Like I said on Monday, the retreat last weekend was in possibly one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my entire life (although I have a feeling I will be repeating that phrase a lot this semester). Loyola is situated right in the middle of the Pyrenees Mountains. Seeing that I've lived in the middle of a city for 5 (now 6) weeks, the change of scenery was welcomed and very much needed. It's very easy to forget the beauty and gifts of natural surroundings when alarm sounds are common and public transportation is the norm. Anyways, here are a few pictures of the mountains. None of the pictures really expressed (I feel) Loyola really was, but these come close.
These are the Pyrenees Mountains! So beautiful!
The view looking out from the Loyola Basilica onto the rest of the property.
The opposite view from the picture above. Looking back at the Basilica, coming from the town we had toured.The entire weekend was so relaxing and peaceful, and I was not particularly happy when I boarded the bus to go back to Madrid.
However, once back in the city, I was greeted by my dad and brother who were here for the entire week! Although they arrived, a little...umm..."unceremoniously" to my apartment on the first night (see previous post), things soon settled down and I spent a lot of time with them over the week. It was a little crazy also being my midterms week to try to balance time with them and time to study, but we managed to make everything work.
On Monday, I had class and they went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and the National Cathedral, which they both seemed to really enjoy. I met up with them when I was done with class, and we ate dinner and then I headed back to my apartment to study. On Tuesday, Greg came to classes with me and my Dad toured the Prado (apparently he got a personalized, 3ish hour tour just by himself. If you ask him about it, I'm sure he'd love to tell you everything) :) Tuesdays are busy days for me every week, having class from 9:30-6 and then my ESL class from 7-8:30. So by the time I was done with my day, I was wiped out. I took the metro back to the hotel and then my Dad walked me home. I had a really big midterm the next day, and just needed to study. Wednesday included another day of classes for me (along with my Oceanography midterm, unfortunately) and a day trip to Toledo for Greg and my Dad. My dad really enjoyed getting to know more about the artist El Greco, and I think Greg was impressed by the sword production there :) On Wednesday night they also met my host mom, Paloma. With my dad being a doctor and Paloma a nurse, they had a lot to talk about! And I also discovered that a lot of medical words are cognates in Spanish and English. The four of us hung out for awhile and then they eventually left.
Thursday night brought us to our Flamenco night. It unfortunately began with a slight glitch, as somewhere along the line our reservations had been made for Wednesday night as oppossed to Thursday. Fortunately, we were still able to be seated and enjoyed an amazing show. Seriously. The place that we went to is suppossedly the best Flameco bar in Spain and hosts the best dancers, meaning that it is bascially the best Flamenco in the world. Don't worry, I've included pictures.
Basically, there were 3 parts to the show. These 3 girls would come out and dance together, then a woman by herself, and then a man by himself. Inbetween the acts, the guitar players in the background would play or one of the singers on the side would sing. This was the first act. The three girls came out in these beautiful red dresses with intense red shoes, and flamenco-ed for us all.
This was the woman who came out after the 3 girls finished. Although this was actually her final performance, I took the picture because I liked the dress :) Flamenco dancers have to order special dresses along with special shoes to perform.
After the woman danced alone, the man on the right came and danced by himself. This picture is of the final act, when all three girls plus the woman plus the man came and danced. It was quite an amazing thing to watch. After the night was over, we took a taxi home and headed to bed to be ready for the next day.Friday we spent all day together. We started our day by going to the museum Reína Sofía. I had really wanted to see the painting "Guernica" by Picasso bascially since I knew I was studying abroad in Spain. So I met them at the hotel at around 10, we had breakfast and set off to the museum. The first floor we went to had a lot of modern art, and I mean REALLY modern art. One of the first things they had on display was a 9-minute video of watching ice melt. Seriously. I could have done the same thing and made it worth about as much as it cost to make, but apparently this movie was a "priceless work of art." Go figure. Anyways, after we finished with modern art, we moved down to the second floor to see Guernica. The Sofía really does a good job of showing how Picasso led up to the painting of Guernica with different sketches and smaller paintings. The actualy painting is very impressive, and had there been benches to sit, I would have sat there all day. I stood there for about 20 minutes and then decided to move on, as the crowd was growing and we had spent about 2 hours in the museum already. After leaving, we tried to take a few pictures in front of the Sofía but it didn't quite work out.
Still a cute picture, just no sight of the Sofía. So my dad fixed the problem by taking a picture of just my brother and I in front of it.
You can tell that its the Sofía in the background because of the glass elevators.We left the Sofía and headed back to Sol, the center of the city. We had a nice lunch, and then worked our way to the Chocolerteria. It was excellent, as always :) After chocolate, Greg wanted to look around a little more for a music store in Sol. We found a couple, but he didn't buy anything. I saw one of my favorite stores (thanks in part to the suggestion by Allison) Natura, and I bought some shoes. We left Sol and headed back to the hotel to relax for awhile. We ended our night at a bar next door for dinner, with several rounds of Gin (the card game), as is traditional for any Ambrose vacay :)
This morning I got up and ate breakfast with them at the hotel and saw them off to the airport. According to the Delta website, the took off ontime and are currently somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Everything seems to be going to plan :)
OK, I think that's enough for one day, haha. I should have more time to update this week with only 1 major midterm and a normal schedule. :) Love to all!
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