Hello all! It has been a while! I have been incredibly busy and am just now able to catch my breath! So leading up to the trip that this post is about, I had the rough draft of my dissertation due at the end of June. THAT WAS CRAZY. I could barely think I had so much work to do. I had spent nearly four weeks transcribing the data for my research, and had roughly only two weeks to do the ENTIRE DISSERTATION. It was a difficult time, because July 1st I was flying to Spain! I got it done, but I think it is absolute rubbish! It is just the rough draft though, the final copy isn't due till September. I am not worried.,...yet. We will see how I feel after I meet with my supervisor!
So the trip! For this one, I actually was staying with someone. A friend from my mom's younger years had invited me to visit her. My mother had flown out the week before and Andrea and I went out on July 1st to visit her. Strangely the guy at the airport in Dublin, where we had our layover, gave me a hard time. Like dude, come on, I am literally going to be here less than two hours. Leave me alone. Once we got to Spain though, it was easy going.
Now, for those of you who live in Europe, you may be aware of the horrid heat wave that has had a hold on Spain the last few weeks. I did not get a single day of that! In fact, two out of the six days we were there were chilly and rainy! My mom's friend (Carmen) lives on the northern coast of Spain, so the ocean currents kept the area much cooler than the rest of the country. Where we were was stunning. Rolling hills with forests and farms hit the coast immediately and created some stunning views.
So rather than go day by day, like I usually do, I am just going to go over the highlights. The first of these highlights was when we visited a Medieval village named Santillana del Mar. There are lots of Medieval villages and cities (looking at you Edinburgh) that I have been to throughout the UK, but to see one from a completely different part of Europe was a fantastic treat. There were many walls throughout the village, and in the center a massive church/monastery. In front of the monastery was an old trough where the women used to wash their clothes, and the cows would drink. It still standing, the same as when it was built, for hundreds of years.
Behind it was the church. It started out as a Benedictine monastery that was converted into a church under the command of the order of St. Agustin. Apparently it is the largest of its kind in the area. It certainly was an imposing, and beautiful building from the outside.
Inside it was just as gorgeous.
Now, I know next to nothing about the architecture of this time period, or what the particular beliefs were of the people who worshiped here, but from my own knowledge of history I noticed a few interesting things about this church. There was A LOT of iconography traditionally associated with pagan religion, particularly of Celtic paganism. Celtic is actually the culture that existed in this region before the Roman invasion, and eventual Christian take over of the area. The iconography I am referring to in particular are animal faces, and the use of spirals, as seen on this column.
Spirals are always heavily used with pagan art, along with images of animals. They are not usually associated with Christian art, but since this is fairly early in Christianity in Europe, there could be some overlap....or I am completely wrong. I never took an art history class!
Anyways behind the church was the old monastery. There were stone carvings all around on columns and in the center a courtyard.
It was really stunning, it is always fascinating to walk the same halls that people have for hundreds of years. After we left we headed out to the rest of the village. My mom bought a leather purse so fresh it smells like a living cow. We had some coffee ( I had a hot chocolate) and explored for a while before heading out. It was just so beautiful, and there were flowers EVERYWHERE, a trend I noticed throughout Spain.
Next up on the big highlights was the day we went into the mountains. Now, spectacular mountains may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Spain, but boy do they got them! The mountains we went to were called the Picos de Europa. Unfortunately it was really cloudy and foggy on the day we went, so we didn't see them in all their glory, but what was did see was still spectacular. These shots are some I got while on the tiny tiny road through the mountains.
I mean those are pretty fantastic, and most of it is completely obscured! I got stuck in back seat middle hump, so I couldn't see much, but we pulled over to the side of the road to take a look around every-once and a while, so I got to see some stuff. We eventually stopped at a vineyard that made hard liquor. Carmen's husband knew the owners. We got a private tour of the facilities, which was awesome, and a tasting of all the liquors. I am not much of a drinker, but it was still really cool to see everything. They used a special kind of contraption to extract the alcohol from the grapes that was unique to the region!
After the vineyard we headed to a restaurant for lunch. This restaurant was literally perched on the side of a mountain in a tiny village that we had to climb up and up and up to get to. I couldn't imagine trying to go up those roads in the winter! When we got up there it was so gorgeous.
Looking out over the mountains was stunning, and the little village itself was so beautiful! I was surprised anyone there could speak English (the waiters could) because it was so remote.
We had an absolutely delicious meal. It was a local dish that was so filling I barely ate dinner later that night. Out of all the countries I have visited, the food in Spain was definitely the best! After lunch we drove to a place where you could take a cable car to the top of the mountain. When we got there we were told it was so foggy at the top you would not be able to see anything. After a little debate, we decided we wanted to go up anyway. This is what it looked like from the bottom....
Yea not very promising. We got to the top and that is pretty much what it looked like. It was kind of claustrophobic to be honest. It was also incredibly hot, which was a stark contrast to how chilly it was at the base of the mountains. We were just about to head back down when there was a ever so slight break in the clouds, and we got to see what was behind us, even though what was below us did not clear out.
That is still pretty nice! The moment passed pretty quickly though, and we were once again engulfed in clouds.
Once we had left the mountain top, we started our drive back. On the way, we passed through another Medieval town. This one was a bit bigger than the last one, and had an old tower at its center. There was such beautiful buildings everywhere, and a river that cut through the town.
