Sitting in the Los Angeles airport, neither Ally nor I had a hostel booked in Paris, nor our connecting train rides to take us down to the start of the Camino de Santiago in St. Jean Pied de Port, France. All we had were ridiculous smiles on our faces and our backpacks, which carried limited …
After ten days of constant travel over Spring Break, you’d think I’d be ready for a moment of stillness. Nope. The week following my three-country adventure, I was booked for a weekend in San Sebastian. And I was actually looking forward to it.
I absolutely fell in love with Barcelona. While I unfortunately missed the beachy and warm Barcelona for clouds and rain, the city did not fail to capture me. My first day in Barcelona, I decided to visit the biggest tourist attraction, La Sagrada Familia. La Sagrada Famila is an investment, costing about fourteen euro to …
At St. Louis University Madrid, a retreat was organized to visit Loyola, in the Basque Country. I have been traveling constantly for about two months straight. In other words, every weekend I go somewhere and then return to Madrid for school during the week. So I decided that going on a retreat would be a …
My day in Seville was an unexpected one. I had planned with some other girls, who were studying abroad from LMU, like me, to go on a trip to Morocco through a tour group that was leaving from Seville. We had to take a separate bus that took us from Madrid to Seville. We ended …
As we were getting into our third week, my roommates and I realized we should start traveling outside of Madrid. So, three of my roommates and I found a cheap bus ticket to a city called Cuenca and, with the reassurance of some cool photos on google, decided to make a day trip out of …
After two weeks of misty, cold weather, the sun decided to come out and warm up Madrid in time for the weekend. Taking advantage of the beautiful weather, my roommates and I decided to visit Parque del Buen Retiro, which means the Pleasant Retreat Park. It definitely was a place of a retreat for all of …
Today began with a multitude of mouth watering tapas and refreshing beer at a steal of 2.50 euro. All starving, my roommates and I searched for the tapas bar that everyone has spoken so well of, El Tigre. And now we know why everyone raved about this place.
So here I am, having completed my first week of school in Madrid. In celebration of an exercise from one of my classes, I decided to share a few culture shocks from my transition from Los Angeles to Madrid. You’d be surprised how different it is here.
On Orientation Day at the university, students were given the opportunity to sign up for trips organized by the school for the weekend. My roommate, Emily, and I both wanted to start visiting places in Spain, so we went over to the Financial Office where we could purchase our tickets. We were given a couple …