Madrid

Over my Spring Break, which was 15-25 April, I went to Madrid and then Morocco. We left for Madrid on Friday, the 15th of April. By we I mean myself and my friends Erika (Mexican-American) and Hannah (German). In order to get to Madrid though, we had to take a train to Santiago de Compostela, because Ryanair (a cheap airline here in Europe) doesn't fly to Vigo. After an hour and a half of listening to our Ipods and watching the Galician countryside go by, we were in Santiago.
Then I got to have my first experience with Ryanair. I've heard horror stories about this airline, but I thought it was fine. Not any different from any other plane, except the seats are a little closer together.
Anyway, we arrived in Madrid without any problems, and then we used the Metro to get to our hostel. (Slightly off topic, but the Metro is without a doubt, the greatest invention ever. Every city should have a metro station. We got from the airport to our hostel in about 5 minutes, which is like, a thirty minute cab ride.)
We stayed at Cat's Hostel, which I would highly recommend if you ever go to Madrid. It's pretty much in the middle of the Plaza Mayor and the Prado Museum, and we walked to the Royal Palace in about 5 minutes.
So we arrived in Madrid Friday afternoon, and we just kind of chilled. We walked around a bit, and made it to the Plaza Mayor without really trying.
Saturday, we went to the Cathedral and the Royal Palace, which was probably my favorite place in Madrid. It's not permitted to take photos inside the building, so I don't have any from there, but it was really beautiful.
Royal Palace!
We also went to the Prado Museum on Saturday, which is one of the world's most famous museums, and I think it's the largest one in Spain, but I'm not sure about that.
It was really interesting, and it's definitely the biggest museum I've ever been to. We went at 6, because entry is free from 6-8 every day, so we only had two hours there. I think in order to see everything, you would need half a day or all day. We saw a couple floors of the museum, but that was it.
Sunday was really relaxing for us. We went to the Park of Buen Retiro and just chilled all morning.
After that, we went to the mall for a little while, and then we went to another park, which was outside the Royal Palace and just chilled for a while there as well.
We had to leave on Monday though, Erika and I went to Morocco and Hannah went to Granada. I was originally going to talk about Morocco in this post too, but I think it's gotten long enough, so I'll just leave it at that. I'll be posting about Morocco fairly soon though!

Viajes

So I realize that it's been a while since I've updated this blog, but I'm in Spain!
While I'm here in Spain, I want to travel as much as I can. I already blogged about my trip to Santiago, but I've also been to Baiona, La Guardia, and Porto. I went to Baiona for the first time in February, for the festival of the Arribada. When Columbus discovered America, the ship that carried the news back to Spain arrived in Baiona. Since then, they've had a medieval festival there every year. People dress up in clothes that they would have worn in the 15th century, and there are booths that serve food and wine. They also act out a play of the sailors arriving on the shores of Baiona, which is followed by fireworks.


Some of the actors in the play.


There's also a medieval castle/fort in Baiona. During the day, there are families and elderly people taking a stroll around the castle. It's right next to the ocean, so it's really calm and relaxing and beautiful.















The view from the castle, and of course, the castle itself.
The castle has been turned into a parador, which is an old building that has been turned into a hotel.
During the night, the castle and the surrounding fields are turned into a massive party called the botellon. Teenagers will go to the grocery store and buy a large bottle of alcohol and a bottle of coke, because that's cheaper than going to a bar and buying a drink there. (the word botellon means "big bottle" because they take a large bottle of alcohol and share it between themselves)
The botellon in Baiona was huge, there were probably about a thousand people there.

A few weeks ago, I went to Porto, which is the second largest city in Portugal. I went on an organized trip with the university with all the other exchange students. We only went for a day, and it takes about 2-3 hours to get there, so I didn't get to spend as much time there as I wanted to. I'm planning on going back at some point, because there are so many things that I didn't get to see while I was there. It's a really beautiful city with a lot of history. It's also cool if you're a nerd like me, because JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in Porto, and you can go to the café where she wrote it.
The Café Majestic, where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

And I went to La Guardia this weekend. La Guardia is a city on the border of Spain and Portugal. The two countries are separated by the Río Minho, and up on a mountain in La Guardia, I could see Portugal. There's also an arqueological site there, with rings of stones where houses used to be.
Portugal is right across the river!

So, that's all of my travels so far. I'm going to Madrid and Morocco in about a week, so I'll hopefully be blogging about that within the next few weeks.

