This town ain't big enough for the both of us.

No, you're not mistaken. This guy is riding
 in a cart in a plastic lawn chair being pulled by a mini tractor.  Unfortunately you
can't see the beer in his hand.

Dirt road and horses and big fancy churches, oh my!  My roomies and I decided to take a day trip to a small town called El Rocio.  I really had no idea what to expect, just that I knew it was small and pretty because we passed it on our way to the beach back in October.  So we hopped on the bus and went to check it out. Stepping off that bus was like stepping into another world.  First off, this small town is famous all throughout Spain for its grand church with a giant ornate statue of the Virgin Mary, or La Virgen del Rocio.  Every year, 10 weeks after Easter, millions - yes millions - of people from all around Spain flock to this tiny town for the pilgrimage of El Rocio.  The only paved road was the main one that came into town.  Otherwise, the town is full of quaint dirt roads.  But before you notice the dirt roads, you can't help but be distracted by the horses - they're everywhere.  Kids on horses, adults on horses, carts being pulled by horses, everything from mini ponies to giant Clydesdale.  It was as if I stepped out of Spain and into a Clint Eastwood movie...not that I've actually seen any Clint Eastwood movies (sorry, Dad).  Anyways, we went into the church to see what all the fuss was about, and it really is quite impressive, inside and out.  There was a mass of some sort going on, so we stayed for a few minutes then left to explore the rest of the town.  The was a big lagoon type thing with flamingos in it and lots of cute ceramic shops.  Overall, a really pretty little town. It was actually kind of annoying that people were driving around in cars, because there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the flow of traffic, at least none that I could figure out. Horses really were the center of the culture though.  Everyone was dressed in super preppy horse-riding clothes and there were even bars with spots outside the were reserved for people on horses. The bars were raised so that people could set their food and drink down without ever having to get down from their horse.  I was really blown away, but I also felt really out of place.  I had enjoyed our few hour stay, but I have to admit, I couldn't wait to get back to Sevilla.

Me outside of the famous church.

The inside view of the church, and up front you can see La Virgen del Rocio in all her glory.  








Here we have some pretty equestrian aficionados enjoying a beer.

Little man, little cart, little pony.

“In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.” - Federico Garcia Lorca

Since I already wrote about Christmas and New Year´s, then went back in time to Amsterdam, now I´ll fill you in on the rest of my winter break.  One day, my Spanish friends and I packed into a van and took a day trip to a small town called Zahara de la Sierra.  It is one of Andalucia´s many pueblos blancos which means white village. I´ll  give you one guess why they´re called that.  It was a warm sunny day, perfect for travelling and being outside.  Zahara de la Sierra is a beautiful little white village stuck right in the side of a small mountain.  It also has a really pretty lake down in the valley. We walked around took some pictures, and stopped at a restaurant to have lunch.  Then everyone decided they wanted to go to Ronda, which is another pueblo blanco about a half hour away.  I was really excited because Ronda is one of the places I really wanted to go in Spain.  It´s hard to explain in words the way Ronda is layed out. It´s another mountain town, but the way it was constructed is unlike anything I´ve ever seen. So, instead of trying to explain it, I´ll just let you see for yourselves. 

<  View from la Zahara de la Sierra






             


                               




                         Ronda 

The last weekend of break, Alex, Mary, Mary´s sister, her sister´s boyfriend Nate, and I went to Bilbao, in the Basque Country of northern Spain.  I wasn´t really sure what to expect from Bilbao because I had never been to northern Spain, but I was really excited.  Nothing all that exciting happened

But it was definitely a great trip and worth seeing.  One thing I noticed is that there is a very different culture in the north that the south.  The Basque country has their own language called Euskera and the people there are very proud of their province.  The style of clothes there is also very different, and people have pretty edgy hairstyles.  Well, to be honest, edgy is putting it kindly.  Lots of mullets, rat tails, dreadlocks, half shaved heads, and strangely cut bangs.   The city itself though, is really beautiful. It is cut in half by a river – on one side, the old town where our hostel was, and on the other side the newer modern part of the city. 

Our weekend was pretty much a typical weekend of seeing as much as we could by walking around the city, with a few stand out experiences.  First, we went to the world famous Guggenheim museum, which is a really cool modern art museum.  Even the building itself is considered a work of art.  I´m not that really into art, and I certainly don´t pretend to know much about it, but the Guggenheim was really worth the visit. 

