Oct 12&13- Granda

We had a long weekend last weekend so a few of my friends and I decided to go to Granada and Seville, 2 cities southwest of Barcelona. We flew into Granada at 8 on Friday morning and took the train from Granada to Seville on Saturday evening and got flew back to Barcelona on Monday night. I asked one of the tour guides who works for our program where I should go while I was in Spain and she recommended these cities. She said Granada and Seville were very "Spain" with free tapas when you get a drink, bull fights, and flamenco dancing. Barcelona wants to be its own country independent from Spain so it was cool to see the differences between the cultures in the cities.

We were really hungry when we arrived in Granada and stopped at a cafe to get breakfast. Churros dipped in chocolate are very popular here, so we decided to get some. The whole language barrier thing turned out to be a problem because when we were telling our waiter what we wanted he kept saying "tres o cinco, tres o cinco" over and over meaning that we could only get 3 or 5. Since there were 4 of us we ordered 5. Something didn't feel right about our order but I didn't say anything. When our waiter came back he was carrying 20 churros and 4 mugs of chocolate to dip them in! Apparently he was saying that we could either get 3 or 5 each, not total. So we tried to power through 20 churros, but it was harder than we thought.

Since we had a huge sugar rish after that we walked around the whole city following a route that our hotel owner had recommended. It took us aorund the city and on top of a mountian where we could see Alhambra. Alhambra is a famous fortress constructed by Arabs in the 10th century. When the Arabs left in 1492, Alhambra was used by Christian rulers. Alhambra means "the red one" which refers to the color of the fortress walls. We walked around some of the gardens at night which was really cool to see, and then went back again the next day to see more! 

Me, Nicole, Dan, and Henry ready to conquer our 20 churros

View of Alhambra

Inside the Cathedral of Granada

The gardens of Alhambra at night

Alhambra during the day

Oct 9 & 10- Basketball Game and Chocolate Museum

The Barcelona Basketball team played the Dallas Mavericks for a preseason game on October 9th and we got cheap tickets through our program so some of my friends and I decided to go. The basketball stadium is up on a mountain overlooking the entire city. I didn't know who I was going to cheer for, but once we got there I realized that I still really wanted the Mavericks to win. Go America! Barcelona ended up winning, but it was still a lot of fun. The next day we went on a tour of the Museu de Xocolata (Chocolate Museum) in Barcelona. It was very small but we learned about the history of chocolate and how chocolate was first used in Spain. There were also a lot of statues made out of chocolate and I decided that my calling in life is to be a chocolate sculptor. The tickets were made out of chocolate too so that was a plus!

The Dallas Mavericks

FC Barcelona Regal

The Chocolate Museum!

My Chocolate ticket

Tom and Jerry chocolate Sculpture

Bambi Chocolate Sculpture

Smurfs Chocolate Sculpture

Jake, my roommate Marie, me, Priya, and Nicole outside of the museum

Oct 7 & 8- Mass at the Cathedral & Cook and Taste

I went to mass with my friend Nicole at the Barcelona Cathedral last Sunday and it was really cool. The service was in Spanish so I could only understand parts of it, but the Cathedral was amazing. The next day we went to a "Cook and Taste" with my study abroad program and learned how to make a 4 course Spanish meal with professional chefs! We made a red pepper and saffron soup, tortilla de patatas and pan con tomate which is very popular in Spain (it's like an omelet with potatoes and bread with tomato juice rubbed on the top with olive oil), paella which is a Spanish rice dish with vegetables and meat or seafood, and crema Catalana which is similar to flan. The entire dinner took about 3 hours and it was so delicious! We got to help out with the cooking, but our chef spoke to us in Spanish so it was confusing sometimes. She asked me something in Spanish and I didn't know what she said, so I just replied with "creo que si" which means I think so. Apparently she asked me if the water was boiling and she said, "Not I think so. the water is clearly boiling!" She was really funny, we had a great time. I have the recipes too so I can cook everyone Spanish food when I get back!

The Barcelona Cathedral

Us attempting to cook and speak Spanish at the Cook and Taste

My friend Priya and I cutting peppers for our vegetarian paella!

Me using a blowtorch making Crema Catalana with our chef

Oct 6- Sitges & Vineyard Tour

Today we went to a town called Bodegas Torres which is about a 45 minute bus ride from Barcelona. We went on a  Vineyard tour of the Torres Vineyard which is a large wine growing company with vineyards in Chile, California, and Spain. The tour was really cool, there were huge casks that could hold up to 600,000 liters of wine! We learned that they replace thousands of casks every year to make sure that each batch of wine will be surrounded by fresh oak. After the tour we went to Sitges, a small, touristy beach town. It is one of the cleanest beaches in Spain and the weather is still really nice here so we went swimming and walked around the town. The water is so clear here and the sand is so soft! Just another exhausting day in paradise!

Hundreds and hundreds of oak barrels

These are all corks on bottles of wine!!

Me, my friend George from CU, Brynn, and my roommate Marie

The town of Sitges

Oct 5- Adventures around my apartment

Today I went wandering around my apartment to see what was close by. I realized I live about 5 minutes away from Park Guell, the cool park designed by Gaudi that we went to on September 12. I also found an awesome church and a lot of cool shops and restaurants. Everything in Spain looks so cool because of all the old architecture. I decided I need to wander more often.

The church that I stumbled upon accidentally

My future house. I think it's a restaurant though

I looked on Google Maps and Park Guell is 3/4 of a mile away from our apartment

Oct 3- Flamenco Show

Our Spanish friend Curro's parents own a popular Flamenco Restaurant where there are Flamenco shows every night. We went the other night and it was amazing! I guess I didn't really know what Flamenco was because I was surprised by how loud and aggressive it was! There was 1 guy dancer and 3 girls and there was a lot of stomping and yelling. There were 3 guitar players too that had a few songs that were just them without any dancing and it was incredible. They were so good! The show was on a Tuesday night and it started at 11:30 pm and ended at 1am- and that is totally normal for them. I couldn't tell if the show was completely rehearsed or if they were making it up some of the time, but whatever they did was amazing! I'm so glad we got to go! We weren't allowed to take pictures until the very last act when everyone was up there together but I took a few good ones.