Cote D’Azur Excursion

Friday: Friday afternoon, we all met up at Part-Dieu to take the train. Our first train ride was about two hours to Marseille. We had a bit of time in Marseille and it already looked like a beautiful place just from the train station – I’m excited to go there in a week and a half. After that, we got on another train down to les arcs de draguignan. There, we were picked up by our guide Jean and taken to where we were staying Friday night at l’hôtel le Domino. Once we dropped our stuff off in our rooms, we headed downstairs to eat at the restaurant owned by the same person who owned the little bed and breakfast we were staying in. Jean and his wife Justine joined the rest of us for dinner. As an appetizer they gave us little crackers with cheese and ham as well as sea snails, which, despite our valiant efforts, were inedible for almost all of us. After that, our first course arrived. We had a salad with hard-boiled egg, sundried tomatoes, anchovies and green beans. Normally I love salads, but I really hated this one except for the green beans. After that, we had a cod dish with a bunch of vegetables including green beans, cauliflower, purple carrots… It was delicious and I was relieved that the whole meal wasn’t a bust. Finally, for dessert, I had a carpaccio of pineapple (really, really thinly sliced pineapple) soaked in a lovely sauce and topped with vanilla ice cream. It was a wonderfully light and delicious dessert. After dessert, Dana and I hung out for a little while before going to bed.

   

   

   

   

     

   

     

   

Saturday: Saturday morning we woke up and headed back down to the restaurant to have a little breakfast. We had a lite breakfast of toast and tea, but the homemade apricot jam that they had was really good. After breakfast, we all piled into the van (me, Dana, Jose, Ansley, Janee, our program director Barbara, our guide Jean and his wife Justine) and headed to this little town called Trigance. It was full of quaint architecture and we even saw this adorable little donkey. Apparently all the houses there were designed without any architects, which we were really impressed with given how cute the place was. All the houses were built very close together to try to preserve space for agricultural lands. On our way back to the car, we stopped off to use the toilets. Unluckily for us, in all the little towns that we visited, they only had Turkish Toilets (basically a nicer name for holes in the ground), which are not the easiest toilets to use! After that, we got back into the van and headed to this little boulangerie. Our guide told us that they had the most wonderful bread and pastries there. We watched a really interesting video on the bread making process including how to make the fire, how the bread is made, etc and then bought some stuff from there to eat at our picnic for lunch. Next, we drove to the nearby town of Castellane to go to a really cute little market where I bought some delicious honey and green olive spread. After spending some time exploring the market, we headed on a long winding road through the mountains to Verdon where we had a lovely picnic lunch. After lunch, we all changed into our bathing suits to go into the little river. Dana and I had left our stuff up at the van and so had to walk back over there. We had to change by the van on the side of the road and try not to flash all the passing cars. It was really a hilarious experience full of funny mishaps! The river was absolutely freezing and it was relatively windy despite the sunshine. Dana and I really struggled to get into the water. Jose and Ansley had to almost pull us in. Once we were in, they tried to get us to dunk our heads, which we refused to do, resulting in a ton of screaming. I screamed so much and so loud that I almost lost my voice. Once we were in the water, it was very nice, but we really couldn’t feel our legs and once we got out, my legs were pretty painful since they were so freezing cold (you could clearly see the line of how deep I went into the water from where I was bright red from the cold). After that, we went on some more winding roads (we were all pretty nauseous during these rides) to head to the panoramic Gorges du Verdon. This has even been described as France’s Grand Canyon and it was unbelievably beautiful! After that, we took a hike down to this very pretty bridge and to the river below. It was so incredibly blue and the contrast with the rocks made for a fabulous place. After a lovely little hike, we got back in the car and headed to the incredible medieval town of Moustiers Ste Marie  that is known for their blue earthenware products. In the town there is an awesome church up on the hill that is a pilgrimage site. It is known for the star that hangs over it to protect it that is on a wire that is connected to the two sides of the hills. We hiked up the hill to the church. Once we got up there the view was simply spectacular. It was incredibly windy, but it was certainly worth it. The church itself was dark inside and only lit by a few candles by the alter. It made for a really unique ambiance in the church. Something that I have yet to experience in all the really elaborate churches I have seen in Europe. We wandered back through the town, popping into a few of the shops before getting back into the car. Jose had left his coat at the hotel we stayed at the night before, so we had to drive back to that hotel to pick it up before heading to the hotel that we stayed at Saturday night right by the Mediterranean called Relais de Maures. Once settling into our rooms, we headed down to dinner. The restaurant there has actually won some awards in the Michelin guide, so it certainly had a lot to live up to. For the first course, I had a fabulous crab soup. The flavor was spot on and it wasn’t too rich, which was just prefect. Following that I had guinea hen in a rosemary cream sauce with a side of vegetable spring rolls. The hen was fabulously tender and perfectly moist, but the real highlight of the dish was actually the spring rolls. The filling was just so perfectly seasoned that I wished I could have had more of them! Finally, for dessert I had a pana cotta with strawberries and pistachio madeleines. The pana cotta was incredible. It was creamy, but light and the strawberries and strawberry sauce on it was just to die for. After a wonderful dinner, Dana and I headed back to our room to hang out for a bit before going to sleep. At one point, I took a shower and Dana ended up falling asleep for a bit on the bed. Once I was back in the room getting ready for bed, she sat up straight in bed and asked me if I had just taken a shower. Then she freaked out and started yelling: is it morning? Is it Monday morning? She was so out of it and I was so worried, but it was a hilarious moment.

