Semana Santa & Sass

Hola!

For you, Faj. They are catching goldfish.

As you may (or may not) know, my Mommy-face and Claire are here in Spain with me. Unfortunately, however, all is not well. Why? I am missing a key piece of my life, one I may not have mentioned as much in my past blogs. This is not due to carelessness, but rather my mind has repressed my memories because it is too painful to deal with. That's right, I miss my Dad. He was unable to come to Spain due to... stuff (that's a technical term), and now I am left to suffer the consequences. I do my best to pay attention to all the fish I see, in hopes of remembering how great he is, but alas this doesn't make up for the actual being that is My Dad. So just know, we all wish he could be here in Spain, helping add to the sass. (One and a half months til I see the Most Handsome Dad Ever!) I miss you more than all the (spiral) Mac & Cheese in the world!

Thursday

Regarding the less important part of this blog: my Mommy and Claire made it to Toledo on Thursday afternoon after (I believe) a few language mishaps and a little luck. Both were quite jet-lagged but in good spirits because Spain. After my classes, I took them on the grand tour of the city where my Mommy realized I was a genius for telling her not to rent a car. It would be impossible to drive in Toledo because the streets don't believe in being wide and straight and drivable. They turned in rather early to catch up on beauty sleep and so they wouldn't be dead the next day. Sidenote: My mom was rather impressed at my ability to negotiate a cab for the next morning and less impressed when I told the receptionist that she was afraid of missing the train, which is why we had to leave so early.

Friday

Friday morning was an early wake up call. Just kidding. After breakfast, I headed over to the hotel and found both Claire and Mams still asleep. Apparently time changes are difficult and I forgot. (More repressed memories?) They got dressed and ate, but we still had a couple of hours to kill before we needed to be at the train station. Because the hotel was really close to the Cathedral, we decided to go there. And, yet again, any description I can give will not do what we saw any justice. The building is massive on the inside and a combination of simple and complicated. And beautiful. The words I use are actually meaningless until you see it. Words don't actually express the....everything (especially the work involved. 270ish years to complete a building?!?). I kept thinking (along with my Mommy) back to the book The Pillars of the Earth, which is a story revolving around the building of a 12th (11th?) century cathedral. I clearly didn't appreciate the descriptions prior to seeing a similar building. I am constantly amazed by my experiences here.

It was also a day of travel and trains among other things. We headed of to the train station and went first from Toledo to Madrid and then Madrid to Sevilla. Minor hilarity (and major sass) ensued due to the language barrier.


Mom: We aren't on the right floor! We need to go to the P one!
Me: Okay, that's upstairs. "Planta Primera" is first floor.
Mom: *looks at sign* That's not what it says! The words aren't the same!
Me: Mom, it means the same thing. Don't worry about it.
Mom: The words aren't the same!

After a brief disagreement, we made it to the right floor (the first floor!) and made it onto the train. My mommy-face was relieved and I believe I passed my translator test, so all was well. Claire and I snagged seats next to each other and spent the ride A) writing terrible poetry for a school project B) swapping sisterly gossip and C) talking about how cute the little boy in front of us was.

A Sample Of Poetry:

I am a panda.

My main hobby is eating

All of the bamboo.

The rest of our poetry session yielded very similar results and included me trying to convince Claire to present her project in the form of an interpretive dance. If you agree, leave a comment. I would be willing to pay her and put up a video because this is probably the greatest idea I've ever had. I honestly can't think of a more hilarious poetry project. No joke.

While this was going on, a really cute little boy kept peeking back at us and smiling. He and his dad were sitting right in front of us, and that kid was probably the cutest thing ever. I want one. But only for like ten minutes.

A conversation

Dad: [in English] Marcos! Don't draw on the window. When we are going by the countryside, all we are going to see is the dirt. You are going to be missing out on all of the beautiful views. 

Marcos: [in Spanish] You can still see through the window, Papa.

Dad: I know! But we don't do that. You will be distracted and it's bad for the window.

Honestly, the whole trip the kid was being both cute and sassy to his dad, and his dad would patiently explain why he couldn't do something. (I want my chocolate, Papa! ... I know but if you don't eat everything else and I give it to you, you will be spoiled.) So, so cute.

Upon our arrival, we took a taxi to our hotel and unpacked. We decided to get an idea of the city, so we meandered around the streets, finding a few of the major attractions. The main issue became finding a place to eat and my apparent lack of practical knowledge in the form of knowing words for food. Results were mixed.

I knew enough for one night, but not nearly so for the rest of the trip.

We may have stolen a menu so we could look up some of the words.

Saturday

Why do I have so many things to say??? Saturday morning, we went across the street to get our breakfast. Pastries, coffee, and sandwiches mmmmm... We were ready to start the day. It was raining, so we bought a couple of umbrellas and hoped for the best (and no. The best didn't really occur). We decided to go to the Cathedral, and, like the one in Toledo, my words are useless. So...pictures! I mean, I could say that it is impressive and the stones tower above you and create an elegance that awes you; honestly, that means very little compared to actually seeing the place. Even with pictures, the scale is lost. (Go to Spain, guys!) We could climb the tower (it wasn't flimsy metal like the Eiffel Tower, so it wasn't that bad.) and got some fantastic views of the city. Incredible. It was a fascinating place, especially because we are here during holy week and it makes you appreciate the site more.

