July « 2009 « Cassie in Europe

San Sebastian!

Posted in Uncategorized by cassandromeda on 20 July 2009

With the hope that I’ll ever catch up to the present and be able to blog about things I’ve actually done within the past few days, I’ll continue the trend of LOTS OF PICTURES and NOT A LOT OF WRITING.

The first weekend of Spain we went on a journey to San Sebastian. I took pictures…at least…. until my camera battery died. (That was exceedingly dumb of me.) It was wonderful! Of course, I’d been there before, but they remodeled the aquarium slightly, and we also went up allllll the way up the stairs/MOUNTAIN to the fortress. It was a perilous climb. You’ll just have to imagine it because, obviously, my camera battery died.

Here are some of the pictures I did take! (Please note that we woke at 5:45 to catch a bus to the beach town to find it rainy/more than slightly overcast. But yes. 5:45 waking times = Sleepy Cassie with a funny hair thing. Lord knows what’s going on.)

There’s a merrygoround on the boardwalk around “La Concha”. Dad, I took this picture for you!

Hey look! More proof that I have friends!

La concha as seen from the aquarium window. I heart La Concha.

Jellyfish! Adooorrrrrable. They just swam round and round in their little tank that was backlit blue. The life of a jellyfish must be pretty simple. Maybe a little bit boring? Probably.

El rey tiburon! This shark is massively intimidating. He’d swim right up to the edge of the glass and right as you thought he was gonna bump into it, he’d swish up and into the part of the tank that must have been above us but not visible. Like I said. Massively intimidating. Loads of teeth.

And then leopard sharks. Not so intimidating but still very cool. They sort of hung out in this part of the tank, right above the rounded walkway.

And then we saw more fish!

And mooooooooooore fish!

And moooooooore fish that didn’t actually look like fish but were still very very cool. They were called “Musical note” fish or something of the sort, probably because they look like the thing you put on top of a whole note on the staff in order to make it a half note/quarter/etc.

But yes. Ridiculous looking right?

Ahorita soy burgosa

Posted in Uncategorized by cassandromeda on 15 July 2009

Expect more posts with few words, many pictures. I find that the hot days and the laziness that comes after eating lunch at 2pm (oh, so much laziness) makes it oh so difficult to do anything productive. And when I’m not being lazy, good god are we kept busy here!

Pictures of Burgos! And then…pictures of San Sebastian, Salamanca, Santander, and Valladolid. No. The photos will never end. I’ve already taken 1300 this trip. You’re all lucky I’m not inundating you with every single one of them.

Note that I will be doing the photos from the Catedral de Burgos separately, just because there are that many, and because the cathedral is that beautiful.

The first thing you should know about my stay in Burgos is that I’m about 10 minutes walking from this place. We can hear the bells chime all-the-time. It’s both awesome and sometimes very loud.

The second thing you should know is that when we arrived to Burgos, we arrived on the first day of festival week. That would be a week of festivals that celebrate the city of Burgos. There were fireworks every night (celebrating our arrival, no doubt) and outdoor concerts and tapas “huts” set up all around the city, and gosh was the city alive (except for during Siesta, and on Sundays. Then it is very dead.) A processional put up this flower arrangement next to the cathedral…and yes. That is a MASSIVE amount of flowers.

Also in Burgos is this building which, if my Spanish comprehension skills do not fail me, was the building where Francisco Franco was essentially “crowned dictator”. No seriously. That’s the place. HISTORY. IT IS INESCAPABLE IN EUROPE.

They also have stuff built in the 15th century just…you know. Lying around. Stuff like this.

This picture is where the gate of the city is. See those stone pillars? They’re on a bridge. Burgos used to have a natural boundary. Obviously the city is much much larger now than when it was founded in the 9th century. (yes. Cities are that old. It still kills me.)

I’ve made friends here!

Burgos has really awesome architecture if you keep an eye out for it!

And the clouds. Oh gosh. I thought I hated the rain that happened here occasionally, but if it doesn’t produce the most AMAZING clouds the next day, I don’t know what amazing clouds are. JUST LOOK.