Farewell to Denmark

So nearly a month after I've returned to the States, I'm posting a Farewell to Denmark--all the stories and pictures from my last few weeks. I had a great semester--got to travel a ton, meet some cool people, and learned a lot about the Europe that I always thought was similar to the US in many ways--it's not. My SIS classes all talk about "the West" as this monolithic mentality, but Europe has a whole different perspective on a lot of world issues.

So, highlights from the last weeks in what will soon be the biking capital of the world:

1. Tivoli. Where Walt Disney was inspired. The main attraction at this park is the rides, but it's SO expensive! So I saw the second and third main attraction--the lights and the gardens. The park really is beautiful lit up at night.

Whimsical streets--one of the sections of Tivoli

One of the restaurants lit up at night

One of the other big attractions in Tivoli is the gardens!

The lake at night

My friend Katie and I stayed for the free concert that evening--Eric Hassle. It was a really fun show!

2. Rosenborg Slot: I finally made it to the castle located right in the town where I lived! It is, to quote my history teacher, one of, if not the, best castles in Denmark.

Great Hall in the interior of the castle

Castle taken from the garden--there is a large lake separating the castle from the garden

3. Kastellet and Den Lille Havfrue: A fortress and a fairy tale!
The kastellet is the old citadel, shaped like a star, that is still intact today. Instead of leveling it, it's used as the headquarters of, according to my history teacher, the Danish CIA. That's inside the fortress--surrounding the buildings (what used to be barracks), there is an earth wall in the shape of a star that has a path running around the top. It's really nice for a walk in good weather--green and with a good view.

Kastellet--walking along the top path

Den Lille Havfrue--The Little Mermaid statue! This is like THE landmark of Denmark--and the statue itself is tiny in comparison to the larger-than-life legacy of Andersen's tale.

Gefionspringvandet, a famous fountain in the area

4. Danish Resistance Museum: located right near Kastellet, this museum is all about Danish resistance, in all its forms, during the German occupation. World War II still has a sizable political impact, especially when it comes to talking about race and religion into European society.

So amidst the studying and preparing of final papers, I got to say goodbye to Denmark and visit a bunch of cultural landmarks. I'm happily settled back in DC for the summer, but there are some things I do miss about that little country. It was a great semester, and thanks to everyone who followed my adventures!

Gaudi, St. George, and the Black Madonna

Our last couple of days we hit Barcelona, and there are so many things I want to go back and spend more time at. Some of the highlights I hit:

1.     Monserrat is a monastery located outside the city on a hill. We went up to walk around, take in the views, and see the Black Madonna. Unfortunately, the picture I have of the Black Madonna was taken from behind glass, so it's not that great. I bought the postcard picture. But the ride up was worth it, if not just for the scenery. The hills are beautiful, all wrapped in fog and clouds.

2.     Park Guell: this place was cool, but absolutely mobbed. You could barely walk. I was really excited to see this park, but I’d love to go back to Barcelona on the off-peak (or maybe just not Holy Week) because the crowds at this place were unbelievable. I bought postcards that had pictures because it was really difficult to get good ones and it was hard to get a sense of the place when you can barely see anything not right in front of you. The project designed by Gaudi was supposed to be a housing development for the wealthy. Can you imagine living in a house like this? Looks like a gingerbread mansion. When the idea didn’t catch on, the city turned it into a public park.

One of the houses that was never actually lived in

Gaudi was really into sustainability: the town hall/benches on the roof actually collects rainwater for household use, and the tile work is all made of broken ceramic that factories in the city were throwing out.

Part of the cistern system, on the ceiling of what would have been the town hall and market area

 Highlight: I found the place where America’s Next Top Model with Tyra Banks held their final runway show in the season that ended in Spain. Fabulous!

3.     Gaudi’s famous houses La Pedrera and Casa Batlló. La Pedrera looks a little sinister, with its metal balconies (not very well featured in the photograph below) and Casa Batlló looks like a snake or dragon with its colored scales.

La Pedrera

Casa Battlo on the right, with the curved roof. You can't see the colors of the facade as well in this picture. That's why I bought the postcard.

