Spring Break

While technically my spring break was a week ago, today for the first time in months I have been able to really settle in and get busy doing nothing. For the weeks leading up to spring break I found myself traveling every weekend. My reward for staying in Madrid for many cold rainy weekends in the earlier part of my stay was sunny spring scented trips to some beautiful places in Spain. In the past month and a half I have been to places all over Spain and had too many adventures to count. Here's a map of Spain with all the places I have gone within Spain. Save for Toledo Avila and Madrid, I've visited all of them since my last post.

Valencia
The entire time I was in Valencia, I felt like I was in another world. I suppose that the city on an average weekend is nothing like what I experienced there during the festival of Las Fallas, but I do know that the city and the people are crazy during this week long celebration of San Jose, the patron saint of carpenters.
It is difficult to explain what the festival is. I guess historically it began when carpenters burned their shavings once a year in the honor of San Jose. Now, elaborate painted structures of paper machet, wood and plaster are created during the entire year before the celebration. Each of the over 700 structures has a theme of some sort, usually mocking someone or something. We saw some that were huge and elaborate, other's, in the children's division, that were more life sized, and usually conveying playful themes. All had minuet detail and I considered them works of art.
While walking around and viewing these structures during the days, the hardest thing to adjust to was the noise. The entire two days and nights that I was there, 5 minutes did not go by without someone setting off a firework or firecracker. Young children especially contributed to the constancy of this noise, and were far more brave using explosives than I was. Outside a store that sold firecrackers there was a sign stating clearly that fireworks/crackers would not be sold to children under eight! So it went that in every corner of the city that we went to (for the whole city becomes a place to display fallas), that children and adults alike were setting off firecrackers and fireworks of varying intensity.

The there was la crema, the burning, and for that pictures speak louder than words.

It was incredible, but eerie at the same time. Burning faces, people, cars, ideas, crying children, fireworks being shot out of the center of a wooden structure, the spray of the firefighters (bomberos) hoses against the surrounding houses and trees so that they too would not catch on fire. It was unbelievable.

The fireworks of the night before the burning, were the best I have ever seen in my life, despite the fact that I was watching them in the rain at 1:30 in the morning. As I have said, it was quite an experience, and like no other.

Granada
Ana, Rutu and I decided to go to Granada on a whim, the very weekend after Ana and I had become emboldened by our independent and sleepless experience in Valencia. Granada was a lot of fun, there is basically only one main cultural point to visit, and that would be La Alhambra, this old Moorish palace, one of the few that wasn't destroyed when the Christians conquered. Apparently some benevolent king decided that, despite it's construction by Muslims, it was rather pretty. La Alhambra was a series of ornate rooms with intricately carved repetitive designs, and ceramic patterns, combined with sprawling gardens and fountains, and all of it is atop a hill that overlooks the rest of Granada with its small streets and white houses, also of Moorish design.

Our hostel was on a second hilltop facing the Alhambra and we had a small terrace facing in that direction from which we had a beautiful view of the palace and the city. I loved the small winding walking streets that led up to our hostel, and the tiered houses on the hilltop. Also, the morning before we left we climbed further up the hill and we received for our early morning effort, a absolutely gorgeous view. Granada just felt like spring the whole time we were there. Warm days, sun, green green green, flowers, a river through the old part of the city that we were staying in, the beautiful gardens of the palace, it was wonderful.

Cordoba and Seville

Another school trip, but a longer one with two nights in Seville and time to ourselves. This ended up being perfect because Carrie Chandler, a friend of mine from the NMH swim team, is studying in Sevilla, and I got to hang out with her and another former NMH 2003er, Ross Jordan both of the nights that I was there. Seville was beautiful, what I liked best about it was the smell. The whole city smelled of orange blossoms while we were there. It is such an enchanting smell, I can not believe I had never smelled them before.

We stopped in Cordoba to see the famous Mesquita on our first day of our trip. I was very excited to see this, as I had heard a lot about in in several of my classes. La Mesquita is a Mosque that was converted into a church, at least in part. It is this large expansive Mosque, that grew through several different Moorish rulers, as the population demanded. It is this cool dark room with beautiful red and white arches that were made to mimic a forest of trees. The Catholic monarchs, when they conquered (or reconquered) Cordoba couldn't help but seeing the beauty in this building, and they build a church into the middle of it rather than destroying it completely as was customary for that time. It thus is now and odd mix of Muslim and Christian. The most fascinating part to me, is that the Muslims destroyed a catholic church to create this building, but they built a more beautiful and expensive church for them in the corner so they could continue practicing their religion, but now, Muslims have requested to be able to practice in on corner of La mesquita, but as of yet have not been permitted to.

We then traveled on to Seville, where there were so many things to see, and as I have said, to smell. Spring had most definitely sprung in Seville as we walked through beautiful gardens and visited places around the city. The most charming to me would have to be the old Jewish quarter, which was again composed of small streets with white walls but in Seville (and Cordoba) the houses are decadent with flowers. Reds, greens, blues, pinks, and yellows looked so crisp and beautiful against the white background of the walls. The pots were mounted on the walls, put in window sills and sitting around on the grounds. It was hard not to feel happy just walking these beautiful streets.

It was also hard not to be content with my reunion with NMHers. It was so fun and easygoing and we spoke some spaniglish, went out to see flamenco, then dancing and had crazy adventures together. I could not have asked for a better experience with them. It was nice to get and inside scoop on the night life of a place and get the full tour, guided trips to historical and cultural places by day with the school, and visited more recently relevant cultural places and attitudes during the night with my friends.

Semana Santa

The following week was in fact spring break, Semana Santa (holy week) as everyone here calls it, and it always falls exactly on Easter, unlike in the US. I turned in a ten page term paper on Wednesday and Zach came on Friday morning. That week was a blur, and then I spent the first weekend of spring break with Zach in Madrid. I saw things in Madrid I had never seen before, like the royal palace, and generally we did a lot of walking around which is always good. Sunday night we hopped a night train to Barcelona. When I say hopped I mean jumped. We were running late after eating dinner with Maria Emilia, and we had packed our rucksacks in a rush, and ran from the metro and two of the conductors waved frantically at us. The second we stepped on the train it began moving--just like an old movie, sans steam engine smoke.

I will save the rest of my story about Spring Break Traveling with zach for another post, both because this post is getting rather long, and because I have to go to class.