Spain - Segovia

Hi, it's Candace again! =) Today (as of now about a week ago) we took a day trip to Segovia. As soon as we were up and ready we head out the door to catch the 2 hour train ride.  The scenery was filled with beautiful green valleys with hay tools, trees and houses spread sparkly through out with mountain back drops. Once in Segovia it was only a 3 minute taxi ride to the aqueducts. they were huge and very cool to look at.  Each block had a small indentation in them and jason and i thought that might be how they lifted each one and construct this massive bridge to carry the water from one side of the town to the other.

On our way to the castle we went slightly off the beaten path and found a mini aqueduct on the railing for stairs.

At the top we were rewarded with a fountain where we could refill our water bottles it was cold and refeshing.

Along the way to the castle we stopped to look at a cathedral that was on the way. When you enter there is the main central area for mass that is beautiful but as we walked along the walls surrounding the center as there were a bunch of mini alters.  It seemed funny as the whole place was quiet with soft church choir music in the background and here Jasons voice comes, seemingly booming, with the narration from the english pamphlet we were handed when we walked in.

My favorite part was walking around the inner courtyard area that had elegant architecture as you walk around the halls peaking into the gardens.

Heading to the castle we walked through really cute narrow streets.

Such a cool place to walk, literally it was nice an cool with all the shade!  We approached to castle after a quick 10 minute walk. It opens to a gate that leads to more gardens.

Outside of the castle are empty motes that used to be filled with 20 meters of water. Of course Jason had to slack line (a new sport where you literally balance and walk across a line hung between 2 points) across the chains.

Once we entered the castle Jason got hungry and pulled out a snack and began eating an apple. On the lower level of the in side it was set up like a museum with knights in armor and displays of how old bedrooms were set up. Ceilings, walls, and floors were all given attention with artistic detail. 

Throne room-

We reach a room with a balcony and view of the town below, Jason now done with his apple decides to chuck, as HARD as he can, the apple out the balcony arch ways. An innocent by stander enjoying the green view below gets pelted in the chest with the deflected apple core! "oh oh lo siento" "so sorry sir" Jason picks up the apple again with more determination on his face he chucks it again this time being more carful with his aim and it deflects off the plexi glass again covering the entire opening to balcony and nearly hits the same guy again. Aas the guy walks away confused at what just happened and whipping his shirt with his handkerchief  you can see a dark stain on his shirt where the apple hit. It was only moments later after the shock of embarrassment of what just happened we were both cracking up at the highlight of the day so far.

Needles to say the mood was much lighter after that. We continue and moments later walk out onto an actually balcony, with me now holding the apple for safe keeping i now hand it to Jason to have the final satisfaction of throwing the apple into the green tree filled landscape below. On the other side of the castle was a garden that was just for looks along with a few fruit trees. i have to say I just love manicured landscapes like this.

In off the balcony was the armory room filled with old cannons, knight outfits, swords and anything else a young boy dreams about when they play battle with their friends. of course jason was caught up imagining what it would have been like way back then as a soldier. Off of that room was also a coin minting room

As we walk back to the entrance we head to the 152 step stairway up to the top passing old prison champs along the way.Once at the top we were rewarded with a Stunning view.  Ulike the other views high up where all you see are the roof tops of hundreds of buildings and houses this one was filled with trees, green fields, mountains, small towns, and the spuratic house. Jason is Jason of course and decides that this was not enough and climbs up to the top of one of the 4 surrounding towers to get an even better view and a video of the panoramic.

Growing hungry we head down and back to the main square for some food. Unfortunately none of the nicer "tapa" restaurants are open til 8pm so we find a place along the way back to the station because our train leaves at 9pm. We ended up at a typical small narrow restaurant with chairs at the bar and a few tables along the opposing wall to eat at.  They had a game of tennis on so we decided it would do.  We had a veggie sandwich, battered shrimp with lemon and a plate of "prime" cut cured tenderloin stirps that looked like a plate full of salami arranged to be put out as a party tray. The waiter did give us about 5-6 mini crispy slices of baguette to go with the 20 slices of meat though… hahah. Jason dug right in.

Back in Madrid at 11pm and we decide to call it a night.

Spain - Madrid

   Hello!  Sorry for so long between Nice and Barcelona, its been a bit crazy!  SO Madrid...  Now we happened to get into Madrid around Midnight, though our intention had been 11pm.  Interestingly enough our HOST had never done Airbnb before so she didn't confirm us...  Which means that we could not get any of her contact info -- as in Address, phone number, etc..

