Semester in Spain: April 2010

On Tuesday I went on another class trip, this time to Merida. The city is only about an hour from Caceres, so it was a short bus trip.

The city is old. Like 25 BC old. It was founded by the Romans, and it has a lot of ruins from that time. It's actually known as the Rome of Spain, and I could see why. It's a beautiful city.

We saw ruins from what used to be houses. We also went to the Temple of Diana, which is a huge Roman temple right next to the city square. The Puente Romano (Roman Bridge) was really cool too. It was absolutely huge, it crossed the entire Guadiana River.

My favorite part of the city was the theatre. It is half reconstructed, half original ruins. But it's gigantic. It was built so the performers on stage could talk at normal volume, and everyone in the audience could hear them perfectly. We sat high up in the stands and could hear a little girl on stage talking with her mom. Very cool.

We also went to the Circus Maximus, which is where they had competitions that were basically ancient NASCAR. It's an oval-shaped ring, and men had to race in chariots around it.

Another cool thing was the coliseum. It looks exactly like the Rome one, but smaller. We could walk inside it, where the men fought and were killed by lions. We also got to go inside the dens where they kept the lions. It was a weird feeling standing there picturing that.

We weren't in Merida long, we left by 6:00pm. It was a really cool city though, and I'm glad I got to see it!

This past weekend I went to Lisbon, Portugal with Steph and Angela. It was an amazing trip and one of my favorite places I have visited so far!

We left Friday at 2:30pm. As always, it's impossible for me to travel without some sort of catastrophe, and this trip was no different. At the bus station in Caceres, I didn't have my confirmation number so I couldn't get my bus ticket printed off. This resulted in me sweet-talking the people working there, holding up the bus to wait for me, and finally having to call one of my friends to look up the number in Angela's email on her computer. Long story short, we finally got the numbers at 2:31 and I took off at a dead sprint to get on the bus that was about to leave any second. Close call!

We went from Caceres to Badajoz, then from there to Lisbon. We had to cross a huge bridge over the Tagus River to get to the city. From the bridge, we could see only water on both sides, and Lisbon in front of us. It was awesome.

Ok let me try to describe Lisbon. It's just an amazing city. The whole place is very very old. The streets are cobblestone, but very broken and uneven cobblestone. The houses are all orange and red and white, and are cramped almost on top of each other surrounding the narrow streets. The whole city is full of hills, so walking through the city includes hiking up a nearly vertical street, sliding down the next one, and turning the corner to climb up 3 flights of steep steps.

The streets aren't organized in any way. They are clustered together in anything but perpendicular, as if a 4 year-old designed the city with a crayon on a piece of paper. There are lots of squares with statues and fountains, and you can stand at the top of any street and look down the hill to see the water, or up to see the castle at the top of the city.

Lisbon is famous for their tram system. All the streets have wires above them, and there are adorable little red and yellow trams that have to be as old as the city itself. I absolutely loved the city. It was so cute and very different from anywhere I've ever traveled to.

So we arrived Friday night. After getting completely lost trying to find the hostel, I asked someone for directions and got my first dose of Portuguese. WOW. The words are very similar to Spanish, I can read any text in Portuguese, but when they speak, I can't understand a word. It kind of sounds like a German with a cold speaking a mixture of French and Spanish with a Russian accent. I'm not kidding.

So we finally made it to our hostel. It was actually very close to the center of the city, and only a few blocks from the water. Our hostel was so great. By far the best hostel I've ever stayed at. We slept in a girls' dorm with 8 bunks. There were lots of common rooms with couches, a TV room, computers, and a kitchen. The people who worked there were soo nice and very helpful. They gave us directions and advice. We also had really good breakfast and coffee and fruit. The whole hostel was decorated with lots of colors; it was really neat and cozy.

Saturday we set off for our big day of touring. First we went to the Belem Tower (Bethlehem in English). It was built in the 1500's because King John II wanted a defense system for the city. The tower is right on the water, we had to cross a small bridge to enter it.

Inside the tower was very cool. There were small windows with cannons all around, and 4 different floors that we climbed to via a tiny tiny tiny window-less curving stairwell. The very top of the tower was open, had look-out towers on all four corners. We could see all of Lisbon on one side and the river on the other.

After that we went to the Hieronymites Monastery. It's HUGE. But we didn't want to pay to go inside, so we were just able to visit the chapel part. That was still cool.

We then went to Pasteis de Belem. It's a pastry shop that opened in 1837 and is famous for their "pastel de nata." It's a cream pastry with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Probably one of the best desserts I've ever had in my life.

Next we went back to the center of the city to the Cathedral. It looks a lot like Notre Dame in Paris. It was ok, but nothing special compared to other cathedrals I've seen in Sevilla and Granada and Turino.

Since we were there on a Saturday, there was a huge flee market close to the Cathedral. We spent a lot of time there. There was so much stuff! There was a lot of crafts and jewelry with roosters. The rooster is a symbol of Portugal because of an old tale that says that a long time ago, a man was condemned to be hung. He said that if he truly was innocent, the already roasted fowl on the table of the Judge would come alive and crow. Which it did. So the rooster symbolizes honesty, integrity, honor, and it brings good luck.

We had one more thing we wanted to see: the castle. Other students in our group who have already been to Portugal told us it's impossible to find and they got lost trying to find it. We thought, there's no way. You can see it on the top of the highest hill from anywhere in the city. it can't be that hard to find...

Well. Two hours later, we had circles the castle about 4 times and could NOT find it. We could see on our map that we were right next to it, but we couldn't find how to actually get in. We couldn't even find the walls surrounding it. It was a maze of streets and houses. We were hot and exhausted, but it was a quest for us and we refused to give up.

We finally found it by accident, and I know I couldn’t find it again if I tried. It was completely worth it though. Inside the castle was a huge terrace that over-looked the entire city. It was beautiful. We climbed a drawbridge and went into the courtyard. From there we climbed narrow staircases up to balconies and towers and look-outs. It was like an adult playground. We climbed all over the castle to get different views of the city. So fun.

After getting utterly lost trying to find our way BACK from the castle, we finally were able to catch a tram... going the wrong way. So another tram later, we finally back-tracked our way to the hostel. It was a long day and we were very tired, but it was so much fun.

The next morning we left to catch the bus back to Caceres. Our trip home was long but uneventful, I didn't have to use my charm to talk my way onto the bus again. :) I was really really sad to leave. I could have stayed another week, or maybe a month. Or a few months... or a year. I LOVED Lisbon!