Oviedo

My friend Megan has been studying in Oviedo this semester, so I've been meaning to visit her since January. Earlier last week she reminded me that she only had one weekend left in Oviedo, so I figured it would be a pretty good time to go. What better time to visit than the weekend before her final exams? Luckily Megan is not a procrastinator like myself, so she was ready enough for her exams that she was ok with spending the weekend hanging out with me instead of studying.

Friday afternoon (on May 10th) at 2:00 I started my trek north to Oviedo, the capital of the autonomous community of Asturias. The busride was about 5 hours long because we stopped in quite a few of the major cities along the way. The mountain scenery was beautiful and it was interesting getting to see what cities like León looked like. I also had a lot of reading to catch up on for my history class, so the busride flew by.

the view out the bus window

Oviedo didn't have any hostels listed on hostelworld.com (which seemed very fishy to me), so I had to pick one based off of google reviews. After failing to find any hostels with cheap spots in an 8-12 person room, I ended up getting a 1-person room in a hostel for 22€ per night. It was the nicest hostel I've ever stayed out... basically it was a hotel. I had a bathroom with a shower to myself and a room with a queen-sized bed and even a TV. It was located in downtown Oviedo, so it worked out perfectly. I guess I put to much faith in hostelworld.com. Lesson learned.

Look at the size of the bed!

After Megan helped me find the hostel, we explored the city a bit and she showed me around the university where she's taking classes.

Megan was incredibly well-prepared for my visit. She had picked up maps of the city from the tourism office for me, had brochures about the Feria de la Ascensión that happened to be going on that weekend, and even had a list of possible things to do in Oviedo along with their prices and when they were open. I will try to steal her ideas and be that organized when my family visits Spain in June... no promises, though.

Friday night we met up with a group of Megan's friends from UNI and they showed me their favorite bars. Spain has some interesting themed-bars. My favorite was a place called "The Batcave" that served "batjarras" (instead of jarras) and constantly had a Batman movie running on a small TV in the corner of the bar.

Saturday morning, Megan and I hiked up Monte Naranco to see the Christ statue that overlooks the city. We left at around 10am and got back at around 2:00, so the hike only took about 4 hours including the 30 minutes we spent at the top.  Megan's friends warned us that the trail disappears halfway up, so we just followed the road up to the top. I was impressed by all of the runners and bikers we saw; I was exhausted just from walking up! The Cristo was modeled after the famous Cristo in Rio de Janeiro, and overlooks the entire city. The view was amazing! It was definitely worth the hike up.

An old church on the way up

Megan near the church. You can tell we're towards the
bottom because she's still smiling! ;)

view of Oviedo from the Cristo

My best Cristo impression

After making it back down the mountain, we had lunch at a restaurant near the famous calle Gascona. It took us a while to find a place because so many people were in town for the Fair. We both got the menú del día (daily combo), a special offered by many restaurants in Spain, consisting of several courses with several choices to choose from for each course. We both had the same kind of vegetable soup and it was incredible! Although maybe we only thought that because it tasted like corn and we're two Iowans that haven't had corn in 6 months.

Calle Gascona

After lunch Megan and I walked through the Feria and visited the Cathedral downtown. The Feria was like a giant Farmer's Market with a lot of homemade breads, cheeses, meats, and other items like knives, wallets, and wooden shoes.

The Cathedral only has one tower and people
say it looks like a hand with the index finger
extended (Megan's demonstrating).

Some baby goats at the Feria

We were both exhausted, so we decided to take a siesta and meet up later. I took an hour power-nap and then walked around for a while on my own, doing some people-watching in a park.

Saturday evening we used the hostels free wi-fi to watch UNI's graduation that was being streamed live. Probably seems like an odd choice since I don't even go to my own brothers' graduation ceremonies... (sorry guys!)... but Megan's boyfriend was graduating and also giving a speech because he just served as UNI's president of the student body. Graduations aren't that bad when you can spend them laying on a bed eating McDonalds.

Saturday night Megan and her friends took me to a Sidrería to try some sidra. Oviedo is famous for its sidra (literally cider). It's kind of like a cross between beer and wine (I think). They forgot to warn me how a sidrería works, so I was very perplexed at first. The waiter takes a bottle of sidra and holds it above his head as high as possible. Then he pours it into a glass in his other hand at waist-level. Then the server quickly sets the glass on the table and someone is supposed to drink it before the fizz disappears. It was entertaining to watch. I forgot to take pictures or video, but here's a video from youtube: sidra pouring.

Sunday morning I found my way to the bus station and headed back to Salamanca. The weather in Oviedo stayed nice all weekend (besides a little drizzle Saturday night), which was very unusual. Megan said it's been raining almost every day all semester. I guess I picked the right weekend to go!