Unfortunately, it was raining again by the time we left the Cathedral and the rest of the day involved Claire and I being rather soaked. That is life, I suppose. The Alcazar was quite close to the Cathedral so we ended up there. This was also completely worth seeing because of it's beautiful architecture (first try on that word I spelled it half in Spanish and had to show Claire) and gardens. I'm going to only post pictures of it because my abilities are sub-par in the description realm and pictures! (I'm rapidly becoming worried because I couldn't remember what I did yesterday. Also, I spent forever talking about a train ride and hardly anytime on the cool stuff. Yowza.) Claire became extremely excited by all of the animals we saw, including the peacocks inside the gardens. (Because if you tame chipmunks for fun, why wouldn't you be excited about all the lil aminals?) This might have been my favorite part of the trip so far because it was so gorgeous. And huge. It was almost endless and seemed to have secret rooms because you could just keep going forever. (I mean, until you couldn't).

After the sight-seeing, we went back to our hotel room to snack (Cheez-its!), relax and dry off. My mommy was wonderful and used a hair dryer on my pants and shoes to make them no longer feel like I had just been in a monsoon and more dry and homey (I'm sorry, first word I thought of and I wasn't changing it.) 

After The Relaxation Period, we went out into the wide world again in search of the Biggest Wood Thing in the World (Metropol Parasol). My thoughts were this would be akin to the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota, however I was both quite wrong and pleasantly surprised. You can climb the giant wood thing (my favorite) for the best view ever. Also, because it wasn't tower shaped and you can't really see the ground, it wasn't absolutely terror-filled for me. As far as not-tower-shaped goes, it looks sort of like a wooden blob (amoeba) with a path that winds around like a snake. I have quite a few pictures from there because it has some excellent vantage points.

Now you are thinking, Emily, your title has the word "sass" in it. You've told us very little about the group dynamics that led you to choose this and where the conflict is. Because sass implies conflict.

You are in luck, my friends! There is nothing that can make my mom and I sassier than A) being lost and B) having to find food. There was a discussion of sorts (i.e. lots and lots of sass going on) until we located both ourselves and food.

(Claire, obliviously: Do we know where we are?)

Food was slightly better because we knew what we were getting but it was pretty clear we didn't choose the best restaurant. Third time's the charm? We headed back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the night.

Sunday

We woke up early (lies) and my Mommy-face kindly brought back breakfast for Claire and I because laze was involved on our part. We had a few things on our checklist to do, namely see the Plaza de España, Torre de Oro and the Plaza de Toros.

To start off, we headed to the Plaza de Toros which is where they hold the bullfights. We took a tour of the place and saw a museum of bullfighting stuff (kee-rap, as my Dad would say). Today was actually quite beautiful unlike the monsoon that was yesterday, so it was a perfect day for this. I would like a fancy bullfighting costume because they have bling. (6000 euros just for a cape!) Bullfighting doesn't start til April, but it was cool just to see the ring.

After, we went just down the street towards the Torre de Oro (Tower of gold). It used to have some significance in regards to shipping but we didn't pay for audio-guides so my knowledge of the place is minimal. When we got to the top (it wasn't that high) we had a good view of the river and parts of the city. Our first two activities of the day didn't take very long, so we still had quite a bit of time to view the city.

Not the KKK

We headed to the Plaza de España next, and were stopped part of the way by a huge procession. Sevilla takes Semana Santa (holy week) really seriously and they have huge floats and people dressed up and everyone (everyone) is out and about. The crowds were huge around the Plaza because of this but we were able to witness some more of the culture. It was amazing to see although I'm glad we are heading to a different city tomorrow. The crowds are crazy! We wandered around and admired the Plaza because it is super beautiful (pictures!). We stayed there for quite a while and even got warm (in stark contrast from the cold rain of yesterday.)

In the middle-ish afternnon, we went out to eat at a crowded (like everything) pizzeria. The pizza was good (not Italy-quality though) and we decided to go back to our room to rest up for our exciting evening out on the town (that might be an exaggeration). After my mommy's power-nap (and uploading pictures to Facebook) we went out again to catch a Flamenco show.

Another brief sidenote: During this entire trip, I've been the navigator. For those of you who know my skills in this field, that is downright terrifying. I can barely get around St Cloud, let alone foreign countries. I don't even know...

Impressively, we didn't get lost on our way to the show. Unfortunately, it was all sold out so we were directed to another place where we could see the dance. But alas, for that was closed so we got a little bit to the Lost and Stressed and Sassy stage of the day. The crowds didn't necessarily help the situation. But ice cream did.

Because of the hecticness of the streets, we called it an early night. We are, more or less, prepared for another adventure to a new city tomorrow.

Adios until next weekend!