On Saturday, we took a day trip to the beach town called San Sebastian, on the recommendations of just about everyone who knew we were going to Bilbao.  It was a really beautiful, relatively small city.  I felt like we were able to walk most of it in the short time we had there.  We made our way through the narrow streets, passing the gorgeous, picturesque cathedral, and to the beach.  It was a really nice city beach on the Bay of Biscay.  I had read online that you can get a really great view of the beach and the city by hiking up a small mountain/hill.  We decided to give it a go, and it really only took us about 15 minutes because the paths, while rocky and uneven, took you up to the top pretty efficiently.  There was a neat old fort complete with cannons and a huge statue of Jesus at the top of the hill, and the view really was great. We had our obnoxious, disrespectful tourist moment by climbing all over the cannons and taking pictures.  After we climbed down, we stopped at a café and got some coffee, well I drank water, and everyone else had coffee, and then we walked around some more.  

Cannon shot!

San Sebastian beach shot

After a while, we got something to eat and headed back to Bilbao.  We had already decided Saturday night would be a disco night, so we came back to our hostel to rest and then get ready for the night.  In case you´re wondering, disco here is not your typical seventies dance club, but what they call clubs here.  We bought plenty of drinks to get our night started at the hostel, and left for the club at about 1.  We hopped on the metro (we were pros at it by the end of the weekend) and followed the rest of the club goers to Fever.  When we got there, it was kind of empty so we sat down and had a couple drinks.  The place started to fill up some more and we were all feeling pretty “happy” so we decided to get up and dance.  This was different from some of the other times we´ve gone to the clubs in Spain, mostly because Nate (Mary´s sister´s boyfriend). Usually if you go out with just girls, the Spanish guys are pretty creepy and aggressive.  But since Nate was there dancing like a maniac…which made us all dance like maniacs, the Spaniards stayed away from us.  I think it was a combination of them being totally weirded out by our dancing, and confusion as to why Nate had four girls with him.  It was really, really fun to just let loose.  I even got up on a stage and did a solo dance to “One way or another.” Unfortunately, some of that was caught on film, but that´s staying in the vault.  We decided to head back home at around 4 or 4:30ish.  The next morning was not too pleasant, but we all made it through enough to get some lunch, see a little bit more of the city, and head back to the airport.  We had a lot of fun, and it was really good to meet Mary´s family.  I think you get to know people a lot more when you meet their friends and family from home.  It was also great to see more of this country that I love so much!

The outside of the Guggenheim 
Museum

The whole group in the hostel before our night out at the disco.

“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.” - John Green

Ok everyone, I have to apologize for the millionth time for being too slow to blog, but this time I actually have an excuse.  My laptop is currently on the fritz so blogging and keeping in touch in general have been a little difficult lately.  However, this weekend I have a computer that my school let me bring home, so I am going to try to catch up.  Where to begin, where to begin…

Amsterdam.  

So, during the second week of December, we all had Thursday and Friday off of school, so my roommates and I decided to take a trip to Amsterdam.  I had already been there before, but I liked it so much the first time, and we found a good deal, so I couldn´t say no.  I could honestly write page after page about the trip, but for the sake of trying to catch you all up, I won´t keep it too long.  And, usually I like to integrate my pictures in the text to make things more aesthetically pleasing, but since I'm stealing moments on my roommates' computers for the time being, I'm just going to stick a few faves in at the end for time's sake. Also, since most of my pictures are imprisoned in my broken laptop, I'm making due.

Our trip started Wednesday night on a bus to Malaga, a city about two hours from Sevilla and where our flight was from.  We had an early morning flight on Thursday, so we decided to stay the night in the airport.   As we wandered around the airport for a few minutes looking for a decent place to make camp, we stumbled across a Burger King that actually had some padded booths.  Perfect.  We each took a half of a booth and got settled.  Unfortunately, not more than 20 minutes pass when a man a couple booths down from us starts snoring like I´ve never heard anyone snore before.  I would describe it as a choking, growling sound.  Another guy in a different booth even woke him up and yelled at him, but as soon as he fell back asleep, he started right back up.  Needless to say, I didn´t get much sleep.  

We arrived in Amsterdam Thursday around noon and we took the train into the city.  Having checked the weather beforehand, we knew it was going to be quite a bit colder than here in Sevilla, but as soon as we stepped out of that train station we were whipped with a cold wind that blew half of my map right out of my hands.  Yikes it was cold.  We made our way to our hostel and got settled.  That evening my roommates wanted to go to the Anne Frank House, but since I had already been there, I decided to check out the fluorescent light museum that was right around the corner.  This turned out to be some kind of house where and old hippie couple lived and had things that glowed in the basement.  I was the only person in this “museum” so I was chatting up the guy who ran the place and he was pretty interesting.  He had a cave type thing that he made himself that was painted with fluorescent colors, different types of rocks and minerals that glowed in black light, and examples of art from artists who were the first to use fluorescent technology.  Now that it´s been almost two months since this trip, everything we did and when we did it is kind of a blur…but here´s a rundown of the places we went and some funny stories.