   

Sunday: Sunday morning, we woke up and headed to breakfast at the restaurant downstairs. We had delicious, freshly baked, warm croissants and tea. The croissants were truly melt in your mouth good. After breakfast, we walked down to the Mediterranean to one of the beaches of where the Allies landed in 1944. Our guide Jean explained to us a lot of the history surrounding this and it was really quite interesting. After that, we all piled back into the van to head to this pretty little village called Bormes les Mimosas. We strolled through the town and took a ton of pictures of the beautiful place. It was truly picturesque and the amount of flowers and beautiful little buildings was incredible. I seriously wish that I could live in the town it was so great! We wandered through the little shops in the town and just took in the spectacular view of the town overlooking the Mediterranean sea. We spent a long time in the town just taking in the beauty of it. After that, we hopped back in the van and headed to the Mediterranean sea to a great little spot. We had a little picnic (we hadn’t bought enough bread for all 8 of us…) and then got our bathing suits on. The water was a little bit warmer (barely), but it was so rocky that it was a little painful to go to far into the water. Dana and I waded in for a bit and then just relaxed on the beach in the beautiful sunshine. It was a bit windy though, so I ended up having to borrow Jean’s jacket to wear on the beach. After we all got out of the water, we headed to the little café next door, right on the beach to get some drinks and relax for a bit. After that, we all changed back into our clothes, packed up all our stuff and headed back to the train station. It ended up taking us a little longer than we had expected and we were a little bit worried about missing our train, but luckily we ended up making it to the train station with a little bit of time to spare. We headed from les arcs de draguignan to Toulon, then ran to our next train that left 10 minutes after our other one got in to Avignon. In Avignon we had about 25 minutes to get off the train, find some food, wait in line, buy everything and then to get onto our train. We ran on just in time to catch our train back to Lyon Part-Dieu. Once there, I took the metro back home and relaxed a little bit before going to bed.

Overall I had an absolutely fabulous weekend. We were so fourtunate with the weather because all the predications had indicated rain and bad weather, but we ended up with beautiful sunshine (even if it was a bit cold). We had delicious food, saw some extraordinary towns and had a wonderfully relaxing weekend!

I can’t believe that I only have one month left in France!!!

