My Semester Aqui en Oviedo

Semana Santa Parte Tres - London

2008-05-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

The last morning of our stay in Paris both of us remaining from the group woke up and ate our last authentic crepes and promptly caught the metro to the airport, which took 30 min. We then caught a flight to London which lasted maybe a couple hours at most. Upon landing in London it was stereotypically grey and chill. We also didn't realize that while London has four different large airports they aren't necessarily all close. After a one hour bus ride we then arrived at the "tube" as London calls its metros, and took the lines to the stop where the apartment rental company said they would meet us. Three of us had looked online and found a site that rents apartments in flexible amounts and we chose a week for $45 each a night. By London standards this was a steal, as the nearby dirty hostels that were available cost about the same a night. The reason we were staying the longest in the most expensive area of the trip so far was that we were going to a concert of some pretty big names the last night of the week.

So we finally got off at our stop and it was raining now, which furthered no doubt in my London preconceptions so far, and waited for the representative to meet us in car. After a little we met with the rep and were driven on the wrong side of the road about 4 mintues down the road into this neighborhood of little brick 2 floor developements that looked pretty well kept, which was reassuring because for the price we were paying we theoretically could have very well been placed in the ghetto. Fortunately we were not in the ghetto.

This is the whole thing, except for the bathroom which was back behind me. True London style it was "quaint". At least it was new looking, spotless, and fully furnished.

Including this kitchen as well which was stocked as well thank god. We used this kitche the whole time in order to save money. There were many halal markets around us because we apparently were in a predominantly arab/muslim section of the outskirts of London, so groceries were often not far away although sometimes strange in nature.

We had a lot of time to explore this massive city, a week to be exact, so we took it casually and saw a couple things a day or so, seeing many important landmarks. One was the London museum.

Here's an example of one of the many artifacts the museum had. It was mainly London history but it went quite far back in time.

Another historical building we went to was St. Paul's cathedral.

We entered the front and were greeted by a very british, older "fellow" standing beside felt rope cordoning off the rest of the interior of the church. I snapped this picture quickly without a flash after I read the 10 pound entry fee sign. $20, no thank you, I'd rather eat. After I took the photo the dour "fellow" by the felt rope gate warned "no photos please!" in a condescendingly polite british manner as was customary.

This is none other than the house of God this is the gate of Heaven -and it costs $20 to enter said gate apparently.

The next day we decided to take the "tube" as the british call their metro, or subway station, to central London to explore part of the city. As you can imagine, like the heart of any major metropolis, it's where the money is at. That grey car pictured there is a new Rolls Royce Phantom, worth around 350,000 euros last I saw in a magazine.

It was parked down the street from the Bentley dealership we came across as we continued on. That there is a Bentley sedan, I forget the model name, but I believe it's in their mid range section of only 250,000 euroes.

I decided to sum up the nerves to enter the dealership after I looked inside and saw this is well.

Price tag: 1,100,000 euro.

Yes, 1.1 million euro, or $1.7 million american if you want to put it that way. What is it you might ask?

This is the Bugatti Veyron.

There are only going to be 300 total in the world. It has an 8.0 L, 4 turbo, W16 engine with about 1,000 hp and a top speed of 253 mph. You do get a 24 hour available mechanic to be flown in included with the deal at least.

That made me quite desensitized to the petty Porsches I walked past at the next dealership and mildly impressed by the Rolls Royce dealership next to that. After that we hopped a double decker red bus and took it back to the apartment to eat. The next day we decided to see Big Ben so we looked up the location and figured out the "tube" and bus routes to get there and got it done.

Here is said Big Ben.

A close up.

On the walk down the street from Big Ben we walked by a row of sculptures. Here is the famous General Monty. All I could think of was the movie Patton and laugh at his stern figure with its goofy moustache.

Not to be confused with this Monty of the Python type however, whose sign I saw farther down the street.

A couple days later we decided to see the royal palace. On the way we found we could go see the London Tower bridge as well, which is not to be confused with the London Bridge which we didn't get to see but were mislead to believe was this one based on it's popularity in photography. The plaque on the support of the Tower Bridge let us know where we actually were. Nonetheless it still looked cool.

Later on we saw the royal palace. This shot was taken with my hand placing the camera through the fence that protected the outer perimeter. I'm not sure what side of the palace I'm on in the photo but it was not as impressive as I imagined so I hope this wasn't the best side of it. It was quite large and we were quite tired so we did not circumnavigate the landmark to find out otherwise.

The guards did change posts while we were there however and do their funny march with the hand swinging and awkwardly high leg movements. Their assault rifles dont look so funny however. This also had to be the back of the palace or something because these guards, while they marched silly, were not dressed silly, like I had heard about, with the giant furry hat/helmet thing and bright red garb.

The day before we were to go to the concert we got an e-mail from the ticket provider that the event got rescheduled to April 15th instead. Wonderful, the whole reason we stayed in one of the most expensive areas of Europe for so long was we were at least going to go see some of the member of Wu-Tang, a hip hop group, perform at the end of the week. Oh well, at least we can just get our money back if we don't want to go, which isn't the problem, it's that we don't live in London. All in all each spot of spring break was amazing and each had certain distinct characteristics that made for some memorable times. If only I had picked warmer places to visit instead, oh well, maybe next time I'm back in Europe.

