My name is Kory, and I am from a small town in Michigan. Last year my Spanish class got the opportunity to go to Spain with EF Tours. This was the first time that I went on a trip without my family, and to a foreign country! We flew out of Detroit on a German airline called Lufthansa. This was the best airline that I had ever experienced. They provided both dinner and breakfast, both delicious, and even their cabin seating was spacious and comfortable. We landed in Madrid after all night of traveling, and started our sightseeing tour.
Our tour guide was a crazy woman from Barcelona that walked faster than anybody that I had ever seen. She brought us through sol and plaza mayor, which was incredibly beautiful. Besides the fact that she walked so fast that we lost her, it was a great first day.
We woke up exhausted and in need of more sleep. Our tour guide took us on the metro (where I almost got pickpocketed), and then to a bus where we went to Segovia. In Segovia, the day happened to be Palm Sunday, we got to see a huge parade where everyone was dressed in ceremonial robes. Words couldn’t even describe the scenery here. Their church was very beautiful, and we also got to see Alcazar, which is a humongous castle with a mote around it. The tour inside was worth every euro.
When we got back to Madrid, our teacher let us go to a club called Teatro Kapital. It was teen night and there were Spanish teenagers all over the place! It was cool to see how differently their music and dancing style is to ours.
The next day we went to Toledo. We went inside the richest cathedrals in the world! We also went inside a forge where they make swords and jewelry out of gold and silver. That was amazing. The scenery here was simply to die for.
When we arrived back in Madrid we ate dinner and watched a flamenco show at Corral De La Moreria. The food was wonderful and the dancers were extremely talented. Then we went back to our hotel. We were staying at The Hotel Charmartin. It was a pretty good sized hotel, but a little hard to get used to. The hair dryer in our room looked like a vacuum cleaner, and we had a toilet AND a bidet. That was awkward. But other than that our room was on the eighth floor and had a wonderful view.
The next day we left Madrid and Hotel Charmartin to go to Barcelona. We took the Ave, a high speed train that went 186mph! The accommodations were okay, but it was only a two hour journey. Before we went to our hotel, we went to Park Guell… this was my favorite part of the trip. I highly recommend this park to anyone traveling in Spain. It was so beautiful, and the architecture was breathtaking.
The shopping in Barcelona was great. It was a little expensive but easy to find great deals. My favorite stores were Zara and H&M. I bought so much that I almost had to buy another suit case! But overall, it was a great trip and I really enjoyed/ recommend any part of it to anybody thinking about traveling to Europe!
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