¡La cukaracha, la cukaracha!

Woke up to a cockroach landing on my pillow after falling from the vent above my bed.  Went back to sleep when it got light outside.  This is the second cockroach encounter of the year.  You know they say that where you find one you'll find more.  Got some solid cockroach prevention techniques though:

Made by my roommate Nick. That is a grocery bag. I guess it's kind of a trap too.

Cordoba

So...I was supposed to go to Cordoba this past Saturday, but I was out at the discoteca until like three in the morning and then had my NBA Fantasy draft that lasted until around five.  In other words, I slept through the bus.  I woke up at 9:08 just in time to go back to bed since the bus left at 9:00.  Oops.  Slept in until around one, but that didn't really cure my tiredness.

While I missed the bus Saturday, it turns out that all hope wasn't lost, nor was I the only late sleeper.  My good friend Adrian and I decided to try our luck at going on Sunday with the second group.  I actually made it out of bed in time and since they don't take role or really even really know who signed up in the first place, this turned out to be an easy mission.  Next thing you know I was on my way to Cordoba...and two hours later I was actually there.

When we got off the bus we were greeted by la Puente Romana (Roman Bridge for those of you who say dos equis, "two x") that spans across el Río Guadalquivir (the same one that goes through Sevilla).  After separating into our groups and fumbling around the tiny baby streets of Cordoba we arrived at our first significant destination: el Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos.  Pretty sweet place, but unfortunately it was the one day of the year that it was closed.  Apparently it was the day that they set aside to honor their protector, Saint Rafael Archangel.  But ya as we walked up I almost bumped in to the mayor not knowing it was him.  He was receiving like a scepter or a cane or a sword or something from some dude dressed up like a joker.  Okay, well a little background on this place.  Apparently it was a palace of the Visigods until the Muslims conquered the peninsula and tore down the palace in order to build a new one.  Well at some point during the time 711-1492 the Christians did the same thing to the Muslims.  The most important thing about this place is that it is where Christopher Columbus came to ask the King and Queen of Spain for the money to sail to the Indies, since he knew the earth was round.  Well you know what happened after that but I don't really remember what else happened here so I'll just leave it at that.

Got off the bus to see la Puente Romano, which we'd soon be crossing.

Maimonides.  The first person to translate the Torah to arabic.  He was also a genius in the field of medicine.

So as we walk up to the el Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos the mayor of Cordoba strolls up. I almost ran into him as he was being handed his scepter.

A rose, for you.

So many long straight fountains in this European world.

Is it just me or does this statue look like its standing in the wall during a free kick?

Huge round trees...

...are fun to bounce off of.

Jumping in with some friends and Cristobal Colón.  Picture from Adrian.

Colón: "Yo Isabel and Fernando give me some gold to go to the Indies cuz I know the world is round."

Reyes Cristianos: "You're one crazy mother f-----, but go ahead."  Best investment ever I'd say.  Isabel actually dipped into her own pocket for this one since they were broke after fighting the Muslims for so long.

So after the garden we had some free time to eat or whatever and me and some friends went to this restaurant where I had a great grilled ham and cheese.  I love eating food that tastes good, it makes me sooo happy.  SOOO HAPPY.  After struggling with some language barrier or something during our attempts to pay we finally got out of there in time to go to one of the sites that I have wanted to see the most in Spain: La Mesquita Catedral.  This mosque (=mesquita), is ridiculous, unique, awesome and everything cool.  After the Christians conquered Cordoba they needed to build a Cathedral, so they wrote to the King at the time, I think it was Carlos asking if they could build the cathedral in the center of the mosque.  Being a loyal Christian, Carlos said, "of course!" without ever having seen the building himself.  Well, turns out that when Carlos visited the mosque/cathedral later he was not happy that his people had destroyed something so unique to build a cathedral in the middle of it, a cathedral similar to those that could be found in Granada, Madrid, Sevilla, pretty much anywhere.  Even though the mosque got a little messed up, the cathedral in the center is pretty amazing too.  

