                                            Ronda

Family Visit

Last weekend my parents and grandparents came to visit me in Granada and then we all went up to Barcelona for the weekend. It was great to have some visitors and finally get some good food and sleep! The two days they were in Granada I had class so they toured the Alhambra one day and the next we met up after my class and all went to visit the Catedral in the city center. Then on friday we headed up to Barcelona. Unfortunately the first day we were there it was raining so we couldn't go sightseeing but ended up having an amazing lunch at this restaurant in the harbor. Seafood is one of the number one things they eat here in Spain and it was especially fresh in Barcelona since the city is right on the sea. That night we went to the famous Les 4 Gats restaurant for my grandpa's birthday. It is a centenarian restaurant, meaning it has been there for over 100 years. After our huge lunch we had that day I wasn't very hungry but the food the rest of my family got was great. Finally on the last day I had with them we got to do some real sightseeing. We went up to Parc Guell, a housing community designed by Gaudi that unfortunately lost its funding in the early 1900s. But has since been turned into a UNESCO World Heritage site that you can visit for free and see the house that Gaudi lived in for 20 years. The park was beautiful with its entrance resembling Alice and Wonderland. After our trip there we went to La Sagrada Familia. Which unfortunately was closed for the day so we were only able to view the outside. Overall it was a great weekend filled with good food, drinks and company.I was so glad my family got the chance to visit and see where I am studying abroad!

Salobreña

                                                                          The beach

                                                    Katie, Shelby and I

                                                     

                                                                   Cliff Jumping

Granada has one of the greatest locations in Spain. We are situated 20 minutes from the mountains and 50 minutes from the Mediterranean Sea. So this past weekend some friends and I took advantage of our location and traveled to Salobreña, a beautiful beach on the sea. There are coach buses that run from Granada to pretty much everywhere in Spain and are very cheap. It was only 10 euro round trip to get to Salobreña for the day. Once we got there we had tapas and drinks at a beach side restaurant and then proceeded to spend the rest of the day laying on the beach, swimming in the sea and cliff jumping. It was so nice to be able to get away for a day and just enjoy the country we now live in. Every day we have to pinch ourselves to remind us that this is real life. Because all of our adventures and travels make it seem like a fairytale.

Finally arrived!

After over a week of traveling to Dublin and through Spain I arrived in Granada Wednesday night. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. The city is amazing, complete with tile streets, colorful apartments and an Arabic fortress, the Alhambra. There are 70,000 students who study here at the University of Granada each year, 10,000 of them international students like me. Making the city full of excitement all hours of the day and night, excluding siesta time, which is from 2-5pm every day. These siestas are taken very seriously in Spain, some city blocks even shut off power for those three hours so that the only thing you can do is rest. Due to the enormous amount of students here my roommates and I have settled in easily and have not had a hard time making many new friends. As far as classes go I am only taking Spanish grammar and language for the first month. It is meant as an intensive month to quickly bring everyone up to speed before the semester. Somehow I tested into the intermediate level even though I have not taken Spanish since my sophomore year of high school. But so far the teacher has been great and the class not impossible so I plan to stick with it and hopefully greatly improve my Spanish. We are required for this class to get a Spanish "buddy" to meet for drinks or coffee and chat. This way we can practice our Spanish and they can practice their English. In terms of traveling we were supposed to go to the beach this weekend but a cold front came in and our senora (house mom) strongly advised us not to go. So we will try to go again next weekend, it is an easy trip, only an hour from Granada by bus. And two weeks from now I will be traveling to Munich with some girlfriends from DU for Oktoberfest and then the weekend after my parents and grandparents will be here for a visit!

                                                    My roommates and I in the Plaza

                                                   Graffiti is always left up in Spain

                                                                      City Hall

Madrid and Toledo, Spain

                                                         Protest for Libya in Madrid

                                                                First night dinner

                                                         Royal Palace with the girls

  

Toledo, Spain

After traveling for almost a week by myself I met up with my study abroad group on Sunday morning. Many of the kids I knew already as 15 out of the 125 students on the trip are from DU. It was nice to see a friendly face after traveling alone. We stayed for two days in Madrid and during those two days we saw the contemporary art museum and the royal palace. The royal family does not actually live at the palace anymore they live outside the city and only use this palace for special ceremonies. Besides the tours we spent most of the time going out for drinks and food. I seem to be always hungry as we spend most of the day touring and walking around cities. The food here has proven to be an adventure as I speak very minimal Spanish and the menus are in all Spanish. I have learned the words for ham, cheese and bread, and have mainly been eating that so that there are no big surprises. After Madrid we spent one day in Toledo, touring the cathedrals and synagogues there. The city was beautiful, situated on a hill, surrounded by a river on three sides. This river is the Tajo River and is the longest river in Spain, sort of like the Mississippi River in the United States. We got lucky in Toledo and stayed at a nice hotel that had a big pool and tiki bar so we were able to relax and lay out in the sun after our day of tours.

Dublin, Ireland

           After traveling for two days I finally arrived in Dublin around 1pm on Tuesday, the 23rd of August. My first impression of the city was wow, this is small. After chatting with the cab driver for a bit I found out that Dublin is only 1.5 million people and all of Ireland is only 4 million. To put it in perspective the city of Chicago with 8 million people, is twice the size of this entire country. Which explains why I was so shocked, when I thought of Dublin I thought of a big city that liked to drink and party. Yet when I arrived I found a small city that drank mainly beer and was very reserved. So for all those who claim they are Irish and that means they can drink a lot. Think again. Irish people do not party half as much as Americans, they sit, chat and sip on beers. The first day I stuck with my plan I had told my dad, I was going to go to the nearest pub get some drinks and hopefully make friends. And what do you know? This loose plan actually worked I met some French and German girls and we ended up going to two nearby pubs that night.
            The second day I ran into some boys wearing Boston Red Sox hats, seeing the hats I realized I had finally found some Americans and went to talk to them. And since those guys had been the only Americans I had seen in the entire city so far we became fast friends. So on the second night me with my newly acquainted Duke University friends went to a couple pubs, one from the movie, P.S. I love you and then onto a club. The clubs in Dublin are nothing like those in the U.S. There was no techno, house, trance or top 40 mashups. There was an open roof and a live cover band. The Irish band was amazing, they were covering American songs better than any band I have seen before. But they weren't playing typical party music they were covering all rock music even going as far as to cover a Blink 182 song. It blew my mind. After having spent all summer working in bars and clubs it was a shock to see what another country referred to as "clubbing". Luckily at the end of the night we found a McDonalds, but this ended up being a shock too, this was no ordinary McDonalds. It was open 24 hrs, complete with body guards at the door and 7 euro big macs. Which is $10 USD. Now I would like to know what it is they put in their big macs that make it worth $10 instead of $4.
             As for the sightseeing I toured the Guinness factory with the boys from Duke,  and gave myself a self-guided tour of Temple Bar, Grafton St and St. Stephens Green/Garden. Since the city is so small the past two days I have set out on my own and wandered around trying to soak it all in and by this point I think I have seen everything there is to see. The city has no distinct culture to it like other European cities, at least not that I have seen thus far. The one claim to fame Dublin has is it's pubs. At one pub we went to yesterday there was a Guinness and Carlsberg tap at our table and it recorded how many pints you drank just like at Bull&Bear in Chicago.  And if you know where to go you can experience the fabled dark and ominous pubs that make Dublin what it is.  Below are some pictures I have taken over the past two and a half days.

 View from Gravity Bar on top of Guinness Storehouse

Pub from P.S. I Love You with Duke students

 Grafton St, like Pearl St in Boulder, no cars allowed

St. Stephens Green Pond