Travel Blog Posts
January 25th 2007
Hey everyone! We´re at the airport waiting for the flight back to Lima. We can´t wait to get down from these mountains. Tying shoes takes your breath away. We will miss all the local people and the alpacas and all the Inca walls which are everywhere. The bad Spanish conquerors took apart most of the Inca sites and used them to build their churches. Most of the buildings in Cusco used the Inca walls as foundations so you can find the remains of the city everywhere in pieces. We went to the main cathedral in the Plaza de Armas, it was pretty cool especially all the work done by the poor Incas. Amazing wood carvings, paintings. It´s weird because its all very religious pieces but done by the local Incas. So you can see a part ... read more
January 24th 2007
Hola! Today was our third day in Cusco. Yesterday Juan and Maria (our names on our train tickets) took a long train ride to Machu Picchu. The train ride allowed us to see the beautiful countryside. The mountains are awesome but the living conditions that we saw from the train were very depressing. I did not realize the magnitude of the poorness of this place, even the beatiful view that we see from afar is in fact the ugly reality when looking at it close up. We saw farms and farm animals like goats, donkeys, cows, chicken, believe it or not it was pretty exciting. When we arrived to Machu Picchu, it started raining but as Jhan said it adds to the mystery of this place. The bus ride to the top of the mountain was ... read more
January 22nd 2007
We have arrived! We have passed the survival test in Lima, with a painful exception of getting the biggest blister ever known to men. Lima was great to us, the smokey polluted air did not stop from walking around the center of town and even when my feet got to be the size of elephant feet, we still marched on. The drivers are awesome, anyone who needs to learn to drive without fear should take classes here. We went to Chinatown, but guess what, we could not find a chinese person. Moving on, we had lots of good food and a show featuring interesting dances from different regions. My favorite was when they have to light the fire on the girls skirt and she has to put it out. Jhan likes the dance with the scissors, ... read more
November 30th 2004
I arrived back to Barcelona from Tenerife on Saturday. The plane ride was gorgeous,we passed by some amazing mountains. I´m going to miss the mountains and all the hills like the ones we had in Tenerife. I had the best workouts here in Spain, Alla and Irene got to experience it. It was great having them with me in Tenerife and I loved our little road trip to Mount Teide. Aside from the ear pain, it was awesome; just like being on another planet. Coming back to Barcelona felt like coming home {no offense to the real home}, thanks to my Swedish friends I felt very welcome. Pussar & Kramar to all of you girls! Yesterday I went to see Casa Vicens, another one of Gaudi´s works. But I was only able to see it from ... read more
November 17th 2004
I´m on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean! Finally I got to my final destination...well almost final since I will be finishing my trip in Barcelona... But, it´s funny cause this place seems to be the final destination for some people here...as mean as this sounds, it is absolutely unbelievable to see so many old people in one place. There are old married couples walking around everywhere and people here joke around by saying that they come here to die. At first I wanted to punish the people who had told me that I should come here (like Eddy for example) who I think had a great time here, but I found out that it wasn´t like this in the summer...the old people who are mostly Germans come here for the winter..they´re like birds, they ... read more
November 11th 2004
Hi Everyone! Glad to be back online and glad to be back in the circle of life! As some of you know, I was sick for the last few days! I was stuck in my apartment since I arrived from Salamanca that dreadful Sunday afternoon. My apartment has turned into something like a hospital (just kidding), well I´m saying that because all the time in my apartment there are a few people who are sick, so we can definetely blame it on them. It´s so nice to be back in school, I missed all my classes this week and today I made it to my second class. The teacher of my second class even hugged me when he saw me coming in. I really missed my classes and I´ve forgotten how to speak Spanish because my ... read more
November 2nd 2004
Spain has so many different regions and you really see and feel the difference. Each region is unique in it´s own way and last night I came back from a 3 1/2 day trip to Andalucia. Andalucia is in the southern part of Spain and although it should be warmer, I was freezing most of the weekend. Granada was our first stop and no wonder I was freezing, the city is located at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada mountains which is great for skiing and now I know why. We saw Granada at night and in the morning went to see the Alhambra. It´s hard to describe it in words, it´s definetely something that has to be seen. It´s an amazing palace full of architectural beauty, amazing interiors and gardens. It was not until Washington ... read more
October 28th 2004
My last day in Catalunya ended my trip in the same fashion as it has been for the last 5 weeks. I spent my last day before Madrid in Montserrat walking and walking and walking. I went on a trip to Monserrat which is located about 45 minutes from Barcelona. It´s a monastery on top of a beautiful mountain (I think it´s about 4 thousand feet high). It has been considered a sacred mountain for thousands of years and especially after a religious statue was found up there centuries after it was hidden from the Moors. It´s a small black statue, La Moreneta (dark maiden) and is the soul of Montserrat. It´s a beautiful mountain with strangely shaped rocks. I thought I would just go up there, look around and leave, but I ended up walking ... read more
October 25th 2004
Nothing is as perfect as a beautiful spring day in Europe. That´s what the weekend was like. It was walking in the Plaza Mayor, el Rastro (the sunday market where you can buy anything and everything) where there are more people than on New Years eve in Times Square, dancing salsa, watching a futbol (for those Americans out there, soccer :) game and enjoying a movie in spanish without understanding anything. There is not enough time in our lives for sure, too many things to do, too many things to see. The more I see, the more I want to see. I actually went to a futbol match on Saturday, I wanted to go for so long and finally I saw a match between Madrid and Valencia. Of course Madrid won, go Madrid! It was great ... read more
October 22nd 2004
Hola chicos y chicas! I'm still in Madrid and it is so much easier here. The pace is similar to New York's. There's always traffic, always honking, people rushing somewhere on the street and trains full of people who are reading the same bestsellers as in New York. For some reason, I keep getting stopped on the street or wherever by people who always ask me for directions or whatever. I don't know why they always choose me and for this reason I 've learned to say with the least amount of accent No Se {don't know} and this way they continue to think that I'm a Madrileno. It's easier to get coffee to go because there's Starbucks everywhere and it's easy to find an internet place cause they are everywhere, so I was even able ... read more
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