Semana Santa Parte Dos - Paris

2008-04-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

So the next day I woke up and dragged my suitcase down the impossibly steep stairs without bringing it down on myself and possibly ending my spring break, and life, all too early, and proceeded outside to hail a taxi for I did not want to miss my bus to Paris and did not know exactly where the station was. 10 euro and 20 minutes later I got my bus ticket I had booked online the month before and sat down and waited. Only two of my friends from the Amsterdam trip were going to accompany me to Paris. One showed up a bit before departure and the other not at all. The other had arrived 10 minutes after the bus left and had to buy another ticket all over again but still made it to Paris a few hours later than us.

On the way to Paris the bus stopped at Brussels, Belgium's capital. We then continued on to France, where my nap during the total 8 hour ride was interrupted by the French border control. A heavyset French gendarme stepped aboard with a partner to do their "intensive" security check which included looking at everyone's passport, well almost everyone's, they didn't even open my friend's passport which of course had nothing to do with her being a young pretty girl. The gendarme then stepped up to me and said something in french which I didn't catch and then looked at my passport with a surprised face and turned to the other guard saying, "ble bla blu amerikann honh oui oui jeauocqx le pas blah blah" as it sounded to me, and I said, "je ne se pas frances" to which they started laughing and handed my passport back. I guess initially they thought I was french. I tried not to hold it against them.

Finally we got off at the bus station in Paris and made our way to the french metro system to get to our hostel. By the way the metro is handycap-unfriendly, very much so. For some reason there are ups and downs of stairs randomly and frequently, which make it fun to carry your heavy luggage with the tiny useless wheels on up and down.

Fortunately the metro stop for our hostel was literally within view of the hostel once we found it. Checking in was our first true attempt at interacting with the French. The Indian looking man behind the desk became flustered when we explained in broken english lapsing into spanish occasionaly how one friend wasn't here yet and that we couldn't pay yet. In retrospect I seriously think he might have been mentally disabled to an extent as I watched him try to figure out a calendar with only 3 different names on it for the bookings and ours was one of them but to no avail until we pointed at our names. He also said we could pay by credit card which was not the case when we went back down to the front desk later and spoke with a different man who said that eez not posseeble and you can go down street to atm ok real easy you put zee card in and take money real easy ok and come back ok? yes? pay now? - is how our conversation went. Anyhow the room was clean at least once we got to it and had a balcony which was a nice surprise plus.

And here is the view from the 5th floor.

First thing we decided to see as we only had 3 days to explore this immense city was the Notre Dame cathedral. We walked down near the metro and approached this t-shirt seller for directions, who coincidentally was an American selling anti-Bush shirts to recoup some money before flying home.

We learned Notre Dame was only about 20 minutes away by foot so we walked along the famous river Seine to get to it, as it apparently is in the center of it on it's own island. Here is the front that we got to see after waiting in a 45 minute line which wasn't bad by Paris standards.

In front was a man performing acts with kerosene.

Here is a shot from the back looking to the front of the inside. It was free to enter surprisingly.

A shot of some of the stained glass work.

After we explored the inside we went back outside and found another line to wait in that let you pay 4.80 euro to ascend the cathedral up to the top for a view of the city. While we waited in line this very french man performed street humor for us by sneaking up on unaware people passing by. I don't think this would fly to well in America as I imagined him trying this in the Bronx or in Detroit or something and most likely promptly being punched out, stabbed, or sued, or all of the above all at once. The French seemed to take it well however.

Once we climbed to the top here was the view.

And here's a quick clip of the panorama to give you a better idea of the experience.

And here is a shot of the back of the cathedral as we left.

As we walked back down the Seine, one of my friends wanted to stop in this park. As we approached the gate I noticed a small group of American looking kids, one of whom was face down in the dirt in his nice polo sweater. So we approached them to see what was going on. They were Catholic highschool sophmores from Scranton, PA, yes where the hit show The Office takes place; on a trip with their school to Paris to enjoy the cultural and educational experience of traveling, and by that they seemed to mean getting completely wasted off cheap wine and whiskey, as demonstrated by their willingness to sing to the girls and the prone figure of their friend taking a nice break to have a dirt sandwich. Don't worry, he's not dead, they picked him up later and walked him over to a trashcan where he promptly started peeing into it while swaying. Remember, the children are our future.

After the singing interlude we returned to the hostel to rest up, for the next day we wanted to see the Eiffel tower and the Louvre. We asked where the Louvre was from some friendly passersby who coincidentally were American anyway and learned it was about 20 minutes by metro. So we took the train and got off at the Louvre's own dedicated stop, which by itself looked like part of the museum with its sculptures and marble flooring. As we climbed the steps up out of the station I realized the stop actually was part of the museum, literally, it was the basement. We bought our tickets at a stand on our way to the main part of the Louvre and unknowingly at the time were saving ourselves another hour wait in line, as once we got into the center where the reception was, the ticket booth line there had a line snaking on and on.

This is a picture of a room housing some royal jewlery of sorts.

There was nothing in the room at all except for at the very back of it where this case was located.

And here is what was inside the case. It was hard to stare at these things and think of them as real. The amount of jewels and their size looked almost fake because I'd never seen so many like that before. That tiara has about 1,100 diamonds by the way.

We spent about 8 hours walking through the Louvre's various wings so here are just some of the highlights as I did take many photos but also saw a lot more than I captured.

Here is Napoleon Bonaparte's bed. It is really that short, like he was. I thought with all that money he would at least have had a far larger bed.

This is a random painting from one of the many halls lined floor to ceiling with them. It made me laugh to look at this painting and think about how technically any art could practically have as well been painted by a monkey and you would not even know necessarily. Such is art.

