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| Map of Spain and Andalucía. |
only stay in Córdoba for a couple of hours or else we wouldn't have enough time to do
everything the school had planned for us in the other three cities. And I guess there wasn't as
much to do in Córdoba, so a couple of hours were all we needed there. We visited the
Mezquita de Córdoba (Mosque of Córdoba), which was built in the 8th century. Inside it's huge. You're surrounded by what looks like a forest of columns, and each column is different because they were "recycled" from other buildings. We had a tour guide and she led around the Mezquita, starting with the oldest part and ending the newest part, like a timeline. That way we could see how the Mezquita grew each time a room or a section as added on to it. After the tour we got on a bus to go to Granada.
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| The "forest" of columns. |
We arrived in Granada that night and went to our hotel. We were given our rooms, and about an
hour later we ate dinner together in the hotel's dining room. Afterwards I went to bed.
We got up early the next morning (Tuesday, March 12th) and ate breakfast in the hotel. Then, we all gathered in the lobby to get on the bus again to go the Alhambra. It is situated on a high hill in the city. It's a huge complex which used to be a Muslim palace and was built in the 14th
century. It's like a mini-city. Again we had a tour guide who took us through the oldest part to the
newest part. We saw the palace gardens and the rooms where the monarchs lived.
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| Metal model of what the Alhambra looks like. |
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| View from above. |
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| One of the many gardens. |
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| Cool-looking arch with blue coloring. |
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| Wall decorations - tiles. |
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| The Patio of the Lions. |
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| View of Granada from the Alhambra. |
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| Another circular plaza in the palace. |
After the Mezquita we visited the cathedral in Granada. When we walked in I was so amazed by
its size. It was so tall. I can't imagine how it was built back then. Incredible. We walked through the whole cathedral with the same guide as before explaining to us its history. It was one of the
most beautiful cathedrals I had ever seen.
We had the rest of the afternoon off to do whatever we wanted. The school gave us money for
lunch, so my friends (Julia, Alex, and Kaitlyn) and I went to find a restaurant. After we ate we
walked through the city some more and returned to the hotel. That night we all ate together in the hotel's dining room.
The next morning (Wednesday, March 13th) we had to wake up early again. We left for Sevilla
after breakfast. When we reached Sevilla we had free time for lunch and walking around. After
we ate lunch Julia, Alex, Kaitlyn, Gloria, and I saw down in a plaza and rested for awhile. It was
perfect out, sunny and warm, and it made us sleepy. Later everyone gathered at the entrance of
los Reales Alcázares which is another royal palace that is still used today by the monarchs of
Spain. We had a very pleasant tour outside in the gardens and then inside the palace itself.
Plaza of Spain), which was very beautiful. A cool fact about the location is that it was used as a
setting in one of the Star Wars movies. I don't know which one, but it was fun to imagine aliens
and spaceships all over the area when we went. Circling around the Plaza was a small canal in
which people could row boats. My friends wanted to do it, but it was too late, so they decided to
do it the next day if possible. We returned to the hotel, and we all ate dinner together in the
dining room. After dinner I went to bed.
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| The boats. |
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| (Left to right) Kira, me, Gloria, Julia, and Kaitlyn. Ales is taking the photo. |
After breakfast we visited the cathedral. It's the biggest Baroque church in the world. When we
entered, I could believe it. The space inside was humongous. It made us feel small and
insignificant. But it was also very beautiful. I don't think I've ever seen an ugly church in Spain.
They're always so graceful and breathtaking. The people who built them must have invested so
much care and precision. It's amazing what they were able to achieve architecturally when they
didn't have the technology that we have today.
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| The entrance to the cathedral. |
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| Stain-glass window. |
After seeing the cathedral we next tackled climbing the very tall tower adjoined to it called La
Giralda. I was nervous about climbing it because in all the other towers I have climbed in Spain
there were small and cramped spiral staircases that aren't the safest things. But the tour guide
told us that when La Giralda was being built, instead of stairs, they used ramps. And a very
important man (don't know his name) once rode his horse up those ramps to the top of the tower. That's quite cool. The way the ramps work is that they form a square and gradually
ascend/descend. There are individual ramps in total.