Monday: I was lucky enough to have a bit of an extended vacation because my French class was cancelled Monday morning (unfortunately that means that class will go a week longer, but I’m happy for now!). Instead I slept in and spent pretty much the rest of the day editing my photos from my trip to Spain and working on my presentation for my history of Lyon class. Monday evening, my host parents were gone because they were spending a few days at a chalet in the mountains with some friends, so I had a low-key dinner with my host brothers.

Tuesday: Tuesday morning I spent my time practicing my presentation about 10 times ( I was really in panic mode). After that, I made some lunch, relaxed for a bit outside and then headed to my history of Lyon class. I did my presentation and I thought it went pretty well. After each presentation, the professor asked the students a few questions. After mine, the questions that he asked seemed pretty irrelevant to my presentation. I did my presentation on the changes in the function of the hospital in Lyon during the 15^th and 16^th centuries and he spent the whole question period asking me miscellaneous questions about the hospital during the 18^th and 19^th centuries…. I told him that I had read some stuff about the entire history of the hospital but that I had focused on the end of the middle ages, however, he just kept asking questions about other time periods. Oh well… I hope he is nice to me and gives me a good grade!! After class I came home and had a nice dinner with my host family. After that, I worked a bunch more on internship stuff for this summer and talked to Seth until past 2am.

Wednesday: Luckily Wednesday morning I was able to sleep in for a little bit. My host family invited me to have lunch with them because everyone but Thibaut was hope. The night before when we had a delicious salad with cucumbers in it, I told my host mom how much I liked it and that it reminded me of salads that I make a lot with just cucumbers and tomatoes. So, for lunch she made me a salad with just cucumbers and tomatoes. Since I love cucumbers so much and its been a long time since I had any, I save those until the end. My host mom was so worried that I didn’t like the salad and was very relieved when I told her how much I liked it. We had a great conversation and I had a really enjoyable lunch. After lunch, I headed to tennis class and was very happy that it wasn’t raining like the forecast had said. After class, I came back home and spent the rest of the afternoon writing my independent study project and editing my pictures in detail that I will be using for my final dossier. After that, we had a nice low-key dinner with just my host parents. During dinner, we were talking about some oranges that my host mom had that were only really used to make wine or jam. I told her home much I love to make raspberry and strawberry jam at home so she asked if I wanted to help her make jam after dinner. This type of orange jam takes multiple days to make so Wednesday night we cut up all the oranges, soaked them in water, added sugar and put them in the fridge to soak for 24 hours. After 24 hours you have to boil them for 2 hours. Then let it sit again for 24 hours before putting it into jars. It was really nice and we had a tea afterwards. It was a really enjoyable evening with my host parents. After that, I spent a little bit more time working on my project before going to bed.

Thursday: Thursday morning I met up with Barbara so that she could help me bounce off some ideas about my photography project. After that, I went home for a bit to grab some lunch before heading over to my political history of health class. It’s so weird that after my class finished on Thursday, there is only one more week of class left! Following class, I met up with Dana at a little café called la tasse livre where we had delicious nutella steamers (steamed milk with nutella). After that, I went back home to have dinner with my family. Thursday night I spent packing and working on my independent study project.

Friday: I woke up on the early side Friday morning and met up with Marie to go to class with her. We sat in on her nutrition class. I was very happy that I actually understood everything that was going on in class. It was interesting because there were only about 30 out of over 300 students who actually showed up to class because most of them just get notes from someone. Also, after class was over, all the students applauded for the professor. Apparently in large lectures the students applaud for the professor after each lecture. After class, we went to meet up with Gregoire to go get lunch. We had lunch at this place called Entrecote on Place de la Republique. We had a delicious salad with walnuts, followed by steak that was cooked so perfectly with so incredibly sauce and fries, followed by a strawberry tart. It was a fabulous meal! After that, I headed over to the Part-Dieu train station to meet up with the Penn group for our excursion.