One of the wings had a large amount of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian artifacts. Here is a mask from the selection.

And of course the Louvre houses those famous pieces we all know about. Here is the one and only Mona Lisa. What you can't see in this picture of the painting is the extensive multiple protection barriers in front of the painting in a 12 foot radius extending outward. I was dissappointed with this as I wanted an up close shot of the painting but this was the best I could get instead. Honestly I wasn't that impressed. This is one of those items of art that is more important historically I believe. It's also a lot smaller than I imagined, maybe only about 2 feet wide by 3 feet tall.

And here is the sister to the Statue of Liberty. This is the first one that was made that inspired the giant version given to America as a gift.

And this is the Venus de Milo, the supposed classic definition of the pinnacle of beauty. It was quite difficult to take in all this visual information I had seen so far because up until this point all of these famous works were just names and pictures in books. To have the real thing in front of you is completely different.

Included in the 8 hours of our time spent at the Louvre was perusing the sprawling gardens that lay at the front of the outside of the Louvre.

There were many sculptures in the garden both new and old. Note the size of the tree next to this giant spider thing to get an idea of its scale. There was also a hedge maze to the right of this photo. To the left continues the rest of the gardens where at the very end was a large gilded gate that opened up to a direct line of sight of the Arc du Triomphe in the distance.

After we left the Louvre we decided to try to make it to the Eiffel tower, and we did shortly before nightfall. It was truly a grand spectacle, but not grand enough to spend 13 euro to ascend to the top. Sorry Paris, I'm a poor college student on exchange without a job.

We were seated outside the tower getting ready to head back when all of a sudden the tower lit up like a giant Christmas tree. The video clip below shows all, including the voices of my friends who had been sampling some of France's finest red wine after the Louvre.

It really was that cool to actually see the Eiffel tower however. It is freakin huge, to put it poetically. It carried this dominating presence, for you could almost always see it from any point in the city where you were, it was always there in the background somewhere. Made for quite some views of the Parisian skyline. The next morning we had to wake up to catch our flight to London to meet up with one of our friends who had parted ways with us after Amsterdam. From there continues parte tres of my spring break.

Semana Santa Parte 1 - Amsterdam

2008-04-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

The first stop for semana santa, which is what they call their spring break, was Amsterdam, Holland. About 7 of us total were meeting up all for the same 4 days there. Two flew from the States, one a boyfriend of one of the girls in our group, and the other a college friend of a guy from our group. We were spread out through Amsterdam in the hostels because we booked things at seperate times. Two of the guys, David and Pete, the ones who know eachother from school in the US, booked the first night before I could talk to them so I had my own place for the first night but stayed with them in a different hostel for the remaining three days. Two of the girls had a place farther down the canal together, and the couple had another place on the other side of the canal down a bit.

My phone couldn't make outgoing calls or send messages, one of the girls dropped her phone into the canal while the other didn't even bring hers, and the girlfriend from the couple ran out of minutes, all of this since the first day...

This is one of said canals that may contain our friend's phone. How beautiful. A side note: this was practically the only sunny day by the way for the rest of the spring break. The temperature at the time was probably about the low 50s, high 40s F from what I recall.

Therefore meeting up was a bit harder than expected and so for the first couple days it was each group on its own. The city was quite small so we ended up bumping into them anyways later on.

These are the stairs leading up to our room in the hostel. Now, normally I wouldn't post such a mundane detail but if you take note of the fact that im standing upright on one stair and pointing the camera at a direct line in front of me you'll realize these stairs incline at a ridiculous rate. It's hard to convey the experience through this photo but basically these are the narrowest and steepest stairs you'll probably run into in your travels. It was a lot of fun lugging a suitcase up.

And these are the luxurious quarters you get to stay in for about $50 american a night in the heart of Amsterdam. The shower in the bathroom was a spigot mounted on the wall and the drain was a hole in the corner. The floor was flat and there was no seperation nor partition between the shower space and the rest of the bathroom, so if you had to go to the bathroom after someone took a shower you best not be wearing pants or mind getting wet.

Here is a view of the street in front of our hostel. We used trams like you see pictured to get around the city, which was quite small anyway. I think we were supposed to pay for it but we kept hopping on the back and no one ever asked us anything. I used the weak dollar in the face of the euro as an anti-guilt remedy for that, that and being a poor college student.

The first day we spent getting our bearings and walking around the city. The people are quite friendly, and almost over-polite to an extent. Almost everyone we spoke to knew english perfectly as well. I read prior to coming here about the many canals of Amsterdam but had not expected there to be quite so many. This city reminded me of a northern european version of Venice to an extent.

On the second day we decided to go check out the Anne Frank house, as it was one of the big tourist things to do in the city. Pictured here is the bookcase which hid the entrance to the secret portion of the house where Anne Frank hid from the Nazis during her time there. To enter the room you step through a doorway not pictured.

This is where you come out to after going behind the bookcase. All over the walls and in various spots were sentences in English and Dutch taken from Anne's diary. The one over this doorway mentions her hearing over the radio about the Jews being gassed in the camps and how terrible she felt.

This is the view out the windows of the room Anne hid in. I took this picture to try to imagine what she saw every day as she hid and looked out this window, imagining how it felt to watch Nazi patrols march down the cobbled streets in search of more Jews to arrest. It was truly a sobering experience. Definately not the typical touristical jaunt through such a famous city. Not quite Disney.

