More Traveling...

After the Northern Spain trip we settled into school a little more seriously. I´ll talk about school in another post.

The Tuesday after the trip, I went to El Parque de Buen Retiro with Minta, Angela, and Serena (that doesn´t mean anything to you, but I want to remember who I went with). We had a picnic and rented a row boat. A cute old man on the sidewalk made gestures to us to come over for a kiss. Minta politely said "no gracias" as we rowed further away. When it started to rain Angela, the girl from Oregon, told us this was normal for her, she would rather use our full 45 minutes of rowing and be wet. But, she also came prepared with sweaters to share.

After the rowing, they walked me to the metro stop where I split from the group to go meet Martin at the airport! After missing over two weeks of school, he had a lot to catch up on.

Before Martin got here, I spent a lot of time with Angela and Serena. They live a block away, so we walked to school together, figured out the bus system, stuff like that, and became friends in the process. After Martin arrived Serena told me they were singing excerpts from a Lion King song "(...) here's the bottom line. Our trio's down to two. (...) with all this romantic atmosphere, disaster's in the air!" I thought it was funny. But sadly, that is kinda what happened. There is a limited amount of time in a day. If more of it goes to Martin (which is what I want), then there is less time for other things. We still hang out, just not as much.

That weekend (Sept 12-13) the group went to Silos and Numancia. There was an awesome church in Silos that was built in and over a cave where a hermit lived. The chapel was painted on all the walls and ceilings, depicting scenes from the bible.

The next weekend, Marty and I spent a day in Toledo. We got a few souvineers, including a hand painted ceramic plate that was discounted 15€ because of chip that is hardly noticible after being painted over. I'm a cheap student. We also got some mazapan (spanish spelling) that is hand made by nuns. I don´t know why that makes it cooler if it tastes the same, but it's cooler. Maybe because I had to go into the abby and ring a bell for the nun to come bring it too me.

This past weekend we went to Avila and Salamanca. Avila has the sites of Santa Teresa de Jesus. I liked learning about her visions and life's work. We also walked the city wall and went inside the cathedral. Salamanca has a few amazing churches and a Roman Bridge. On our way home we went an hour and a half out of the way to see one of the only remaining Visigoth curches. It is from the 7th century. It is a great example of a church shaped like a byzantine cross, rather than the typical Latin cross. Cool as that was, you could see a lot of other things in four hours. But maybe medival history and visigoths are your thing. If so... you can stop by the bar for a fanta. The town is so small, it's the only place to get a snack.