Longer Trips: Malaga and Barcelona, Spain

So in my haste to post pictures, it turns out I forgot to post about some of my trips. Well near the end of October, the Madrid schools had a break (puente). Given this opportune moment, a group of 10 of us decided to embark on a 6 hour bus ride to Malaga, in the southern part of Spain. After the harrowing 6 hour, did I mention SIX HOURS, bus ride through tight roads, mountains, and one of the nicest rest stops I’ve been to, we arrive in the oasis that is Malaga. While Madrid wasn’t too cold at this point, 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit, Malaga was a pleasant 70-80 degrees; it even had palm trees!

I enjoyed spending most of time on the beach, as well as getting to explore the city. While not as culturally significant as Madrid, Malaga had it’s fair share of history, including being the birth place for Pablo Picasso and the world-renowned Antonio Banderas. Along with laying on the beach, days before Halloween, we visited centuries old castles, a museum with the strictest security I have ever encountered, an outdoor party in the plaza on Halloween night, and a quick trip to Nerja to see the caves.

Two weekends ago, a few of us went to Barcelona for three days. Rather than taking an even longer than Malaga bus there, we decided to fly since it ended up being significantly cheaper than the train (which is unbelievably quicker than flying). I think I can sum up my thoughts on Barcelona in one sentence, “Barcelona, being the second most populous city in Spain, is huge!” In those three days, we didn’t even cover a fraction of the city, but from what I saw it was quite an amazing place. Being on the coast, the weather was more humid and temperate than Madrid. Since we had such a short amount of time in Barcelona, we focused our attention on the coastline and seeing the different Gaudi buildings. Just these two things easily filled our three days and we could have spent another week just on Gaudi. His work just reminded me of how us humans are capable of such incredible, and destructive, things.

Well my next trip will be to Bilbao, in the north of Spain, thus concluding my visitation of the center, south, east, and northern parts of the country. We are leaving for Bilbao in just over a week and a half, so you can expect new pictures then. Following Bilbao, I’ll be embarking on my Christmas/New Year adventures, which will surely take me to places outside of the land of jamón.