¡Hala Unión!

After four months in Salamanca, I finally made it to my first UD Salamanca soccer match (or is it soccer game? I don't really know what the proper term is... Maybe I'll stick with partido de fútbol). As big as soccer is in Spain, Salamantinos don't get very excited about their local team. Instead, everyone picks either Real Madrid or Barcelona and cheers for them. That's probably because while Real Madrid and Barcelona are fighting for the top position in La Liga, the highest division in Spain, Salamanca is in the middle of the pack of the Segunda B division, the 3rd lowest of 4 divisions.

Salamanca plays at the Estadio Helmántico just north of the edge of town. It would probably be a 40 minute walk, but Jack (my roommate) & I were able to catch a bus near our house that runs on game days. We weren't sure when the bus left, or if there even was a bus for sure, but my very reliable source (an online UD Salamanca forum) claimed there was one that left an hour and a half before game time. The game was at 6, so we showed up 4:30pm on Sunday afternoon expecting to see a crowd of crazy soccer fans waiting for the bus. Nobody was there at first, but eventually a few more fans showed up. The bus ended up leaving around 5, in typical Spanish-time fashion.

We got to the stadium and bought our tickets for the south fondo (endzone) because the endzones were the cheapest (10€) and a friend from ISA said that the south side was more fun. She was right! Some Salamantinos might not care about the local team, but there was a big section of dedicated fans that stood the entire game, chanting, cheering, and booing. There was no assigned seating in the sections, so we could sit anywhere on the south side. Our seats were great- I could have high-fived Raúl Moreno after making a good save if it weren't for the security guard nearby.

Salamanca was playing Atletico Madrid B (their "A" team is in La Liga), and ended up winning 3-0. Forget about the frog, Jack & I must be good luck!

There were signs of the crisis: The jumbo-tron and smaller
electronic scoreboards appeared to be broken.

Spring Break

Part I: Córdoba

I just got back from a week-long excursion around Andalucía, Spain's southernmost province. The university gives students the Thursday and Friday before Easter and the following week off. With all that free time, it seemed like a good time to check off a few more cities off of my Spain bucket-list.

Saturday (March 30) I left Salamanca with Chelsey (another ISA student). We rode a bus to Madrid and then took a train to Córdoba. The buses around Spain are ok, but the train is awesome! It's twice as fast as the bus and twice as spacious! We made it to Córdoba in the early afternoon (afternoons last until supper at 9 in Spain). The weather was b-e-a-utiful, so we checked into our hostel and started exploring the city. Luckily, we happened to reach the famous Cathedral/Mosque just as a Holy Week procession was leaving; we couldn't have planned it better if we had tried.

procession

Semana Santa Barbie dolls

After the procession, we stopped by a museum about Al-Andalus, the muslim state that was in modern-day Spain. That probably seems like an odd place to stop, but we're both in a Hispanic-Arabic Culture class that talks about Al-Andalus all the time, so it caught our attention. It's good to know our professor didn't just make everything up.

Al-Andalus Museum

view from the top of the museum

We wrapped our night up by trying to attend a midnight mass at the Cathedral. Trying... but not succeeding. When we got to the cathedral it was closed. I think we misinterpreted a sign; it said mass was at doce por la mañana (12 in the morning), which might actually be 12pm, since they don't each lunch until 2pm. That or we just weren't at the right entrance. Oh well.

Our hostel seemed a little sketchy at first because the lock to our room didn't work, but the people we met there were fun. We were in a room with two Austrians and two German girls that were studying abroad in Madrid this semester.

We spent all Sunday hanging out with our new German friends. It was pouring all day and pretty much everything was closed for Easter, so there wasn't a lot to do. We basically spent the entire day eating: froYo, coffee, lunch, etc.

View from the top of our hostel

Deserted plaza during downpour

After the rain finally stopped Sunday night, Chelsey & I explored the old Jewish Quarter, the old city center, and a torture museum. It was actually called the Inquisition Museum, but there wasn't a lot of information about the Inquisition. Basically they just had a bunch of torture devices and detailed instructions of how they were used. It was the most depressing museum I've ever seen. After that, we found some kebabs, which always cheer me up.

Monday (April 1) I got up early to take advantage of the free breakfast at the hostel. They had cold milk! That's surprisingly hard for me to find in Spain. Milk is sold in cartons that aren't refrigerated in grocery stores and my host family only drinks milk heated up in the microwave. I tried it once... it tasted like warm milk.

After a delicious breakfast, we went to the Mosque/Cathedral to wait in line for tickets before it opened. We got there in time to be one of the first groups into the Mosque. The building is very unique because it was originally built as a giant Mosque. During the Reconquista, King Alfonso X ordered the construction of a church inside of the Mosque. A bell tower and other renovations were also added to transform it into more of a church. After the Mesquita, we toured a Jewish museum, so we covered quite a few major religions in one day.

