Spanish Club visits Europe over Spring Break

We arrived in the morning at 11 a.m. at the Charles De Gaulle airport where we converted our dollars to euros and spent two hours waiting for our bus to take us to the Mercure Hotel, the best of the three hotels we stayed at during our trip. At 3:30 p.m., we took the Metro, which is like a subway, to the Notre Dame cathedral. It is the most common and convenient way to get around in Europe, even though some stations are filthy and smell terrible.
The architecture of the Notre Dame cathedral was extremely detailed, and like the rest of Paris, sophisticated and beautiful.

At dinner, we met our tour guide, Laura, who would be with us for the next nine days. We had a common European dinner called “flam.” It is basically a really thin pizza only half a centimeter thick. While some people enjoyed it, I personally thought it tasted like a tortilla with mayonnaise and parmesan cheese.

On day three, breakfast in Paris consisted of croissant rolls and cereal with room-temperature milk. I was disappointed to find that the croissant rolls tasted identical to the ones from Costco, but I was not complaining…anything was better than flam.

We went to the Louvre museum after breakfast, and took pictures by the inverted pyramid. After that my friends and I decided to go to Denon, the best section of the three in the Louvre, and home to two major masterpieces: “The Winged Victory” (a.k.a. Nike), and the “Mona Lisa.”

On day four, we were all excited to have a bus tour for the beginning of our day, because of all the walking we endured through our first two days. We were dropped off at the Arc de Triumph where we walked up over 1,000 steps in the spiral staircase to see the breathtaking view from the landmark which is in the center of Paris.

After climbing back down, we decided to visit the Eiffel Tower. Because the streets in Europe are not rectangular, but instead trapezoidal, we got lost for a good 45 minutes. We finally made it to the world famous tower – which is much more stunning in person.

By the evening of the sixth day, we had our bags packed ready for our overnight train to our next destination: Barcelona. We were all very excited to be in a sleeper train, but when I found out there were four people to a room, and the room was so small that my arm span could reach from wall to wall, all I could do was laugh at the disappointing situation.

After a long night on the train, we woke up in Zaragoza, Spain. From there, we transferred our luggage to our tour bus, and drove a couple of hours to what would be our favorite city on the trip – Barcelona. We stayed in a hostel, a cheaper type of lodging mostly found in Spain and Hispanic America. Although we did not like it, we knew we would not be spending much time in it anyway.

Our first stop was Park Güell, where Antonio Gaudí lived and created his mosaic designs. It was amusing to walk through and be able to take pictures of what we once saw in our textbooks back home. In the late afternoon, we were free to roam around the city on our own.

Of course, we went shopping and were a lot happier with the prices here compared to the designer price tags in Paris.

The bus ride to Madrid took around four hours. We all tried to get some sleep during this excruciatingly long ride, but were unfortunately woken up by our guide almost every hour, to show us historical landmarks. Before arriving there, we stopped by the Plaza de España to see the Miguel de Cervantes monument.

April 10. Day 9: In the morning, we went to the Palacio Real. We had seen the architecture of several buildings in France and Spain that were beautiful, but nothing compared to this palace. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside.

By the evening, we were able to go to El Sol, the best part of Madrid. It was a lively area to shop in, and eat incredible food. In the evening, we stayed out late to go to the Chocolatería San Ginés to eat the best thing in Madrid: churros dipped in dark hot chocolate.