4.     I was in Barcelona on St. George’s Day. St. Jorgi is the patron saint of Barcelona and the people love him, he’s everywhere in this city. St. George shares his day with Shakespeare and Cervantes, who both died on this day. To celebrate, women buy books for the men in their life (husbands, fathers, brothers, etc.) and the men buy their women roses (they symbol of St. George)! All over the city there were stands run by different organizations selling books and roses on the street. This is my kind of city.


5.     Palau de la Musicia Catalana: translated as the Palace of Catalan Music. This place is a beautiful Modernista concert hall. I took a tour (unfortunately you can’t take pictures inside) and it was really beautiful! All of the design is made to make the audience feel like they are in a garden, connected with nature. The beautiful ceiling in the middle of the room dips into the concert hall and is decorated to look like a sun. It’s stained glass and lets in a lot of light, which is incredible considering the concert hall was surrounded by tall buildlings and narrow streets. Aside from a small courtyard entrance, it still is. Even though I didn’t get pictures of the inside (again, I bought postcards), the outside is still pretty remarkable.

And that’s my tour de force of Spain! Being there for Holy Week was interesting--it was cool because there was so much energy and excitement in the cities we visited, but things were closed or altered due to processions which, if you're only visiting for a day, made it hard to see certain things, like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia is a Mondernista-style neo-Gothic cathedral still being built according to the designs of the architect Gaudi, who designed the two houses that I mention above. The cathedral is not even finished yet! All the more reason to go back!

Granada and Valencia

I was really looking forward to time in Granada. This city is so important in terms of history; it was the last stronghold of the Moors in Spain, and in 1492 it was all over with the capture of Granada. The change from north to south, even from Madrid to Seville, is telling. Madrid, like I said, is very mainstream European. The south of Spain is European as well, but with a lot of Moorish influence discernable in their architecture and decorations. For example, tiles were nonexistent in Madrid, but in Andalucia they’re everywhere!

So back to Granada. I really liked the city and wish I could spend more time there. The good thing about a tour is that you see a lot, and you don’t have to figure it out yourself. However, you can’t spend as much time as you want in certain places. We drove through the morning from Seville to Granada and only had the afternoon in the city. It’s a small city, with little shopping streets, plazas, and the Gran Via through the center. We went to the Royal Chapel in the morning (the cathedral was closed) and saw the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, the two Spanish monarchs who united Spain (from a conglomerate of kingdoms) and outsed the Moors from Granada. They still celebrate mass in the little chapel every day, even though they have a cathedral with services, because Isabel wanted it that way. They even have a candle burning all the time because she wanted it that way. Can you imagine? Being so powerful and influential that what you said 500 years ago still matters to these people? It’s amazing.

We then went up to the Albaycin, the old Muslim quarter of the city built onto a hill. It was picturesque—whitewashed houses, with iron balconies and colorful flowers. 

House in the Albaycin

View of the Alhambra fortress from the Albaycin

View of Granada from Albaycin

We walked up for a great view of the Alhambra and the city. These two guys were singing in Spanish with guitars, but their song was a little weird.

“Look at the Alhambra, how beautiful”—sounds normal, right?

“The Alhambra, the Alhambra, it is falling”—Wait, what?

“We will rob you while you sleep”—Excuse me?!?!

Probably trying to impress the non-Spanish speaking tourists, but I was laughing the whole time at their ridiculous (awful) lyrics.

Our next day took us to Valencia which, like Granada, I wish I had more time in. Again, the drive was beautiful, with little villages wedged into the side of mountains, some of them covered in snow. Our first stop in the morning was in this little town to see a Troglodyte cave. You enter the cave like a normal house, only the house is actually made out of the walls of the rock surrounding it. People would just dig into the sides of hills to make their house. It was pretty cool to see.

We resumed our scenic drive, past the Mediterranean. You can make out little towns in the hillside with a walled fortress on the top of a hill, with the tower of the church peaking out from the town below. Terraced rows of fruit trees cover the hills and the valleys in between them.

Our visit to Valencia started with the Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias, a grouping of new museums. 

It was a rainy day in the city unfortunately, so we walked around and hung out in the main plaza of the city. 

Main plaza

One of the cool things I learned about Valencia is they have these falles (like big comical floats) on St. Joseph's Day. Each neighborhood works really hard on one float, and then the day of Falla, the festival, they burn all but one of them! It's really something to see, another reason to go back. 

My next installment will be highlights of Barcelona--stay tuned!