After such a light hearted experience (sic) we decided we needed a few pints of fresh authentic dutch Heineken to un-sober ourselves after having experienced such a sobering sight, and walked to a nearby cafe.

The next day we decided to check out some of Van Gogh's and Rembrandt's works at this museum. They didn't allow pictures inside so this is as much as you'll see of this place right now. The interesting thing was this style of architecture was consistent throughout the city with the other important civil structures as well. The train station we emerged from on the first day was nearly as grand as this museum in its outer appearance.

Here is snapshot of the 'dam on our last night there. There are a lot of other things I could have taken photos of but did not want my camera with me at the time. We did take a stroll through the red light district and it was quite funny actually. You walk down streets and alleys lit up in red neon as girls in lingerie knock on the windows they stand behind as you pass. The whole experience of this city was quite surreal. The apparent unrestricted allowance of such hedonism would suggest this city would fall into utter chaos and ruin after a month but instead what you get is quite the social experiment in action that still continues on without a hitch. Not once did I feel threatened or unsafe, except for being paranoid about my camera, and I did not see anyone seemingly out of line. Everyone generally kept to themselves. Granted if you wanted trouble all you had to do was look for it and it wouldn't be far but at the same time trouble wasn' going to come find you, unlike other places I've seen.

The next morning I had to wake myself up to catch the bus to Paris, as my friend David was going to Ireland from Amsterdam by plane later in the evening and his friend had already left for his plane back to the States as I slept.

Luarca - Santiago de Compostela - Cudillera

2008-03-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

This little town named Luarca was a seaside town we stopped off in on the way to Santiago de Compostela.

Here is a few of another small pueblo I saw down below on the way to Luarca.

And here is part of the little town of Luarca. It's built into the edges of the mountain that surrounds it and is inhabited mostly by fishermen.

After a about 40 minutes we hopped back on the bus and continued on our way to Santiago de Compostela.

This is the view from a bridge really high up. The land mass protruding on the left side is actually a town on a small island connected by a little bridge to another part of the mainland which you can't see from here.

Once we finally arrived in Santiago de Compostela and dropped our stuff off at the hotel we went walking. Here is a view of the street our hotel was on. Cars would fly by occasionally doing about 45 mph on the cobble stone surface wide enough for one but meant for two.

So apparently the big attraction to this town is the cathedral. We took an organized tour of the inside later on in the day.

Here is a view of once you first enter through the large front doors.

Here is a snapshot I took of some of the didactic carvings from the inner part of an arch I walked under as I looked up. What you see are demons consuming the damned. When this church was constructed most people were illiterate so the doorways and stained glass windows throughout the church were decorated with various depictions of things the church wanted you to be aware of at that time.

Here is another depiction of some part of the bible. It's just one of several panels on this special door at the back section of the church that is only opened twice a year on two specific days during a holy period.

These are the organs. Note the horizontal angle at which the pipes protrude from. I've never seen a church or cathedral with an organ in this style before.

Here is the backside of the main altar. On the other side is where the priest performs the services. This structure is about 25 feet tall by the way, and yes that's all gold, not just gold leaf either. Where was that money in the collection basket going to all those times again? God right? Anyhow I won't criticize the old catholic church system...

We were in the church touring it long enough for a mass to begin actually. Here is a video clip of the brothers starting up the incense. Note the pulleys and 3 or so brothers it takes to haul the container up into the air.

Here in this clip you can better get an idea of how vigorous the brothers pulled on the lines to get the incense container swinging throughout the massive cathedral.

After the ceremony ended we exited out the back using this doorway.

I was staring at the carvings above the doorway and happened to notice this. Can someone tell me how a flying monkey from the Wizard of Oz managed to get carved into a centuries old church?

Just outside of the church was an open air market. In this part you may note the green basket in front of the woman contains rabbits. No they aren't dead, and no they're not to take home to the kids as pets either, they're just farm fresh... As I walked away I turned around one last time and saw an elderly woman approach the farmer and watched as the farmer grabbed a rabbit by the ears from up out of the basket and held it up showing the quality and size to the prospective hungry housewife.

There wasn't too much more to see in Santiago de Compostela aside from the cathedral. The following day we left. On our way back we stopped off in another seaside pueblo named Cudillero. Note the V-shape of the house staggered down the cliff sides.

The houses literally were built along the incline all up and around, forming almost an ampitheater like shape around you. This was an extremely tiny town, what you see from this shot is basically all you get.

Some of us decided to climb through the alleys between houses and work our way up the incline. Here is a shot part way up right before sunset.

Here is another shot now higher up than before. This is of the whole town.

And lastly, before we left our hilltop perch, I turned around and snapped this photo of the lighthouse guarding there tiny harbor. This shot was taken in complete dark with no flash. I had to set the camera down on a safe spot where the lighthouse was in view, set the shot timer to wait 2 seconds so me pushing the capture button wouldn't shake the camera, and have the lens set to stay open for a full 15 seconds gathering light and pixel data until it closed the lense and rendered and wrote the picture to memory. Try to click on it for an expanded size to get a better view of the detail of the lighthouse.

We then descended, made our way to the bus, and rode it home to Oviedo. Now I must go shower before I walk to the bus station to get to the airport for my flight for Amsterdam. Next update will be the 28th!

Weekend in Madrid - Parte 2

2008-03-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

So as we were walking past the royal palace we noticed a stage nearby had been setup and some music had started. Here is a vid clip showing the beginning.

Later on we walked down to this park that had an ancient Egyptian temple in it.

