Travel-tastic!

Hola amigos y familia! I'm finally starting my blog before 10 pm! I hope that means I won't have to stay up late finishing it, because I'm super tired.  It was definitely a busy and eventful week.  I had my first studio pin-up, a Spanish midterm and a presentation to give speaking in Spanish, and then I hurried and finished up my homework for the week so I wouldn't have to worry about it during our 3-day weekend.

Early Friday morning, Cara, two other girlfriends of ours (Lindsey and Abby), and I took a taxi to the Barcelona airport and from there took the one-hour flight to Bilbao.  (At least they said it was an hour, but I'm convinced we were only in the air for 5 minutes. Either that or I fell asleep ;).)  It was so pretty flying in, with all the mountains. And it was so green! (Probably because it rains all the time!) We got Bilbao a few hours before we could check into our hostel, but none of us had much luggage so we walked around the city for awhile in the rain and took some pictures.  Then at 10, the Guggenheim opened and we figured that would be a perfect start to the trip since it was the main attraction, as well as an opportunity to get out of the rain.  I really enjoyed the museum, and  since we went right at opening on a Friday morning, it wasn't busy at all.  The main attraction of the Guggenheim is the building itself, of course, but there was one exhibit there that I really enjoyed.  It's an exhibit by Richard Serra called Matter of Time (in case you wanna Google it :)) and he makes giant metal sculptures for walking through and it's really disorienting the way he does it, but it was really neat.  We walked around the museum for quite a few hours, although I'm not nearly artsy enough to appreciate most of the artwork there.  We did get a free little audio-guide with our tickets that you held up to your ear like a cell phone and that was helpful in explaining what in the world I was looking at. Overall, I really enjoyed the museum, and then we went out into the rain to find our hostel.

None of us had ever done the hostel thing before and it was definitely an experience.  Since I don't have anything to compare it to I don't know, but I think the hostel we stayed at was pretty nice as far as they go.  It was similar to staying in the dorms at school, so it was fine but we all agreed we'd much rather search for cheap hotels in the future.  We dropped our stuff off and the headed over to the Casco Viejo (Old Town) on the metro in search of some pintxos for lunch.  Pintxos are the Basque region's form of tapas and they're usually served on a piece of bread.  We happened to be walking around (in the rain, again) at kind of an off time; it was around 4, which is often considered siesta time.  In Barcelona and in many cities, businesses close for siesta, so the restaurants were open but they didn't have much of a selection available.  I tried a few and they were pretty good, but we ended up going to a little cafe for lunch because we were all still pretty hungry, as pintxos are not very filling.

We did as the Spaniards do and stayed in the cafe (away from the weather) for probably a few hours, and then we ventured out again and tried to decide what to do for the night.  We wandered around and found a sort of shopping center with a lot of different types of places, including a movie theater (and a pool!).  We decided to be brave and go see a movie in Spanish.  It was The Descendants, or Los Descendientes, so it was an American movie, but dubbed over with Spanish audio.  I was impressed that Lindsey was willing to go as she has zero Spanish experience, but it was a good night for a movie because we were all a little tired, so we wanted to do something pretty calm, and movie theaters are warm and dry (did I mention the weather sucked ;)?). The theater was really nice and I enjoyed the movie and felt like I was able to follow the story-line well, although I would like to watch it in English now to see how much I missed, just out of curiosity.  At one point I looked over and all three of my amigas were asleep ;), but I don't blame them. The seats were really comfy, it was dark and it takes so much active concentration to comprehend a movie in a foreign language, it was definitely a little exhausting.  So needless to say, we called it a night then and went back to the hostel to sleep.

The next morning we checked out of the hostel and got on a bus to San Sebastian, just an hour away.  It was raining there, too. The bus ride was beautiful, we went between all these hills with little farm houses and farm animals and at one point there was a whole double rainbow! It was like a postcard.  The town itself was just as picturesque when we got there.  It's the cutest little seaside town you could imagine, even in the pouring rain.  I can't imagine how beautiful it is in the summer.  When we got to the hostel, we were glad because it was more like a bed and breakfast than a dorm and a guy who works there took us on a walk around the town and the weather even cleared up (temporarily).  That night we went as a huge group to a cider house.  That was an experience.  There were a bunch of giant barrels of cider in the walls and they would tap one and people would line up to catch it in their glasses.  The traditional thing to do was to chug it immediately (they always only fill the glass about an inch), but I wasn't feelin' it. I did try it, but I thought it tasted like apple juice that had gone bad.  And then the food came out in huge platters, family style, and that was interesting as well. There was cod, and a giant steak that I'm sure was on the verge of still being alive, it was so red.  I tried everything, but mostly I ate a lot of bread.  The last course was cheese, fruit spread and walnuts.  Those who had had a little more cider cracked walnuts with their foreheads and still had marks from it this morning.  I didn't attempt that.  A large portion of the group went out to a bar afterwards too but we went back to the hostel and went to bed.

This morning we took a taxi, bus, bus, plane, bus, and then a metro and then I was back here! It sounds complicated, but it wasn't bad and I was actually really impressed at how easy it is for four young women on a budget to travel for a weekend without a car.  It was a really fun weekend regardless of weather, and it was interesting to see more of the country and how each new city in Spain we've gone to has had a completely different feel. I look forward to traveling more and this week we just have three days of class and then our program is taking us to Berlin for 4 days! I'm really, really excited for that, so that'll be in the blog next week! Gracias y hasta luego :)!