Barcelona

Hola amics (that means "hi friends!" in Catalan, the official language of Barcelona)!

I visited Barcelona this past weekend, and I have to say that it was one of my favorite cities thus far :) Best way to describe the city? Sevilla on roids (roids=steroids abbreviated). Sevilla has the Guadalquivir river, Barcelona has the beach; Sevilla has the world's largest Cathedral, Barcelona has the Sagrada Familia; Sevilla has heladerías everywhere, Barcelona has legit gelato...I could go on & on! As much fun as I had in Barca, it was also one of my most stressful trips—I got to the city with no place to stay for the weekend! As you can see I'm still alive & well so the living situation was taken care of ASAP. Here's my weekend in pictures!

Instead of flying to Barcelona I took the AVE train, which goes about 180 mph! Although the trip took 5 hours (a flight is 1.5 hours), the convenience highly overshadowed any lost time.

Upon arriving to the big ol train station in Barca, I was reunited with my travel partners for the weekend, Sarah & Katie! We're so cute.

We walked through the Boqueria off of La Rambla for some healthy snacks in the middle of the day—a giant container of strawberries only cost me 1.5€, talk about a great deal. Here's a picture of all the smoothies they sold.

Highlight of the trip: La Sagrada Familia. Construction for this church began in 1882 & is predicted to be finished around 2026! The overall structure is enormous & beautiful, with so much detail that cannot really be captured in photos. Antonio Gaudí is credited for the majority of the building.

Side 1: Stations of the cross. The crucifixion of Jesus is in the center, and above that is a statue of a golden Jesus, resurrected (not shown).

Inside the Sagrada Familia: the ceiling. The columns are meant to look like trees, spreading with their "branches" in order to support the building.

The glass mosaics were so beautiful!

Side 2: The life of Jesus. Super ornate.

When visiting the Gothic Quarter we stumbled upon some sort of dance thing...I'm still not sure what went down! Basically older couples started dancing in a circle together. We visited the area 30 minutes later only to see that more people joined in on the dancing & the circles started to combine!

We visited the beach (Barceloneta)! It was kinda chilly but still really pretty. We ran into some people doing gymnastics on the playground, weird. They brought some straps & made their own strap bar on the jungle gym—talk about giving me a heart attack!

Park Güell! This park, also designed by Antonio Gaudí, was outside of the city about 30 minutes by metro but gave such a great outlook of the Barcelona city. This is actually the last picture I was able to take in Barcelona because my camera soon peaced out a minute later :(

Barcelona was an all-around success, & now I'm back in Sevilla working on some homework before my next trip...PARIS! I cannot believe that I am over halfway done with my study abroad experience in Spain, what a bittersweet feeling. I will definitely be taking full advantage of the next 50 days I have here in Europe :) Sending muchos abrazos y besos, B

Morocco

Hello! I apologize for the lack of blogging this past week, but I am now back to obscene amounts of travel once again so be expecting a lot more updates! This past weekend I was lucky enough to visit Morocco with DiscoverSevilla, where they planned to take us to 2 cities: ChefChauen & Tetouan. Here's a picture blog of the trip:

First stop: Avenida de Portugal, the meeting point for our bus. The bus ride went from Sevilla-Cádiz-Tangier, where we would then ride a ferry into Morocco, & then finally bus to our Hotel. Total travel time: 7 hours!
We arrived in Morocco around 8PM on friday. This is Katie & I's first official picture in Africa!!! Fresh off the ferry ride.
First stop in Morocco: exchange euros into Dirhems, the official currency of many Arab nations. 10 Dirhems=1 Euro= .7 cents...you do the math!

At around 10:30PM we arrived at Hotel Kabila, where we were greeted by some sort of band! It was pretty cool. After our spaghetti dinner we headed to our hotel room to sleep & prepare for our next day of exploring.

Day 2--visit ChefChauen. The city was about 2 hours away from our hotel; you'd think this ride would be pretty miserable, especially after being on a bus the day before for 7 hours, but the Moroccan countryside was absolutely beautiful. I have never seen a greener landscape.

10AM: Arrive in ChefChauen. First impressions: I have never seen so many men in my life. As I looked out of the bus window there were no women in sight, only men walking around or just sitting and staring at our giant, out-of-place travel bus. I immediately get called at by the men when I step out...what a weird experience.
Walking around ChefChauen was really eye-opening as to how lucky & fortunate I am. The city is underdeveloped, with animals roaming the streets as they please. The city is really picturesque but it's shocking to see how behind ChefChauen is from the rest of the world (I guess I just compare to the states & Spain, but still).
This is a prayer tower located in ChefChauen. 5x a day the prayer tower sings--you can see the big speakers located on the top of the building.
This picture is the best representation of what the city looks like. All buildings are some sort of combination of white & blue. The blue represents the Jewish religion while while the white represents the Islamic faith. The town was beautiful itself, but the symbolism of the colors in unity made it even prettier.