Apparently this temple was transported from Egypt to Madrid and reconstructed on this spot. After leaving this park we decided to hop the metro to the Zoo, for we had heard Madrid had quite a large one. Those pictures I took using a friend's camera because my batteries died after snapping these photos you see above. Therefore I'll have to post them at another point whenever I can get those pictures from that other memory card. That probably won't be for a while because I am going on spring break on Thursday.

Several friends and I are taking a 9 am flight to Amsterdam first and staying there for 4 nights. After that some of us are seperating and the rest, including myself, are taking a bus to Paris at 9 am the fifth day. Then we are staying in Paris for 3 nights. On the 4th day then some of us are taking an 8 am flight to London, where we meet up with some others from the program with whom we've rented an apartment for a week with. The 2nd to last day in London we are going to a concert of some of the members of Wu-Tang Clan and few days after finally returning home to Oviedo. Of course I'll be taking lots of photos but I won't be able to do any updates between March 13-29th.

Therefore tomorrow I'll post a bunch of photos I took from the latest excursion I went on with the UMASS group. It was a weekend trip to Santiago de Compostela, located to the west of us in the province of Galicia.

Weekend in Madrid - Parte 1

2008-03-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

About a week ago I decided to accompany some friends I made from the Iowa group to Madrid for the weekend. Round trip by plane was cheap, about $50 american, and the hostel they had picked supposedly had a bathroom inside each room! How luxurious.

Even better, I had not realized the room came with a balcony as well. The view was sort of interesting, but only one at a time please, I don't know if you can tell from the picture but the balcony was only big enough to comfortably fit one person. What you might be able to tell from the view's height is the fact that we had to ascend and descend about 5 very long flights of stairs to go anywhere.

We decided to walk around after finding our hostel and get familiar with our surroundings. If you are familiar with the famous Prado art museum it's to the left of the rotary that encloses this arch, which I later learned was apparently a present from Italy.

This building was some sort of government building, can't recall what its function was but I thought the architecture was pretty interesting.

Later in the day we made our way to the royal palace. We only walked around the outside, we couldn't go in.

Next to the palace a little further down, a street performance of quite a large scale began as we walked up to it. I'll post those pictures and the rest of Madrid tomorrow.

2 for 1 - Day Trip to Gijon and another one another day to Luanco

2008-02-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

So one weekend I decided to visit two beach towns, the first of which was Gijon, a seaside city 40 minutes north of Oviedo by train.

We thought we could lay out on the beach and have a relaxing afternoon but the sand was actually wet and cold. Also it was quite windy and not that warm, probably about in the mid 50s lows 60s.

So we decided to walk a little farther down to the right of the beach where we saw people laying down, hoping it was at least warmer there.

It was warmer, and dryer, so we rested a little. After a bit we were bored and decided to explore the beachfront businesses. After a but of walking we were tired and wanted to sit down and have a drink to relax so we stopped in this Indian bar to end the day.

The next day I felt adventurous and walked to the bus station myself and got a schedule for the little pueblos nearby. I asked my host mom Helen where the best photo opportunities were of the various little villages around and she told me either Luanco or Candas, but that Candas was the best option. So I hopped the bus for Candas and Luanco because they were close to eachother and went along for the 40 minute ride.

Getting close to the destination I kept my eyes open for the bus station in Candas. The bus continued into the town and stopped periodically letting locals off at random corners. I kept waiting for the bus station. Then we left the town and got on another highway and I realized there was no station in Candas and now we were headed to Luanco. Oh well, I guess photo op in Luanco it is. So, without an idea of what to see or where to go in Luanco I got off at the bus station, that actually did exist there.

This was the first thing I saw that was interesting. The church was situated right next to the water.

This is the view if you look to the right of the church from the previous photo.

If you continue to turn right from the previous photo this is the view of some houses that once were owned by fishermen at some point probably but now with the way waterfront property goes I'm sure no fishermen live there now.

I then turned around and decided to walk down this side street. As I walked a little old lady approached me and started talking quickly in heavily accented spanish about something to do with transportation and young people today and I couldn't really understand so I apologized and said I was foreign and she laughed and said something else I couldn't understand and walked off.

A little ways down the street was this bell tower. It's not a church, nor part of one, just a tower, with a clock, and some bells. It rang shortly after I started to walk away from it but not long enough for me to catch a video as I tried to capture one.

Here are some of the fishermen that probably don't live in those nice waterfront houses you saw earlier. Fishing is apparently this town's biggest income however as tourism is not really their thing here. This town was described to me by my house mother Helen as more of a working town.

I tried to get somewhere in time to take some photos of sunset but not knowing the town and being on foot kept me from achieving that. So here is a photo of a random street in the dusk. Most of the town's buildings were in this style.

I soon after this walked over to the bus station, which I found by accident on my way back. This town is really, really small. I didn't even know where I was walking the whole time and I still found my way back without even trying. Next post is going to be Madrid, which I visited the following weekend with some friends from a program from Iowa that study here.

Barcelona - el tercer parte

2008-02-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

To finish up the Barcelona experience here are the photos of the Gaudi park that I took on my last day there.

This is a quick video clip of a random performer in the park, he was all by himself and there was no one else even near him except for me, which I think is kinda weird that he was playing anyway. Not that coming across a man dressed like the 1600s isn't weird either but hey. Also, sorry, the clip is sideways so you have to turn your head to see.

This is a mosaic fountain that you see when you first enter the park and walk up the steps leading to a stucture composed of large columns.