 

 



Part II: Granada

Monday afternoon we headed to the bus station and bought tickets for the next bus to Granada. It happened to be in an hour, so we didn't have to spend to much time at the bus station. We had lunch at the diner in the station, which had surprisingly good food for a bus station. I had some spaghetti, which would have been amazing if they hadn't used olive oil mixed in with the sauce. A short 3-hour bus ride later we were in Granada!

Chelsey and I checked into our hostel Al-Andalus, which was super nice. I walked in and thought we were in a hotel! It just opened and didn't have any rankings on hostelworld, so we were able to stay for 9 Euros per night per person.

We were meeting up with some more ISA students in Granada, but they weren't arriving until late that night. After taking a siesta, Chelsey and I walked around the downtown area for a while and eventually found a Chinese restaurant to have supper. It was my first time trying Chinese food in Spain. It was pretty good, and I got soup, a meal, pop, and a dessert for less than 6 Euros!

After eating, we headed back to the hostel to meet up with Christine and Alex, two ISA students that were stopping in Granada for 2 days and then flying to Italy. We also met up with Angie and her cousin's cousin, Christine, who we were traveling around with for the rest of Spring break.

Tuesday morning at 10am, we had tickets for a guided tour of Alhambra, a fortress/palace on top of a hill looking over Granada. Originally we had just tried to order (cheaper) tickets without a guided tickets online, but they were sold out, so we ended up getting the guided tour in order to get into the Alhambra. We were all running a little behind and didn't end up leaving the hostel until after 9:30. Then we started walking in the complete opposite direction of the Alhambra for about 10 minutes. Luckily Angie's cousin Christine had the bright idea of waving down a taxi when she realized we had no idea where we were going and weren't going to make it in time. We made it to the meeting point about 10 minutes late, but luckily the tour was operating on Spanish time and hadn't left yet.

Bill Steussy look-alike?

Everyone was given an earpiece connected to what looked like an off-brand iPod, and the tour guide just talked quietly into a microphone so we could all hear. This seemed like a great concept, but didn't work so well in practice. There were so many tour groups walking around that there was a lot of radio interference, so it was hard to understand what was being said a lot of the time. The tour was still fun because the views from the Alhambra were amazing!

Wednesday we got up "early" to enjoy the free hostel breakfast. It was mostly just bread and jam, but for 9 Euros a night, I can't complain too much. After breakfast, we took a city bus up to the Gypsy caves in the mountains. It was probably a 20 minute ride up the mountain and only cost 1.20, so it was quite the deal. We were the only people on the bus, so it was like our own private shuttle. The bus driver even dropped us off right by the entrance to the cave museum.

Seeing the Gypsy caves wasn't as interesting to see as I thought it would be, but the museum also had a lot of information about the history of Gypsies in Andalucía and flamenco. There was also a really good view of the Alhambra and the entire city.



After the cave museum, Christine and Alex left to catch their flight to Italy. The rest of us slowly walked back down toward the city along the river path. We stopped at Sacromonte on the mountain and ate lunch in it's bell-tower (we'd brought sandwiches with us). We spent the rest of the day walking around Granada and exploring a street market we found.

view from the top of the tower

Part III: Málaga

Wednesday we took a bus from Granada to Málaga, which was about a two-hour ride. We checked in at The Melting Pot hostel, which was right across from the beach, and about a 5 minute cab ride from downtown. Málaga was Pablo Picasso's hometown, so it has a big Picasso museum. After checking in, we tried to make it to the museum, but it had just closed by the time we got there at 8:30pm. Dejected, we made our way back to the hostel. We ended up missing the street our hostel was on and walking way too far. We finally found our way back at almost 10:30pm. Luckily the hostel had dinner that we could order, and we had some delicious paella for 5 Euros a person.

After dinner, we ended up getting convinced to go on a barcrawl by Andreas, an Italian whose job is basically to go to hostels, play his guitar, and convince people to pay 10 Euro for his barcrawl. He's good at what he does. It was a pretty good deal, since it included taxi fair downtown and 5 drinks. After we got to the first bar, Andreas disappeared and we got a new guide for the night... the ladies in our group were devastated.

Friday (April 5th), we slept in and then Angie, Christine, and I went to the Picasso museum first thing to make sure we got to see it. It started raining just as we got to the museum and stopped by the time we left, so we lucked out again with the weather. I was impressed by Picasso's work- he started off with more realistic looking paintings and then evolved to more abstract paintings later on in life.

no pics allowed inside :(

After the museum, we walked around a garden/ old castle with an amazing view of the city with the mountains in the background on one side and the ocean on the other. It was my favorite place that I saw in Málaga.

