Northward Bound Día Uno

Well this actually occurred a few weeks ago or so but I figured it would be worth it to tell a bit of my adventures in El Norte. So to start our adventure off (and because Landes loves making stops in small towns along the way which usually involve some sort of cathedral or castile that is the best example of some sort of old architecture) we headed to a pueblo called Coca. This town happened to hold this great castile that we had fun exploring. Megan (non peliroja), Rebecca and I had a grand ole time running around on the walls yelling things like “THE BRITISH ARE COMING!” (in a British accent, ironically enough) and getting laughed at by guys sitting and eating their bocadillos. Another fantastic part of this side trip was the amazing sun that we had and this fantastic amphitheatre that some of our girls got to reenact a jousting match A Knight's Tale-style. However our good times were suddenly interrupted by a hotbed of moral corruption and general stank. This came in the form of three disgusting boys, affectionately called the gross Coca boys (see picture below, taken before we were acquainted with their real character), who felt the need to follow us around and yell repulsive things and then flash us as we were pulling out (luckily I was not witness to this otherwise my eyes might have been gouged out at this current time and I would not be able to type this). This is when Landes finally realized just how dangerous it is traveling with 11 twenty-year-old girls.










After our dissipated escapades in Coca we made it to León via autobus (one of our new favorite places), or Lion in English. After doing the usual hotel check-in and eating ham and cheese bocadillos we set off exploring the city. First it was the exterior of the Casa de Botines, a castile-like building that now houses the bank Caja España, designed by Gaudí, weird architect extraordinaire. Due to the fact that it is just a bank right now we did not linger long at this particular location and thus were off to see the Catedral de León before too long.






The outside basically looks like any other more basic cathedral that we have seen, but everything changes when you go inside. There are about 125 stained-glass windows dating from the 13th century. They are so heavy that the cathedral’s walls are strained and need support. The nickname for this place is the House of Light and I can see why. As soon as you go in you are overwhelmed by the amount of light and amazing colors there are here in comparison to other cathedrals (there still is not enough to actually warm the dang place up, but at least you can see your hand in front of your face here). Something that I never realized before was that it is incredibly rare to encounter a depiction of Mary pregnant, but we sure saw one here! So after all this admiration we headed off to the Basilica de San Isidoro.






This place was dedicated to San Isidoro de Sevilla (don’t ask me who the heck this was because they have so many dang saints here I lose track) in 1063. The actual church wasn’t too exciting (except for the unlocked door that we snuck into and saw that it was just someone’s office so we high tailed it out of there) but there were a bunch of people worshipping there. The real sight was the Panteón de los Reyes attached to the church. This has 23 tombs of Leonese kings and was one of the first Romanesque buildings in Castile and León. It was embellished by Ferdinand I’s artists and on the ceilings are colorful frescoed murals from the 12th century. Don’t go thinking that this is all Michelangelo-Sistine Chapel-style, but it was still beautiful nonetheless (pictures are from the internet so they’re not that great, but we weren’t allowed to take any there). Then we actually got to go upstairs to see the treasury and library. Apparently this is pretty unique and has some rare finds in it (not that I really realized it at the time, but hey that’s what travel books are for when you’re writing in your journal, right?), such as: 10th century Scandinavian ivory, an 11th century chalice, 10th-12th century cloths from Asia, the Book of Job from 951, a Visigothic Bible and a Bible from 1162.








After getting our historical fill it was free time. This was time that we spent walking along the river, playing on kids’ toys, meeting an old guy that I’m still trying to decide if he was being creepy or not, goofing around in front of some fancy hotel and going to a modern art museum. This last location was specifically MUSAC (don’t want to write out what it stands for; just know that it’s modern. And now I have written more than I would have if I had just written out the dang name.), and I must say that we were probably more fascinated with the exterior of the building, with its technicolor tiles, than the exhibits inside. They were pretty strange and it was hard to distinguish what was art and what was construction, but we did enjoy making shadows in one of the pieces.






So we hurried through the museum so that we could get us some food! Sadly we ended up at Domino’s and had quite a fun time trying to understand just what they meant when they said that every day is buy one get one free, but we eventually got it and the pizza was heaven in cheesy, meaty form. Then it was time to head to the hotel for late-night girl talk and sleep in preparation for the next day full of religious locations (these Catholics sure know how to fill a country with cathedrals, let me tell you).