This is a side view of that structure. All of this was designed by Gaudi whose influence mainly came from natural forms found in plant and animal life as examples.

This is inside the structure looking up at the ceiling. The whole ceiling is coated in mosaic.

This is another house designed by Gaudi that I came across as I walked beyond the columned structure a bit. It might betough to see in the reduced size format of this picture but the orange trees out front were actually bearing fruit.

After continuing the ascending trail that wound around in a very non-linear manner we came out into this clearing. To the right is a view of the city below that lets you realize just how high up you are at this point.

And here is that view. Directly in front you can also see two other structures that were of course, also designed by Gaudi.

On my way back from the park going to my hostel I passed by these two street performers and decided to watch for a little because the music was actually fascinating and at the same time completley unexpected for I did not think that there would be performers playing music like this in the streets. By the way I took the video in the taller aspect ratio by turning my camera because I thought it'd look better but then I didn't realize that I couldn't change the rotation until later so unfortunately you have to tilt your head to the left to watch this clip.

Barcelona - Parte Dos

2008-02-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

After settling and taking a much needed nap we got back up and decided to walk around and explore the city around our hostel.

The beach we found was not very far at all and so we headed down to check it out. This is one part of it.

After relaxing on the beach bit, because it was actually quite warm, low 70s F approximately, we were there long enough to see the sun start to set. Below is another photo of the other end of the beach right before then.

Walking back on the boardwalk we decided to get lunch at an outdoor cafe that was actually an Irish pub as well.

After leaving the pub and heading back into the direction of the heart of the city we heard what sounded like Bob Marley playing in the distance and came upon these street performers.

Getting near the center of the commercial district I recognized a seemingly familiar logo, that is until I got close enough to read that it actually said Dunkin Coffee, not Dunkin Donuts. I wonder if Dunkin Donuts is aware of this, and if it's their spanish branch, why the name change?

Once we were in the older district near our hostel we came out into a small plaza where we found this little outdoor market.

The market was directly in front of this church and I didn't even notice till I looked up randomly and was surprised I hadn't immediately noticed it, I found it kind of funny that something that large could surprise me like that.

After walking a bit further towards our hostel I heard the sounds of instruments playing in the distance, and as we came upon yet another plaza this is what I saw.

After that we arrived back at our hostel and went to bed. The next morning we went and got breakfast at a little crepe restaraunt that only serves crepes.

After breakfast we met up with the others from our group who were still in the city and proceeded to walk to the famous Gaudi park where everything in it was designed by the famous architect. On the way there we walked through an open air market sheltered under a giant metal roof. In it we found all the local food and ingredients one could purchase to cook authentic Spanish food. Also note the spelling of some of the words here and there on the stands, it looks almost like Spanish but it's not quite, it's actually a dialect called Catalan which actually is it's own language more than a dialect. It seems to be French mixed with Spanish. And yes, in the beginning of the video that is rabbit you see in the butcher's.

Here is the entrance to the Gaudi Park.

There are a lot more pictures I took at the park however so I'll upload the rest tomorrow in part 3 of my trip to barcelona.

A Spontaneous Weekend in Barcelona - Parte Uno

2008-02-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

So, a couple weekends ago everyone in the various groups of American students was planning a trip to one local or another. Some people were going to Barcelona, some to Lison Portugal, and others to not as distant locations such as Gijon or Aviles. Myself and some friends included were deciding upon either Portugal or Barcelona. Portugal would be interesting but the travel time by train was about 20 hours due to the fact that for some reason the route there backtracks almost to France first. So we decided on Barcelona. One friend and I decided to get our plane tickets online one night and as we went to buy the tickets the price jumped within that minute from 80 euro to 122, this is a large difference and I was only going to fly somewhere because 80 was relatively cheap for a last minute booking.

Thinking that we would be going no where this weekend after all, my friend and I decided to check out the train station to see if anywhere cheap and interesting was available. Upon reaching the train station we learned that within the next hour a train to Barcelona was available for about 35 euro each way, so we decided then and there to go for it and bought our tickets and ran home and packed within the hour of time we had to make it to the train. Upon returning to the station we found the rest of all the others who had been mentioning going to Barcelona over the past week standing there waiting for the same train haha. The ride took about 11 hours and went overnight. We had to sit in little cabins of 8 people at a time, 4 by 4 facing eachother, seated mixed with strangers. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't exactly comfy to say the least.

So finally we reached Barcelona! Here it is at 9:30ish in the morning as we wandered from the train station, map in hand, and no plan for where to stay or what to see.

This is the harbor we walked to, about 30 min from the train station.

Near the harbor is a rotary where in the center is a large statue of Christopher Columbus pointing seaward, dedicated to the fact he left from this city on that fateful day back in the late 15th century.

Here's a close up at the top. It's a little weird that in Spanish, Christopher Columbus' name is actually Cristóbal Colón. Which is why it looks like it says Colon in the red portion below the column cap.

And here's a close up of the bottom.

And this is a large cat sculpture, obviously. I do not know who created it nor what it stands for but I thought it rather funny to just have a large cat randomly in a park I was passing though.

This is the entrance to the hostel we got. The first one on the beach was full of course so we had to go look in the city itself to find another. This one had room and we were both exhausted so that's how this choice was made.

Here is the main entry to the hostel, it had Aborigonee digiredoo music playing when we entered, all in all a bit different than we expected.

This is the hallway where the bathroom was, yep, the bathroom, as in singular. The whole floor shares it.

