Spain!!!

Exam week finally arrived marking the end of the first half of the semester.  Since I only had one exam early in the week, I decided to use this opportunity to travel to Spain.  After doing some research and purchasing plane tickets, I was ready to travel.  Since this blog is supposed to primarily be about Dutch culture and Dutch experiences, the goal of our trip to Spain was to locate the house of the famous Sinterklaas!  The Dutch version of Santa Claus who lives in Spain during the off-season.  But anyways, a total of 6 people went to Spain, including Tyler, Matt Warren, Ian, Andrew, Staci, and myself.  We were going to be in Barcelona for two days, Sevilla for two days, and Madrid for one day.  The intention was to leave early March 22 and fly out of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.  But those plans changed when we accidentally bought the wrong train tickets to Eindhoven.  So we had to leave the night before.  We left on the latest train leaving Amsterdam at 11:30pm and arrived at around 1am in Eindhoven.  Then the adventure began!

After arriving at the Eindhoven train station, we decided to start walking to the airport.  We walked for around 2 hours and finally arrived at the airport at 3am.  Upon arriving, we realized that the airport did not open until 6am.  At this point, the temperature dropped into the mid 30s.  Since Eindhoven seemed to be only industrial buildings, it had no 24 hour cafes or even gas stations.  So we were forced to spend the rest of the night outside.  After attempting to sleep on the benches, we eventually gave up and starting running and jumping around to stay warm.  At that time, several homeless people also came and did their own things to survive the cold.  One person even offered us some Styrofoam to use for insulation!  After an intense 3 hours of using our survival instincts to make it through the night, the airport finally opened and soon enough we were on our way to Barcelona!  

Barcelona

Our flight landed in Girona, a city located about an hour north of Barcelona.  We jumped on a bus to take us to Barcelona and we all fell asleep instantly after pulling an all-nighter before.  Once finally in Barcelona, we began by walking around and exploring the city.  

Since we had absolutely no plans for this trip besides our plane tickets, we decided to first try to find a hostel to stay for two nights.  We found a very good hostel located in the center of the city.  

Our hostel and the view from the our room

All six of us were located in one room on the sixth floor of the building.  We continued exploring and seeing all the touristy spots that Barcelona has to offer, such as:

The Sagrada Familia

the Goudi sculptures

and beaches.

Barcelona felt a lot like Miami to me because of the large number of palm trees, warm weather, and the nice beaches.  Unfortunately, the weather was still too cold to swim.  Barcelona is the coolest city I have ever been to and was so much fun!  There were street performers everywhere!  

I also ate a couple Spanish dishes that tasted very good.  

Tortilla and croguettes

Paella con pollo

These dishes were tortillas, paella con pollo, croquettes, tapas, and of course, sangria.  The second day we climbed a mountain and had a picnic at the top and watched the sunset while looking over the city at night. 

Yes, very romantic!  Once arriving back in our hostel, we all crashed and got prepared to leave for Sevilla early in the morning.

Sevilla

On March 24, we woke up very early at 3:45am and took a cab to the airport.  Upon arriving in Sevilla, we began to walk around once again trying to find a hostel to stay for one night.  We finally found an awesome hostel which had a rooftop terrace.  

The hostel also had a couple free nights of food and drinks which we took advantage of.  March 24 also happens to be my birthday, so my theory is they knew this and threw a birthday party for me!  But while in Sevilla, we walked around the whole city about 6 times total doing all the touristy things.  

Plaza de España

Tower of Gold

Bullfighting ring

My favorite place was the Palace garden.  

This garden was very peaceful and had orange trees growing everywhere!  

(The oranges did not taste good).  We also got a free walking tour of the whole city.  Later that night, we went on a very long mission to find the cheapest helados in order to celebrate for my birthday.  After searching for an hour, we finally decided on a place close to our hostel.  Once we arrived, we realized it already closed.  So we continued on our mission and finally bought ice cream at the most expensive place in the city.  The next morning I woke up early and went up on the rooftop terrace in shorts and short sleeves and drank some tea.  The morning was very relaxing and it was gorgeous outside!  The temperatures while in Sevilla were in the 80s.  That day was a nice relaxing day.  We went in the cathedral and climbed to the top of the tower and looked over Sevilla and saw an awesome view.  

Tower we climbed

Bullfighting ring from the top of the tower

We also decided to go back to the garden and relax there and play with the ducks by giving them food and making them do tricks.  

It was a lot of fun!  

The peacocks even joined in the fun!  That night the hostel had a bbq on the roof.  We met a lot of people from all over the world.  That is one of the best things of staying at a hostel.  We met several Americans and a couple of them were even studying in Brussels, Belgium.  After the bbq, we headed over to the bus station and jumped on the bus going to Madrid. 

Madrid

March 26, 2011- The bus left at 11pm and arrived in Madrid at 5am.  We all assumed we would save some money by traveling to Madrid while also getting a good night sleep, but none of us really slept longer than an hour.  So that day was especially difficult to walk around the city because we were all super tired and sore from walking so much the previous four days.  But we continued on and saw everything touristy in Madrid.  

None of us really had any money left so we ate really cheap food.  Madrid had a lot of cool things to see and had a different feeling than the other cities we visited.  That night we slept in the Madrid airport and left for Amsterdam in the morning.

Overall, the trip was an awesome experience!  I had so much fun and I was happy I was able to visit.

A picture of everyone who went to Spain overlooking Barcelona

Barcelona was my favorite city because there were so many awesome things to do and see.  Barcelona is a huge tourist city.  Every building looks different from the one next to it.  

There were so many awesome sights to see.  

Sevilla was also a really cool city.  It was a much smaller city than Barcelona and had a cozier feel to it.  

The buildings in Sevilla were very impressive looking  

and had very narrow streets. 

Sevilla also had the nicest weather.  I could see myself living in Sevilla someday.  Madrid was a disappointment in my eyes.  Madrid is the capital of Spain so I assumed the city would be really cool, but it was not very touristy and did not have many sights to see.  My feelings of Madrid may also have been skewed because of how tired and exhausted I was.  The whole trip can be characterized by very little sleep and a huge amount of walking.  My legs were barely working by the end of the trip, but it was totally worth it!  The weather was amazing everywhere we went.  Since most people only speak Spanish in Spain, it was actually pretty fun to try to speak to them in Spanish.  All the Spanish that I learned in high school came back to me so I was able to speak very simply to other people.  This trip made me want to learn Spanish more and I regretted not paying enough attention in high school.  But this trip was an amazing experience and I had a blast!!!