Spanish Malady

You know how whenever you feel sick it doesn’t really matter how old you are, you still want your mommy to come and scratch your head and make you some sick food and place that beloved throw-up pot beside your perch on the couch? Well being under the weather in a foreign country doesn’t change anything. Now you just have to deal with a language barrier in a weakened mental condition while at the same time wishing you could just curl up on the couch and watch illness daytime classics (Over the years I’ve become a fan of weirdo TLC stories of strange people’s lives, game shows and the occasional talk show-except for Tyra makes me want to pull my hair out strand by strand and Oprah is kind of gaggy.) but you can’t understand anything going on in the telenovelas except that all the girls are either pregnant by one of three men, or dying.

This is not complaining about being here and being an infirm; rather it is documenting the peculiarities I have encountered in this condition. Blanca apparently has many years of practice taking care of ill foreigners (but most of the other girls took too much of a liking to the sangria to get them in that state, leave it to the Mormons to stick her with communicable flu-like symptoms). I would like to say that I have now officially drank my weight in the Spanish version of Gatorade that Blanca swears by, eaten carrot/rice soup puree as well as a plentiful supply of cooked apples and some weirdo fruit called quince and frustrating tried to watch every movie we have here (Dear Dell Company, You guys suck at creating computers that can play either the whole of one movie or even the beginning of others. Sincerely, Katie the Sicko).


Thank you Spanish mother for providing bland delights to please my disgruntled tummy (even if I have not eaten a real meal in days, you did say I was looking skinnier-needed after all those Rebuenas). And thank you pharmacy lady for teaching me that some words are the same in any language when it comes to matters of the stomach. And a final thanks to my lovely roommate Megan for resisting the urge to punch me in the face as you heard moans in the night and for helping me to sneak-eat contraband apples with peanut butter as well as teaching me interesting words for old classics (and looking on thesaurus.com for new ones). You people have combined to make my Spanish infirmity a little more homey and a lot more memorable. (But if you want to give me that head scratch when I get home Ma, no complaints here!)

Partied Like a Rockstar

Ok I did not want to leave you people in suspense any longer (because I just know you are checking everyday to see if I’ve put up a new post concerning the remark made on the last one). Well as a preface you must know that here in Spain these people have incredibly active nightlives. Apparently it is quite a normal occurrence to end your Friday or Saturday night Saturday or Sunday morning with breakfast with your homies and you usually turn in around 7 or 8 AM. Now I don’t know about you guys, but my body is used to BYU time and that usually means late is 3 or 4 AM and even then you’re back in your apartment by 1 or 2, so this whole partying all night until the sun comes up (literally) is a little new to me. But I must say that on the night I became a true Spaniard my body embraced it well and I feel like I’m home (mas o menos).

Our big night of fun started with the 11:04 train into Madrid (can I just point out that this time is when things are at a peak and going down usually, but this is not even when the nightlife starts here) with 8 of us girls completely psyched to party it up at our first discoteca (yep that’s right-and don’t go thinking this is a place where you deck out in your bellbottoms and get down to “Play that Funky Music”; it’s just what they call their dance clubs here). So we were in Madrid by about midnight and even though we’ve been there plenty of times we still found a way to get ourselves lost on our way to the discoteca, thus we resorted to asking a group of about 7 eighteen-year old boys where it was and then ended up following them sort of creepily because apparently they were partying it up there that night as well. They pointed out the club to us and then went on their way without heading inside. That should have been our first tip-off that maybe we were a little early for the dance party. The second tip-off had to be the groups of people standing outside without heading in. So to be like the cool kids (and because we were still kind of confused on how you even got in the place because it’s not like any of us do any heavy clubbing in Provo) we headed next door to good ole’ Mickey D’s to bide our time until the cool hour. And then we got impatient and went inside by 12:15.

