Tyler T in Oviedo!

Spring Break in Paris Day #1:

After a 17 hour bus ride, which wasn’t all that bad except for the random stops at 1, 3, and 6 am, we finally arrived in Paris with my al Penny. The first thing we had to do is find our friend Kelsey and her sister Lydia. E checked in and our concierge said that if we knew how to say $1.40 in French he would only make us pay $100; sadly we all failed. We had no time to spare so we ran out the door to explore Paris. We first went to the famous Arc de Triumph. We took pictures and didn’t go u the tower because the line was too long. We decided to take a one hour cruise down the river to see all of Paris, well the most popular part. It was beautiful and the sun was shining bright. After that was the highlight of my day, the Eiffel Tower.

We had to stand in line for about an hour and a half on the first floor and ten about another half hour on the second floor, but it was worth every minute, When we went up the sun was setting, was so pretty, and then e stayed up there until it got dark so we could see the city lit up at night; it was amazing! When we ran down the 704 steps my college foreign exchange friend who lives in Paris was waiting for me. I hadn’t seen him n a year and a half so I was very excited to see him. He took us to this Italian restaurant where I got to introduce him to my friends and chat about life. After dinner we had to run to the metro to get home because it stopped running at 1 am; luckily e made it, and were off to bed.

Spring Break in Paris Paris Day #2:

We woke up really early to start off the day. We got a free buffet breakfast, and the man working even said that I reminded him of a French princess named Princess Erica, and he called me that for the rest of my stay at the hotel. We walked about an hour to the famous Louvre Museum. It took us about an hour to walk there in the hot sun, but we made it. It was the longest line I’ve ever seen so we decided to come back early another day. We decided to go to the Orsay Museum instead with a lot of paintings from Claude Monet. Afterwards, we went to the Cathedral o Notre Dame, the same one from the movie Hunchback of Notre Dame.

At this time our feet were hurting from walking so much so we stopped for some gelato. Then we got souvenirs and I bought a new Paris purse. Then some people shopped and I bought a cute shirt for 5 euros. Later we met my friend Xavier and want to the famous Mont Martre to see the night life. We had to climb up a billion stairs and then e saw tons of people and a huge building. It was awesome to see, and we even saw the moon and the Eiffel Tower all lit up. We ate dinner, where we all got the same thing and headed back to our hotel.

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #1:

I woke up early this morning to walk to school. There we boarded the bus for a trip to Salamanca. In 2008, after I graduated from high school, all the students in my advanced Spanish class went to Spain for a month. We went to Salamanca, then when we arrived, I began to remember everything we did. I remembered especially seeing the University of Salamanca, La casa de las conchas.. Also the skull with the frog and its history. After our visit, we took the bus to Cáceres. I was very tired after traveling!

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #2:

Woke up in Caceres to tour the city. We weren’t there long because e had 2 other cities to get to that day. We went to Merida next and I really liked it there. There was a theater for singing, in which Raeanne and Kelsey gave us a show, and even a ring here the gladiators use to fight. After the tour in the hot sun, we finally arrived to Sevilla. My high school foreign exchange friend, Tina, met up with me there and convinced me to go out and I invited the others in my group. I had so much fun experiencing Sevilla’s nightlife.

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #3:

Woke up in the beautiful city of Sevilla. My favorite city in Spain, by far. It was the hottest it’s been in Spain for me so far. We all got to wear our summery clothes for the first time. We got a tour of the Palacio Alcalzar with its beautiful courtyards, its mudejar style of art, we learned the history of castilla y leon, and more. We also got to visit the huge cathedral and see a cool mausoleum. The rest of the day as free time and my good friend Tina gave me a tour of the city. It was a lot of fun!

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #4:

Our next stop was Cordoba. The coolest part about the city was the mezquito. The part that I found interesting was that the when the Christians came and wanted to make the mezquito Christian, they just added to it instead of completely redoing it. There was a lot of Borroco arte that was added as well as many arches and pillars. The Arab and Christian cultures were mixed which was amazing to see. After this we were headed to Granada. A lot of people who I talked to said that Granada was their favorite city so I was very excited to see it.

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #5:

We toured la Alhambra which was my favorite tour. The Muslim styles were very interesting to see. Our tour guide was very friendly, funny, and easy to understand. The garden that was inside the house and the fountain were very important. They mentioned how important water was, Carmen means villa which came from Karm meaning grape vines, and aben means the son of. The history was all very interesting. Our group walked completely down a mountain and then walked up another one so we could see the view from the opposite site. Afterwards we did some shopping in the local street markets.

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #6:

The next day was a day that mostly consisted of driving. Before we left we saw Garcia Lorca’s house. From Granada to Toledo was about five hours. That is a long time in a bus, but at least my group and I have become experts and taking food from our breakfast and eating it later. When we finally got to Toledo, it was very old looking with beautiful architecture. Because our hotel happened to be very far from the city and it was about to rain, me and my roommate decided to stay it. We both skyped our families and even got to dance to Shakira.

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #7:

I had probably the best free breakfast in the hotel that I’ve ever had. There were so many options and I absolutely loved it. The weather was a little colder and you could really tell that we had moved up toward north spain. On our tour I got distracted a lot because Max kept drawing the tour guide, and it looked just like him! I liked the aspects of the jewish culture that affected many buildings in Toledo. We were finally on our way to Madrid after this. I was really looking forward to it.

Cultural Trip to the South of Spain day #8:

I had a rough start to the day because my friend who lives in Madrid, Pablo, took me and my friends out the night before. I feel like everyone was really tired this morning, and it was raining, but luckily we were off to the very famous Prado museum. There were so many paintings there that we didn’t even get to look at half of them in the two hours that we were there. I enjoyed Greco’s style of paintings the most but Velázquez and Goya’s were really cool too. We spent the rest of the day souvenir shopping then off to Avila.