Update

It’s about 11:30 on Sunday and I’m sitting in our new hotel room in San Sebastian. Here’s a recap of the last few days…

On Saturday the 12th, we went to “Valle de los Caidos” (Valley of the Fallen), which is a monument honoring those that died in the Spanish Civil War. On top of the Guadarrama mountains (about 45 minutes outside of Madrid), there is a basilica with an 860 ft entrance, including the coffins of 40,000 soldiers that died in the war. The Catholic Church did not want the monument in Spain to overdue St Peter’s or St. Paul’s cathedral, so they had to split the entrance sections by doors. Directly above the altar is a large dome and built on the exterior of the dome is a massive 410 ft. high cross that can be seen from the base of the mountain (I’ll try to post some pictures soon). It was REALLY cold up there and we weren’t able to stay long because the monks were about to begin mass.

After that we went to the San Lorenzo Monastery in El Escorial (a small town outside of Madrid). It is a monastery, palace, and crypt, where all the kings of Spain are buried. We toured the entire place, which was beautiful, and then took 3 flights of stairs underground into a round room containing the coffins of all of the Kings, Queens, sons, daughters, cousins, nieces, nephews… anyone who was royal at some point in Spanish history was buried there. It was very decorated and elaborate but also a little creepy.

We ended the day at about 1pm (earlier than our other days) and were able to explore Madrid a bit more. The Reina Sofia museum was offering free admission for the day so a group of us went. The main exhibits were from Picasso and Dali, including the original Guernica painted by Picasso. You should have seen the crowd around that painting!

To say the least, Saturday was a very productive day.

Well, we left Madrid at 8am this morning (Sunday), took a bus to the city of Segovia, toured a castle and saw an ancient Roman aqueduct. Apparently, Disneyland created Sleeping Beauty’s castle to reflect the one in Segovia. Again, it was freezing outside!

After a long day of travel we have finally arrived in San Sebastian. We got here at about 7pm but were unable to see much because it was dark. Our hotel is MUCH nicer than the one in Madrid. My roommate Jill and I got to watch the Charger game in our room tonight! The commentators were in Spanish which was kind of funny. We had dinner at a Basque restaurant tonight which was the best food I’ve eaten since arriving in Spain! They brought us Spaghetti and we were all so excited to eat something normal. Nearly half way through we realized there were 2 other courses on the way! No one was hungry by the time the main course arrived and the Basque woman serving us got mad at everyone. Haha.

We received keys to our apartments tonight but will not be able to move in until tomorrow afternoon, after orientation. My roommate seems really nice. It sounds like we have a similar amount of experience with Spanish and are hoping that our third roommate, who is a 19 year old San Sebastian native, will help us improve.