ireland, london, y el sur de espana

wow, looking below at my Barcelona and Madrid post has once again solidified in my mind how fast my time has gone here in Europe. It almost feels a bit overwhelming to even attempt to fill you in all of the stuff ive done since uve last heard from me, but I am gonna go ahead and try. This will lean more to the picture side of things, so if u want to know more, just ask. Anyways, here begins a brief summary of my past month in Europe…

February 17-18: Ronda y Cadiz

(wow, this feels sooooo long ago)…way back when, our program took a day trip to the small city of Ronda, which if I recall correctly, isn’t more than a 2-3 hour drive to the west of Granada. Ronda, a beautiful city, essentially is recognized for two things: the giant gorge that divides the city in two and containing the oldest bull fighting ring in all of spain. Check um out:

el tojo

correo de torros

Although, it was technically just a day trip to Ronda with our program, a bunch of us decided to head down to the beach city of Cadiz for the night to enjoy one of Spain’s biggest festivals: Carnival. The entire city was packed through all hours of the night, and everyone adorned a wacky costume…think Halloween on steroids and red bull and you might have an idea what it was like. Here was my steezin’ outfit, as well as Drew’s:


February 22-26: Ireland (Galway)

I finally had my chance to check out another European country other than Spain with this weekend trip to Ireland. My friend Lauren has a friend from home who is studying abroad in Galway (situated on Ireland’s west coast, opposite of Dublin), so we flew into Shannon, and we were able to stay with him for free. Just as I imagined, Ireland was plush, green, and replete with stone walls and sheep. While we were there we took a day trip to the nearby Aran Islands, another day trip to the stunning Cliffs of Moher, and even got to catch an Ireland / England rugby match in a huge Irish pub. Granted I haven’t been to Scotland, I’d still like to think Ireland has the most to offer of any of those English speaking islands. Here’s some pics:

bikin around the aran islands

a nice representative pic of ireland on the islands

the ireland crew

scalin the cliffs at the islands (mom, i could hear you saying 'be careful peter')

the cliffs of moher

February 28 – March 4: England (London)

I was barely in Granada for more than a day, before I took right back off for the isles. (I should of just stayed up there, I know!). And as you may have noticed by my closing sentence about Ireland, I was hardly impressed with the England. I still had a lot of fun on the trip, because we were with a fun group of kids, but a combination of some travel difficulties, the pound (see expensive), and some unhelpful London-ers (including our supposedly competent and travel-savvy hostel assistants) resulted in a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth by the time I boarded my return flight home. It wasn’t all bad though, on our first full day (Friday, I do believe) we went and just walked all around the city. We saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, The London Eye, Buckingham Palace, The National Gallery, and Hyde Park. We capped the day off with a huge all you could eat Indian Buffet. The next day, three of us decided to do an expensive, albeit worth it, excursion to see the famed Stonehenge monument as well as the city of Bath…On Saturday, we spent our last day checking out more of the city, specifically the bankside south section of London. Here, we saw the Tate Modern museum, the Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London. We grabbed some Portugese food for our final meal, before just relaxing for our 6am flight out of England. Although the trip was a bit draining and frustrating, it was still a place that was good to see…once.

you havent been to london till uve done this obviously

a kiss for big ben

ridin the lions outside the national gallery

bird madness – drew, lauren, and rob

the stonehenge crew

a nice look at dem rocks

takin a dip at the roman baths in...bath

rob, drew, and i at the tower bridge

March 9 – 11: Gibraltar, Sevilla, y Cordoba

After my first full week in Granada in quite some time, our program took off on an excursion to see some of the most important places in the southern region of Spain. Our first stop was Gibraltar – the small colony of the UK, which marks the very bottom of Europe. The extremely small country is made up of the largely recognizable rock, a diverse mix of cultures, and of course: monkeys!!!

monkeyin around

this ones on my desktop currently

From Gibraltar we made our way back up into Spain and to the gorgeous city of Sevilla. Sevilla has just about everything within its confines including sprawling parks, a winding river, the third largest cathedral in the world, and the Alcazar (a huge Moorish and Catholic palace)…

a nice shot of sevilla from atop the giant catherdral

Our final stop before making it back to Granada was Cordoba – a city packed with winding narrow streets covered with beautiful flowers; and of course Cordoba is home to La Mezquita (mosque) – an intricate mixture of both Islamic and Christian architecture.

the famed flower-covered Cordoba alley

…exhale…

Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed that catch up on my Europe happenings, and like always, feel free to comment cuz I like hearing from you.

Oh, and before I go, here’s my busy, upcoming schedule…

March 16-18: Trip to Morocco, Africa.
March 23-25: Showing Pete and Ryan around Granada
March 26-29: Midterms
March 29 – April 8: Spring Break to Amsterdam and Sweden with Ryan.

Alrighty then, till next time, adios.