April came along, and before I knew it, I was down to my last two months in Spain. In between my last couple of weeks at work, I took the weekends off making trips to visit friends and see more of Spain, to make the most out of it all. A quick round up below :)
1 - In the first weekend of April, I made the long train ride down to visit two friends in Huelva. I was excited to visit since it's the only province in Andalucía I hadn't been to yet, and of course, I was missing some Filipino company. I arrived on Thursday evening and caught up with my friends over dinner and white wine. We eventually had to call it a night for the next day we headed to Aracena, a town in the Huelva province. I made the trip with my friends Lia and Nice, plus her coordinator who had invited us, another colleague of Lia's, plus two interns who were working at her school.
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| Quaint Aracenas |
Aracena is famous for its Gruta de las Maravillas (the Cave of Wonders) which is a 1km route of limestone caves. I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful they were (we were unfortunately not allowed to take any pictures).
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| By the entrance of the caves |
En route back to Huelva capital, we stopped by several small towns, one of which was
Alájar, which boasted some gorgeous views -
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| Took some pictures of budding flowers. We were so excited Spring was finally there! |
It was a quick but fun trip back to the South, and another check off my Spain bucket list (visiting all the provinces in Andalucía).
2 - The whole year I was in Valladolid, I had been giving private classes to two brothers who studied in my school. Their mother took a liking to me because they have an adopted daughter from the Philippines. I bonded well with the family and they would invite me over for lunch and to some of their parties. Mid-April they finally invited me to spend the weekend in their pueblo
Olmos de Peñafiel.
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| Mateo (one of my tutees) and Aliyah (adopted from the Philippines) |
It was a nice and chill weekend getting to know the rest of their family, playing with the kids, and trying some lechazo, a lamb dish similar to cochinillo which is famous in Castilla y León.
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| Soooo juicy and tender |
It was a meat-overload weekend for me, as I was also treated to a variety of other grilled meats.
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| lamb, chorizo, bacon, morcilla |
The city also had a castle in the neighboring town. So Cristina and Juancar toured me around the town and we paid a visit to the castle before heading back to Valladolid.
3 - On the last weekend of April, I headed to
Barcelona with Lia and Janina. Lia was going to be seeing her dad (who works on a cruise ship), so she invited us to come along. It had been a while since my last visit to Barcelona, so I decided to visit one last time. We spent most of our first morning touring the cruise ship (it was my first time on a cruise ship and I was amazed!). In the afternoon we visited
Park Güell (the free parts at least) -
We then trekked to the Sagrada Familia to marvel at it from the outside -
And stopped at the FCB store nearby where they had a temporary exhibit featuring a Greek culé's collection of Barça shirts. I didn't know the exhibit would be there so it was a nice surprise. :)
We ended the night with some dinner at a Filipino restaurant, and stocked up on some Filipino goods from the Asian store.
The next day happened to be April 23, the feast day of Saint Jordi, Catalunya's patron saint. It's also known as "día de los amantes" (lover's day) and it's a tradition for couples to exchange gifts; the men receive books while the women receive roses. The city was extra beautiful that day; there were roses adorning buildings and window shops, and in plazas all over the cities were pop-up book fairs.
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| Casa Batlló's façade covered in roses |
We started the morning off with a free walking tour by
Sandeman's. We enjoyed it, and decided to take the Gaudi walking tour in the afternoon as well (after having a quick lunch).
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| With the Arc de Triomf which was near the end of our first walking tour |
We caught the Barça game in the evening, wearing (fake) Barça shirts courtesy of Lia whom I was able to convert to a Barça fan. Haha. Lia and Janina left early the next morning, while I heard mass and then visited the Contemporary Art Museum (
MACBA) before my afternoon flight back home. Another short trip, but you can never go wrong with a visit to Barcelona :)
4 - In May I hit my 14th out of the 15 mainland autonomous communities, Cantabria, up in the north coast of Spain. I met up with Lyle in Santander in the afternoon, and we spent the evening catching up over some good Peruvian food.
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| Reunited with my roomie |
The next day we visited
Santillana del Mar, a small town about an hour away by bus from Santander. One of the guys who was in my blablacar to Santander urged me to visit it and shared some trivia about the town: it's known as the town of three lies as it's neither holy (
santa), flat (
llana), or near the sea (
del mar).
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| Santillana del Mar |
It was a pretty cute, small town. We visited some museums, walked around, checked out some of the artisanal crafts, and had a hearty lunch.
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| Charming town |
After lunch we decided to visit the nearby caves of
Altamira which are famous for its cave paintings. Tickets to the caves and its replicas were limited, so we just visited the museum instead (which also happens to be free in the afternoons). We waited for a long time for the bus to take us to the site, and then later found out that it was only a short ride away! So after visiting the museum we decided to walk back instead, taking in the views along the way.
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| Walking back to Santillana del Mar after visiting the caves |
Back in Santillana, we checked the bus schedules and on a whim, decided to visit
Comillas, another nearby town (which another friend had also recommended to visit). The whole bus ride to Comillas, Lyle and I were wondering why the name was so familiar but we couldn't place it. Later on, we both remembered but had different reasons. Lyle remembered that we had reported on it in one of our Spanish classes back in university, and I remembered that Comillas was the setting of the film
Primos, which was the movie I used in my undergraduate thesis.
In Comillas, we only had one hour to look around as we had to catch the last bus back to Santander, so we quickly went to marvel at the
Palacio de Sobrellano -
Gaudí's
El Capricho -
And took a walk by the beach before heading back to the bus stop -
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| Playa de Comillas |
It was a quirky and spontaneous adventure deciding to road trip to the small towns in Cantabría :)
The next day we explored Santander itself. We first walked to the famous El Sardinero beach. Unfortunately it was still a bit chilly in early May so we made do with just marveling from afar.
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El Sardinero
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Then we walked all the way to the other side to the
Magdalena Peninsula to see the
Palacio de la Magdalena, which the royal family previously used as a summer house.
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| Palacio de la Magdalena |
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| Loving the green and the blue of Santander |
We spent the afternoon exploring the rest of city checking out several more beaches and gardens, and just catching up in general. On our last day, despite the cold we couldn't help ourselves and bought some delicious ice cream before heading to the station to catch the train back home.
5 - I spent my last couple of weekends moving my things from Valladolid to Madrid. On one trip I visited my cousin and spent some time with her daughters (one of whom in the picture below). I gratefully crashed in one of my best friend's place (I can't believe I don't have a single picture with her), and slowly started packing up, and visiting several other places in Madrid.
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| Playing with Carmen in Madrid |
Living in Spain was amazing, and this country will always have a special place in my heart, but I knew it was time to pack up (and seek another adventure). So when June came along, I had my last day of work, packed up my bags (and a box to be mailed), and headed home to the Philippines. But not before making a quick stop to Colombia (post coming soon)! :)
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