There isn't much to report this week. Last Friday (about 9 days ago now) I slipped going down the stairs of my apartment and hurt my foot. After walking on it for almost a week, I gave in and went to the orthopedist on Thursday to make sure there were no broken bones. Luckily I didn't break anything so I don't have a cast, boot or crutches but I'm still hurting pretty bad. The doctor told me to stay off it the best I can and gave me some heavy-duty ibuprofen to help with the pain. Unfortunately, it's not easy to avoid walking in this city. The weather has been pretty great lately and it pains me to sit inside with ice on my foot while the whole world is out enjoying the sunshine. Especially since I only have four weeks (gasp!) left. I've been trying my best, but sometimes the weather and the lure of fun with friends gets the best of me. It's supposed to be rainy most of the day today... so maybe I'll actually stay home and not walk. In any case, it'll heal with time so it's okay.

Thursday was also Dia de San Jordi. He's on of the saints of Cataluna (the 'state' in which Barcelona is located) because of a legend in which he saved the princess from an evil dragon. When he saved her, her tears of joy mixed with the blood of the dragon and a red rose appeared. San Jordi gave the rose to the princess and began the tradition of giving roses to women on this day. Then, later in history Cervantes and Shakespeare both died around this time and it was named some sort of day to honor literature as well. So, now on Dia de San Jordi the men give the women a rose and the women give the men a book. Of course, many people don't follow this tradition too strictly because obviously women love books as well, but it's still an important day in Cataluna. All of the bookstores (of which there are gobs upon gobs in this city) set up tents outside on the sidewalks to sell their books and there are carts and tents set up to sell roses anywhere that the bookstores left space. Also, anyone with a balcony hangs the Catalan flag from it. The photo at the top is of our apartment building, just to give you an idea of what the city looked like that day.

Obviously with my foot the way it is we didn't do any traveling this weekend, so I don't have any new photos to share with you. This coming week I'll be traveling Thursday evening through Monday evening through southern Spain so when I get back I'll have TONS to post.

I missed a few calls after I'd already gone to sleep this week, they came up "Unknown" so I don't know who it was but I'm pretty sure it's somone who must've been calling my virtual U.S. number. Whoever it was can feel free to E-Mail me or call back, just remember that it's seven hours later here and after midnight I'm usually either asleep or trying to get to sleep. Calling before 5pm CST works a lot better for me.

More next week...

This weekend I went with my program to a place called Vall de Boi, about four hours away from Barcelona and up in the Pyrenees Mountains. Saturday we visited two Romanic churches from the 12th century. There are eight of them in the area that are extremely well preserved. Sunday we spent a few hours at a national park in the mountains and did a little hiking. We had a very nice tour guide who taught us about how the park is run and what kinds of wildlife can be found in the area. One interesting thing I learned is that hunting, fishing and camping are not allowed in the national parks but they do let farmers use the land for grazing for their sheep or cattle. The weather was fabulous and so was the view. Visiting the park was the only thing we did Sunday then they drove us back to Barcelona.

This weekend I don't have any real plans set, but I think I might go to Tarragona and see the Roman ruins there on Saturday in the afternoon. Next weekend I'm going to two other cities in Spain that my program didn't pay for us to visit. I'll be visiting Valencia and Granada from Thursday through Sunday night and traveling by train... Even though I'm pretty sick of trains after taking so many through Italy...

I'll be heading home a month from Wednesday or four weeks from Friday, depending on how you want to look at it! Because of my crazy layover in D.C. I'll land in the U.S. on Friday the 22nd at about 8pm, but I don't leave D.C. until 12pm the next day so I don't actually get to SF until 8pm Saturday the 23rd. When I land in D.C. I'm going to see what I can do to get out of there earlier, but I doubt they'll be able to do much for me. In any case, I'm starting to get excited to head home. I know it's going to be sad to leave the city, but I miss all my family and friends back home!

Here is a link to an album I just added some photos to. I added photos from La Pedrera, an apartment building designed by Antoni Gaudi that was lived in during the early 1900s. I'll also post the link to my photos from Vall de Boi.

Viva Barcelona II

Vall de Boi

Milano, Venezia, & Firenze

Sicilia & Roma

Roma II

Roma III

I don't know how I can possibly write about everything I did over spring break... I haven't even been able to get all the photos up yet, there are too many! I guess I can start with the general comments...