Return to the US and Continuing my Tour of Spain with Sevilla

Update: I am back in the States and busy enjoying 75 cent candy bars and not paying 7 dollars for McDonalds. But there are some things about Denmark and Europe that I miss/have noticed that are different here:

• Most people in Denmark don't wear jeans. They wear skirts, tights, black pants, leggings, everything except the elusive blue jean.
• Not having a castle towering over a lake on my way to school. 
• Flights between countries are no longer 4 hours max. 
• No more cobblestone streets
• Hoardes of small children taking the public bus in the mornin

I'm sure I'll think of even more as I get back into a routine here. I'm looking for an internship in Washington, DC this summer, have a paying job lined up there too, and moving into a new apartment with new roommates. Busy busy! But I realize that I haven't been good the past few weeks (really, ever since I got back from Spain) about updating on my travels and things I've seen! So I'll try to give you the abbreviated version in a few posts, because I'll probably be talking with most of you very soon!


Continuing chronologically, my next stop in Spain was Sevilla!

Seville has as many churches as they do orange trees (a lot). I walked around the area near the hotel the evening we got into town, and I took pictures of at least 3 churches in a 4-block radius. Amazing. I feel more at home in Spain after being in Denmark, where everything is Lutheran and in a language I cannot understand a bit of. With Holy Week, pictures of Mary are all over the place. I got to see two of the huge floats that they use in the famous processions. There is so much riqueza, richness, in texture, in gold and silver, in expensive fabric. The size of these things is amazing! I wonder how people manage to carry them for hours. One of the processions starting near our hotel began at 12 am and returned to the Basilica at 5 am, just in time for all the Sevillians to go to bed. 

Seville was a lot more colorful than Madrid, in terms of its buildings.Walking through the old city was really beautiful. 

Our hotel was right near the old city walls (which, as you know by now, I thought was really cool)

Church near hotel in La Macarena neighborhood

Building in the center (white) is la Basilica de la Macarena, where I saw the floats

Courtyard in the old city

Our tour guide decided to have me demonstrate how to wear a mantilla (the comb and lace monstrosity on my head).

One of the other places I visited that I could have spent hours (if I wasn’t on a tour de force!) was the Plaza de Espana in Seville. It’s decorated in incredibly detailed tiles, with all the different areas of Spain represented. I took pictures of the ones on our itinerary, but that ended up being more than I thought it would be! There were lots of families out enjoying the sun. You can rent boats and ride them around the little river that runs through the plaza. 

 
Next episode: Joint post on Granada and Valencia, with the highlights of both.

La Mezquita en Cordoba

We depart from Madrid and make our way south. The drive, while long, is beautiful. Vast fields of olive trees in perfect rows, with mountains in the distance. Later we drive into those mountains, the Sierra Morena, right through the only natural pass in the area. There are rocks all the way up on either side of the view from the bus.

We reach Cordoba early afternoon and visit the Mezquita, which is a weird mix of buildings. First a huge mosque, one of the Spanish kings allowed a church to be built physically inside the mosque. You had the sense that the church was trying to outdo the mosque, the styles were so different. First of all, the clocktower of the church is built right on top of the Muslim minaret of the mosque. 

The arches of the mosque were simple, yet repetitive. 

The church had a lot of decorative features, which was a sharp contrast to the simple double arches of the mosque. It is said that the king who gave permission for the church to be built visited the site after construction had begun and regretted that he had allowed part of such a unique structure to be compromised. 

Altar of the church--stark contrast to the arches

The depth of the place was what made it so awe-inspiring, given its lack of height, and it’s so hard to capture the depth on film.  Here's a little bit, with a close-up on the mihrab of the mosque.

Visiting this place was like checking off one of the sites featured in my old Spanish textbooks—I kept thinking of the pictures I saw in those books and being in awe that I was actually there, visiting one of those sites.

Cervantes, Churches, and Chocolate

Madrid seems, to me, like the Paris of Spain, a very European city. Like Paris, Madrid has wide, tree-lined boulevards and numerous circles. Plazas are the heart of city life—cafes and gift shops spring eternal. We went on our city tour, which stopped at the Plaza de Espana with the Cervantes Memorial (the Spanish love Cervantes, he’s everywhere) and Don Quixote with Sancho Panza in front.