Tres peregrinas en Santiago

I went to Santiago de Compostela last weekend with two of my friends, Stephannie and Erika. They're both from the USA as well, but they speak Spanish much better than I do, and they were really awesome travel buddies.
Anyway, we left Vigo Friday afternoon, and we took the train to Santiago. It was about an hour and a half train ride, so we got to see quite a bit of the Galician countryside. The thing about this region of Spain is that it's really green and mountainous, with a lot of trees. So riding on the train made me feel a lot like I was on my way to Hogwarts.
We made it to Santiago okay, and the first thing we wanted to do was find our hostel. However, we forgot to print off the directions, so we spent about two hours asking around trying to find it. And I would like to thank the wonderful bus drivers, police officers, and old ladies of Santiago for giving us yankees directions. We finally made it to our hostel, dropped off our stuff, and then went exploring. There was a mall really close to the hostel, so we spent some time there, ate dinner, and headed back to the hostel.
Saturday was when we did everything. Literally, everything. We ate breakfast at a cafe and had churros and chocolate, which is one of the most amazing inventions ever. And then we walked around the streets of Santiago for a while, looking for the cathedral.
The Camino de Santiago (the way of St. James) is one of the most important pilgrimage routes in Christianity. There's a legend that St. James's remains were carried there and he was buried in Santiago, and the Cathedral was built up around him. For a long time, and even today, a lot of people walk the Camino de Santiago to get to the Cathedral. The length of the trip depends on where you start walking, the most famous route, the Camino Francés, starts in France. I admire their dedication, because my friends and I didn't even walk from our hostel. But no matter how you get to the Cathedral, it's absolutely incredible.
We spent a couple hours in the Cathedral, and as beautiful as the outside is, the inside is even better. I'm not going to post any of those though; you guys will just have to see it for yourselves.

After we left the Cathedral, we were accosted by a clown in the Plaza de Obradoiro, which is where this picture was taken. We ran away from him and did some shopping in the Rúa de Franco, which is the old part of the city. It's also really beautiful, and it's also where all of the night life in Santiago is found.
We also made a new friend on Saturday, a girl from Brazil who is studying abroad in Portugal. She was staying in the hostel with us, and we all went out on Saturday night and had a lot of fun.
On Sunday, we slept pretty late and did some more shopping before we got on the train to Vigo. I bought a Tarta de Santiago for my host family. The tarta is a cake made of almonds with powdered sugar on top. It's okay, definitely not my favorite dessert though. And then we said goodbye to Santiago. It was a lovely city with wonderful people, and I hope that I'll get to go back someday. I also hope that you guys will go there someday as well.

I'm planning a trip to Madrid soon, so I'll hopefully have a post about that trip in a couple weeks!

Jamón, jamón

Living with a family means that I get an authentic Spanish food experience while I'm here. My abuelita cooks traditional Galician recipes that have been in her family for forever, and some of my favorites have been:
Tortilla de patatas : an omelette with fried potatoes and onions.
Cocido gallego : a stew with everything in it. Seriously, EVERYTHING.
Empanadas : a pastry stuffed with peppers, onions, and meat OR with fruit.
Bocadillo : it's a sandwich, but it's awesomer than an American sandwich because of the bread in Spain, which we eat with almost every meal.
Croquetes : a roll of fried breadcrumbs or something, with a filling of mashed potatoes, meat, and other deliciousness.
Other food that's really popular here is chorizo, which is a cured, smoked sausage. I don't really like eating it by itself, but it's really good in stews and stuff. I had garbanzos with chorizo, and that was amazing.
Jamón : we eat so much ham here, it's ridiculous. It's really good though. There's a lot of different types of ham too, including jamón serrano, which I am going to miss when I go back to the US. There's also jamón iberico, paleta, and jamón york.
One of my favorite things here is going out for tapas. We go to a bar, or a bunch of different bars, and order a drink and pick up a few different small plates of food. My favorite tapa was bread with some kind of ham and cheese on top.
Since Spain has completely different food, I miss a lot of different foods from the United States. I miss chili, Dr. Pepper, Mexican food, sushi and other Asian foods, and pepperoni pizza. We have pizza in Spain, but apparently no one has thought of putting pepperoni on one. So, if anyone would like to send me any of these things, my address is Camino... Just kidding about sending me American food. Mostly.
I ate at a McDonalds here to see if there were any differences between the American and Spanish McDonalds, and I have to say, American Micky D's beats the Spanish one any day. First of all, they give you more unhealthy food for your money, and it tastes a little bit better. It's McDonalds, so it doesn't taste great in either place, but still. They also have a lot of Burger Kings and Dominos, but I haven't tried them yet. I'll keep you guys posted.

The wine here is also good. La Rioja is a region of Spain that's famous for producing really awesome wines, and it's right next to Galicia. So I can buy a decent bottle of wine for about 2 euros, which is about 3 dollars. I love Sangría as well; it's a drink made with red wine, fruit juice, and fruit. It's a little bit sweeter than regular wine, and it's yummy. The only sad thing is that tequila is really expensive here, so that means no margaritas for me. :-(


I just realized that I am really horrible about updating my blog. But in my defense, I'm in an exciting new country, and I'm lazy.