That afternoon we went shopping; I guess that's what happens when I travel with 3 other girls. After getting bored of picking out new clothes for themselves, they decided to use me as a life-size Ken doll and play dress up with me, trying to make me look "European." I don't understand why anyone would ever wear skinny-jeans. I actually ended up getting a shirt and pair of jeans that they picked out that I liked... I needed some clean clothes to make it through the rest of the trip anyways.

For supper, we went out to eat at El Tapy, where we could get 6 tapas (like appetizers) and a pitcher of beer for 6 Euros, and 6 tapas with a pitcher of sangría was 10 Euro. The food was delicious and I really enjoyed the ambiance. There were a ton of younger people there and a lot of people must go there to celebrate birthdays, because two tables erupted in the Cumpleaños Feliz song while we were there. It was Christine's last night in Spain- she left Saturday morning at 4am for the airport.

The rest of the weekend was very relaxing. We had already seen all of the must-see tourist destinations, so we spent most of it relaxing by the beach. The weather warmed up on Saturday so it was hot enough  to go to the beach, but the water was still too cold to go swimming. After spending Saturday afternoon on the beach, Chelsey really wanted some Taco Bell (there's not one in Salamanca, but there is in Málaga). She offered to pay for the taxi, so Angie and I tagged along for the ride. I've never felt more American than I did walking around downtown Málaga in flip-flops, swim trunks, and a t-shirt while drinking a coke from Taco Bell. A native Malagan walked by wearing jeans and a winter coat, chuckled at me and asked "Hace mucho frío, ¿no?" (Cold, isn't it?).

We went back to the hostel for supper, because we could get a big plate of delicious food for 5 Euros. The owner of the hostel was also the guy who made the food. He was an older guy who everyone called Papi (Pappa). He seemed to like our group a lot, either because we spoke more Spanish than most of the people that stayed there or (more likely) because we had Angie with us, who's fluent. I was still a little hungry after sharing a plate with Angie, and Papi made me another plate with a burger and a couple hotdogs for free.

Sunday was another relaxing day on the beach. We also hung out with Olaf, a German we had met at the hostel. He was meeting up with a friend from the US who flew to Spain for 3 days to compete in a half-ironman triathlon and meet up with Olaf. For supper, we had another delicious meal at the hostel, courtesy of Papi.

View from the hostel!

Monday, April 8th we flew from Málaga to Valladolid, an town about 2 hours away from Salamanca. Then we took a bus the rest of the way back to Salamanca. It was Lunes de Aguas in Salamanca, a holiday celebrating the return of the prostitutes to the city. In olden times, the prostitutes were banned from the city during Lent. They were banished to the other side of the river, where a priest would take care of them. On the Monday after Easter Monday, the prostitutes were allowed to return to the city. The students of the university would help the priest get the prostitutes back across the river and have a huge party by the river to celebrate their return. Nowadays, people still gather by the river and party, often eating hornazo, a breaded snack containing chorizo, pork loin, and other types of meat (since people had gone 40 days without meat). I was so exhausted from traveling I didn't go out to celebrate, but it's probably one of the most interesting holidays I've learned about in Spain.

Semana Santa

Holy week, or Semana Santa, is a big deal in Spain. Although not a lot of people go to mass every week, it seems like everyone goes to at least one procession during Semana Santa. There were plenty of processions to choose from in Salamanca. Starting the Sunday before Easter, there was at least one procession every day and multiple processions a day towards the end of the week. They started from different churches/cathedrals and took place all times of the day and night. Families lined up for the processions ahead of time like we would for a parade in the US (unfortunately none of the priests threw out candy).

Processions consisted of priests, fancy costumes (yes, some processions had the [in]famous KKK-looking gowns), bands, and the highlight of processions: one or more imágenes. An imagen is giant float carried by a group of people that has a depiction on it such as Jesus on the cross or the Virgin Mary. Some of are hundreds of years old and weigh up to 1000 kilos (~2000 lbs).

Here's some pictures from a procession Sunday afternoon:

the imagen

The people carrying it are hidden by the clothe.

It was raining Thursday night, so they canceled the procession that was supposed to cross the old Roman bridge. They still brought the imágenes right outside the church for people to see, though.

torrija, a traditional dish served during Semana Santa (It's like french toast).

I was also talked into staying up for the 5:30 am procession Friday morning. It was going to be a huge procession with 4 imágenes that left from San Esteban, one of the big cathedrals in Salamanca. While we were waiting, I had some torrija, a french-toast-like dish traditionally served during Semana Santa. It was raining off & on, so they just carried the imágenes to the door of San Esteban for people to admire.