And here is a shot of the room itself. What you see are 4 bunk bed style partitions on each side, totalling in 6 people sleeping in a room with you that you do not know. For not having reservations I guess this is what you get.

And lastly for now, this is a shot of my luxurious private quarters, and private as in I had a curtain to pull across the front part so no one could watch me sleep. For about $15 american a night I couldn't complain however.

Tomorrow I will post more pics and some video clips of what I saw as I went through the city.

Walkin to the big Jesus on the mountain

2008-01-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

So yesterday some friends and I decided to hike to that big Jesus statue located on that distant mountain top I can see from my window. We got directions on where to go from whence the map we have ends, because the route is on the part outside of the range of the map of the city. I later learned it was about 5 km outside the city, which would explain why going up took about 2 and a half hours and also why it wasn't even on the map. Here it is in this picture I marked, it's barely visible from here but they keep it lit up at night so you can see it there.

So the hike started around 3:30 PM, which is when we were finally outside the urban part of the city and into the beginning of the countryside, which took about 30 min just to get to aside from the 2 hr 30 min it took from there on to get to Jesus. If you turned to the left from the angle here you would be heading up the road on the beginning of our route. To the right would be the city and behind, obviously where we came from.

In this video, I was in the middle of just trying to film a panoramic view of our current location when an elderly man walking a dog passed by and stopped a bit away from us and asked us, in spanish of course, if we were walking up the mountain, so when I replied we were he told us the better shortcut to take because it had "less curves" as he said more or less.

So this is a view of the city about 30 min into the hike into the countryside, it's quite a bit farther away now as you can see.

Around the corner a few minutes later we came accross this building, named the Santa Maria del Naranco Hall.

This building dates from the 9th century, that's right, it's about 1,100 years old.

This is about an hour into the hike now and you can see the city off to the right. The speed limit, or rather speed suggestion as I'd put it based on the way they drive by, is 40 kmh. Note the lack of guardrails. Nice.

About an hour and a half later we're still walkin along this windy road, there's a guardrail here because for some reason it's safe to do up to 60 kmh in this part. That of course didn't matter for us pedestrians aside from making dodging the passing cars a little more interesting.

Here is how far away the city looks now at about an hour and 45 min into the walk.

Shortly after we found a path that at least took us off the road fortunately. Note the steep grade at which the path ascends as it curves to the left in this picture because that will help put in perspective the angle of the slope in the next picture of the path we walked.

Yes, that's going up and away at that steep looking angle, it's not my camera angle, i took it looking straight ahead, not upwards. It wasn't that bad but I don't think I'd want to run laps on it or anything.

At the top of this incline here is the view of the city down below that we walked from.

Finally after walking another 15 minutes or so we came to the final path to the giant Jesus.

And here he is. Not sure how old the sculpture is or the exact size but I'd estimate it's over 50 feet tall.

These are the mountains in the distance that lay behind the city and beyond.

This is a 360 pan shot I took of the view from up top here next to the monument. It was pretty hard to take it all in and accept it as real and not just a pretty photo background or special effect. The view was definately worth the journey to get to it.

And this is a zoomed in shot of the city from the top.

And lastly, for all the pictures I haven't posted that I did take is at least this one that I think is very worth posting, it is the sun as it's setting and I caught it at a good moment. I took about 90 photos of our hike so this is merely a portion of the narrative but at the least sufficient to express the highlights of what we saw. It was worth the sore muscles in the morning the next day.

The areas I've frequented the most so far...

2008-01-15T15:10:00.000-08:00

So I finally managed to get a chance to take one outdoor photo of the university, here is the front of the campus as you first enter it. The building where my classes actually take place is not shown here but I'll get a picture of it later. It's an older building that was originally used as a garrison for the troops of the Spanish army during World War II.

I did manage to take a picture of the lobby of the building where I have classes even though I don't have an outside shot yet. This is what you see once you enter.

This is the street that is essentially one of the bar districts, about every door you see on either side leads into a different bar.

This one bar named La Caja Negra, or The Black Box, is one that I've been frequenting because of their music choice and it's proximity to where I live. Also now if I go in on certain days of the week I get free drinks here and there because I became acquainted with the bartender by trading mp3s. One of the times I was first visiting this bar I noticed they were playing the music through a computer hooked up to the bar's huge stereo, so I told the bartender how I brought my external hard drive with me to Spain with my 130 GB of music files and that I could let him browse it.

So the next week after that, which was a few days ago, I returned with my hard drive and hooked it up to the bar's computer. While doing this I asked if I could install a DJing program on the computer and the bartender said that was fine, so I commenced to mix music and play around with the program on their computer while having it play through the bar's stereo while there were other patrons there. It was a lot of fun because I got to pick the music I wanted to hear at the bar because I was the one in control of the system for once, and while I DJed for the bar for a bit the bartender would just give me and my friend beers and didn't let us pay for any of them which of course was great as well.

So, so far it's only been a week and I'm starting to get to know the locals finally. I'm also not getting lost on my way to my usual places now, as long as I take the same route. I don't have classes tomorrow because of my schedule so maybe I'll get a chance during the day to take some pictures of the area around where I live in the city.