Italy is fabulous! Before we left the weather predictions were saying there was a chance of rain in every city we were going to visit for the entire week so we were prepared for some bad weather. By some stroke of luck, however, we barely saw a handful of sprinkles over the course of the week. Italy was all sunshine and cool breezes for us! We did almost all of our traveling by train and it got old after a while. From Milan to Venice, Venice to Florence and Florence to Rome were all about 4 hours or less. But, from Rome to Palermo, Sicily was FOURTEEN hours and it was miserable!!!! Our car was one of the only cars to have five of six seats filled so none of us could recline our seats or put our feet up! Sometime after 3am two of the passengers in our car got off at a stop and the other three of us got a few hours sleep where we were able to lie down before the ticket checker came by and woke us all up again. At that point I never wanted to get on a train again, so I was glad we were flying back to Rome instead of taking another night train.

The food was fantastic, as I'm sure you'd imagine. We ate a LOT of pizza this week. When looking for the cheapest meals, it turned out that a cheese pizza and a bottle of water was usually the winner. Most of the pizza had a thinner crust than what we eat in the U.S. but they give you a pizza the size of a medium pizza back home so it's plenty for one person. The desserts were great, too! I ate my share of cannoli and chocolate! The pasta was good, too... I think I had lasagna, spaghetti and tortellini at different points during the week and they were all yummy!

Let me see... highlights... Well, I'd already been to Venice and there wasn't much more I could see that I hadn't seen when was there before. But, I still enjoyed it because it's a beautiful city and truly one of a kind. When we were in Florence we didn't get to see much because it was Monday and we forgot that most public museums, gardens, castles, etc. are all closed on Mondays in Europe. So, we didn't get to go inside the Piti Palace or its famous gardens and we didn't get to go inside the museum that holds the original statue of David by Michelangelo and that was a bummer. Once again though, the weather was great and we were able to walk everywhere we needed to go and we saw a lot of beautiful architecture.

Matt and I had a few hours in Rome before we caught our train to Sicily so we walked through as much of the city as we could and completely overwhelmed ourselves. We literally just kind of "stumbled upon" the Colosseum as we were looking down a narrow street trying to find our way to the center of the city. It was pretty incredible how it just kind of showed up right before our eyes. I already mentioned how the train ride to Palermo, Sicily was awful, but our experiences in Sicily were interesting, too. Palermo is the biggest city and it was really strange compared to the other cities we've seen. It was very dirty and a lot of it seemed rundown. The traffic was AWFUL and we saw a couple stereotypical Italian men get out of their cars to yell things at the other people in traffic. We took a bus to a nearby town called Corleone which is the town "The Godfather" is based on and there's supposedly still a lot of mafia influence thriving there. We got dropped off right in the middle of their lunchtime so almost everything was closed and all the people were just watching us from their windows clearly wondering what the hell we were doing there. We walked for a little bit and then ended up sitting in a plaza waiting for two hours for the bus to come back and pick us up. As we were sitting there waiting all the old men of the town came to the plaza with their canes and their matching hats and sat on the benches talking to each other and watching us. We were convinced they were retired mafiosos. Apart from that I can only say that Sicily really does have the most incredible landscape I think I've ever seen. It's a great mixture of coastline, mountains, and green, rolling hills and plains. I loved it!

Then there's Rome... What can I say about Rome? I couldn't wrap my head around that city no matter how hard I tried. We had two jam-packed days of sightseeing and still couldn't see everything we wanted to. There are ruins strewn about around the entire city and all of them are tied to names and stories that seem like legends and myths to us. Much of the ancient city dates to before the death of Christ and some of those relics are still standing today. Most of the time we just walked around stunned and snapping photos. We went to see the Vatican on Friday and that was interesting as well. We got to see the inside of St. Peter's Basilica, the room of the tombs of the Popes, St. Peter's Square, and the Sistene Chapel. We weren't able to see the Pope speak because we didn't get tickets in time, but we were able to see more of Rome with the time we saved. The whole thing was really surreal.

Now we're back in Barcelona with three days left of spring break. Easter is HUGE here since the country is about 97% Catholic, so we get an extended break. Everything is shut down for the most part both today and tomorrow, but I'm hoping to get out and accomplish some sightseeing in Barcelona on Tuesday... or maybe a day at the beach, depending on the weather. Coming up we have a trip with our group to Vall de Boi this weekend; I'm not sure exactly what we'll be doing there but I know it involves the mountains and possibly some hiking. The weekend after that I think I'll be taking a day-trip to Tarragona which is a site with Roman ruins just outside the city. And beyond that I know I have a trip to Amsterdam planned May 8-10, but the rest of the weekends are up in the air. I'll be home in 6 weeks!