   This led to a fun bit of detective work to figure out where her place was and a bit of luck to see if we could even find her.  After a taxi ride, a confident wander about(thieves get excited at the stumbling, slow lost and wandering tourist.  So walking fast and confident fixes some of that), and a score on a cool cafe with some internet, a few things came together.  We didn't have an actual address, so Candace used some of the pictures describing the place, one in particular of the outside of the building, to get a visual of what the place was like.  I went out and found the building! lol.  Our host was standing outside with a friend hanging out waiting for us - Yay!  We then taught her how to confirm bookings =)

    We woke and figured out how were were going to get to Rome later, whether it be a ferry, flight, or train.  Went shopping for some food and then headed out to my hometown Acala De Henares, which is 20-30 minutes east of Madrid by train.  Funny thing is we got to the station to leave for Acala and as we got down the escalator to get on the train it literally started slowly pulling away!  I was like NOOOOO!- While I ran after it.  I don't know if you have ever had the feeling - The one where you do actually get to the dock and the boat just unroped 30 seconds ago and its pulling away and everyone waves at you as you sit there and watch.  Or that you missed the train by 10 seconds, because that's exactly what happened to us...  luckily the next train was only like 30 minutes from then, so we busted out our two Kindle programs (one program is on Candace's phone where I downloaded Hunger Games, book 2 for her, the other the Kindle fire won from SW region contests, where I had At the Queen's Command: The First Book of the Crown Colonies on it.  Have since finished the book and recommend it, and have downloaded the second Of Limited Loyalty: The Second Book of the Crown Colonies.   I just think its funny he puts the Series Name in his titles of his books so I did the same :)

Candace wrote the Acala blog entry and its been posted so cool!

    It was great being in Acala and seeing my hometown where I studied abroad.  Great memories!  Back in Madrid around 11pm, we got ready and went to El Kapital, which Candace also wrote about.  Last time I was there I guess I didn't even get to see the top two levels!  We didn't even know they existed until we kept going up and going up...  Cool light shows from above the dance floor - Huge structure that moved dozens of different ways and blew out Fog with a strong cool breeze that could cool the whole room down and blind everyone momentarily..


  
   The next day we got up and walked over to a vegetarian restaurant we found that had really good reviews.  On the way we passed a couple huge buildings, which Madrid has a plethora of - Congress De Los Diputados -



It was hotter so we were always making sure to walk on the side of the street that had the shade wherever we walked to.  We 1st went to a huge plaza and got a map of Madrid and a bus tour pass.  This included two different bus tours of Madrid, one (Line1) going northwest and west while the other went north and covered the eastern portion of the city.  We started with Line1



Remember, bus tours are a LOT of pictures and Little commentary.  But we did happen to find, through our headphones, a Cat voice.  It was interesting to hear his commentary, probably designed to entertain kids on the bus who were listening, but since Candace loves cats so much we got a smile out of her every time he talked =).  At the end of describing something he would always throw in something about him being a cat like - "Now thats a tall building.  Even though I have 9 lives, I wouldn't want to try that out!", and so on and so on.



And the bus tour goes on... An ancient Egyptian Tomb gifted to the Spanish Throne -



We decided to take a break from the tour shortly after and got off (since you can get back on every 10 minutes anyways anytime you want), and took a walk through some Gardins and passed an interesting performer -











We walked back over and took a seat on some grass in the shade and read our kindle books while the breeze, open atmosphere, plaza in front of us, huge statue behind us, and thousands of leaves above us sunk in.  Eventually we hit up the bus tour again to move on -



This arc was 5x smaller than the Arc in France.  But hey, since we don't have many Arcs in the US it was still cool.



Lots of cool buildings.




We passed by an area where there were a ton of people creating a flowing crowd.  We thought maybe a festival was going on?  10 seconds later we caught site of the Futbol stadium.  It appeared that a soccer game was going to start because it was absolutely crazy around it.



  I was down to get out and maybe get some tickets.  Candace not right then, and since shes usually down for anything and everything, when on the occasion that she isn't, it's not a biggie, so on we moved on-





CENTER of the country! -



  Time for another stop - Hard Rock Cafe Madrid.  We got some amazing nachos and watched music videos that were live music performances by The Doors, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, and tons of other old school rock and roll bands.  Getting back on the tour bus we headed back to the main square Plaza del Sol, and scored some cool performances by some street performers.



Got actually got a CD from these guys so maybe you will hear it at the next wine and cheese party!

This guy had his mannerisms down pat so Candace fell for his act and wanted a picture!



Well done!