Plaza de Espana

 Our next stop was for a photo op at the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) with a view of the gardens and the Campo de Moro. I was going to walk around in the park later, but there is so much to do in Madrid! 

Palacio Real with gardens in front

After the bus tour, I got off at the Prado Museum of art, where the line is humongous. I walk the main streets and stop in a couple plazas to check out the activity. The architecture of the buildings is amazing, and I can look at it with new and enlightened eyes because of the class I’m taking back in Copenhagen. The people and the sunshine are wonderful; there’s so much energy in the center of the city. I stop at the Mercado de Miguel and grab some delicious snacks to walk with. It’s like a Reading Terminal or Quincy Market, only with Spanish food and wine. Yum. 

El Mercado

I also try chocolate con churro, which is a churro (think thin crispy donut) dipped in hot chocolate, only this chocolate is the consistency of chocolate syrup, and about as rich. I could have ordered the chocolate con leche, with milk, but I wanted to try the traditional.

I stop in the Madrid cathedral on a whim, because I like churches and I always enjoy seeing the art inside. This church was beautiful! I discreetly took some photos while they were having a Palm Sunday service. 

Front of Cathedral--beautiful colors

Ceiling of the Cathedral continues the color theme

To top the day off, I bought an ice cream and ate it while I walked through some of the parks nearby. 

I made my way back to the Plaza de Espana, did some shopping at the little market they had there (like Eastern Market in DC) and then headed back to my hotel on the metro for a well-deserved rest from a great day in Madrid! The next day we drove down to Seville and stopped in Cordoba to see the Mezquita--next post!

Holy Toledo!

Toledo looks like what you’d expect a Spanish city to look, and it doesn’t disappoint. Driving up on the highway, it appears out of nowhere, the old city sitting on top of a hill still enclosed in the ancient walls. I love city walls now, as I have explained in earlier posts. Check out these bad boys:

Gate to the city

Most of the walls of the city are still intact. They have strict building codes inside the city, and new residences are outside the city walls.

Great view of Toledo

We stop for a photo op across from the city on a hill (picture above), and then drive back towards the city to meet our local guide. Our guide, Rufino (what a Spanish name!) takes us to see a famous painting by El Greco who worked in that area (but we couldn't take pictures). So here are some of the Cathedral and streets instead:

We also see a synagogue, because before the city was taken by the Christians both Jews and Muslims lived peacefully together in the city. The detail in the carvings of the walls of the synagogue was incredible!

Our next stop on Laura's Tour de Espana will be Madrid!

Much-Promised Video of Eden Project!

My video of Eden Project! This is my first time uploading video, so excuse me if there are some problems. Eden Project is a garden in a quarry, so I wanted to take a video to get a sense of the size of the thing. 

Avebury: The Stonehenge No One's Heard Of

On Wednesday morning Uncle Gordon, Aunt Jessica and I got up to go to Lloyd and Michelle's. On our way we stopped in Avebury, which is a prehistoric stone circle, similar to Stonehenge. The circle is huge, and the main road cuts right through the middle, so all the shots I have are about a quarter of the circle. We had lunch at The Red Lion (ham, egg, chips, and peas) and then walked around on the hills.

The rocks were pretty huge! Here's a bit of size comparison :)

Rock circle. More regular, carved stones mark the place of missing stones, that were probably taken and used in building before the site was protected.

The Red Lion, the pub where we had lunch

Avebury

Our next stop was Silbury Hill, the largest manmade hill in England. No one knows why it was made, but it's a huge mound made of dirt and clay. They've tried to excavate it several times but haven't found anything extraordinary, except for the building process.

Silbury Hill

Our last prehistoric stop was to the Long Barrow burial mound, from about 4000 BC. We walked up a long hill, with the wind blowing and rain sprinkling--very dramatic. The mound itself is kinda creepy. We didn't stay long (but it was cool to see).

Entrance

The mound itself is pretty long.

We stopped by Lloyd and Michelle's new house, but it was raining so we didn't get out of the car and I didn't take pictures. It's a really nice house in a really nice village, with lots of green around.

We got to their house in Eastleigh later in the day and went out for a delicious Indian feast! Our entire table was lined with dishes, it was almost as amazing as the sushi boat. We tried a bunch of new things and took some stuff home.

So far my stay in England has been really nice--relaxing, with plenty to do and plenty of good company.