Well - it has certainly been a long week of traveling! I'm finally back in my bed in Madrid, and it feels wonderful!
After I arrived in Valencia, we decided to just grab some drinks and dinner at the hotel restaurant. Their hotel was located RIGHT on the beach, and the beach in Valencia is absolutely beautiful! We had paella, and I ate snails for the first time - can't say too much, not bad/not good. Unfortunately, they had been in Valencia for a few days, so we ended up leaving somewhat early in the morning.
The ride to Barcelona was beautiful (and expensive). The highway runs more or less on the coast, and we stopped a few times to look along the way. Apparently toll roads here aren't cheap though; it cost almost 40€ to go from Valencia to Barcelona, a distance of about 200 miles. Getting to the hotel in Barcelona was a another story. We had the car, so we were going to pull up by the hotel, but the street the GPS was telling us to use was closed. Instead, we drove around for 40 minutes and decided to go get lunch by the beach. We had Italian food, and I got an asparagus risotto with crispy ham. Everyone's food was amazing, and we decided to retry getting to the hotel, but this time we asked the cop running the detour how to get there. His response: "you can't, so just go park somewhere else." That was easy.
The hotel was a beautiful and located in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. It felt like a truly European experience, but the neighborhood wasn't as exciting as other parts of Barcelona. After a two hour siesta, we wanted to go out and explore the city. We asked the bartender at the hotel bar where we should go, and she suggested a street near the cathedral that had lots of restaurants to get tapas. After dinner though, we were exhausted and went to bed.
Friday was my (and their) last day in Barcelona! We walked around in the morning, and my Dad really wanted to go to the central market. Afterwards, we took some pictures in Montjuic (the large park over the city) and rode the funicular from the top of the park back down. Then we took a cab to La Sagrada Familia. Unfortunately, the line was somewhat long, and we ultimately decided to just walk down to Passeig de Gracia for lunch. The food was just okay, nothing spectacular. I had an 8PM train back to Madrid, so we just went shopping for a bit, and then I got ready to leave. All in all, it was a phenomenal week with my parents. I took the AVE train, which goes from Barcelona to Madrid in 2hrs and 40mins. We were going through the Spanish countryside at 185mph. It was pretty awesome, and it's unfortunate that we don't have infrastructure like that in the US.
I got back to my apartment around midnight, and I was just plain exhausted. I watched a little bit of TV and went back to bed. Saturday, we met the bus to go to Avila and Salamanca at 9am. Avila was a precious, medieval city to the northwest of Madrid, but it was very quiet. The population is about 50K people, but the old city wall is one of the most well-preserved in Europe. We spent about 4 hours there walking around, and we even got to go up to the wall and walk around part of the city. I'll put some pictures up on the Picasa album later tonight.
Salamanca is basically the "Oxford of Spain." The University there is the oldest in the country and was founded in 1218! Almost 1900 years! The city is basically just a college town with bars and restaurants etc, but we had a great time. We all walked around the city and took in some of the sights, and I took some pictures; it was so, so beautiful! It was a quintessential, 11th century European city. I'll put some photos up later, but I don't think it can truly do it justice.
Anyways, I'm back in Madrid now, and I'm exhausted from my Spanish adventures. I only have one more trip left in Spain. GW is taking us to Cordoba, Granada, and Seville in November, but I've already visited these cities before. I'm excited to have a few relaxing weeks, but November is going to be crazy with travel. October 28-30 I'm in Amsterdam, the 30-November 1 I'll be in Brussels; November 4-7 I'm going to London; November 12-15, GW is taking us to Andalusia; November 19-21 I'll be visiting Paris. That's four solid weekends of traveling! It should be awesome, but it should be a somewhat stressful weekend.
Time to go do some homework!
No comments:
Post a Comment