The Spanish trip was an experience of a lifetime. We flew into Madrid, the capital of Spain, and we stayed there for a few nights at the Hostel One Madrid. During the day we would go out into the town and see some really lovely places. We visited the modern part of Madrid and the really old part of Madrid. After a few nights in Madrid we went for a bus trip down to Toledo and stopped there to take a few photos and walk around. We then carried on to Córdoba. Córdoba was a lovely place. The hostel that we stayed at there was beautiful. It had a lovely green space for us to hangout in. Córdoba was really different to New Zealand. There were lots of little skinny cobbled streets. All the buildings were a few stories high and were all nicely painted. We stayed in Córdoba for 2 nights then we got on a really fast train and headed off to Sevilla where we would spend a week with a homestay family. The first night at the homestay was a little rough for some of us but we got a lot better as the week went on. For the week we were in Sevilla we were going to a language school which meant us getting up early and walking 15 minutes to school. The walk to school was lovely. Across a bridge that went over the river, down one of the main streets and past the beautiful Cathedral. My homestay family was really nice, they had a really sweet Boxer dog that would just walk into our room whenever it wanted and say hi. On Good Friday we didn’t have school so we went out and had a look at all the places around Sevilla. On the Saturday we went and saw the Semana Santa (Holy Week) Parade. The Parade consisted of people in pointy hats walking down the street with lit candles and people carrying huge floats of Jesus and Mary followed by a Band. On Easter Sunday we had to leave Seville as we had flights to Barcelona. The flight was surprisingly
quick. We got to Barcelona and got on the bus straight to our last hostel in Spain. We had our last few days in Spain touring Barcelona and doing our last bit of shopping. We went and saw the Sagrada Familia, a huge church designed by Antoni Gaudí. We also took the metro to a well known street called La Rambla which has heaps of souvenir shops along it. It came to the leaving day. Some of us didn’t want to leave this beautiful country and others didn’t want to spend another 34 hours on a plane but we had to. After 4 flights we made it back to Nelson – it felt so good to be home, but it felt like the trip had gone so fast. Spain has been a lovely experience of culture and language to us all. Thank you to the two Señoras for organising the trip. All us students had a great time. – Brooke Milligan
