A Beautiful Weekend trip

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This weekend, we went on a school trip to various towns in Extremadura, which is the province above Sevilla. Check out the map I added. We started on Friday morning. The bus left for Merida, which is a town that is famous for its well conserved Roman ruins. They have a gorgeous amphitheater and a theater. The theater is the best conserved Roman theater in Europe. There is one that is also well preserved in Northern Africa. It was very pretty. Then we went to the Roman museum that is also there. The museum is so beautiful. It was a little hard to stand because we were all starving when we were at the museum and I am really sure that everything has to be physically perfect for a museum trip to be tolerable. If you are really tired or hungry, a museum is just horrible. After fleeing the museum, we had our packed lunches at a cafeteria where we got coffee. Antonette have decided to carry around our own tub of cola cao, which is like nesquik. It is really popular in Spain and we really like to add it into our coffee, but some cafes started charging us for coffees and hot chocolates when we asked to put some cola cao in our coffee. We were not going to take that so we bought a tub that fits into the drink holder of my backpack. We were excited to use it for the first time and it did not disappoint.

Then we walked around the town for a while. It was so gorgeous. Oh my gosh. Then we had some ice cream before getting on the bus to head to our next town, Caceres.

In Caceres, we first went to our hotel and got settled. We had about 2 hours when we got there to chill before our tour so I took a nap. It was so divine. The bed was amazing. When I woke up from that nap, I had the happy feeling that you can only have when you wake up from a perfect nap... aaahh... Our tour went through the medieval district of Caceres. It is filled with castles, houses, old cobblestone streets, churches, and amazingness. It includes moorish architecture and then Christian architecture, because they conquered the moors in Spain. It was really interesting. We went with great professors who made it really interesting, but not too boring.

For dinner, we were served in the hotel restaurant. It was really fun to just not worry about money and have this trip be such a treat. We had pisto, a vegetable stew that is like ratatouille, and bread. Then this breaded stuffed chicken and fries, and ice cream. Yum. After dinner, we went to this free International concert that was right on the edge of the medieval district. The first show was a jazz group that was pretty Berkeley-ish and fun. There were Spanish hippies everywhere!! Then the next show was this English folk group. They were good too! Antonette had this huge cup of Tinto de Verano, but I got a coffee. We went back to the hotel to go to bed when my toes got too cold (I was wearing my birkenstocks to the hippie concert, of course!).

On Saturday, we got breakfast in the hotel. I had melon, watermelon, coffee with cola cao, and a fresh wheat roll ham sandwich. Very good. Then we got on the bus to go to Trujillo. Wow Trujillo! Trujillo is basically a town on a hill in a circle around the castle that is on the top!! Yes, we went to the castle and it was so divine. It was the most beautiful day and the castle was just so amazing. The view was... I don't even know. It really felt great. There were a lot of times this weekend where I just closed my eyes and breathed happily knowing I was in Spain doing what I needed and wanted to do. I am finally feeling confident about my decision to stay for the whole year.

After hiking up to the castle and back down, we had lunch in a restaurant. We had bread, pasta, chicken, and fries. For dessert, they brought out this bowl that we at first thought was soup. But it was cold and so we figured out it was dessert. It was supposed to be like a custard, but it was really runny and smelled like nothing but raw eggs. Like it was hard to have your face close to it. We all tried to lick our spoons a few times and then gave up... eeeww... It was a funny ending before we got back on the bus for the long ride back to Sevilla. I am glad to be back, because this is my home right now, but it was a great journey.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we are planning to take it pretty chill. We have a Starbucks date and we are very excited!

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