So I've Heard it Rains A Lot in Oviedo

2008-01-11T06:35:00.000-08:00

Was supposed to have a tour of Oviedo today with the rest of the UMASS group but when I woke up to get ready I noticed it was raining hard and quite windy. I called one of the program directors and asked if we were still meeting and she said she already sent an e-mail out saying that it was canceled. This is funny to me because not only did I not receive an e-mail, but I also thought it funny because many of the other students don't have access to the internet so even if one was sent it would be useless. So, I texted the rest of the group that has a spanish cell phone number here and let them know it was canceled. Oh well, whatever. Least I got to sleep more. Now I'm about to go to class and was originally planning on taking pictures of the university but now that it's raining I think not today, so here instead is a video I just took of the view out my window right now at 3:40 PM Oviedo time.

La Sidreria

2008-01-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

So last night I went out to the sidreria, it wasn't so simple however. I figured I could remember the name of the place and that it didn't matter if I got lost because I had my map and knew the general location of it on the map at least. Wrong. Apparently going out knowing just the name of the restaraunt and not having a map would have gotten me farther. I wandered in loops for about an hour and thought I was going to lose it before I gave up trying to find it myself and called my apartment and asked Helen to get the name for me from the sheet I left behind. After that I found it and fortunately everyone was still there and in true Spanish style hadn't actually started on time at all and were in the middle of dinner instead of finished when I arrived an hour late.

This is where we ate in the back private room of the sidreria with the rest of the other UMASS kids and some members of their host families.

This is how you are supposed to pour the sidra, or cider. The waiter, el camerero, always has to pour it out like this according to their custom. He then serves you the glass which only has a little sidra in it, they don't fill the glass. Then you take the glass and have to drink it all in one movement and not leave any behind. Then he takes the glass from you and you resume eating and drink the water or wine that you have in front of you.

This is some of the food, they serve multiple courses of small portions that they put out on the table and you all share it with the people around you. You don't ask for anything they just bring it out and you try it. There was a wide variety of food types that basically cover all kinds of meat, seafood, and vegetables.

After we ate, which was a long, social process, all of us students along with the program directors left as a group and went to a nearby bar. The music was a mix of bad american pop and other songs from around here that people dance to that we don't even know. It was funny watching Spanish guys dancing enthusiastically to "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" and not knowing that if this was the U.S. they wouldn't be thinking they looked so cool after someone said something. It was still a fun time and we ended up leaving around 4ish because us Americans were tired. All the other locals were still going at it without a sign of stopping anytime soon. While walking home late at night you get to see the street cleaners hosing the streets down and sweeping. I can see why Oviedo won a prize for cleanest city.

Classes started yesterday but I haven't had all of them so far yet. I'll try to post some pictures of the campus, etc tomorrow. For now, here is a video clip I took of the street right in front of my apartment ground level entrance.

Settling in

2008-01-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

So here's my first blog entry from Spain. It's been 3 days now since I've been here in the city of Oviedo. So first a little info about this place. Oviedo is a small city located in the province of Asturias, almost at the northwesternmost point of Spain, with one province in between here and Portugal. It's about 45 minutes south of Spain's northern coast. The weather here is like paradise after coming from snowy Amherst. When it's "cold" here it's about mid 50's F at night. Ha, in Amherst it was around 19 F when I left, and that's during the day.

Here are some mountains I saw while on the plane ride from Madrid to Oviedo.

As the one hour plane ride from Madrid to Oviedo drew near the end and we lowered altitude, I could see thesurrounding countryside outside the city.

The mountains are very close to us here, when I look out my 8th floor window of the apartment I'm staying in, I see green peaks not too far in the distance with a large, lit up statue of Jesus, arms outstretched, and as a matter of fact I walked pretty close the other day to the edge of the city, and the mountains appeared to be quite close.

The part of the city I live in is in the commercial center of the town where the most activity is. When I open the door to the elevator on my floor, that's right, I said open the door, because the elevators here have doors like a house that you pull open to enter, I push the 0 button to go to floor 0 because that's the first floor of a building for them here. -1 is the basement haha. I learned the hard way today that negative numbers around here next to floor numbers always mean an underground floor when I walked into a portugese for spanish natives class on the wrong floor but the right room number at the university today and had to ask the teacher where to go as the students laughed at my confusion, I thought it was pretty funny because the class got a kick out of watching me talk back and forth with their teacher.

Anyhow, so here are some pictures of the room I'm staying in.

Here is the view at night looking downward from my window.

Here is the rest of the apartment, it winds around a corner in an L shape. This is the entrance, note the large, centered doorknob haha.

And this is what you see once you open the door and enter.

Upon walking down the hallway the first room after the bathroom is the kitchen, on the right. We eat dinner at this table together around 9 PM every night. "We" includes myself, my host Helen, and sometimes Victor who is another student who stays here who is from this city and rents another room in the apartment from Helen. I have not eaten yet with Helen's son, a 42 year old lawyer, but he too has his own room here that he occasionally stays in.

This is the living room where Helen watches her shows at night and also converts the couch into a bed and sleeps here.

I was surprised to learn they have "high speed" internet here hooked up to a wireless router. This is because a student from Japan who stayed here last semester installed the router, figures... haha. I was surprised about the internet because other students from my program are in houses or apartments that don't even have phones let alone internet.

Well this is all I feel like posting for now as I do have much more to write but must go attend a dinner/meeting at a Sidreria, a hard cider oriented bar/restaraunt that caters to the customs of this region which have celtic roots. The cider here is a big deal for the locals and is more popular than beer and wine. Apparently there are a whole set of special rules and actions to follow when partaking in this cultural event of going to to a Sidreria so I guess I'm going to go see them. I'll take some pictures tonight and post them later. Tomorrow I want to try to get some photos of the university, as I've been so busy I've not had the time to take any.