Pictures from Spain

I'm a little more than a week into my classes here in Salamanca, and everything is going well. Spanish is hard, especially since we're learning things so quickly, but I'm dealing with it. I'm making lots of friends here, too, but the problem is that most of them aren't staying as long as I am, so they'll be leaving in the next few weeks. Oh well, I'll just have to meet some of the new students!

Anyway, time for some pictures from Spain. When I was in Barcelona, I visited many of Gaudí's works, of course, and they're a lot of fun to photograph. My favorite spot was the roof of La Pedrera, which has beautiful chimneys sprouting up everywhere. I was there pretty late in the day, when the sun was low, which meant that the light was perfect for photographs.






I also went to La Sagrada Família; I have to say that I actually liked some of the more recent additions to the building more than the parts that Gaudí designed. For instance, they have some amazing stained-glass windows now:



I took a day trip to Segovia and Ávila this weekend with a bunch of other foreign students. Segovia is really cool because it has an aqueduct that dates from Roman times which towers over part of the city:




And then finally, some pictures of Salamanca. These are all in the Plaza Mayor, which is a great plaza in the heart of the city, about a 5 minute walk from my apartment. When you want to meet up with someone in the city, you almost always agree to meet here, under a clock in the plaza:



At the moment, there's a giant inflatable structure in the middle of the plaza that looks like a pumpkin. It really doesn't fit in with the rest of the city, but it makes for some interesting contrasts in photographs: