Now that I’m home, I realized that I have spent a lot of time talking about the big trips that we took during the semester, but I really haven’t mentioned much about a lot of the smaller day trips. These had a huge impact on the trip, because we had some really amazing cultural experiences that I will never forget. Here are some of the other little trips that we took:
Cantabria
This was the very first excursion that we went on! Cantabria is one of the autonomous communities in Northern Spain. We spent an entire weekend here, one night in Picos de Europa (in the mountains) and another in Santander.
Cantabria was beautiful, but I was extremely sick during this trip. The night before we left I got a fever, and when I say a fever, I mean a fever. It was not casual. I was constantly either sweating bullets or feeling like I was about to freeze to death. My whole body ached and I was miserable. The first morning, when we were supposed to go on a hike in the mountains, I woke up and immediately threw up. I felt like death. I stayed behind, which sucked because I love hiking, and it looked so incredible. This whole trip was kind of a bummer, despite the gorgeous things we saw. Our program director Jesús actually ended up taking me to the ER, and they gave me saline in an IV that temporarily made me feel better. I ended up being sick for 8 days, during all of Cantabria and then our first week of classes the following week.
Besides that, Cantabria was amazing! The scenery was breathtaking, everything was so green and the water was sparkling blue. The hotels we stayed in were Fancy, capital F. The one in Santander was literally right on the beach, and we all had views of the ocean from our rooms. The mountains in Cantabria are super rocky and jagged, and the rocks are a gorgeous light gray color. Super different from the Rocky Mountains, where I grew up. So, despite being miserable and ill, it was still a great experience.
Valverde/Monumentos de Salamanca
I have to say, this was probably my least favorite thing we did. We drove about 45 minutes to Valverde, and went to a horse ranch. We spent about two hours riding horses. The scenery was really beautiful and my horse was very sweet, but horse back riding has never been my thing and never will be. I’ll leave it at that. Unfortunately (or maybe not so unfortunately) I didn’t take any pictures during this excursion.
The next day, the two women who work for our program, Vanessa and Alessia, took us on an educational tour of the historically significant places in Salamanca. We toured the Cathedral and the University, and learned a lot. This was actually really cool, because it was super important for us to learn more about the city we were living in. The heat was brutal, which was the only downside.
Mérida
Mérida was a day tacked onto the end of our Morocco trip. We had to drive through Extremadura to get back to Salamanca from Gibraltar, so we stopped for a night in Mérida and spent half a day touring some ancient roman ruins. These are extremely famous ruins, and we spent a lot of time studying them in my art history class. I could tell you tons of little fun facts, but I’ll spare you.
Toledo
In Toledo, Jesús took us on a tour of a Cathedral, museum, mosque, and synagogue. They were all beautiful, but it was boiling hot and we were all STARVING since lunch wasn’t until around 3pm. We toured everything before lunch, and then walked uphill for about half an hour to go to where we could eat because there was a problem with the bus. I literally almost passed out from a combination of dehydration/hunger/heat exhaustion. We had some free time after lunch to explore downtown a little bit, which was fun. It was a really beautiful city. It was the only place we went to in Castilla la Mancha, so I’m really glad we went.
Romería Arabayona
This was definitely the most unique experience we had. Spain has a huge population issue, called El Gran Exodus in Spanish, where the vast majority of the population live in on the coast and in Madrid, and the rest of the country is practically empty. The middle of Spain is filled with thousands of tiny little pueblos, the majority of which have an extremely old population, so they are slowly dying out. We went to one of these pueblos, about 45 minutes outside Salamanca. It had a population of 300, and it was very poor. There was only one coffee shop, and there were no restaurants.
We got a tour of their church and an underground wine cellar. Then, since it was a religious holiday, the whole town came together for a procession, beginning at the church and going through the whole town. It was basically a big parade, with music and dancing. We were the very first Americans to ever come to the town, so the local newspaper took a picture of our group at the end. It was a really fascinating experience, because we were so immersed in this untouched community.
Idly Wild 