Hola Teresa y la clase 9C de Onslow St
Audreys,
Espero que sus vacaciones estuvieran
muy divertidas. Lo siento para escribir esto mucho más tarde que esperado. I have been so busy with all my classes at the Universidad de Valladolid and also from Friday 17th October-Sunday 19th October I went to Merida, Sevilla and Cordoba-3 cities in the South of Spain.
Last Friday in the morning I went to Merida which is the capital of a region in Spain called Extremadura. Merida was once the capital of the Roman province of Lusitania. While we were there we saw the famous ruins of the roman teatro and Anfiteatro which I have attached pictures of below:
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| Anfiteatro, Merida |
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| Roman Theatre, Merida |
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| Anfiteatro, Merida |
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| Me and my french friends at Roman Theatre, Merida |
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| Garden of the Roman Theatre, Merida |
After we had seen the theatre and anfiteatro (amphitheatre) at Merida we set off in the coach to our next destination: Sevilla. On the journey we watched this really funny romantic comedy called 'Ocho apellidos vascos' which was about the differences between the South of Spain (Seville) and the North (El Pais Vasco)-The Basque Country. It is all about a man from Seville who has never left Seville who falls in love with a Basque woman from the north of Spain and follows her up to the Basque Country-where he has to pretend to be a Basque so her father will approve of them being together to lots of comic effect. I have attached a link of the trailer of the film below for you to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDMpcCf5WhM&hd=1
In Sevilla we united with other Erasmus student societies from other parts of Spain-for example Granada, Sevilla, Valencia, Madrid, and even one of the student societies from Barcelona for the Evento Nacional de Sevilla!-unfortunately my German friend Jil who I met at the Barcelona summer school was not among the Erasmus students from Barcelona as there was only 1 university from Barcelona there. Everyone had their faces painted with the flags of their countries-unfortunately I can't find the photo I took of me with my face painted with the flag of England so I can't upload it here :( The entire tram system in Seville was entirely shut down dut to our parade and we felt very much as if we were a tourist attraction ourselves as we went round the whole city! The weather was very hot in Seville and it was like summer!
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| Evento Nacional Sevilla, Flag Parade, Seville |
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We had ice-cream and tapas for lunch-I had cheese with bread and a Spanish omelette as my tapas. We went to the supermarket to ge drinks for that evening as we were all going out to a 'Feria de Abril' themed party in Seville which I have attached a picture from that party:
On Saturday we had a tour around Seville around the 'barrio de Triana' of Seville and all around Seville which I have attached many photos of Seville below. We also saw the cathedral in Seville which was very pretty.
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| Catedral, Sevilla |
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| Adentro la catedral de Sevilla |
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| View from the bridge in Seville |
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| View from the bridge in Seville |
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| La catedral de Sevilla |
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| Barrio de Triana, Sevilla |
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| Catedral, Sevilla |
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| Adentro el Catedral de Sevilla |
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| Sevilla |
After we had had our city tour around Sevilla we returned back at the hotel. Once back at the hotel I found out that in order to have dinner at the hotel you had to have booked beforehand and so I was unable to get dinner at the hotel as there were no more spaces left for dinner. Instead I decided I would order a pizza. My attempt to try and order a pizza did not go well though-unfortunately I was unable to do this myself as the pizza delivery man had such a thick Andalucian Spanish accent that I could not understand what he was saying and he hung up on me. I later found out when I got one of the Spanish ESN leaders to call up for me, that all the man had been saying was that I was unable to order from that pizza delivery as they did not deliver to the address of my hotel, and that I needed to call another to get it delivered to my hotel. She managed to find out what the other number of the pizza company that did deliver to our hotel was and ordered it for me. I found out after she had done it that she had also found the man's Spanish hard to understand and had to ask him to repeat things-so it was not just me! Lesson learned-never study Spanish in Andalucia because their accent is very hard to understand even for a native Spanish speaker from another region! After I had eaten later in the evening we had another fiesta-this time the theme was animals and me and the 2 Italian girls I was sharing a room with decided we would all dress up as cats and this is the picture of me and one of the Italian girls wore to the party:
Overall I had a really great time that night in Seville but I ended up staying out really late (until 6am-which was when the last bus was!) which was fine because by the time I got back to the hotel the two Italian girls I was sharing with were still up! The next day we had to check-out of the hotel in Sevilla and go on to Cordoba. I was absolutely exhausted that morning getting up for breakfast as I had stayed too long at the party! Once we had checked out we started on the way to Cordoba. Cordoba was really different from Sevilla in many ways-for example in its Arabic influences mixed up wth the Roman and Christian influences. In Cordoba there were all kinds of strange smelling foods in the air because this city is highly influenced by the Arabic. While we were in Cordoba we had a walk around the city and even there you could see many differences between Cordoba and Sevilla. An example is that the colours of the buildings were much more varied and brighter-there were a lot of reds and bright yellows in the buildings of which I have attached some photos of so you see. We also went to see the famous 'La Mesquita' (mosque) of Cordoba-which is unlike any other Mosque because it is influenced from 3 very different religions: Roman, Christian and Arabic and this is reflected in the inside of 'La Mesquita' which I have attached many pictures for you to see. It is huge and very beautiful and the decorations inside 'La Mesquita' were very ornate-our ESN guide tried to talk to us about 'La Mesquita' using headphones and headsets-at first mine was broken but they got me a new one that worked, unfortunately shortly after, everyones headsets broke and no one could hear him anymore. After we had tapas and I had a half portion of chicken with garlic and onion sauce and a tapas portion of pork with tomato sauce-both of which were very good.
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| Street in Cordoba |
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| Cordoba |
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| La Mesquita, Cordoba |
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| La Mesquita, Cordoba |
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| La Mesquita, Cordoba |
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| La Mesquita, Cordoba |
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| Outside of 'La Mesquita', Cordoba |
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| Entrance to La Mesquita, Cordoba |
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| La Mesquita, Cordoba |
Overall the trip was amazing and was well worth missing a day of classes and was worth the 126 euros it cost as it included a lot of sites in 3 days. I also made many more friends on this trip-including the two Italians who I shared a room with and numerous girls from South America and one from Athens in Greece.
I hope that you are all well and that you have enjoyed your holidays,
Adios para ahora y hasta la semana que viene,
Becky
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