Barcelona #1

An awesome bubble maker hippy that was hanging around the "porch" at Parc Güell.











La Sagrada Familia. An AMAZING cathedral that is 0ver 70 years in the making. Don't worry, it should be done by 2030.












The tower of the gatehouse at Parc Güell. The architecture is amazing.









Me sitting in front of the main fountain at Parc Güell.
















Sign outside of Parc Güell. Looks like something I'd find on the cover of a CD from the 60s (Beatles, maybe?).












(For those of you who were uninformed, I went to Barcelona last weekend on a complete whim with almost the rest of my Team Bilbao ISA group. We left Wednesday night at 5 by train, arrived at about 11 pm, and stayed until Sunday morning. It was an absolutely incredible trip - we saw La Sagrada Familia, Parc Güell, the Picasso Museum, various street performers, and the Mediterranean! I highly recommend visiting this massive, but impressive, city if you have the means :)

Photos from Travels #2

Toledo very early in the morning. We drove around the city before actually entering it so that we could see the whole thing from afar.







Outside the tomb of Francisco Franco. It took 20 years to build because it's carved into a mountain. The cross on top is over 30 floors tall, and can be seen from Madrid (about an hour away) on clear days.











El Escorial. A small town outside Madrid and close to Franco's tomb. Includes a gorgeous monastery that used to be the home of a king. All of the kings and queens of Spain are buried there (and we got to see them!).

La Plaza Mayor in Madrid. It was pretty bare while we were there during the day, but it picked up at night.











A crab that was on Kasey's paella. We ate lunch at a restaurant called El museo de jamón. It was very good, interesting (to say the least), and a great price!

BARCELONA!!!

Hello all!
I´ve hopped on a train at the LAST minute and am now in Barcelona for a long weekend. We arrived two nights ago. So far it´s been a blast - I´ll update when I can!

El caos del nieve (parte 2)

My time in Madrid was very fun. I got to know my roomie more, and the rest of the 7 people that make up the ISA Bilbao group. We all had a fun time touring the Prado Museum, the amazing royal palace, and Madrid in general. We all went out to lunch and dinner together last night, which was a whole lot of fun!

Today we drove to Toledo in the snow! Yep, it's the first time that it's snowed in Madrid since the '50s they say... The entire city is going crazy on the news, and it's only a light dusting! Seriously, it's less than half an inch of snow on the ground, and the highways are backed up miles outside of the city. It's rather entertaining. One headline I read was that Madrid had "collapsed under the snow." Right...

We drove to el Escorial, to the monastery there. It was amazing! It was a retreat for King Felipe II, and a monastery, and is now still a monastery, an elementary school, a high school, a college, and a museum! So cool! Our tour guide was amazing. He showed us the room where all of the past kings and queens are buried, the old rooms of the king and queen, and the monastery that's one of the oldest chapels in Spain is located.

Next, we drove to the Valle de los caidos (Valley of the Fallen). This place has been said to rival the pyramids of Egypt. It was built into a mountain by Francisco Franco right after he took power to be his tomb when he died. It's truly an amazing place.

More later!

El caos del nieve

So far my trip to Spain has been a bit of a roller coaster:

My flights were alright, but I didn't get much sleep on them since there was a girl and her mother across the aisle from me who kept talking the entire night! Once we landed, we had to literally run to our next plane. We had 15 minutes to get from one plane to the other. There were about ten people on the plane that needed to get to our next flight, and we were so sure that we wouldn't make it, but we did! But then we waited for about half an hour before we actually took off.

When we finally landed in Madrid, I was exhausted from lack of sleep. I just wanted to get on my bus and drive to the hotel and SLEEP. But no, that just couldn't happen. Upon arrival, we had to wait about half an hour to get our bags, but mine weren't there!!! I freaked out of course, and ran over to the Iberia line to find out where they were. There were so many people in line with us who had also had their bags lost. Luckily, they knew exactly where they were, and they were to arrive on a plane at 4:30 (it was about 2:30 at this time). So I sat down, checked my emails, and waited. Around 5:30, my bags arrived on the conveyor belt, and I was finally able to get out of that place. I called a cab and high-tailed it out of there!