So here it is, the third and final week trip in Spain. Heading out I was pretty darn excited. We would be going to Barcelona and everything I had heard about Barcelona amounted to beaches and relaxation. So ya. Stoked. We went shopping the day before and I bought a bunch of candy for the road but sadly, I ate most of it before I left the store and the rest as gone pretty quickly. I did use some of it to reenact VA road trip 1998.
Who remembers that? Did somebody say Swedish fish? And yes, it had been some time since I had shaved. What do you guys think? I know that little Timothy was a little shocked by it.
We drove off to Zaragoza and thus we started the beginning of the end. I was also a little sad to think that this was a huge marker for the near end of the study abroad. But I wasn’t about to let that get in the way of my fun so off we went. Zaragoza was amazing. One of the things that it is most famous for is the large basilica that was pretty cool.
We had some fun out in the courtyard and took some cool pictures.
This guy was pretty creepy.
But the basilica was pretty amazing.
A lot of it was under construction though because the world’s fair is coming to Zaragoza in June so they were renovating everything in the city for it. It is kind of lame how bad our timing is sometimes. Here are some basilica pics.
They had a huge Goya painting as the ceiling in one of the domes but it was under construction.
I think Catholics are so funny. This church was built by some lady, Pilar, who had done some miracles or something and personally laid one of the pillars for the church. Overtime, people paid more money to the church and they expanded but kept the original pillar that she laid. They decided that it was necessary to kiss the pillar in order to get what you wanted and needed. They have such strong faith. Its crazy. Sometimes it is faith founded in something way off but the devout Catholics are pretty darn devout. But obviously, I had to kiss the pillar as well.
Outside the church there were a ton of pigeons all over the place and so we ran through and chased them but there was one that Andrew was going to sneak up on till he realized it was dead.
There was one church that had a leaning tower.
That was very interesting. We moved onward and saw the even Zaragoza pays homage to George Washington. We went to a park and sat for a while on the swings and such that was a lot of fun. Sometimes the most fun things to do are little kid things. That makes sense since they are the ones who have the most fun. From there we went to a famous Moorish castle but it was closed for the siesta so we went to a nearby stadium to check it out and relax. Everyone got there and went to sleep but I wanted some cool pics.
Here is the stadium.
This Lion was awesome.
Here is a better pigeon picture.
When the siesta ended we headed back to the castle and got ready for our guided tour. The Tour was way cool and our tour guide’s name was Poloma. She was cute. But anyways, it started out in with a few cool rooms. Paloma told us about how this was a very interesting Moorish castle used since the times of the reconquest for many different purposes. In the mosque section of the castle there was an interesting carving of a bird.
Now, she told us that in Muslim culture they are unable to make carvings of plants or animals because it is against their religion. So, this makes sense why the mosques that we have seen up to this point have been so elaborate. They couldn’t do paintings of people or animals so they made intricate geometric designs. So that was a fun fact and an answer to the question that Katie had about the mosques before. During wartime this was a very crucial point for defense. One of the kings dug up an underground well outside the castle and then covered it up with a series of caves that connected the castle to the water from underground.
Enemies putting the castle under siege could be directly over the water and have no idea. So that was pretty cool. The castle was also used during the Spanish Inquisition and a few of the rooms were converted to holding cells. The prisoners from the different religions each left their marks in the cell.
Some even carved a checker board in the ground.
Funny story: so the tour was full of stairs and a bunch of cool stuff to see. There was nothing interesting to hear that you couldn’t hear sitting somewhere. Also, there was nothing that we could touch. But for some reason, they had this model of a castle with all the parts labeled and they were labeled in Braille.
It was really out of place and random. Like Braille on a drive up ATM. Picture 3000 was of our tour guide Paloma in a room that Sarah and Erin decided was going to be the dinner halls for their wedding receptions.
This was a pretty neat door.
Here are some pics from the room that Fernando and Isabel decorated with their symbols and such.
The shield is their crest. The arrows are a symbol of strength in numbers. And Tanta Monta is a famous phrase that means “it’s the same either way”. We went into the chamber of congress type place for the state of Aragon.
This was the kingdom that Fernando was king of when he married Isabel. Back in the day, when Spain was still a large number of kingdoms, the most powerful were Castilla and Aragon. That is why it was such a big deal that Fernando and Isabel got together and began the formation of a united Spain. Aragon was the kingdom that was smaller of the two but arguably more powerful. At the time, they owned Sicily. Pretty cool, eh? After the tour, we wandered around for a few seconds and got some pics that we didn’t have time for on the tour. Here is one of the prayer room of the mosque.
And another.
Some amazing gardens.
From there we went off into Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, and had some more fun.
Look at this cool drinking fountain.
They sure love their lions here in Zaragoza. We got to one plaza and the girls decided to go shoe shopping.
…shoe shopping…(said in a zombie/Zach Braff voice) Here was a cool church.
And another roman bridge. They sure do love their bridges.
More lions with a pretty sunset.
Wow…all I have to say about this next one is wow.
I mean, it’s got a bird fling and everything. This is a good group.
Do you understand why I said that the basilica is famous now?
We went around that night and had a bunch of fun. We found a park and played missionary tag and then a new game of tag that Andrew made up called bent and straight tag. We found some Greek gyros and they were way good and then headed back to the hotel. But not before we got an amazing picture of Andrew and Sarah.
We walked along the beach for the time that we had and grabbed a bunch of sea shells. A lot of them had little holes so Kyte is going to use them for jewelry. Anywho, the main point of meeting in Barcelona was the plaza of Columbus.
I decided that Spain capitalizes on Columbus way too much. Everywhere you go in Spain they are trying to make a big deal about how something important happened there. I know that that was the port city where Columbus came back to and met the King and Queen but I didn’t bother to think about that when I was there. It wasn’t until I just started writing that that I even remembered what Barcelona had to do with Columbus. There were some pretty good Lion statues there at the plaza for picture taking.
I thought that this statue was interesting.
I wonder if any native was ever really that appreciative of a Spanish Padre. We went down the street called Las Ramblas. It was an amazing street of performers and art and all that good stuff.
I love art. I know a lot of this is pretty lame and commercial but I still really love it. We headed to the Picasso museum. It seemed kind of weird because it was back in some poorly lit alley but it was really cool inside.
I thought it was a really interesting museum. One of the coolest parts was the special exhibition. During Picasso’s lifetime he amassed a large amount of art from his friends and also the normal course of an artist’s life. When he died he made the condition that it would be donated to France if it were to all remain together as a whole. It is usually there but was brought over for a temporary exhibition. We went to see Picasso’s art but were pleased to be able to see the art he owned as well. We were able to learn a lot about him through the taste he had in art and artists which he considered as friends. But, speaking about the actual museum, I was once again amazed to see how much art one person could produce in a lifetime. I had, only days before, seen his exhibit in the Raina Sofia and while there I was shocked about how much he had painted. When I walked through an entire museum with art he had done I was floored. It is surprising as well to think that most of his art was not “traditional” Picasso style. Very few of the pieces in the museum were what I would have thought. We talked about how it probably was because most of the more famous “Picasso style” paintings were privately owned. They did have one room that was devoted to many renditions he made of the “las meninas” all done in “Picasso style”. They were all really really cool. It was also interesting to see them after I had been to Santiago and learned a lot more about the artist. I had seen the painting in the Prado in my first week in Spain but it didn’t really mean much but now that I know the characters of the work and the meaning of the Cross which he painted on his chest. Art is a lot cooler when you actually can read stuff into it. We couldn’t take pictures inside but it was really cool.
We went looking for dinner and found an amazing sea food paella place. I love paella. That was it for that day.