Things I saw/places I went:

The Fluorescent Light Museum

The Rijksmuseum

The Sex Museum

The Medieval Torture Museum

Madame Tussaud´s Wax Museum   

Vondelpark

Giant chess board

The Iamsterdam letters

Big Christmas Tree in Dam Square

Ok now for a couple funny stories.

One evening after having dinner and some drinks at an Irish pub, we went out in search of the skinny bridge.  It was once a bridge that was so narrow only one person could walk down it.  It has since been broadened, but we figured we´d check it out.  We knew we were close and had stopped to check our maps. All of a sudden, two of my roommates, Alex and Hayley, started looking at their map and shouting “we found it, we found it”, and starting running.  I looked at my roommate Mary, and said “since when did this become the Amazing Race??”  We started running after them, but stopped after about a block, and continued walking.  Then Mary said, “well they may have one this leg, but if we show up to that bridge with two hot Dutch guys, I think we´ll really win the Amazing Race.”  No sooner than the words left her mouth, two Dutch guys about our age start shouting at us in Dutch.  They realized pretty quick that we had no idea what they were saying and started explaining to us in English that we shouldn’t go that way because there were cops on the other side of the bridge giving drinking tickets.  We ended up chatting with them until our other roommates realized we stopped following them and came back to meet us.  Then to a bar with them for a few beers and had a great time.  They had already been drinking for what had to be a substantial time so they were saying some pretty funny things.  A couple of my favorites were "We love America because you guys saved us from World War II, so now we just go along with whatever you guys say," and I got in a argument with the other guy because he asked me if my 16th birthday was on the show "My super sweet sixteen" and I said no that it was actually kind of boring, and he went off in a rant saying, "that´s what´s wrong with Americans, you think that just because your birthday wasn´t on a TV show that it was boring!"  I tried to explain that was not what I meant, but there was no convincing him.  All in all, it turned out to be a really fun night.

Saturday night, we were pretty tired because we had taken a day trip to Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium (which was really cool) but we still wanted to get some dinner and go out for a few drinks on our last night.  We went to this fast food place called Febo, which is essentially a giant vending machine for fast food.  You put a couple of euros in whichever box you want and pull out you burger, fries, or chicken sandwich.  It was really good actually, and it was cool to see the people working behind it putting new food in after you take it.  Then we walked around a bit and did some souvenir shopping.  After that we decided to find a nice place to sit down and have a beer or two before we went back to the hostel.  We stopped at this place that had a nice homey pub feel, nonethewiser that we were about to end our night in a really interesting way.  Our first red flag was that when we walked in all the guys in the bar started cheering.  One quick look around told us why: we were the only girls there.  We let out some uncomfortable spurts of laughter and sat down at a table.  We ordered a beer and chatted for a while.  Then, Mary realized that the guys were pointing at here and motioning for her to go over to their side of the bar.  Against our urging not to, she decides to see what they are doing.  Then the bartender, who was a prototypical buxom, blond Dutch girl, hands Mary a giant wicker flyswatter type thing. So she´s like…ummm what am I supposed to do with this, and the bartender told us she had to spank one of the guys. We were all staring in awe thinking what the heck is going on.  But apparently it´s some kind of tradition at that bar or something.  So she wound up, took a swing, and landed one right on the guy´s tush.  We all laughed hysterically at the ridiculousness of what was happening, and then we realized that they wanted us all to do it.  So what do we do? We all take turns spanking this guy with a giant flyswatter.  Later we found out that they were some guys from a Belgian soccer team in Amsterdam for the weekend.  I got the whole thing on video, but we´ll save that for when I get home because it´s just a little embarrassing for the whole internet world to see.    Ok I think that´s enough about Amsterdam…so much for keeping it short. 

This is me in front of the Atomium structure in Brussels. Right before I went to Amsterdam, I was talking with my mom and she told me that the contestants on the Amazing Race were in Brussels and I should try and find this thing called the Atomium...well, here it is.

Only in Amsterdam can you find a bronze sculpture of a hand touching a boob in the cobbled-stone sidewalk surrounding a church.  There actually a cool story behind it too.  The artist who put it in the ground did so anonymously and without anyone knowing.  The Amsterdam government thought it was distasteful so they had it removed.  There was such a public outcry at the removal, that they eventually decided to put it back right where it was.  What's the first thing we do...take a picture of us touching it too, duh!

Just a typical snapshot of the completely awesome and unique architecture of Amsterdam. Go ahead, marvel in my amazing photography skills, haha.