Segovia

This past weekend, I went on a trip to Segovia with my program. It's about 2 hours from Salamanca, so we took a bus there for a day trip. I really enjoyed this trip, more so than I did in Toledo and Madrid.
We arrived late morning, and began the tour of the city with some free time to walk around, which we mostly spent looking at the acueduct, which Segovia is famous for. It was built by the Romans to bring water from the mountains around Segovia to the castle, which is on a hill across the valley from the mountains. Here are some pictures:

Next we began our guided tour through Segovia. I enjoyed all of the narrow, twisty streets and the beautiful buildings. Segovia is also known for the decorations and carvings that are on the outsides of the buildings. Since the stone that is available around the city is not very high quality and doesn't look very nice on it's own, many of the buildings have cool patterns carved into the stone, which is called esgrafiados de Segovia. Here are some pictures of this, as well as some other random city shots:

Then we went to the cathedral, which was gorgeous of course, just like all of the cathedrals here. After seeing so many cathedrals it's not quite as exciting, but it's still so beautiful. I tried to take pictures inside, but a security guard told us we couldn't, although there was no sign so we didn't know beforehand.

Our last stop for the day was the castle in Segovia. This was my favorite part of the day. We toured the castle and then we also went up to the top of the tower. We had to go up the longest, narrowest spiral staircase I'd ever seen (I actually got a tiny bit claustrophobic) but it was well worth it when we got to the top. I wish I could post all of the pictures I took, but it would be a lot, so I'll just give you the highlights of the castle pictures.

View from the top of the tower

The staircase we came up

I guess that's it for my trip to Segovia. This weekend I'm going to Germany!! I'm sure I'll have tons of pictures from that and lots to write about. I'm so excited!

Sevilla

Last weekend I went to visit Danielle in Sevilla, and I had a blast! It was one of the best weekends I've had in Spain. We didn't do a whole lot of the touristy stuff that there is to do there, we just walked around the city a bunch, went out to eat a few times, and spent some time just hanging out together. I didn't take very many pictures, but here are some of them in any case.

 Some shots of my hostel. It was so nice!

 Food we ate the second day. It was so good, and it was the first time I'd had real Spanish food at a restaurant. 

 The Plaza de Espana. Unfortunately they were doing a little bit of construction so the middle was closed off. 

 There were areas decorated with tile for many cities in Spain (although Sevilla wasn't one of them for some reason), so I took a picture of the Salamanca one. 

Festival of Nations, where we got Greek food the last day. 

I had an awesome weekend in Sevilla, and I loved the weather. It's gotten pretty cold in Salamanca by now (today it was in the 50s) so I really enjoyed not having to wear a sweater all the time when here it's gotten to the point where I have to wear a coat occasionally. 

Some other points of interest about my semester so far....first of all, I may have mentioned this already, but I decided to take a Latin dance class at a gym not too far from my house, and two girls from the program are taking it with me. We've had 3 classes so far, and I'm really enjoying it. The teacher is really nice and energetic, and it's really fun to learn dances that I'm not familiar with. I've done some latin and ballroom dancing in the past, but not enough to say I actually know the dances, so this is a great way to learn.

Another fun fact, the day before I went to Sevilla, Salamanca hosted the Spanish national football (soccer) team in a game against Lithuania. I'm pretty sure it was a qualifying game for something that's happening in a few years, i'm not sure what. And of course Spain won! I didn't get to actually go to the game, but there was a huge screen set up in the Plaza Mayor, so a bunch of us went to watch it. We also got to see the World Cup trophy, which I unfortunately don't have a picture of because it's on someone else's camera. But when I get it I'll post it.

Toledo and Madrid

This weekend my group went to Toledo and Madrid on a trip our program organized. We left on Saturday, spent the day in Toledo, then drove to Madrid, spent the next day there and came back to Salamanca. It was a whirlwind trip and we saw a lot of churches and museums. I was exhausted the entire time but it was pretty cool to travel around and see new things. I took tons of pictures during the trip but unfortunately I will only be able to show you a few of them because I don't want this post to get too long and it also takes awhile to upload pictures for the blog.

So we left Salamanca at 7am. I was not too happy about waking up at 5:30, but it meant we were in Toledo by about 10am. Here are some pictures of our first glimpse of the city. Soooo beautiful.

Once we were in the city itself, we toured a few churches and saw some art. Then we had free time for lunch and shopping. Then after that, we toured the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen, but we weren't allowed to take ANY pictures inside!! I was so disappointed! I feel like I'm already starting to forget how absolutely incredible it was, and I really wish I had pictures to remind me. Here are some pictures of the outside though.

After that, we got back on the bus, drove to Madrid and went to our hotel, and then had the evening to do what we wanted. One of the girls in my group has a friend in Madrid, so a bunch of us hung out with him and some of his friends. They were all really nice and it was great because I got to practice Spanish with them, even though some of them wanted to practice English too. The only problem was I stayed up way later than I meant to and only got about 4 hours of sleep before we had to start our day in Madrid. We went to the Prado Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum in the morning, and then after lunch we took a walking tour of various sites. I didn't enjoy the day in Madrid as much as Toledo though, because I'm not a huge fan of art museums and during the walking tour I was so exhausted and cold that I just wanted to sit down somewhere warm. Here are some pictures of what we saw in any case. I wish I could remember what everything is but we saw so much that I can't keep it straight.

Prado Museum

 Reina Sofia Museum

 Madrid's Plaza Mayor

 A really pretty church that I can't remember the name of

 The Palace (next to the church)

 Kilometer Zero

After our walking tour we got back on the bus and came back to Salamanca. We were all exhausted by this point and most of us fell asleep on the bus. The weather had gotten really bad by this point and we had to walk home in the wind and a little bit of rain. Needless to say I was very happy to get into bed that night haha.

I guess that's it for now, this post has gotten pretty long. I'm thinking about trying to post all of the pictures somewhere so that everyone can see them, but I don't know where to do that. I have them posted on facebook but that's not publicly accessible. Any suggestions for a website where I can upload pictures?