Barcelona-ma prochaine maison

Barcelona is quite possibly the best city I have ever been to. I went this past weekend with 3 other girls in my program. We found an amazing apartment for super cheap on Airbnb (I highly recommend it) and went for 3 days to experience some Spanish culture.  Let me tell you it was very hard to leave. In fact we met a group of Spanish guys who had a boat in the harbor and told us to come sailing with them for a week instead of going back to the program...hard to refuse.
     Once in Barcelona the first thing we did was head to the beach which is so large you cannot see either side of it. Lining the beach are tons of shops, hotels, bars, clubs, restaurants, you name it. There were thousands of people there which while not ideal for relaxing but was still an awesome experience. People just came up to us whenever they pleased asking where we were from, what we were doing, and sharing their travel stories. It seemed to be the center for nomads and adventurers. For dinner we stopped by a massive market in the center of the city where there was every sort of edible thing imaginable. I saw sheep heads, brains, cow hearts, every fruit possible, veggies, tons of candy, the list goes on. That is one thing I really wish the US had: kick ass markets.
    We spent the next morning exploring some of Gaudi's architecture which can be found all over the city. Parc Guell was our first stop and we hiked up to the top and saw the entirety of Barcelona for miles and miles. The park is also filled with cool Gaudi structures, my favorite being some mosaic, life size ginger bread houses from Hansel and Gretal.
    Nights in Barcelona are even better than the day if one can believe it.  We went to several amazing clubs and bars and I had my fill of some way too good sangria.  People in Barcelona get up relatively early in the morning, go to the beach, then all evening people sleep in preparation for the night of festivities which usually don't end until 6 or 7am.  We weren't quite on that schedule but I will say we did not sleep much that weekend.
   Highlight of our last day was going to the Picasso museum in the city's Gothic quarter.  There were over 5000 Picasso pieces starting from when he was only 7 years old. It was amazing to see his work in a timeline manner and see how he progressed and changed as he got older. I have to say after seeing his younger work before cubism I am now a definitely Picasso fan.  After the museum we hitched a ride back to Arles from a young student in Toulouse using covoiturage (carpool) and made it home safe and sound that night.
                                                                                  

Cassis

My trip to Cassis was one of my favorite days here so far. It is a little town right on the Mediterranean with beautiful white cliffs, beaches and a tiny little town center.  It was quite a hike to get there, literally, we had to walk an hour from the train station to the beach but luckily we went through beautiful vineyards and could see the gorgeous cliffs in the distance.  I want to go back and hike the Calanques: steep, walled inlets and coves in the crevasses of the limestone cliffs where you can find complete isolation to enjoy the teal blue Mediterranean...don't mind if I do.

Our walk to Cassis

My friend Gina and I in Cassis

Montmajour Abbey

This is the stunning Montmajour Abbey built between the 10th and 13th century on what was at the time an Island but is now just north of Arles. It was primarily a monastery and the home to many monks for hundreds of years. Now it is open to the public and when we visited we were lucky enough to see the Christian Lacroix exhibit of various costumes and designs he created. He was in fact born in Arles and is now one of the most famous and high fashion designers of our time.

  
 Above are some of the costumes that Lacroix designed for the opera Aida. They are  absolutely exquisite with a lot of layering and detail. I had been walking around the Abbey alone at this point and it was rather alarming to stumble upon this dark crew in one of the corridors.

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This is a gorgeous Lacroix wedding dress found in another of the Abbeys chambers. I loved exploring the different rooms constantly surprised with what each chamber had to offer.














 

La Course Camarguaise

La course camarguaise is the more humane, in my opinion, of bullfights. In this sport the taureau (bull) has tons of little ribbons attached to its horns and les raseteurs (men in white) attempt to get the strings off the horns with this little hook tool without being speared with the taureau's horns.  Unlike the corrida the bull is not killed just tortured for 20 minutes by tons of men in white and then he returns to the fields to reproduce the next generation of baby taureaus.
  The dangerous part is that the taureau has been poked and prodded before hand into a frenzied, angry state and comes into the arena rearing to charge at anything that moves.  The raseaturs have to run as fast as they can and jump over the fence to safety when the taureau charges, which is constantly. However some of the raseteurs definitely get a buzz from waiting until the last moment to fly over the fence and in one such instance the raseteur waited too long. The taureau charged at him ripping his pants so much so that both his butt cheeks were clearly visible to the world and there were small traces of blood running down his pants. Yet no sooner had he jumped the wall to safety he was right back in the arena chasing after the last string on the bulls horn, his butt cheeks bouncing along behind him.

Palais des Papes

For our first excursion day, which will happen each Friday, we went to Avignon. There we explored the Palais des Papes one of the largest medieval gothic buildings in Europe that housed many of the Popes starting in the late 1300s. It is now home to the Avignon Theatre Festival during the month of July each year as well as open to the public for visiting and viewing 20 of the rooms inside the palace. While I loved the guided tour what I really wanted to do was sneak off into one of the many hidden passages and secret doors found throughout the palace. Unfortunately I abided by the rules and have nothing exciting to report in terms of buried treasure.

Gypsy Kings

On Thursday night everyone in my program went to the Arena to watch the Gypsy Kings perform.  They are a mixture of Flamenco, Spanish, French, West African influenced music but all the performers come from either Arles or Montpellier in the south of France. This was the end of their "revival" tour I guess you could call it. It was pretty hilarious, they all were grey and balding and had barely any voices left but they were really amazing musicians and it was fun to dance to. Here's a youtube clip of the  much younger Gypsy Kings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mifnMC_Kn1Q

L'Espace Van Gogh

 From the 16th-20th century the building surrounding this courtyard was the hospital in Arles, and the hospital that housed Van Gogh several times after he chopped portions of his left ear off. Now it is called L'espace Van Gogh and is, as one can imagine, a major tourist attraction. Van Gogh is referenced constantly all over the city and you can follow his footsteps through his many paintings of Arles and Arlesian life. The picture to the right is a painting he did of the garden while he was in the hospital.