And now we enter the world of KAPITAL. Just to paint a mental picture of this place here is a small description, courtesy of Frommer’s: “This is the most sprawling, labyrinthine, and multicultural disco in Madrid at the moment. Set within what was originally a theater, it contains SEVEN (emphasis added) different levels, each sporting at least one bar and an ambience that’s often radically different from that of the previous floor. Voyeurs of any age take heart-there’s a lot to see at Kapital, with a mixed crowd that pursues whatever form of sexuality seems appropriate at the moment.” So I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it was (especially the different forms of sexuality because as far as I could tell all the guys were doing a pretty good job of swarming the American girls), but you get the general idea. But to that I would just like to add that I felt like a freaking celebrity there. It was like one of those clubs in New York or LA that you see in magazines of famous people. So basically we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into by the time we were done exploring the basically deserted (no one awesome shows up before one) club, but we were loving every minute of it.




So to wait it out until the party got started on all the dance floors we headed to floor seven-the lounge area fully-equipped with two bars, many couches, even a fountain and some lovely bed-like things in the middle-and worked our American girl magic. And when I say “worked” I really mean sat on a couch and talked in English and then random guys came to see the exotic women. Even our friends from the street finally decided to show up and come and chat it up, even after us following them creepily. And the best part was that they had other friends who provided us with many funny quotes in their drunken English (one of them even looked like a mix between Nick and Joe Jonas, so that made the devoted Disney fan in our group sublimely happy). But at least the rugged and dark one acknowledged it: “I’m sorry my English is like ‘crap’ (editing needed); it is because I am so drunk.”

So by that time we were ready to boogie and all us girls headed downstairs to get down with our bad selves! The first floor we picked ended up being our favorite so we spent most of our night there, changing it up when we got bored of creepy guys following us around. So after only about 10 minutes of dancing I came to the conclusion that American girls are hot stuff here (probably just like anyone with a decent accent is in the US). So a lot of our night was spent with all us 8 girls dancing in the middle of groups of guys, keeping a close eye on each other. But don’t get me wrong, we did dance our fair share of dances with Spanish men and chatted it up a lot more. The Disney fanatic even got herself her Jonas boyfriend, so I think that night was a success for her. So basically how you got asked to dance (don’t go expecting some guy to get down on one knee and politely ask if you would care to dance, this is no EFY) is by them grabbing your hands and pulling you towards them. And you respond by either starting to dance with them (yes) or making an “I’m so creeped out by this man will someone please save me?!” face at your fellow girls (no). Many a strange conversation was started this way; my personal favorite happened to be, “My friend he is going to go and get the ugliest guy here and bring him here…What do you think of my monster?” How this thought popped into his head, I am still trying to figure out.








So after quite a bit of dancing we went back up to floor seven to get ourselves some drinks and rest for a bit. This happened to also be the time when someone decided to be a klutz and knock over their drink behind where I was sitting and thus I felt a strange cold sensation on my rear end, which just so happened to be a giant wet spot that had formed there. It was my don’t-even-think-about-grabbing-my-butt protection. But before too long we decided it was time for some dancing again so it was back downstairs for some of that.




I’ll just give you a quick overview of some of the classic lines of the night:

“Hola, what is your name?”
“(Insert name here-it happened to all of us)”
“Oh cool, cool. I am (insert Spanish man name like Jose or Guillermo or Jorge-take your pick). Can I kiss you?”
“What? Um…no.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know you.”
“But you are in Spain.” Thank you Captain Obvious, but tell me-does that line work on any girl?

To one particular girl in our group:
“Oh you are so beautiful. Are you an angel? Are you for real? (to one of us): Is she for real?...Can I kiss you?”
“No I don’t know you.”
“But why? You are so beautiful and I am not ugly. Can I taste those lips?”
But alas when she still would not let him taste those luscious lips his final conclusion was that she liked girls. Go figure.

To Megan (this gets me every time):
“Hola I am Roberto, what is your name?”
“Megan.”
“Oh, like Megan Fox?”
“Yup, exactly like that.”
“Oh cool…Would you like to go to the sofa?” Megan Fox you do wonders for your fellow Megans.


So by the time we had our fair share of partying it up it was around 5:30 and we decided we should gather our things and head back to the train station to catch the first one back. It wasn’t until we were all on the 6 AM train that it really hit and our zombie-like appearance took shape. And then we were back in Alcala by 7 and after eating and doing our best to clean up a bit (the smoke smell took days to wash out of my hair) we were in bed by 8 AM (thank you blinds that block all the light from outside). When we woke up at 3:30 it was like a dream and sometimes I can’t believe I partied like the Spanish, but then I remember this sudden new cool feeling I woke up with that day and I know: I was meant to be a Spaniard.