Spring Break with the Family: Madrid, Toledo, Segovia and El Escorial

Saturday: Once we arrived to the Lyon airport, we had to wait a surprisingly long amount of time at the Easyjet check-in counter before we headed over to catch our flight. Once we were onboard, there were a bunch of delays due to some engine problems and we ended up arriving in Madrid about an hour late at 6pm. We got our bags and went to find the driver to take us to our hotel. We met up with him and realized that he spoke very little English and my mom’s rudimentary Spanish was inadequate to really communicate. Luckily he spoke some French and I was able to direct him to take us to terminal 4 (a few miles away from terminal 1 actually) to go pick up my dad and brother before heading into the city. We arrived at our hotel: Jardin de Sabatini and dropped off our bags. We walked a bit through the town and then happened upon the Mercado San Miguel, which, by this time (close to 10pm) was bustling and we decided that since there wasn’t even room to stand, let alone to sit, that we would find somewhere else to eat for the first night. On our way, Daniel and I found this incredible smoothie shop where we had the most amazing strawberry and watermelon smoothie. After that, we had a nice dinner at meson tapa tapa of calamari, cuttlefish, paella and a Spanish tortilla (which is kind of like an omelette but it potatoes). On our way home, given that it was the night of Easter, we ended up hearing part of this really cool midnight mass at the Cathedral next to the Palacio Real.

Sunday: Sunday morning we slept in a little bit since everyone was a little bit tired and then we headed over to the El Rastro market. We had heard very mixed reviews about the place from that it was a terrifying awful place full of pickpockets and crappy goods to that it was the best flea market in Europe. I happened to think that it was an awesome market with a really great ambiance and I bought a couple really awesome scarfs and a cute little sweater. After the market, we were hungry and my dad found this random lunch place that was located on the sixth floor of some random apartment building. My mom was freaking out a little bit, because from the bottom it looked a little bit sketchy and weird, but once we got upstairs, it was actually a pretty busy place. We shared a big plate of seafood for lunch. After lunch, we took a really nice relaxing nap in the retiro which is this incredible 300 acre park in the middle of the city. After that, we headed over to catch the end of the free evening at the Prado. Unfortunately we got there a little later than we had wanted and didn’t get that long in the museum before we were kicked out (exactly at the moment that the museum was supposed to close, and not a minute later!). Next, we wandered over to Puerta del Sol, stopping in one of the Musee de Jamon where we tried these little bocadillo sandwiches for only one euro. We walked around the nice little square and took in the sites before heading over to Casa Toni for dinner, where we shared grilled mushrooms, fried eggplant, a mixed salad and the rest of my family had some pork ribs. As with a lot of the food in spain, it wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t particularly great. On our way back home we stopped at a cute little ice cream shop back on the Puerta del Sol. Walking back we watched a little game of cat and mouse between the illegal street sellers and the cops that ultimately resulted in some free sunglasses for some of the bystanders who grabbed the dropped products as the venders ran away.

   

   

   

Monday: Monday morning we decided to take a bike tour of the city. Despite the fact that biking is not my favorite activity (im a wimp what can I say… it just hurts my butt), I actually enjoyed the ride (even though I ended up hurting my leg in the end…). We biked through a few parks, past the palace, through Plaza Mayor, Plaza de Espana, Mercado San Anton, a big pond in the retiro and a bunch more sites. It was a beautiful day which just made it even more pleasant. After the ride, we were pretty hungry and tried to go to the Mercado San Anton for lunch. Unfortunately, it wasn’t like the other market and it wasn’t really a great place for lunch. Instead, we had some sandwiches at a little place on a little square that we found. After that, given that we were in Spain, we decided to do like the Spaniards and head back to take a little siesta (I really could get used to the whole taking a siesta everyday!). After a nice relaxing rest, we headed over to the Reina Sofia (modern art) Museum. In this museum is housed the Guernica which was extremely impressive. I was also very impressed by the amount of planning and studies that were done prior to starting this piece and how quickly Picasso was able to complete all of the work. After the museum we went over to Casa Patas. We first had dinner, which was, unfortunately quite disappointing. I had salmon, knowing that of course it wouldn’t be as good as salmon from Seattle, but it was actually pretty awful. Horribly fishy and just not good. Luckily though, the Flamenco show that we saw there after dinner more than made up for it. The talent of the dancers was really incredible and we were literally right under the stage; so close in fact that we were actually sprayed with sweat at one point. It was really an impressive show and I really enjoyed it!

