El tiempo vuela cuando viaja

This is what I’ve been up to in the last month and a half:
Morocco (October 8-13): Overall a very humbling and eye-opening experience. The ISA staff had told us to expect the worse as far as hotels and food, but everything was a lot nicer than I expected. On the bus ride through Spain and on the ferry ride across the Strait of Gibraltar, we were constantly reminded that for the first two nights we would be staying in an “African” four-star hotel, not a European one. Turns out hotels in Africa are a lot nicer than hotels in Europe. We spent the first two days in Fes, home to the largest medina in the world. “Medina” means city or town in Arabic and like most medinas, the medina in Fes was a walled city with narrow maze-like streets. Cars are prohibited in the medina so goods are moved on donkeys. The day we were at the medina it poured, which made an already bad experience worse. The medina was crowded and dirty. The markets were interesting but meat and fish and set out on tables and subject to all weather conditions. Our first stop in the medina included a Moroccan pharmacy, which was basically an American herbal medicine store. The store owner gave us an hour long presentation about various herbs and incenses in the store ranging from saffron and musk to opium an herb that has the same effects as Viagra. I purchased some saffron and a little bar of musk to give to Mitch so his shoes don’t smell so bad. Next on our agenda was a fabric and garment store. There one of the store owners dressed me up like Jasmine then proceeded to encourage me to buy the outfit, insisting that I would love it so much that I would wear it every day in the US. Nice try. I bought a scarf instead for 100 dirham, or about 10 euro. We then stopped at a leather store which included a trip up to a balcony overlooking the leather making plant. We received sprigs of mint on our way up to the balcony because we were told it would smell really bad. The smell of leather-making was probably the worst scent I have every smelt. The next day we left for the Sahara desert. The trip to the desert was interesting; apparently our ISA directors had never been rained on when they had taken students to Morocco in the past. We had been there for two days, and so far had had two days of rain. The road we took closely followed the river and at several points the river completely covered the road. We had to stop on two occasions and wait for the water to retreat a little. On our second stop, a Moroccan family allowed us to spend our six hours of downtime in there home. Finally at about midnight, we were allowed to cross the second bridge. About forty-five minutes later we arrived at a meeting point were we got of the bus and into 4x4s. After riding in the 4x4, no ride at any amusement park will ever seem exhilarating. All of the 4x4 drivers had the same mentality: get to the campsite first. At about 1AM on Saturday morning, we literally flew over a sand dune into camp. Our tents were quite nice and the rain stayed away during the two days that we camped in the desert. On Saturday we rode camels from our campsite to a nearby town. Note to anyone who is considering riding a camel: it hurts. The gait of a camel is really awkward and you can’t quite get comfortable, especially when you are traveling over shifting sand. The lifestyle of the people in that little town was eye-opening. Kids were running around without socks or shoes yet had the biggest smiles on their faces. I bought the kids some candy but hopefully someday I will be able to do more. The following day we left the desert for Meknes. We arrived in the evening, and by this point a few of my friends had already had food poisoning. Sick of the Moroccan food, we found a McDonald’s and feasted on American food. We spent most of the following day in the bus, traveling through Morocco, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, and traveling through southern Spain. We finally arrived in Sevilla around 9PM that evening and unfortunately I succumbed to the Moroccan food poisoning that evening, too. Basically it wasn’t too much worse than when I eat dairy without taking a lactaid pill, but I made the mistake of telling my señora that I wasn’t feeling well and was restricted to a soup, cracker, fruit, and juice diet for the next couple of days.

Madrid (October 18-19): On Friday night I took the overnight bus up to Madrid and surprised Mitch. We spent the weekend visiting a few places that I wasn’t able to get to during my first week in Spain including the Museo Reina de Sofia, where we saw Picasso’s Guernica. The painting was huge and easily is one of the coolest pieces of art that I have seen. I also revisited the Museo de Prado and I finally got to see The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch which was also a lot larger than I thought it would be. Delights is tied with Velasquez’s Las Meninas and Tintorretos’s El lavatorio for my favorite pieces in the Prado.

Midterm week, Sevilla (October 20-23): Finally half way done with classes! Midterms here were a joke compared to tests at home. The grading system here is also markedly different: grades are given on a 10 point scale and anything above a 5 is a passing grade. In Spain, an A or a 10 is rarely given and professors are not quite as generous in their grading as American professors. I am happy to report that the lowest grade I received was an 8.9, and on top of it, my GPA does not transfer back with me, which may or may not be a good thing because it encourages me to slack off quite a bit academically.

Sevilla FC vs. VFB Stuttgart (October 23): I finally went to my first professional soccer game! Sevilla beat Champion’s League rival VFB Stuttgart 2-0. Tickets were a bit pricey, 35 euro, which I guess is about the same thing as a cheap football ticket in the US. However, unlike at football games, even the cheapest seats in the fútbol stadium had excellent views. We sat at the north end, right above the biris, extreme Sevilla fanatics, and both goals were scored right in front of us. Unfortunately, smoking is not banned anywhere in Spain and everyone around us was smoking, which detracted from the overall experience a bit.