There were some pretty crazy other performers out there in the square too - EX:



We then took the metro back to our area, grabbed a bunch of fruit, and headed up to chill.  I worked on the blog a bit with a open window to Madrid-



Candace had a little fruit ses -

The next day we headed out to Segovia.  An awesome day trip from Madrid that I did once a long time ago on my abroad trip, so I wanted to take Candace there to see it as well.  She has written that blog entry so we will organize the pics for it and post it soon!! 

Spain - Acala De Henares

Acala De Henares

So, it's finally my turn (Candace) to help write one of the blogs. =)

Acala De Henares Spain the city Jason studied abroad in for 2 months.  It was cool to finally see the places Jason has been talking about over the years. He prepared me for a quaint little town with nothing more then a small university and a few restaurants and shops but I found it quite charming.


Immediately, once we arrived I began dodging into cute and quaint boutiques and shops finding really cute dresses that were very inexpensive, but before getting to involved Jason steered me away from the shopping eager to show me his old college.  We walked through a long courtyard with flowers, greenery, oh and Jasons favorite thing to take pictures of a statue.



He began explaining to me how this place fills up with tables and chairs after the sun begins to set and waitresses serve wine beer and food. Just behind the statue is the University. Unfortunately it was closed but we still took a stroll around it getting the occasional glimpse of a hallway through a window and a peek through a gate to cobble stone courtyards splashed with gardens of grass and flowers and the occasional bike stand out wide of the entry doors. We finished where we started at the front door of  the school where we sat on a marble bench and Jason quietly reminisced about all the people he met and all of their individual agendas.



On our walk back towards the square he began telling me stories. One of his friends Brock was not there to learn Spainsh like Jason and the rest of the group, he was there to party and have fun, Jason could always count on him as a wingman.  When going out for an adventure to check out a new cities nightlife he primarily hung out with a group of 7-8 girls (an over whelming portion of the study abroad population was girls) and Brock, Brett, and sometimes Eric, admitting he never really knew where they were going or how they got there, the girls generally took over that part.



Browsing menus along the way back to the main shopping area Jason again steers me straight through and down an alleyway to show me where he used to live and the phone where he used to call home to say "Hi" to his parents and ask for more money.



His old family wasn't there but we managed to peek into the window and checked it off the list.



Hah hah!  Now it was time for shopping! We picked up some cherries form the corner market to tide us over while shopping. along the way we  stored cherry seeds in our cheeks and each time we came upon a trash or sewer we'd assault it and spit 3-4 seeds at a time into it like bullets.

First stop Jason found a cool Clint East Wood shirt that had spanish on it and I found a fun dress/shirt to wear to "The Kapital" club later that night. Everything was so inexpensive compared to what we were used to in the other countries we visited so far. 



After shopping we stopped for food. Again SUPER CHEAP!  First place we stopped at we got 2 lipton ice teas, 2 beers, 1 wine and a sandwich for only 12eruo plus because we bought "so much" they also delivered an extra tuna wrap for free!



Before leaving we had a seat in the square to people watch and enjoy another drink and a cigar. Kids were playing, adults were lounging, while new lovers would stroll through enjoying the scenery as we were.



once back in Madrid we immediately changed and head out for "El Kapital"! It's a 5 story club with different rooms, a main floor with a major dance floor with crazy light shows and cold fog that shoots down at you, dancers female AND MALE dancers on stage (finally something for the guys to get jealous of rather then just having girls on stage) and two bars on either side.



Among the other floors you could look over the balcony to the main dance floor, enjoy 3 other atmospheres with different music, or a level with out music on the roof top where everyone smoked and a room for Karaoke. Later into the night (around 2am) there was a bongo player, easy to stay entertained at this place with so many floors and different things to do.



Jason and I booth got a song in for Karaoke and dance our butts off. We had a great time, best thing of all was that is was only a few blocks from where we were staying and we just stumbled home.

Spain - Barcelona

    From Nice to Barcelona we had a couple stops on the train.  I took the liberty of utilizing the 1 hour layover on one to connect to wifi at McDonalds and download + put into a document everything about Barcelona that we could find that we had interest in.  For the next 3 hours on the train we read it all, researched and narrowed it down to what we wanted.