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| La Giralda. |
same. We just had to keep going because we knew we would eventually reach the top. There
were a lot of people there. School kids, tourists, other Spaniards. It was a bit difficult to walk. But the view was amazing. We could see all of Sevilla. Everything was very white. The houses and buildings were all painted white or made out of a white material. I don't know. The sun reflected off of them and had a blinding effect. Once everyone had come down from the tower we had free time. Julia, Alex, Kaitlyn, and I ate lunch and afterwards we returned to the plaza in which we had been the day before and rested there again. The sun felt so good.
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| View from La Giralda. |
Later in the afternoon we all met again to go see a flamenco show. The performance took place
in the only museum of flamenco that exists in Spain. And we had a surprise at the door. An alum of SYA Spain was working there! And she also happened to be an alum of Phillips Academy! I was a freshman when she was a senior. I had seen her around campus, so I knew who she was, but she didn't know me. We met for the first time in the flamenco museum. She was also the first SYA Spain alum I had met, so I got to see how much the program had affect her. When she spoke Spanish it was so good. I could hardly hear any American accent in her voice. Of course she's had more years to practice her Spanish, so it's a lot better, but still it's amazing to see what this program can do for you.
We all sat in a single room with the chairs surrounding a small black stage with microphones and chairs and huge skid marks made from the dancing shoes. We saw the whole package:
singing, dancing, and playing the guitar. It was spectacular. The four performers played and
danced and sang with so much passion. The faces of the dancers, a man and a woman, always
had a very intense look, their eyebrows together and their eyes partly closed. I could tell they
loved dancing flamenco, and they were really good at it. The performance was too short. When
it ended everyone was yelling and applauding like crazy. I wanted to see more, but we couldn't
unfortunately.
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| The woman dancer. |
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| The man and woman dancing together. |
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| The singer and guitarist. |
Afterwards we had more free time until dinner, so Julia, Alex, Kaitlyn, and I decided to go for a
ride in a horse-drawn carriage. There were a bunch of them all around the center of Sevilla. The
drivers, all men, would stand around their horses and carriage and wait for someone to come up to them to ask about a ride. Or the men would call to you and say, "You want to take a ride? It's very nice." They tried to convince people that way. We selected a random horse and the driver told us that he'd give us a tour of Sevilla. We all got in the carriage and then the horse started walking. We were all excited. When we passed an important building or park the driver would point it out to us and tell us something about it. What surprised us was that the carriage did not only go on the small streets but on the main street itself! We were out there with all the other cars and trucks as if we belonged there. It was actually quite cool. The whole tour lasted for about 45 minutes which went by pretty quickly. We paid the driver, said goodbye to the horse, and returned to the hotel in time for dinner.
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| Me and Alex in the carriage. |
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| Me with the horse! |
our final city, Cádiz. I couldn't believe that the trip had flown by so fast. We had been anticipating it for so long that now that it was almost over it felt too quick. Something that we had been waiting for so long should last longer, but it just shows you how much fun we were having.
Before arriving in Cádiz we stopped in a place called Jerez de la Frontera, which is city with a bodega, a place where wine is stored. The bodega is one of the most famous ones in all of Spain. It works with the wine company González-Byass to produce the drink, and its well-known brand is Tío Pepe.
We were split into two groups with two different tour guides. My group first visited a more modern structure that holds wine from all around the world. On each barrel is a flag from a different country. The US flag shows up several times. Next, we got on a little trolley sort of vehicle to look around the whole place. When we finished we all went to see a video about the bodega. It talked about its history and the types of wines it contains. It was very interesting to learn. After the video we went to the gift shop where different kinds of wines were sold and another building in which visitors can taste the wine. The students weren't allowed because it's against school rules, but the adults got to. Instead we drank grape juice, which was really good, in wine glasses. We had to pretend. Soon we got back on the bus and kept heading towards Cádiz.