So the mosque was built over time and expanded by three members of the ruling family.  Two did the interior and another worked on the tower.  Each member added their own "flair" and tried to out-do the other.  Nowadays the mosque has 1,300 columns and is sometimes referred to as the forest of columns.  It also has an arch for every day of the year (...365).  I don't really know much information about the cathedral.

Another cool arch.  Built by the later ruler.

Some stuff.

Here you can see where the Muslim and Christian influences mix.  Its incredible to walk from the dark column-filled mosque into the enormous, high-ceilinged and classical cathedral.

Every Mosque has to have a tower?  Apparently the Muslim tower is hidden inside this Christian one.  Oh and more frickin' orange trees.

Whoop whoop

It's weird walking over dead people.

Dome surrounded by more crazy arches.

Adrian and I.

Every cathedral has to have its organ(s)...kind of like people.

How'd you like this for a ceiling?

The whatever its called where the priest stands. 

This myspace pic is for Arnie Gardner the master myspace pic-taker.

Plaza Corredera, for some reason recommended for us to do during our free time.

View from across the river near the end of the trip.

Finally, in more recent years there has been a large controversy over who gets to use the mosque.  It is currently a Christian place of worship but at one point (last year?) a group of Muslims entered and began to pray together.  They were tossed out of the place and as you might have guess this only served to fuel the flames.  There is currently a ton of security that is pretty up-tight about anything that moves.

Can't we all just get along? :-)

Barcelona Sunday

Well, my last day in Barcelona was pretty laid back.  Woke up around some time that at don't remember and chilled around the hostel for a while.  Actually, I woke up around 10 because I had check out.  We were able to keep our things in the lockers you'll see below until we left for our flight.  We waited around for a while to go to this thing we thought was a choir but it turned out to be a bunch of people holding hands in a circle and doing some weird step-forward, step-back dance.  Pretty boring. After we went inside the church that the dancing had taken place in front of. Things kind of got all turned around and me and my friend Kelsey ended up separated from everybody else, but it turned out to be a good things since we got to do all the things we had planned/wanted to do.  Kelsey and I made our way to the Picasso museum.  It wasn't what you'd expect. The majority of the paintings did not reflect the style that you would associate with Picasso.  Instead, the museum exhibited his early works.  Maybe you've heard of the Blue and Rose periods.  A lot of the works were pretty disgusting and depicted a bunch of prostitutes in brothels.  Apparently Picasso was addicted to prostitutes or something.  I am pretty sure that many of his works can be found in 7th and 8th grader's notebooks.  Unfortunately this day was not well documented by my camera being that it did not charge the night before although it was most certainly plugged in.

Adrian and the lockers where we left our things! Oh and some craziness on the wall.

They let tourists in during mass???

Cathedral. Uh...people pray here.

Walk forward, walk back? Oh and some stamp collection exhibit (I heard?) that the post office put in the plaza. Pretty hardcore temporary building.

Picasso's impression of some artist from a napkin, and made famous on this random building.

Tourists are bullets shot out of the machine guns that are our society. Totally gave me the death glare as I took this.

Self-explanatory

Well, after the Picasso museum I was starving.  Kelsey and I got a baguette and split some jamón y queso and made ourselves some bocadillos to go along with our beer in the park.  Or maybe it's the other way around, beer to go with our bocadillo.  Ya that's right.  On our way we stumbled upon the Arc de Triumph (see below) and took a whole bunch of pictures (on her camera).  After, we hung out in the park for quite a while trying to regain our energy from such a hectic few days.

Arc de Triumph, and some other random monument in the front.

We didn't know that after lunch during our walk around the park that we would run into one of the coolest things on the trip.  Cascada Gaudi is a fountain that is much more than a fountain.  Unlike Gaudi's other crazy buildings this is a pretty classical piece and is covered in plants and moss and it looks so cool.  You can't see it in the picture below but in front of that the is a semi circle across the pond lined with winged lions spraying water into an even large pool.  I am in the process of remembering to get Kelsey's pictures from her.

