Leon

Two weekends ago we had our second CIEE trip up to Leon in the region of Castilla y Leon. On our way there we stopped at the Bodegas Yllevra, a vineyard and well bodegas. We got to do a wine tasting and get a tour of the whole underground celler bodega stuff. We then got to Leon and got a tour Fausto-style of the city stopping in the Barrio Humedo, the most popular neighborhood in the city, the plaza mayor, the cathedral with some of the most amazing stained glass windows i've ever seen, and an old monestary. Saturday we got up and went spulunking... wellnot really, but we did go to some amazing caves up in the mountains. We walked about 2 kilometers of beautiful caveage. we then had the rest of the day for free time. Sunday we went to the museum of modern art (i seem to be going to quite of few of those here in spain) and it was actually pretty cool. we then spent the morning at the rostro and headed back home.

Las Islas Canarias - Lanzarote

So last week was Semana Santa also known as Holy Week or the equivalent to spring break in the states, so we had off for a week and a half. We decided to take it easy and head to the Canary Islands for 8 days. We stayed in Lanzarote, said to be one of the most beautiful of the Canaries. The whole chain of islands is more or less off the coast of Africa, is a territory owned by Spain, yet the vast majority of the people there are from England or Ireland. So we had an apartment right on the beach to the Playa del Carmen. The picture of the gate that opens to the ocean, yah thats where we stayed. The beaches were beautiful, but it was impressivly windy almost every day so it made beach-going less fun. The islands are all volcanic as they sit on a fault line, so every hill/mountain you see was at one point a volcano. The pic of me and kelly on the rocks in front of the ocean is what a lot of the shoreline looks like over there. One day we took a guided tour [yes i broke down and took one] to Timanfaya National Park which is this huuuge space lined with volcanoes and covered in volcanic rock. The pic of the red rock cliffs with teh black sand beaches were taken in part of Timanfaya. There was a restaurant at the top of the main volcano that cooked its food with the heat from the earth. We saw some demonstrations of the heat, for example a man took a shovel and dug down about 3 inches into the gravely rock and gave us each a small helping and the rocks were so hot you couldn't even hold them! Then a guy poured water into this pipe that went down into the earth and in about 4 seconds the lava got mad and shot the water back up into the air all geyser style. it was really cool seeing how powerful the earth is! we then rode camels around the volcanoes also very cool. The tour then took us on a wine tasting because Lanzarote's wine was rated the second best in the world. Apparently the island has good soil but its covered in about 4 inches of volcanic rock/ash to protect it from the wind. Each grape plant is planted in its own little hole and then each hole is protected by a 1/2 foot semicircular wall. This as you can imagine makes it very hard to harvest them by machine, so all the grapes are still harvested by hand! After eight days of hanging out at the beach and the pool spiced up with a little volcano climbing and camel riding, i still wasn't ready to come back last thursday but i still had four days of break/semana santa celebrations to see!

Cordoba y Sevilla

Okay so i'm trying to catch up! So a couple weeks ago, specifically March 27th to the 29th, we had our first CIEE program trip down to Andalucia to the cities of Cordoba and Sevilla. We left friday morning early early early and started on the 6 hour bus ride down there. We stopped in this tiny little town thats know as part of the route of Don Quijote where we got to see the molinas or windmills that he "attacked" as he thought they were giants. if you dont know the story of Quijote 1.shame on you because its famous and good and 2. that last bit won't make any sense but anyways. We finally arrive in Cordoba which is much smaller than I had imagined, but very beautiful nonetheless. We begin with a walking tour led by Fausto, our director's husband and an all around black hole of knowledge about anything and everything Espana. We then went into the Mezquita, the main attraction in Cordoba. [the pictures of the tall red and cream arched building is the MezzyQ] Mezquita is the spanish word for mosque but the unique thing about the one in Cordoba es que it incorporates all three of the major religions that clashed there throughout Cordoba's past. The main foundation of the building is Moorish because the south of spain was the last to fall from the Moors, and that part is all the red striped arches. In the middle of the building the Catholics came in a built a huge Catholic open cathedral altar type thing and then i can't remember the third religion to influence it...
anyway later that evening we headed over to Sevilla [about an hour away] where we ate and went to our hotel just to start over early the next morning. We began saturday with the gardens of Sevilla, starting off the day right with a statue honoring Christopher Columbus, and then Fausto led us on another walking tour, this time of Sevilla. We went to the Mezquita there which was completely different, it looked a lot like the Alhambra, the major palace in Granada, with a lot of moorish influence. We then had lunch and returned for a visit into the huge, amazing cathedral there. [the pic is of it at night] The picture of the statue of four kings carrying a coffin is inside this cathedral and just happens to be Christopher Columbus' tomb. awesome. The rest of our day was free and as always we ended up wandering and getting to know Sevilla better. Sunday morning we went to the main gardens and another big building thing that was really pretty but quite obviously at this time my attention span was dwindling AND i was getting sick [not a good combo for me] Sevilla was def up there with Granada as one of my favorite places i've seen so far.
<---oh and ps mom that is def a picture of a fairy house. the spanish faries from sevilla live there. i saw them.