Tuesday: Tuesday morning we headed over to see the Palacio Real. Unfortunately Rick Steves (guidebook) failed us once again and we showed up an hour before the palace opened. We spent some time in the Cathedral and then got in line so that we could head inside right when it opened. The palace was truly impressive. In one of our guidebooks they even called it Europe’s third most impressive palace after Versailles and Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna ( I’m doing pretty well then given that I have seen all three of these palaces since February!). We tried to snap even one picture inside of the incredible décor (especially in the throne room and the rooms made completely from porcelain), but the guard actually made us delete the one photo that we tried to take. It was really serious business. After a fabulous and really interesting audio tour of the palace we headed over to the Mercado San Miguel to get some lunch. I had a deliciously creamy mozzarella, tomato, pesto toast and some fabulous seafood paella for lunch. The market was certainly the best food that we had in Madrid. After lunch, we headed back to take our daily siesta (which is really necessary given that we ate dinner at about 10 or 10:30 and so went to bed pretty late each night). Once we woke up, we headed back to spend a little bit more time really appreciating the incredibleness that is the Prado. After the museum, we decided that we were already a little bit sick of the mediocre Spanish food that we had been eating and we found this great little Italian place called Emma and Julia. We had some delicious pesto pasta, 4 cheese pizza and a really fresh salad. It was really great to have some variety since we felt like we had been eating pretty much the same thing every meal (worsened by the fact that I don’t eat pork, which eliminates at least 80% if not more of the menu).

   

    

Wednesday: We woke up early Wednesday morning to head to the train station at Atocha to take a train to Toledo. I guess given Spain’s history I’m not that shocked, but I was certainly a little surprised by how intense the security was at the train station. You had to go through airport style security to get to the area where the trains are and then you had to give your ticket to a gate agent to get onto the platform of your train. This was really weird given that theoretically (if you don’t get caught and fined), you don’t even have to have a ticket to take a train in France… It was a quick 30 minute train ride to Toledo where we grabbed a cab to head up the huge hill to the little apartment that we were staying in called Apartmentos Touristicos Casa de los Mozarbes. After we dropped our stuff off, we headed down to the Catedral Primada Santa María de Toledo. We were outside the Cathedral looking for the entrance when this Spanish guy approached my parents and started explaining to them (in Spanish) about the Cathedral. They called Daniel over to translate and the guy ended up telling us about this great little place down the road that we should check out. Figuring why not, we decided to go explore. The guy caught up with us saying that he would show us where to go since he had to go move his car so that he wouldn’t have to pay. Once we got to this little monastery Santa Isabella, he took us inside and showed us the work room. Once he walked right in and started showing us the jewelry that was being made there, we all realized that he was actually someone who worked there and was trying to get us in to buy his stuff. We decided to play along and he showed us this incredible handmade 24K gold jewelry. It was actually really impressive and interesting to see how this jewelry was made (especially since we saw it all over Toledo the rest of our time there). However, he was not all that happy with us once we left and didn’t buy anything. It was certainly an interesting experience to say the least. 