    We met our host at The Cathedral and realized real quick that our location was prime.  We walked 2 minutes from the Cathedral and were at our place.  We had our own big room with couch, fridge, microwave, etc.  As soon as we had our bags down, Luis gave us our tour which ended up in the kitchen where he presented us with something to eat.  He said "it being so late I knew you would be hungry".  I was internally thinking oh NO, in Spain you eat what is prepared for you no questions asked and to do otherwise is considered more rude even than in America.  I remember this from my study abroad and living with a family for 2 months.  BUT - out came my favorite thing from Spain that I hadn't had in so many years - Spanish Tortilla!  YES!!   You just can't get this in America - Its like a pie, but consists 90% of Potatoes and Eggs and doesn't taste like either.  I was definitely warming up to this Luis character real quick.  We gladly ate all the tortilla we could, and saved the rest for bxfast as we crashed and got ready for -

EPIC DAY -
    I did my morning workout and Candace joined in.   She called me her personal trainer so I told her different things to do and it was fun.  We ate the rest of the leftover Spanish tortilla and then headed out to the Cathedral literally in view like 1 minute away.  It was a beautiful Cathedral and we realized why we like them so much - they are all so different, massive, and beautiful.  Again, reading Pillars of the Earth lended me my strength to be able to endure viewing Cathedral after Cathedral, and for Candace the artistic appeal is obvious.  If you just haven't been to one of these, they are just ridiculous in the scope and size - Meant to inspire men and women with their beauty to create and strengthen belief in God, to be a symbol of strength and greatness + more.  So if you take it for that and just soak in the ancientness of a lot of these buildings it can be pretty cool.



    Outside the Cathedral was an antique market so Candace checked it out while I searched for Wifi spots on my phone.  Soon, after finding out that it was not easy locating one, we bought a new camera and had some PAELLA, a famous spanish dish that comes in a huge iron skillet full of rice, peas, full-shelled large crawfish and mussles and fish, + spice and more.  To top it off we had some Gazpacho, a special Spanish soup served cold with vegetables in it.  Sanchez in Grand Rapids, MI, serves great Tapas and Paella, etc but other than that nothing in the US has lived up to the recreation of good, authentic, Spanish food.  



    Without Wifi I just had to ask a local for the directions we needed to get to La Familia, one of the coolest architectural buildings in the world.  Originally concepted by Gaudí, it is one of the most interesting buildings in Europe.  It's a work in progress, as Gaudi was actually killed in a Tram accident after about 20 years of work on the building.  Nowadays it is being worked on with a goal of completion in 2030.  Since I was last there when I studied abroad, not much has changed, but I HAD to show Candace PLUS this time I wanted to go inside.

    Before we got there on the Metro though, I sparked up a conversation with some locals (all in Spanish) and before we knew it, this super kind lady was all excited about showing us this old-school hospital.  We diverted our stop to there, since we HAD heard about it, and because of her enthusiasm, we checked it out and had a good look inside while I pretended to be a pre-med student. =)



    Back to the metro and onto the walk over to La Familia.  It was a beautiful walk, and we enjoyed the weather as it was a gorgeous day. 



  Soon the building came into view…  The structure is a combination of art and religion as Gaudi strove to combine new and innovative artistic designs with old traditions and grandeur to create with his vision, and in his mind, the greatest and one of the last cathedrals ever to be built.



    We started at the ticket office, purchasing a ticket for entrance and also for the "lift" to the top.  The lady said it would be "cinquenta minutos".  "50 minutes!?" I said.  Hmm I donno I think that we might just be waiting around forever once we see inside.  Candace chimed in and said - "don't worry about it", so we purchased the "lift" to the top, which supposedly yielded a great view of Barcelona and allowed you to see some of the towers first hand… an hour later and we were like "oh crap, we gotta get on that lift!".  We had seen the outside of the Cathedral on both front and back, the museum inside describing the history of it, videos of the visit of the Pope, the inside of the Cathedral itself,



different drawing by Gaudi from back in the day with his visions of the building, and stories of fires and obstacles that were overcome. 



It was cool seeing pictures depicting the past, present, and future of what the cathedral looks like.



    Once on the lift and at the top, we had to hike up some more stairs and were rewarded with a view of the city of Barcelona that was awesome.



    We began winding through the towers of Gaudi, grabbing snapshots here and there and enjoying the architecture up close, while checking out the workers building the new sections.


   
    We then descended the towers in the coolest spiral staircase EVER.  From the top you could peer into the center and see the bottom, which is never the case.  The hole literally went all the way down hundreds and hundreds of feet rather than like 10 feet.



    Once done, we finished our tour of the inside, checked out the outside one more time and a cool brass door covered in carvings and imbedded with cool pieces.  I took like 10 pictures of it, breaking it into random sections and have since posted one of them as my background on my labtop. 