I couldn't get over how wonderful this town was. There are so many gorgeous pictures that I took there (keep an eye on my Flickr page to see them!). It was a wonderful day that left me completely exhausted! To be fair I was pretty tired throughout this entire trip though, but this was a particularly full and satisfying day.
The next thing I want to mention were the caves. Now, I have a degree in Anthropology, and because of that I have studied the paleolithic cave paintings of Europe many many times. I never thought I would actually get to visit any. So when Carmen asked if we would be interested in seeing them, I was extremely surprised and excited. The first cave we visited was Neo Altamira Cave. This is one of the most famous and significant cave painting sites in the entire world. It has been called the Sistine Chapel of cave art. It is a rather large cave, with one of its ceilings entirely covered in massive paintings of buffalo, horses, goats, and deer. It is truly a wonder considering they were painted 35,000-11,000 BC. However, we didn't get to go inside the real cave. The real cave has been closed off in order to preserve it, and what people can tour today is a replica.....a replica you are not allowed to take pictures of. *sigh*. You can read a bit about it
here. The closest you could get to the real cave was about 50 feet from the entrance, which was sealed off. It was emotionally painful being that close to the cave but not being able to go in it. The replica was amazing, but as our host Carmen said, you lose the feeling of being in the cave, the atmosphere of it all, when you are in the replica. Of course I 100% support the real one being closed off to the public. Preserving it is more important than me be able to see in person.
We did, however, get to see caves where we got to go inside the real thing. These were called
El Castillo and Las Monedas. When we visited these caves it was an incredibly hot and sunny day, but inside the caves were extremely cold, so we had to carry jackets around with us! The first cave was enormous. Staggeringly enormous. It literally went on and on. I didn't realize we weren't allowed to take photos inside the cave, which seems ridiculous to me because if you aren't using flash there is no way taking a picture can hurt the cave! But whatever....I managed to get one picture before the tour guide yelled at me.
This sad little photo was near the beginning of the cave. You can't even begin to see how large it actually is. We took a tour of the cave, sliding all the way because the ground was wet and my shoes had no traction, and we learned a bit about the history of the cave. They had found the skeletons of bears in the cave, along with a sack of coins and footprints leading away from them. Most importantly, they found paleolithic cave paintings. There were only a few, and they weren't as detailed as the ones in the previous cave, but they were the real thing right in front of me. It was extremely emotional and exhilarating to see them. There were a few paintings of horses and reindeer mostly. The next cave had a much wider variety.
The second cave was also pretty massive, and it had A LOT more cave paintings. Outside the entrance to the cave was a massive archaeological site, where excavations had revealed human habitation of the site for tens of thousands of years. Inside the cave, once again it was very cold. Now I can't remember as much about the history of this cave, as the tour guide spoke very little English. I do remember the paintings though. There were hand imprints all over the cave. Seeing these imprints were....indescribable. They were the hands of people that lived tens of thousands of years ago and they were right in front of me. There were also more bison, horses, reindeer, regular deer, and goats to be found around the cave. It was seriously one of the most amazing experiences, one I never thought I would have. Again, no pictures in the cave, so the best I can offer is this picture of a snail I took outside the entrance :)
So the last thing I want to talk about is, of course, THE BEACHES! Oh the wonderful beaches. I should say that I rarely ever go to the beach. The last time I went before this was roughly a year ago, and the weather was so cold and rainy I never went in the water and I was on the beach for maybe ten minutes total. Before that, I can't even remember when I had last gone to the beach. It had to have been years. So this was pretty exciting for me. On the sunny days we went and relaxed and swam in the water. I got so lovely tan and basked in the wonder of it all....also in jealousy at the people who lived there and got to go to these beaches all the time. What was also interesting about these beaches were, well, they were in Europe. This means that it wasn't a big deal if women went around without their tops on. It was very strange at first but I guess I got used to it. Europe is much more lax about that sort of thing. There was even a nude beach nearby, but we did not go to it. I was happy with that, the beaches we did go to were fantastic.
I mean look at that! White sandy beaches, the cleanest ocean water I had ever seen, and bright sunny skies.
One beach also had these wonderful tide pools that the little kids would play around in when the tide was out.
It was seriously an awesome place. I had never had so much fun in the waves before.
There was one incident where a young girl dived under a wave while I jumped over it, and she went underneath me and ran into my legs. She came up from under the water and I ran over to see if she was okay. We both yelled "I'M SORRY" in our respective languages, stared at each other for a second, before I managed to say it in Spanish before swimming away in embarrassment.
If you are going to go to a foreign country, experiencing it with people who live there is without a doubt the best way to do it. You skip over the touristy version of the country, which never gives you an authentic experience, and get to see what that country is actually like, and what the people are actually like.
For example, I learned that in Spain lunch is the largest meal of the day, and dinner is not eaten till 9pm or even 10pm! I saw how closely extended families live together and help each other, I saw how even gas stations have fresh made delicious bread for sale, and I saw some beautiful countryside I would have never seen otherwise. Not to mention I got to meet some amazing lovely people who took such good care of us, and I certainly hope I can visit again in the future. Spain is a beautiful country, filled with beautiful people and amazing food. I highly recommend a visit, it nothing that you expect...it is so much more!
