Madrid, Classes, and Two and a Half Weeks

This week pretty much can be summed up in one word: cold! That word has more than one connotation, but primarily the weather this week has been pretty cold…for Segovia. Maybe some of that wished-upon-me Michigan weather by everyone back at home has finally been sent over here for us to enjoy. We had a little bit of snow this morning that went away after classes, but it has still been a pretty cold week overall for us.

Outside - It doesn't look cold, but it is!

This past Sunday was our excursion to the Prado and Reina Sofia museums in Madrid and luckily the weather held out for us. One part of living in a different country means you get to experience new things, and that definitely happened in Madrid! When we first got to the Reina Sofia Museum, we encountered a protest – complete with police, signs, T.V. cameras, and all. We think that it was a protest against conservative government measures, but we weren’t entirely sure. It was really different to see the police guarding the area, but it’s a precautionary measure that made us feel a little safer about being in the area before going into the museum. Apparently it happens with some frequently in Madrid, but was still interesting to see. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Reina Sofia because I don’t particularly care for modern art, but I really enjoyed the Prado. Apparently the Prado is the world’s second most famous art museum, after the Louvre in Paris. It had hundreds of paintings from countless artists, and it was really something to see.

Outside the Prado

The second part of the cold is that I’ve managed to catch one. This week so far has consisted of me sleeping and sleeping a lot. Thankfully I’ve gotten most of what I needed to do done. Two and a half more weeks and then I’ll be back to the U.S. already!

Three More Weeks?

I can't believe how fast time is going by - there're only three and a half more weeks left before I'll be heading back home! It seems like now more than ever is going by even faster than before.

A little piece of spring outside my window!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit London! We went to Regents Park, saw the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and went to the Harry Potter Studio Tour on our first day. Our second day was the British Library, British Museum, King's Cross Station, and seeing the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and Trafalgar's Square. It definitely was busy, but I loved every minute of it!

London <3

This past week was getting back into the swing of things, on top of projects and homework. On Thursday we went to an archive close to our school to see medieval documents and their collection of books. I was in seventh heaven, and some of the documents dated back to the 12th century! The museum part of me went into observation mode, so it was interesting to see a Spanish archive for the first time. Yesterday we went on an excursion to La Granja, which is a palace near Segovia. It was built by a French king that was also king of Spain, so La Granja is also known as "little Versailles." The gardens were gorgeous and everything over here is starting to blossom into spring. Tomorrow we're going on another excursion to the Prado and Reina Sofia art museums in Madrid for the day!

Archive Visit

A Greek Adventure

This past week was our spring break trip to Greece! We had rain, not a lot of sleep, and spent a lot of time in airports, but it was all worth it. Our first adventure was to get through finals and make it to the airport for our flight to our layover in Rome from Madrid. We left after our last final to catch the bus from Segovia to Madrid and then had to take the metro to the airport before going through security. Our flight ended up getting delayed by an hour and a half, but we made it to Rome with an hour less of our twelve hour layover.

 Rome was interesting, or at least the airport adventure. My carry-on ended up getting placed in the checked luggage because the flight was full and I had a bigger carry-on, so I had to leave the past security area to go get it when we got to Rome. I didn’t have any problems getting my carry-on, but then we found out that security was closed to get back in since our flight got in so late at night. Three information desks, one airline attendant, three security guards, and about an hour later, I was able to get back in through the staff entrance. It was a humbling experience not being able to speak their native language, a problem I haven’t run into in Spain or any of the places I’ve visited before. I managed to get my point across in English to get through, but it was definitely a challenge and new experience for me. When I finally got back, we managed to find benches to try and get some sleep that night. Everything in the airport was closed, so it was a little strange being there with only a few other passengers and all of the cleaning people. Thankfully time seemed to go by pretty quickly and before we knew it we were on our connecting flight to Athens.

Athens!