Paris (October 30-November 3): Paris was everything it’s cracked up to be and more. Unfortunately the weekend we were there, a cold front moved through most of Western Europe and dumped rain and 40 degree Fahrenheit temperatures on Paris. The weather didn’t stop us from walking everywhere though. I bet in our four days there we easily walked 20+ miles. We spent Thursday wandering around the city and ended the evening in front of the Eiffel Tower, were we watched the hourly light show three times. France is currently holds the presidency of the European Council, so the Eiffel Tower was decked out EU-style, lit up with blue lights and twelve yellow stars. On Friday we did another loop of the city, stopping at the Sorbonne, the Pantheon where we saw the crypts of Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Madame Curie, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Dumas, Luxembourg Park, Les Invalides (Napolean’s burial site), the Ecole Militaire, and again on the lawns of the Eiffel Tower. We then stopped at the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais and the Place de La Concorde, where Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, before stopping of for dinner. That evening we spent several hours in the Louvre, which turned out to be a huge disappointment. Venus de Milo and the other statues were spectacular, but the Mona Lisa and a lot of the other paintings were duds. It’s like Amanda said, there are only so any times you can tolerate seeing Jesus die. Jean Louis David’s paintings redeemed the Louvre a little bit and I discovered a new painter that I particularly like, Giovanni Paolo Pannini. On Saturday, after a little bit of trouble navigating the RER trains, we made it to Versailles. On the train ride we also found the Statue of Liberty, which we had been looking for the past two days. I didn’t really know what to expect, but Versailles was a bit disappointing too. The palace too much resembled a museum and the curator of the palace decided to feature pieces by American sculptor Jeff Koons in several of the main rooms, which detracted from the grandeur of the palace. My two favorite parts of the palace were the Hall of Mirrors and the grounds, which were spectacular, but the cold weather prevented us from exploring them more. Next time I visit Paris I’ll come in the spring so that I can see the gardens of Versailles in full bloom. That evening we walked through the Tuileries gardens and down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We found an original version theater on the Champs and saw High School Musical 3, and finished the night with a nutella crepe. On Sunday morning we ventured into the Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise and saw the graves of Balzac, Eugene Delacroix, Proust, Oscar Wilde, Moliere, Gay-Lussac, Auguste Comte, Jim Morrison, Chopin, and painters Pissarro and LeBrun. We then made our way to Notre Dame, then to the Musee de Rodin and the Musee de l’Orangerie, which more than made up for the Louvre. The Orangerie features Monet’s Nympheas, or waterlilies. We ended the evening by eating dinner and seeing Vicky Christina Barcelona on the Champs.

Election Day (November 4): Since the US finally turned their clocks back November 2 (we turned our clocks back a week earlier) the east coast was again six hours behind Sevilla time. Since the majority of the west coast polls wouldn’t close until 11PM Eastern Time, we were prepared to stay up all night to watch the election results come in. My señora showed Kelsey and me several English news channels with non-stop election coverage and we explained to her how the US Electoral College system works. Like the rest of the world, my señora was cheering for Obama. Spain is the most left-leaning country in Europe, so it turns out that I’m studying in the right place. Fortunately, the election was a landslide, so I was able to catch a couple of hours of sleep. The following morning on the way to school, the election results had not completely been reported but all of the Spanish papers had declared Obama the winner. On the bus I was overcome with pride when the topic of everyone’s conversation was the American election. It is interesting to see everyday how much influence the United States has on other counties and how much other countries want to be in the US’s group of friends.

Lisboa, Portugal (November 7-9): After a five hour bus ride, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge’s little sister and entered Lisboa. The city was beautiful, tucked in along the Rio Tajo, or Tagus River, a few miles upstream of the Atlantic Ocean. In the evening we visited the Castillo de San Jorge, which offered us great panoramic views of the city. We ate dinner at a little dinner near our hotel called “The Great American Disaster.” There we learned that the Portuguese aren’t quite as fond of Americans as the Spanish, which surprised me quite a bit. On Saturday we visited the Torre de Belem, which used to be completely surrounded by the river, and the Monasterio de Los Jerónimos. In the afternoon, we took the metro out to Colombo, the largest mall in the Iberian Peninsula. That evening we ate Portuguese restaurant in the Barrio Alto. I ordered frango (chicken) and potatoes. On Sunday morning we walked through the botanical gardens at the Parque de Eduardo VII before heading back to Sevilla.

