Blogs from Aragon, Spain, Europe - page 8

Today we took a day trip to Cadiz. Cadiz is a peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean in the southwest of Spain that is famous for their beaches. It is approximately a 1hr 45min bus ride to get to. This morning it was overcast, cloudy, and actually a little bit cool for the first time since I have gotten here. But maybe it's just my inexperience at waking up at 7:30am on Saturdays thusfar. In any case, once we got to the beach we set up shop as a group and grabbed some lunch. It did warm up significantly around 1pm and the sun was shining for the majority of the time following 1pm. Long story short, the beach was glorious and it was a good time. On the downside, I contracted a mean sunburn despite repeated ... read more

After spending the night in an overpriced Barcelona hostel and having sent out a million couch requests, I took the bus to Zaragoza without being sure I would have a host. I just hoped at least for a cheaper hostel and a less crowded city. The bus was pretty nice, although there were some rules that I thought were kind of weird... you can't eat and you can't take off your shoes (which I did anyway). I had forgotten to bring my book up above, so I ended up taking a 2-hour nap, which was super nice. When I woke up the landscape was dramatically different - in Catalunya it was mostly green with little villages and stuff, but in Aragon it was all kind of unforgiving. There were cliffs and weird little hills and huge ... read more

The Aljaferia is the most important civil building in the history of Zaragoza. It was a muslim palace for the monarch Abu-Yafar during the XI century (Aljaferia means "the house of Abu-Yafar"). Later, after the Reconquest, it was enlarged and it became a christian palace. The new lounges were built in the mudejar style. "Mudejar" was the word used for the muslims that were allowed to live in the reconquered territories; many of them were cheap labor in the construction of new buildings but their legacy was that the previous muslim architectonic style remained in the new christian buildings. Then, this palace became the residency of the Catholic Kings in the XV century, the seat of the Inquisition tribunal and its dungeons, a fort in XVII century and barracks in XVIII century. Today is the seat ... read more

This past weekend I went to Zaragoza...its about 4 hours away from Madrid. I was there for 3.5 days; left school early on thursday, skipped class on friday ( I only had one ) and then came back on sunday. I went for 2 reasons; first, some friends that I met here in Madrid live there and wanted myself and two other kids to go. The friends are from Turkey! two girls, and extremely nice. Being here has made me so much more accepting of foreign people and has made me realize that it is ok to be different (I used to get frustrated with Chinese students at Tech when I was working). Second reason for my trip was because tomorrow, Monday, is a national holiday in Spain. Actually its a religious holiday that the state ... read more

Ola, So I finished up working at the Mission on August 14th, and I felt like a vacation was necessary. I decided that I would head to Spain for a couple of weeks. I flew into Madrid on Sunday morning, and then took the train to Zaragoza. Zaragoza is located in the north east of the country on the Ebro River and it was founded by Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar. I arrived in town and checked into the hostel. The hostel was cool, especially the basement bar. The basement bar is the only surviving part from the Inquisitor’s house when he lived there during the 16th century. It was made of brick and consisted of vaulted ceilings and was a great place to enjoy a drink. I walked around town for the rest ... read more