After that, we walked back over to check out the Cathedral. It was said to be the most impressive Cathedral in Spain, and I certainly thought it was pretty great. The amazing Gold alterpiece and beautifully carved choir chairs were fantastic, and it was a pretty impressive building to say the least. After walking around for a while, we headed up to the bell tower. The view of Toledo was beautiful and the 10 or so bells at the top of the tower were pretty impressive as well. I also appreciated that they only let small groups up at a time, so that it wasn’t a problem of people coming up and down the tiny little winding staircase at the same time. Once we came back down, we were walking around the church and since I love to joke around, I thought its be funny to tell one of my family members (keeping some anonymity here…) that there was a legend that if you licked the church, you would get good luck. This person’s response was where do you have to lick it? I responded with that I wasn't sure but I assumed anywhere would do. And before we could even realize or get out camera out, this person actually licked the church. It was hilarious! After that, we headed over to the treasury to see the incredible La Gran Ostensoria de Toledo. Made of the finest silver and gold and bejeweled with gems, it measures over ten feet tall. The monstrance is famous for being used in the annual feast of Corpus Christi of Toledo to carry the communion wafer. Once we finished exploring the Cathedral, we headed down the hill a bit to find a place for lunch. We had a recommendation for this little place called Naveria where we had absolutely delicious fish dishes. After that we found this incredible overlook that looked out onto the river that surrounds Toledo on three sides. Next, we went to the Sinagoga Transisto which houses the National Jewish Museum of Spain. It was really cool to see this really old synagogue and to learn more about the important history of the Jews in Spain prior to their expulsion in 1492. I love getting to see old synagogues in Europe, given that I spend a lot of my time exploring old Churches… After that, we headed back to Zocodor square to take the Zocotram around the city to see the stunning views of the city built into the hillside and some of the remains around the periphery of the city. I probably took a couple hundred pictures just trying to capture how awesome the place is. After that, we wandered around and found this great little restaurant called Taberna Fabula for dinner. I would say that the food that we had in Toledo was certainly better than what we had in Madrid!

    

Thursday: After getting up, we walked over to the Museo Santa Cruz which used to be a hospital. The museum had some amazing El Grecco paintings, since he spent the last part of his life in Toledo, and had a lot of really interesting information about the history of Toledo. It also had a really cool exhibition showing comparisons of ceramics from all different regions in Spain. While we were in the museum, we happened upon a tour that was being given in French and I was able to translate the tour for my family, which was quite helpful since all the signage in the museum was in Spanish. After the museum visit we found a little Mediterranean place to have some lunch. After lunch we found this unbelieveable Italian gelato place on the main commercial street. I had some pistachio gelato that was just to die for! Once we finished our ice cream, we grabbed our stuff and headed down to the Europcar office just below the old part of the city. Once we got there (at about 3:40pm), we realized that the office was closed for siesta. Our taxi driver told us that he didn’t think that the place opened until 5pm. Luckily, they came back from siesta at 4pm and we were able to get our car without waiting all the long. Once we got our car, we drove just under two hours to Segovia, another great little town. However, once we got there, we couldn’t figure out how to get our car into the part of the city that we were staying in. We ended up hauling our stuff through the streets only to find out that we had to go get our car to valet park with our hotel. Driving through the little tiny streets was terrifying and I am seriously in awe of my dad and his ability to drive a manual car through tiny uphill streets! After taking a short rest in our room at Hotel Infanta Isabel (right on Plaza Mayor!!) we walked down to the incredibly preserved Roman Aqueduct to see it by night. After that, we found this great little restaurant called El Bernardino for dinner. I had a delicious bowl of shrimp soup followed by an incredibly most piece of roasted chicken, finished off with a lovely vanilla cream for dessert. It was a really great find and I was just stoked to find some food that didn’t have pig in it (Segovia is known for their Roast suckling pork, which my mom initially thought that she wanted to try, but chickened out once she saw that they literally brought the whole entire pig to the table (head and feet and all)). 