Photos from this week will be up sometime later today...

Alright, finally my long-awaited post about Paris! First of all, traveling there by myself went fine. I went through my usual anxiety about airports. I don't know why I'm always so afraid something will keep me from getting to my gate on time; I always get there so far in advance that I have time to eat a meal and take a nap before boarding. In any case, the flight from Barcelona to Paris is fast, about an hour and a half. I took the train into the city and managed to find the metro lines I needed AND my hotel all by myself. My friends and I went out to eat and then I went to sleep early because I had a cold and our friend Aura was going to arrive very early Friday morning and I knew we had a full day of sightseeing ahead of us.

Friday Aura and I pretty much owned Paris. We managed to hit almost all of the major sights on foot with just a map and a good sense of direction. We were able to walk from our hotel to the Arc de Triomph, from the Arc to the Eiffel Tower, from the Eiffel to Luxembourg Gardens, to La Sorbonne and from La Sorbonne to Notre Dame. There was a service going on while we were there, which was interesting. We forgot that it was a Friday of Lent so the Roman Catholic servies would be going on. By the time we finished at Notre Dame it was about 4:30pm so we went back to the hotel and took a nap before dinner. Thursday evening we took the metro to see the Moulin Rouge/the red light district/the Sacre Coeur. The walk from the Moulin Rouge to the Sacre Coeur was really interesting because the street is flocked with clubs advertising lap dances, peep shows, and cabarets. Surprisingly, though, it wasn't all that sketchy even after dark.

Saturday we took things a little easier. First we went to the Louvre, where we managed to get through everything we'd both been planning on seeing. It took us about 3 hours to see everything we were hoping to see, including the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, Madonna on the Rocks, and the small exhibition of Spanish art. We also saw the Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibits... some of ancient Rome and Greece too, I think. After the Louvre we hopped a train to Versailles, about half an hour or so from the heart of the city. Since I'd already been to Paris, few things that we'd seen up to this point took me by surprise. But Versailles definitely blew me away. There simply aren't words to describe how HUGE the palace is and how extensive the gardens/property behind it are. There are miles and miles of gardens and fountains and one huge canal. It was incredible. I just walked around imagining what it must have been like back when royalty were wandering around in their fancy clothes. After Versailles, Aura and I went back to the Sacre Coeur/Montmarte area to have a crepe and to look at the artists paiting portraits in the street, then we bought some bread and cheese and went back to the hotel, exhausted.

Sunday the three friends I was with all had flights at noon and mine wasn't until 4pm, so I took time to go to the other major art museum in Paris, Musee d'Orsay. The Orsay has a lot of sculputres and a huge collection of French Impressionism art. I saw most of the major works of Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir and Van Gogh. The Van Gogh was definitely my FAVORITE part and I didn't even know his stuff was there. My favorite painting of his is the one of his bedroom... I bought a magnet with that painting on it and it ended up being the only souvenir I brought back with me from Paris.

Since getting sick last Thursday, I'm finally feeling better today. I've gone through a bottle of cough medicine, a handful of ibuprofen and now I'm taking some medicine to help drain my sinuses and that seems to be working. I've also had countless cups of tea... Probably 4-5 a day. Thanks Gram :) By the way, I've now learned to communicate with pharmasists in Spain and France, although France was mostly gestures and not so many words haha. My roommate had the flu, so my weird cold/sinus thing is really not so bad in comparison.

We leave for Italy on Saturday morning. We fly into Milan, but we're leaving for Venice a few hours after we get there and we'll get to Venice at about midnight Saturday night. We'll spend Sunday in Venice, then Monday morning we take a train to Florence. Tuesday afternoon we take a train to Naples, but once again we're only staying a few hours. Tuesday night I'm taking an overnight train from Naples to Sicily. We're spending all day Wednesday in Sicily, then flying from Sicily to Rome late Wednesday evening. Then, to round out the trip, we're spending Thursday, Friday, and half of Saturday in Rome. We come back from Rome late Saturday afternoon.

We just found out today that our spring break actually goes through the Tuesday after Easter, so I have three free days I'm not sure what to do with. I could save the money and spend them lying on the beach here (if the weather's nice) or going to museums around Barcelona, or I could pick somewhere in Spain to spend a few days. I haven't decided yet... It'll probably be a last-minute decision. I'll keep you posted.


Paris: The Sights I

Paris: The Sights II

Paris: The Art