I'll add more of this later. Such a cool fountain pictures can't even do it justice.

Meeting up to head to the airport, pretty night in Plaza Catalunya.

Where's your add Nate McMillan???

Such a busy airport.

As you know if you read one of my many of Barcelona blog posts (sorry for the number) I spent the night in the Barcelona airport.  When we got there the front desks were closed so we slept at some cafe tables.  Or actually, I put my head down on a cafe table.  Hmm, well like I said I'll try and find some of the pictures from my friends and hopefully show you some good ones.  I won't waste your time with words, well except a caption or fifteen.

Barcelona Game

First of all I'd like to thank my dad, and his friends Jordi and Brent for making this possible.  After the Estadi Olímpic (see previous post), we made our way to Camp Nou.  For those of you that don't know, that is FC Barcelona's 100,000 seat stadium.  I was basically freaking out the whole metro ride there and every where else until I got to my seat.  Oh my god.  Probably one of the coolest things I've ever done.  Hmm game info... The match was between Barcelona and Valencia at 20:00.  At that time Valencia was in first place in La Liga and Barca was in third so it was a decently important match (even though its early in the season).  We got there roughly two and a half hours early just to make sure that we could locate our tickets and whatever else.  They were going to be at the Megastore.  What a name.  It took what seemed like miles of walking to get around the stadium to the MEGAstore, but when we did I found the manager, Eladio, fairly quickly.  Very friendly guy.  I felt super special when he took me through all the employee only doors that required a special badge to open.  The point that I felt most cool was when he asked ME if I worked at the Nike World Campus.  That is like two to three times as good as getting asked by tourists for directions in Sevilla.  After we knew that we had our tickets for sure, we went got a hot dog (perro caliente ja ja) and chilled on some grass outside the stadium.  I think I had been holding my breath the entire time.

The metro stop we got off at for the game (can you tell how excited I was?)

FC Barcelona offices

They had the whole starting line-up set up in both kits. My picture of the turquoise uni's was blurry :(

This is what happens when 100,000 people show up a couple hours before the game starts, about an hour before the gates even open.

Yes

The stadium. Kelsey looks so happy!

Damn Catalan

There were two ramps like this below it, and the same on the opposite side. So huge.

Third level, but perfect view. What you can't see is my hand squeezing the life? out of the railing. the stadium was steep!

To the right of my seats.

I look so stupid in this picture but I wanted one with the Nike swoosh. To the left of my seats.

Different view.

Crazy fan section.

Before kick-off.  They also did the little kid thing but I didn't get a picture.

Uhhhhh ya.

Goal Valencia. Pablo in the 38th minute. 1-0.

Goal Iniesta, 47th minute. A little late on the picture. 1-1

Puyol! Heart of a Lion! 63rd minute. Barcelona 2-1

The game got intense. Fight fight fight.

Interesting things about the match:
-Every time the Valencia keeper got the ball he would waste time and the crowd would whistle so high-pitched it was deafening.  The keeper was actually joking around with the crowd at time too it was funny.
-I sat next to a German, had a French person in front of me, Americans behind me (my friends), a Catalunyan, and Spaniards around me.
-They only sell non-alcoholic beer
-Messi had an amazing diving chest goal called back for offsides.  That would have been the coolest thing ever if I had those three players score.
-Concession stands in Spain are crap. They're just carts set up against the concrete backing with maybe a mini fridge or two. There are no concession stands that were built into the stadium.
-Barca sucked in the first half but then went crazy in the second.  Shot after shot after shot.  David Villa is a choke artist and he paints some pretty beautiful pieces.

There are so many different things I could say about this game but I am getting very tired and blogging has replaced homework recently. I'll do Sunday when I can.  Hopefully it is before go to Cordoba tomorrow!  Amsterdam next week!  Feel free to visit.