I absolutely loved Athens. After we checked in to our hotel the first night there, we decided to climb this huge mountain-like hill to get a view of the city. It took forever and was quite the climb, but the view was gorgeous. The next day we went to Agora, the Acropolis, and the Acropolis Museum. Agora is basically an ancient marketplace and has an archeology museum along with all of the ruins. I loved the Temple of Hephaistos, which was built between 460-415 B.C. and is still standing. I also loved the museum, which had artifacts dating back to the 1500 B.C.! I was in history heaven the entire time. We then went to the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, which made the day even better. The Acropolis contains temples and other monuments, including the Parthenon. The Acropolis Museum was interesting to visit too, and it explained more about the Acropolis and had so many artifacts. It turns out the Parthenon has lived through a cannon explosion on top of all of the other destructive periods in time it went through! Another really interesting thing that I liked was that there were several artifact restoration projects throughout the museum and explanations for each. The Erechtheion is one of the buildings in the Acropolis that has six statue columns, but five of the six original statues are located in the Acropolis Museum with replicas at the actual Acropolis. The sixth original statue is located in the British Museum. The five statues are undergoing a laser restoration process in the Acropolis Museum and we could see what exactly they were doing. The Acropolis Museum is just one of the many examples why I want to go into the museum field, and I loved every minute of being there. It may have rained on and off the entire day, but in my opinion it just meant that everything wasn’t as crowded for us. Our last day in Athens was spent at the market and the parliament building and gardens. The market was a huge flea market near Agora that sold just about everything you could imagine. I got souvenirs there, so I won’t say what exactly I bought! After the market was the parliament building, where we got to watch the changing of the guard. Next to the parliament building are the parliament gardens, where we spent the remainder of the day before leaving bright and early for the island of Mykonos!

Temple of Hephaistos

View of the Acropolis 

View of the Hill from the Acropolis 

Me with the Parthenon, Despite the Rain

Me with the Parliament Guard 

After a one-way five hour ferry ride, we spent two days in Mykonos. Since it was offseason and their winter, it felt like we had the entire island to ourselves. We explored around on our first day and ran into more rain before watching the gorgeous sunset. Our second day we went to Paradise Beach, which was completely deserted just for us. It was a wonderful beach day and we got to get some sun before heading back to leave for the island of Santorini the next day.

Windmills in Mykonos

Paradise Beach

Santorini was another incredible island. There were more people there than Mykonos, but it was still their winter and offseason. I don’t know how many people we had ask us what we were doing there then, but I was perfectly okay with not having crowds of people. We found a boat tour that took us over to the volcano and hot springs on our second day. I’ve never been to a volcano before, so it was an incredible experience. It took forever to get to the top, but the views were incredible; and yes, it did actually smell like sulfur at the top where there were steam vents. I did go in the hot springs after the volcano, but they weren’t very hot! The water was freezing and then you would hit warmer spots where the springs were, but I can at least say I went in! We also went to a black sand beach on our last day. The sand is black from the volcano, but I liked it because it was warm. It wasn’t the best beach day, but it was nice to sit, relax, and enjoy our last day on the beach before heading back.

View from the Volcano

The Stairs on the Way Back

Black Sand Beach

Something that I loved consistently throughout Greece was the food. We couldn’t believe how cheap everything was, and then we found out that it tasted wonderful too. I think I lived off of souvlaki with pita! I think I figure out the terminology – gyro describes the meat that’s sliced but that’s what they call the entire sandwich in the U.S., sticks or skewers are the meat on skewers, and souvlaki describes the entire sandwich with lettuce, tomato, onion, fries, and cucumber sauce called tzatziki, all wrapped in a pita. I had them with pork, beef, and chicken to mix it up a little, although I think I liked the pork the best. They are the best things ever, and generally were only around two euros. Another thing that we tried was baklava, a Greek desert with a honey and filo pastry like base. I tried it with walnuts first and then caramel and both were amazing.

My First Greek Souvlaki

Another thing I picked up were a few phrases in Greek. A really common one I used a lot was efharisto, which means thank you. Yiassas means hello and can also mean goodbye too. I used efharisto a lot and while I don’t speak any other Greek, it generally got a smile from the person I was talking to every time I used it.

Santorini Group Photo

After a seven hour layover in the Athens airport, another twelve hour layover in the Rome airport and sleeping on the same benches for a few hours, and a metro ride followed by an hour bus ride, we made it back to Segovia. Classes started back up again this week, and it’s nice to get back into the normal routine. Even though I’m not home in the U.S., I was glad to get back to my home away from home after all the travelling!