Week in Review, Andalucia Part I

Hola Chicos! Sorry it has taken me so long to get back with you all! You deserve better! Last week we were on a school field trip through southern Spain, in a province called Andalucia. The next few posts will be a review of that trip. However, this week, I've been pretty lazy, but have managed to accomplish a few things: celebrate my birthday, catch up with LOST, get addicted to Grey's Anatomy and finish the first season, visit the Sorolla Museum (he is my FAVORITE painter of all time!), and manage to get really sick yesterday and feel a lot better today. Busy week if you ask me.

Anyways, here goes on Andalucia.

Last Tuesday I got to wake up before dawn (the weird time zone in Spain means that it's always dark in the morning) and head off to school. Once there, we all piled into our favorite (sarcasm) coach bus for what would be the longest bus ride of my life. 6 Hours in all. We stopped for a half hour at a little roadside pension for a coffee. Also, they played a Spanish film in the bus which helped pass the time. I don't fit into buses very well (being tall and lanky does that to you) so the trip was tough, but the Spanish countryside is beautiful.

The trip we were taking is called "The Route of Washington Irving." You may have heard of this fellow, he was an American diplomat and author that travelled through southern Spain in the early-19th Century. He travelled between Sevilla, Córdoba, and Granada, the three cities that we visited. He wrote about his travels and research and thus introduced America to the "romantic" Spain that most people know: flamenco, bullfighting, passion, rural lifestyle. Southern Spain is definitely representative of this, however the rest of Spain reflects other cultures and modernity.

Anyways, we got to Córdoba early, which is kind of odd for us. Córdoba is a small, quiet town of cobblestone streets and brown buildings. We got to walk around before lunch, so a small group of us went off in search of postcards. We had a lot of luck and went to lunch at a small restaurant with the entire class. All I remember is that the gazpacho-like soup was very tasty. At these restaurants, some of the dishes are served community style, where you just stick your fork in with everyone else at your table and eat. The salad was served this way. It's kind of odd as an American to be sharing food like that with someone else, we always have our defined spaces for eating; our own plates.

After lunch we toured the Mezquita-Catedral. What was originally a massive mosque for the Caliphate of Al Andalus, or the Muslim Kingdom in Spain, was added on to extensively throughout time by the Muslims and then converted into a Cathedral by the Christian Kings once they reconquered. The mosque is absolutely stunning. It's a large hall, filled with pillars of various materials that support beautiful double-arches of brick and stone. The effect is a "forrest of stone" in every direction. When the Muslims came in to Spain, they used the old Roman and Visigothic remnants (pillars) to construct their own buildings. When the Catholics came, they used the building and converted the center into a Cathedral. I find it fascinating that though there may not have been absolute respect for one another's religions, the civilizations of Spain respected and admired the art and architecture of the other cultures.

Also, in the center of the mezquita is a beautiful orange orchard on a patio. The trees are all connected by a beautiful latticework of irrigation canals set within the patio. Orange trees abound all over southern Spain (as do olive orchards). Though the orange trees in the cities and mezquitas are used for cosmetics and spices (not good for just eating), the oranges that you can eat in Spain are much more tasty than those in the U.S. I don't know if you've heard of a Valencian Orange, but they originated in Valencia, Spain. The mandarins, tangerines, and other oranges are very sweet here.

After Córdoba, we hopped back on the bus for our trip to our hotel in Sevilla. I'm impressed with the nice accomodations that we get on our trips; I always feel very comfortable and safe in the hotels we get to stay in. We stayed at the Hotel Fernando III in Sevilla, which is just tucked into one of the small streets.

It was rainy and wet in the evening so we just went out to a tapas restaurant for dinner. My friend and I split the black spaghetti with scallops and crab pie. The black spaghetti was VERY good, it's colored and flavored with octopus ink, how exotic! We expected the crab pie to be like crab cakes, but it was more like a crap pate, which was a weird consistency, didn't enjoy that one so much. Afterwards we just went home in the rain.

It's weird because Andalucia is semi-arid yet this winter has been the strangest one for all of Spain in many years. It downpoured, at least once, in every city we visited in Andalucia! The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain!

That was the end of the first day, I'll fill you in on the other days later this weekend! Sorry again that you had to wait so long for a new post! Hope you enjoyed this one!