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| Map of Jerez de la Frontera. |
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| The company name on the barrels with the different flags of the countries. |
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| Wine that's more than 300 years old! |
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| Wine dedicated to some of Spain's monarchs. |
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| This and the following barrels have been signed by famous people. Many other barrels in the same room were also signed by famous people, but I only took pictures of signatures of people I know. |
Once we arrived we walked straight to our hotel and went to our assigned rooms. We had free
time, so everyone hurriedly changed and went to the beach. We had perfect weather again, and
it was kind of hot. Julia, Alex, Kaitlyn, and I bought some food and ate it on the beach. It was so
relaxing. It made me miss going to the beach in the US. Two of my friends had put on their
bathing suits, and they actually went into the water! They did it really quickly though, jumping in
and out in 10 seconds. I didn't feel the water, but I'm sure it was really cold. We stayed on the
beach for several hours, laying down, sunbathing. I almost fell asleep, and my other friend did
fall asleep for about half an hour. We woke her up when we had to leave. We had to meet
everyone at the Centro de Interpretación de la Constitución (The Constitution Interpretation
Center) that afternoon. It's a museum about Spain's Constitution. We walked around for about half an hour. We didn't have a guide because the whole museum was interactive. We could touch the exhibits and watch videos. It was pretty cool.
My friends and I returned to the hotel. Alex and Kaitlyn wanted to go running, so they went while
Julia and I hung out in her room together. When it was nearing the time for dinner Alex and
Kaitlyn had not gotten back yet, so Julia tried calling both of them, but neither one picked up.
After waiting awhile we decided to just go out and find something to eat. We wanted to eat near
the beach, so we headed in that direction. Julia spotted a nice, little restaurant with a good view
of the beach, although because it was dark outside we hardly saw it at all. Just when we sat
down one of Alex called Julia, and Julia told her where we were. While we waited for them to
come, Julia and I walked down the pier on the beach. It was pretty long, and we met a man
who's job it was to supervise the place at night. He was very nice and was interested that we
were from the US studying in Spain. Once we got near the end of the pier we said goodbye to each other and he continued on. Julia and I climbed down some stairs to the side and stood on
the rocks looking at the view. We saw the black ocean stretching out before us and a part of
Cádiz lit up to the right with the lights reflecting on the calm water. It was very peaceful and
beautiful.
After several minutes we went back to the restaurant, and soon Alex and Kaitlyn arrived. Julia
and I immediately asked them why they had taken so long. They only had planned on running
for about half an hour, but instead they ran for two hours. And that's after not running for a long
time. They told us that they had wanted to run around Cádiz and didn't think it would take that long. They were very sore.
The food was very good. We ordered a variety of things and tried each other's food. Afterwards
we returned to the hotel, very tired.
The next morning (Saturday, March 16th) we got up pretty early again. We ate breakfast and
brought all our bags down to the lobby to put them into a room to guard them until we left Cádiz
later that day. As we group we went to visit the Torre Tavira, which is unique in that it has at the
top a special camera that allows one to see the surrounding city on a circular, convex screen.
It was really cool. This way we could have a tour of all of Cádiz without having to walk around. We had a 360 degree tour of the city. We started at the south end and ended there. When the tour was over we returned to the hotel to collect our bags and walk to the train station. We were
given our tickets and soon boarded the train. The ride took about six hours, and we arrived in
Zaragoza in time for dinner.
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| La Torre Tavira. |
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| What the screen looks like. |
Of all the cities we went to in Andalucía, my favorite was Sevilla because of the flamenco show,
the horse-carriage ride, and the perfect weather. Cádiz comes second; it had the beach and
perfect weather also. Then comes Granada and then Córdoba. In the last two cities it rained all
the time, which made a bad impression on us, but what could we do. We made the most of it
and it was still enjoyable. I definitely want to return to Sevilla and Cádiz someday. The south of
Spain is quite different from the north. The people in the south talk and look different than the
people in the north. They could be from different countries for all you know. That's how distinct
they are.
