When I arrived in Zaragoza (the capitol city of Aragon. Located between Barcelona and Madrid,) I was greeted by my friend Lizzie, who is an exchange student from Tacoma, Wahsington. First surprise of the trip, the massive train station, Estacion de Delicias. In 2008 there was an exposition in Zaragoza about water. I'm not entirely sure what entailed, but I feel like it mostly evolved around conservation. Anyways, the city built a lot of very modern, beautiful buildings, such as the main train station.
That evening she showed me the historic center of Zaragoza, which is beautiful! Although Zaragoza isn't exactly a on peoples top lists of things to see in Spain, it still has a beautiful presence!
Saturday, we went to la Catedral Basilica de Nuestra Pilar, which is this HUGE, baroque cathedral, commemorated to no other than la Virgen de Pilar! We went to the top of one of the many tower, where we had an awesome view of the city and the Ebro River, the biggest (in volume) river in Spain.
I discovered, afterwards, that Zaragoza is still a fairly traditional city, so the majority of the sites were closed for the weekend siesta. So we made use of our time, shopping at some cool hip stores, like Tiger. Later on, we took a bus tour (the hop-on-hop-off kind) of the city. I love those sort of tours! Even though they are some times a little canny, it is a really easy way to learn and see and new city (the Viking tours of Dublin?) The most memorable about the whole tour was when we went through the 2008 Exposition. Like I said before, there was an a ¨fair," (if you may) held in Zaragoza, and there were tons of HUGE, beautiful, modern buildings built, that are now abandoned. There's still a functioning aquarium, and a little man made rafting loop, but other than that there was nothing. We saw people swimming in the massive fountains, but I doubt that they wanted to go aquarium. Although such things are kind of dismal, I thought that Zaragoza could be an awesome place to do a National Geographic article. I mean with the exposition grounds, and the contrasting city center? Why not?
Afterwards, we went to the Goya museum, which was free!!!!!!!!!! Goya was actually born in a town outside of Zaragoza, and painted some of the murals in the Basilica de Pilar. They had some of his famous works, like the portraits of Queen Maria Luisa, but they had TONS (if not all) of his political drawings. I didn't know if all of them were published, but he obviously had some very deep feelings about what was going on in society at the time!
Sunday we went to the Aljaferia, which was originally a Muslim fort, which was, guess, conquered by the ¨Catholic Kings,¨ and later a site of the Inquisition. But, overall, it was very well preserved. Almost every room had a beautiful, wooden, medieval ceiling that was still intact, as well as Moorish styled, alabaster doorways!
We had lunch in the historic center, and at the restaurant we ate I accidentally caused the waiter to drop Lizzie's food on the floor, and break the platter. Bad omen!!!!! I'll get to why later!
After walking off our lunch, we went to La Seo, which is another HUGE cathedral, located on the same plaza as la Basilica de Pilar (named- Plaza de Pilar.) It had the highest ceiling, with grand, curving pillars. All of the large alter pieces were painted differently, which gave the cathedral a special flare. There was also a Medieval tapestry museum in the up stair rooms, but personally, I like paintings more.
And now for the juiciest part! I missed my train! Yep! Stupid mistake, mostly due to the fact that I didn't double check my ticket earlier that day. I thought that my train was leaving for Sevilla at 6, when it actually left at 5:30. We were at the bus stop by Lizzie's house at 5:45 when I checked my tickets. I had a little bit of a cussing fiasco, which I need not to do the next time, but I really hope that the old women waiting did not understand my profanity!
We headed to the train station to get things situated, which was a fiasco in itself, considering that we had to go back and forth, between the ticket office and the Renfe (the main Spanish train company) to get my train switched. I was unable to take a back that night, but was able to get a ticket at 12:30 the next day, that would go to Madrid and I'd switch trains to return to Sevilla. This meant that I had to stay another night in Zaragoza, but, thankfully, Lizzie's host family was fine with me staying another night. Although things had worked out I was a nervous mess, right until I started writing this blog post.
We arrived at the train station an hour early, because I did not want to miss another train, and pay for another ticket. So, I successfully caught the train to Madrid. When I got to Madrid I figured out what terminal I had to go to, but I had no idea where to go, and I had limited time! Again, I was a frantic frenzy! I walked with the crowd, and then I turned around to ask a woman where I should go for connections, and she said that I should turn around. Not true, but thank goodness the escalators had stopped, because I went down one, that usually goes up, to get to my train. I probably skipped security, and the part where I showed my ticket (I was worried during the train ride, quite unrealistically, that someone was going to arrested because I didn't do so.) Sprinting, I looked like a disaster, and the people sitting by me were staring at me with open mouths! But who cares! I'm back in Sevilla- SAFE AND SOUND!!!!!!!!!!!!
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