    Finally we left and initiated a walk to the 1st place of our Barcelona party night, coming right out of our research - A famous English pub, The Loch Inn.  Only a 5 minute walk from La Familia,  The pub had an amazing beer on tap Franzishaner Weissbier, also a favorite of the workers at the pub.



  They had internet there so we checked out the huge music festival going on in Barcelona, Sonar, and Candace went to AirBNB and checked out some places.  A soccer game started up so I watched a soccer game with the locals.  Halfway through the game at the break, they busted out a soccer video game on PS3 and played with the exact same teams that were on playing live.  The tradition is that what happens at halftime during this "virtual game" will help to dictate what happens during the rest of the real game.  The problem lies in the fact that one of the people playing the game is usually better than the other =)

    The game looked so real that when Candace got back from a break, she looked at the computer game being broadcast on the main screen and made some comment about the game.  When we told her it was just a video game, she was like - OH, it looks more real than the other game!  Which could be true depending on the HD quality of the game being broadcast.

    After a smoothie ( WISH they had a vitamix to actually blend it properly! ), we headed home, got ready and then off to Slow Barcelona we went!  This place had, through our research, a bartender ranked #4 in the world.  By who or what, or if it was really true we didn't know.  But anyone laying claim to that should be able to put together a pretty unique and good cocktail.  When we arrived it was CLOSED though, and only open Friday & Sat.  So we wandered around looking for Tournesol, a cool atmosphere place that has great seating and looked worth of a checkout.  Unfortunately it didn't come up on my google maps, and the phone number wasn't working… BUT they had a website so we knew they existed.  Finally found them and had some Bruschetta, tuna wraps and Guac + chips & chilled,



    From there we caught the Metro before it closed around 11:30 and took that to Razzmatazz, which was just opening at midnight.

See in Barcelona, things start late =)  This place had 5 big rooms in which music was being spun by DJ's.  When we got there we entered into Room #1 and the DJ there was playing some industrial music playing. 
    Moving to room #2, this was the Pop room, playing remixed popular hits with a dubstep underbeat.
    We moved to room #3 and the DJ there was playing some trance music while the place was completely dead.



    The DJ in room #4 was playing some interesting music kinda techno but with a lot more flavor rather than beats just building on eachother.  It was this room we came back to several times.
    Also there was another room not worthy of mention.
    We kept wandering



There were cool projectors outside between rooms projecting stuff - one of the coolest projections was fans on the wall, because initially we actually thought they were fans for a second :)



Soon it started to get busier and busier. 
   Around 2am a concert started in room#1 and we sat down on the second level and looked out over the crowd as Modestep performed.



     It was pretty good actually for being a concert that we didn't even know was going to happen!  haha.  I don't know what was more fun, watching the performance or watching all the F*#%$d up people being nutzo from whatever drugs they were on.  We alternated.  One dude got up on a platform with girls on it and just started dancing in front of them.  After getting pushed off a few times, he charged through the crowd knocking into people everywhere and making his way to the front where he got into a shoving match with plenty of guys.

    The next day after bxfast from Cat's Bar, a vegan place,



, we did some research, then headed out to the beach.  The walk down was nice, as we walked by a harbor, and along the beach all the way down to where Icebar was.



    Entering IceBar, one of our "things to do in Barcelona", we equipped up with winter jackets and gloves in preparation for the currently -12 degree temperature inside the bar.



    Once inside we could see that everything was made of ice ->  The walls, the seats, the sculptures, even the cups that we drank out of were made of pure ice.  On a TV in there, IceAge 2 was playing continiously while we took pictures, enjoyed our icedrink, the tunes, and began to get colder and colder.



   Only 10 feet away was the nice warm Barcelona beach, so we caved in, finished our drinks, exited the bar, and found a nice spot to lay out on the beautiful sand. 




    Taking a taxi back, we got dropped off at the Cathedral and did some shopping in some cool bristling alleyways.  One of our friends, and also someone from Arizona and on our Fair & Show team, Mike Staley, happened to arrive in Barcelona today so I called him to see where he was and we met up for dinner at a cute little place we found.  Randomness - it was pretty cool just meeting up with him randomly in Barcelona.  We got to hear his Spanish skills a bit, chit chatted, and we told him what there was to do in Barcelona so that he could have a bit of an inside scoop.  I emailed him my research and gave him my Map that I had plotted out where all the cool things were, then Candace & I headed to the train station to make our train to Madrid at 9pm.  I definitely had more fun this time in Barcelona than last time I was here.  This was one of our favorite places thus far, Jason & Candace