Rome and Vatican City (November 12-17): After getting settled at our hostel, Mitch and I grabbed our map and headed out to explore Rome. We wondered around the Piazza della Repubblica and down the Via Nazionale until we came to the Imperial Forum museum. Mitch convinced me not to buy a guidebook, so we left empty handed and stumbled upon a bunch of ruins. Frustrated because I didn’t know what they were, we went back to the museum and bought a guidebook. We then explored the Imperial Forums, the Monument to Vittorio Emanuel (the first king of united Italy, the building is also known as the “typewriter”), Palazzo Venezia (seat of the government during the Mussolini dictatorship), and walked around the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Coliseum. We then found ourselves in Santa Maria in Cosmedin, a church that contains the relics of St. Valentine and the Bocca dell Verita (Mouth of Truth). Unfortunately it started raining when we were visiting the church, so we waited until it stopped then walked along the Circus Maximus, and hopped on the Metro to the Spanish Steps. In the evening ate dinner at a small restaurant (I had real Italian spaghetti!) near the foot of the Spanish Steps. After walking up the steps we came across “Blue Ice,” a gelato shop with soy gelato! After I ate chocolate, hazelnut, and cappuccino gelato, we walked to the Trevi Fountain, which was spectacular. We threw coins over our shoulders into the fountain, so hopefully we will return to Rome again soon. We slept in on Thursday morning, then made our way back to the Piazza della Repubblica and went into Santa Maria degli Angeli, a basilica designed by Michelangelo. However, when we came out of the basilica, it was pouring. Fortunately we had our umbrellas that we had bought in Paris, and I was determined to not let the rain stop us from exploring the city. On our way to Santa Maria Maggiore, yes, another church, we finally gave up and ducked into a cafeteria to wait out the rain. It never stopped, so cold and tired, we made our way back to the hostel. That evening we went out for pizza then saw Quantum of Solace. On Friday we got up early and took the Metro to the Vatican. We were told that the lines for the Vatican museums can get quite long, so we got there around 7:30AM. The doors don’t open until 8:45AM. There was no line yet, so we stopped by a little café for breakfast. The museums were, well, museums. The Raphael rooms were really nice and I finally got to see his School of Athens. The Sistine Chapel was a little bit disappointing; it wasn’t as cool as people make it out to be but Michelangelo’s frescoes were very cool. Apparently photos were prohibited in the chapel, but I secretly took some pictures of his famous Creation of Adam, so take a look at my pictures. After spending several hours at the museums, we ate lunch ate a little Italian restaurant and made our way over to St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican grottoes. Basically I had enough Catholicism in one day for the rest of my life. We left the Vatican and walked past the Castel Sant’ Angelo and the Palazzo di Giustizia, then through the Piazza Navona were we found ourselves in the middle of a bunch of hippies and student protesters. We quickly left the plaza and made our way to the Area Sacra and the Pantheon, where we again encountered more protesters, then to the Templo Adriano and the Palazzo Montecitorio (more protesters). Everywhere we seemed to go students were protesting, albeit peacefully. The police reluctantly let us cross their barricade and we made out way back up to the Spanish Steps (more gelato) and then walked through the Villa Borghese, the largest park in Rome. The next morning we went for a run back down and through the Villa Borghese then explored the Piazza del Popolo and walked all the way down the Via del Corso to the forums and the Coliseum. In the evening, we finally made it back to Sana Maria Maggiore and we ate at a small restaurant close to Termini, the main train station, and got a three course meal for only 8 euro! On Sunday morning, we finally decided to pay to get into the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. They were both pretty cool, but for 12 euro, definitely not worth it. We spent the rest of the day in the Trastevere area on the west side of the Tiber River, even managing to wonder outside the old Roman city walls. In the evening we again found ourselves eating gelato on the Spanish Steps, where we watched a movie crew set up to shoot a scene on the steps, then made our way back to the Trevi Fountain and threw some more coins into the fountain. We flew out of Rome on Monday morning and arrived in Madrid a little after noon. I then took the bus back to Sevilla and, as icing on my already church-filled weekend, sat next to three nuns.

Whew . . . the last month and a half flew by. In retrospect, all of my travels have been positive experiences but most of the places I thought I would enjoy the most were the biggest disappointments. Rome was remarkable, but I’d choose Paris over Rome any day. Lisboa is also a hidden gem. This weekend I will be traveling to Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain until the Catholic Kings re-conquered Granada in 1492. Then on Sunday, Kelsey and I are celebrating Thanksgiving with our señora and her family. We’ll be preparing the whole meal, which could get quite interesting . . .

The remainder of my travel itinerary looks like this:
November 21-22: Granada, Spain
November 27-December 1: London, UK
December 4-8: Barcelona, Spain
December 12-14: Daytrip to Cordoba, ski in the Sierra Nevadas, or relax in Sevilla (pending my financial situation)
Decmeber 20: HOME!

I’ll try to blog more often over the next month because it’s kind of a pain in the butt writing so much at once, but I hope you enjoyed reading it. And I really don’t feel like re-reading this now, so please excuse any typos. Looking forward to seeing you in a month . . .

Jen