Merida

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!