WARNING: long blog post.......

Hello everyone! I'm back from my week-long trip to southern Spain, and I have a TON to tell you! As a preface to my tales, I'd like to say that Spain is Wonderful and I'm often totally caught off guard by how beautiful the things we get to see are (as you'll see in this post) and I feel SOOOOO grateful that I get to be here :)

so...

First off, we stopped at La Mancha--what's that from...anybody? anybody?? yep, Don Quixote's home town :) so of course we stopped by the windmills and castle for pictures and to read the famous part of the book where Quixote battles it out with the windmills, much to Sancho Panza's distress.



ya, I like this last one too :)
Also, at the castle at La Mancha, we of course had to have photo shoots, but also video shoots. This is my friend Robby doing a little Jason Bourne action--he thought he was so cool until he twisted his ankle :) Jovencito.....



Finally, about five hours after taking off from from Alcala, we reached Cordoba. Just as a little history for everyone, the Arabs controlled Spain for about 800 years before the reign of the Catholic Kings--this means that there is a ton of architecture left behind from them, mostly in the south since they came from Africa. So heres some pictures from Cordoba:



This is a really famous street in Cordoba where everybody takes pictures, so I did too...




Then we went to Seville! This place is also big in Arabic/Spanish history not to mention it's gorgeous! We first went to the Real Alcazar palace where they have awesome buildings but the real prize winner is the gardens--I thought for sure I had walked into a rain forest!



Also, in the south, but especially in Seville, there are orange trees lining the streets--I kid you not. They're EVERYWHERE! Unfortunaly they're all pretty green this time of year, but I did find one that had some orange oranges:


Between Cordoba and Seville, we stopped at Madinat al-Zahra, or at least its ruins. There's a lot of history to it--a massive city built b the Caliph Abd al-Rahman III and sacked by I think the Christians, and not redescovered until 1911. You should look it up :)


Also in Seville, the HUMONGO Catedral de Maria

And the Plaza de Espana, where supposudly some scene from some Star Wars episode was filmed...you'll have to tell me if you can figure it out.


But the best part of Seville (and probably the whole trip) was the Flamenco show we went to! I was AMAZED at how awesome it was! It's like a combination of tap, ballet, ballroom, and modern (at least how I see it), and it is pure, uncontained emotion that I loved!!! You would have LOVED it! I took video of every performance, and someday i'll have good enough internet to load it...





The last stop was Granada where we saw The Alhambra which consisted of the Palacio de Carlos V and Generalife (gardens of the palace). This place was really cool to, and when I say gardens of palaces, I mean miles and miles and miles of trees, flowers, waterfalls, ponds, birds, etc. etc. etc. It was gorgeous! When we first got there, the professors told us we had 5 hours to look around, and I thought they were crazy--but it almost wasn't enough time! I wish I could post more pictures, but my camera kind of died, so google it!



Best Ice Cream of my LIFE!!!