Bravo, Costa Brava!

Hello!

This weekend was so great! We all went on a mandatory "study journey" set up by IES to the Costa Brava (Northeastern Spain, Southeastern France) and it was AWESOME! I will give you the play-by-play..

Friday: We left early in the morning and drove to Girona, which is in Northern Spain. Girona is really awesome. It's a pretty old town with so much history. We visited the "old" part of the city and saw Arab Baths, cathedrals, the Jewish Quarter and the Jewish museum on a guided tour. Girona was once surrounded by Roman walls, so we walked along the walls for a while and explored the city. It is nestled at the foothills of the Pyrenees so it was absolutely gorgeous. The mountainous scenery reminded me of Colorado Springs, it made me very happy!

There were six busses, and each bus stayed in a different hotel in Girona. We were assigned roommates by our last names. OF COURSE, my roommate is the only girl on the

trip that could not make it on the walking tour...why? Oh, because she was vomiting and sick. Awesome. Of all people to get the pukey roommate. I'm not the nice, understanding person when someone is throwing up...might be a flaw of mine...but, I prefer to stay as far away from the vomiting person as possible. The person in charge of my bus/hotel group was very understanding and arranged for me to switch to a different room. The only r

oom open was at a different hotel with a different bus. The new hotel was really beautiful. It was a 5 star, and all the other hotels were 4 stars so I moved on up. My new roommate went to Miami of Ohio! She knew some of my friends from Indian Hill that now go to Miami. She actually didn't sleep in the room either night....hmm...so it was nice, I had my own 5 star hotel room! It was great to have some "me" space and time.

Girona

Saturday: We had to wake up nice and early (I had to wake up extra nice and extra early and walk 25 minutes to my former hotel to meet my bus...) and headed to a small, medieval Spanish town called Besalù. It was gorgeous! The best way to see the town was to just wander, so wander around we did! We managed to see the entire place in

maybe 30 minutes..so we enjoyed the scenery and got back on the bus. Again, more mountains..made me very happy. We then went to Figueres to the Salvador Dali Museum. WOW! What a place. I was very impressed..but at times I found it almost comical. Dali is sooo full of himself it's ridiculous. He was very talented, I will give him that, but pretty damn cocky. His work ranged from docile to outrageous. It was all great to see. After a bocadillo (sandwich), we boarded the bus once more and headed to Cadaqùes, a small Spanish town on the coast. So beautiful with such personality. I loved exploring and wandering down small streets along the coastline. After that we headed back to Girona, had dinner, hung out, etc.

Besalu Dali

Sunday: Best day ever! We woke up (again, nice and early) and went to a museum in La Jonquera (Northern Spain, very close to the French border). The museum was the Exile Museum, dedicated to the time when Franco took over and what happened to many Spaniards. There was one problem: everything was in Catalan (the dialect of the region). No Spanish, no English...so there was no chance of us understanding anything. Kind of a bummer. The

re were still some pretty powerful pictures and cool artifacts that we could look at. After that, we headed to France! Woo I went to France! We visited Collioure...a teeny little town on the coast and it was BEAUTIFUL. Such a gorgeous coastline...words don't do it justice. It's probably one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been in my entire life. We had such a great time there climbing around on some rocks, wandering the streets, and eating paninis and crepes. After that, we drove back to Barcelona and Katie and I had quite the welcome from Mar

ia! She was so happy to see us and made us this awesome dinner and even had bought us a postre (cake/treat)!

Collioure

What an action packed weekend!

FUNNY STORY: So, Katie (my roommate) was on a different walking tour of Girona than I. They let us break for lunch, and some new friends and I were sitting at an outdoor cafe having some food. Out of nowhere, Katie (my roomm

ate) runs up to our table, laughing hysterically...completely soaked, covered head to toe in green. It literally looked like she went to a paint party and had someone throw green paint all over her. What happened? Well, during her lunch break, she wandered to a park. She wanted to go into the park, but there was a green sidewalk that was between her and the park. She decided to step onto the sidewalk...and....turns out it wasn

't a sidewalk at all...it was a moat!!! Hahahaha. I guess moat is the only word to describe what it was...a man made strip of water surrounding the entire place? Anyways, so Katie walked right into this moat, thinking it was solid ground.. It was pretty deep too..she said she didn't even hit the bottom. So she had to climb out of the moat, and was covered in this horrible bright green algae for the rest of the day. Probably the hardest I have laughed in months. Could you imagine sitting on a bench in this park and then all of a sudden see this girl walk directly into the water? Also, how do you pull that off? Like..oh hey yeah, just going for a little dip in this gre

en moat here... Hahaha oh my goodness. She was such a great sport about it. She laughed about it and finished out the day looking like a mermaid covered in algae and seaweed. See the pictures...I don't think they will do the story justice either.

Katie, in green Green Sidewalk....

To sum up the weekend: visited beautiful places, met some great people, had some good laughs, ate some good food, the end.

This is turning into quite the long blog post. I am very tired and going to take a siesta soon (of course). This weekend marks the beginning of a huge festival in Barcelona. I don't know really anything about it, other than the fact that we get school off and it's a pretty crazy time. I'll fill you in, blog reader, once I find out more information.

I think it's time for me to take my siesta now. Hasta luego!