 

   

Friday: In the morning, we got up and found a little bakery next door to have a little breakfast. We ended up heading back to our room another two times to put on more clothing because it was so incredibly cold. I had brought all my winter stuff with me to send home with my family and we actually ended up all wearing all of my hats and gloves and scarfs. It’s crazy just how cold it was in Southern Europe in the middle of April!! After that, we walked over to the Alcazar. It is this awesome little old royal residence that later served as a prison, followed by military archives and now serves as a museum. There was a major fire there that ruined a lot of the place, but it has been restored and it quite impressive. We found another French tour group which was very helpful again for us. During the fire, the students chose to save the rare and important books in the library of the building that was a science academy at that point in history and in order to do so, they threw them all out the window. Also, they were able to even save one painting by cutting it into quarters and chucking it as well out the window.
   

Once we finished our tour of the Alcazar and the military museum that it housed, we headed over to the Cathedral on Plaza mayor. The cathedral was quite impressive and after that, we headed over to this famous place called Duque for lunch. We had a great cheese plate (proof that there is really good cheese in Spain) Followed by these enormous white beans from La Granja that are made in this delicious tasting soup. Traditionally it is served with sausage, but I had a delicious bowl with leaks and bacalao fish. After lunch, we walked back down to see the aqueduct by day. We found the cute little market and ended up spending way too much money on baked goods, cakes and little candies (that were all quite delicious). We walked all the way to the end of the aqueduct. The aqueduct itself was pretty impressive, but it is also amazing how well it has been preserved given that it dates back to the Roman period! After that, we headed back to our room for a little siesta. Since we had eaten a pretty big lunch, pretty late in the afternoon, we decided to stay in and watch love actually and just have some fruits and nuts for dinner (followed of course by the lovely cake that we had bought at the market earlier in the day).

Saturday: We woke up Saturday morning, packed up our stuff and headed to this little city not too far away called La Granja that has this great palace that is known to have gardens that rival those in Versaille. Unfortunately for us, the weather on Saturday was miserable. When we were in La granja (holed out in our car) it was raining so hard that it was hard to even see out of the windows, so we decided to skip the palace and head over to another town called El Escorial. There we saw the Royal Seat of San Lorenzo de El Escorial which is a historical residence of the king of Spain, built by Phillip II. A lot of the place was very stark because it was built as part the counter reform, just on the cusp of the Renaissance. However, the tombs and the monastery are incredibly ornate. This is where most of the Kings and Queens and princes and princesses of Spain have been buried since it was built in the 1500’s. The place was just enormous with over 70 stops on the audio guided tour. Inside this old residence houses one of the most impressive art collections in all of Spain. It was room after room of incredible masterpieces including pieces for El Grecco and other masters. We were really impressed and really happy that we ended up stopping there. Once we left, it had stopped hailing and there were beautiful blue skies (the weather changed every 15 or so minutes and varied from beautiful weather to miserable hail and rain storms) so we headed over to a little pizza place for lunch. Given our luck, by the time we finished eating it was down pouring and we ran back to the car. After that, we drove over to Urbanizacion Los Arroyes to Casa Nina Mana where we stayed in two rooms in this adorable little house owned by Raphael Martin Ortega. Once we got there we all enjoyed a nice glass of tea while we talked to Raphel about his life in Spain. We had a nice relaxing afternoon all hanging out together and then Raphael cooked us a delicious dinner. We had a vegetable, bean and chicken soup, followed by rice, a delicious beef stew and salad, finished with strawberries soaked in honey and lemon. After dinner we hung out a bit more, packed our stuff up and went to sleep.

Sunday: We woke up bright and early, had a great breakfast that Raphael prepared for us and left to go to the airport. My family had a flight back to the states at 11:55am and had to return the car, so we had to leave by about 8:30am even though my flight didn’t take off until 1:10pm. So after they dropped me off and we said our goodbyes ( L ) I spent some time in the airport doing some homework and having a little lunch. It was a quick and easy flight back to Lyon where I grabbed my bag and headed back home.

I had a really really fabulous spring break. It was SOOO great to see my family and I absolutely loved Spain (well, the food doesn’t compare to France, but everything else was pretty great!).