I'm Katie's video subject when it comes to narrating our travel experience, enjoy!

This was the first Moroccan dish I ate...& I still don't know what it is! The top was a combination of brown & powdered sugar, while the inside was chicken soaked in green curry. All of it sat on top mint leaves--can you say weird combination?!

After lunch we did our souvenir shopping! My first purchase was a scarf that could double as a a head wrap--hey, I wanted to fully experience the Moroccan culture! A nice lady wrapped my head; unfortunately we were not able to video the whole process because she did not have her husband's permission to be on camera.

After getting my head wrapped the shop keeper convinced me to try on the traditional outfit. After struggling to get it over my head (I got some big shoulders!) I finally looked the part! The shop keeper was SO nice.

Another narration, enjoy!

Of course I had to teach the shop keeper the Waka Waka dance :) He was pretty legit.

We headed back to our hotel after ChefChauen, ate dinner, & then were given the news that we COULD NOT visit Tetouan the next day because there were rumors of a protest that day, around noon. In order to be safe, we needed to LEAVE Morocco before 12 noon. We made the best of our Saturday night in the hotel & headed to bed, ready for an early morning of packing & quickly touring the other sites before having to "evacuate."

Day 3: Visit to the caves of Hercules! This is inside the cave--the cut out looks like Africa! Other than that, I'm not sure what the significance of the caves is...

After the caves, we quickly bused over to the camel-riding site. I'm not gonna lie, I signed up to go to Morocco solely to ride a camel, so of course I was super excited for this last part of the trip! Katie & I rode the camel together. The picture on the left is the original (a man pulled the camel while a kid made sure the came kept moving with his stick :[ ) but I decided to put my Photoshop skills to use & edit out these people (shown on the right)! In all reality, we would never be allowed to ride a camel solo, but shhhhh....
Katie & I "evacuating" Africa! We rushed to the ferry in order to be out of Morocco before the scheduled protest at noon. Don't worry, we made it okay, but were slightly upset that we were unable to see Tetouan. My Fez hat is another one of my souvenirs!

I am so blessed to have been able to visit Morocco and loved every second of the trip. Although I had fun, I don't think I will be visiting Africa again anytime soon...haha. What else is new in mi vida??

• Midterms are OVER!!! So far, I've gotten all A's :) I have a 5 page paper to write for my Spanish Art History class (in English) & a 12 page paper to write for my Spanish Culture & Civilization class (in Spanish). Pray for me! haha
• It's finally spring in Sevilla! The weather is amazing.
• I had 2 friends visit Sevilla this past week! It was great to catch up with both D'Ann & Veronica & show them some parts of my new home.
• My travel plans are getting outta control! But don't worry parents, school is FIRST! My following weekend travels: Barcelona, Spain; Paris, France; Lagos, Portugal; Palma de Mallorca, Spain. I am SO excited!!!
• I may or may not be going to an Enrique Iglesias concert in Paris... :D

Well enough about me! It's dinner time so I'm off to eat some yummies. I send my love!!!

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A Series of Unfortunate Events

Hi guys!

Since I've had 3 weeks of no travel (2 weekends), I've been hanging out in Sevilla & appreciating the city more & more. Although I am realizing how much I love Sevilla, I have had a series of unfortunate events hit me :( (kinda like the book!) so here they are (I apologize for the emo-ness of this post):

• I was suppose to take a 6-day trip to the Sahara Desert, but the trip was canceled! Because of all the protests in Egypt & Libya, many students have been pulling out of this Morocco trip...since not enough students are signed up to go, the company canceled the trip! I was most excited about riding a camel in the Sahara-looks like that's not going to happen anymore :(
• My parents were suppose to visit me this month but had to cancel the trip last minute. 1st off: I'm sad I won't be able to see my parents until June. 2nd off: we had coordinated travel plans for Barcelona & Paris...now I am traveling to those cities by myself. I'm hoping for friends to join me on these trips, but nothing is set in stone at the moment. I'm not really looking forward to traveling to these big cities well-known for pick-pocketing alone, especially as a girl alone, so pray that something works out!
• I caught some weird cold that includes sneezing, coughing, & a sore throat...oh & both of my eyes are bloodshot! I have no idea why, they are extremely dry, but after a quick stop at la farmacia today I'm hoping the meds they gave me will cure all.
• My friend Kristi sent me a package...that is now stuck in Madrid at customs. Hoping it makes its way to Sevilla soon.
• Did I mention that it's midterms week? I have 2 midterms on Tuesday. Fun stuff.

Okay so those are the current issues. Rewinding to last week:

• My internship gave me a free trip to the carnival in Cádiz, a city about 1 hour away from Sevilla. Basically everyone roams the streets in costumes at carnaval; it was really cool to see all the costumes and the craziness of carnaval, especially since it was all free! Here are some pictures:

Praying that things go up from here. My friend D'Ann will be in Sevilla on Tuesday & I cannot wait to see her. I will update after her visit. Until then-hasta luego!!!