and she has returned from her travels

spain is beautiful. architecture is big.. the cities, and everything else, are designed for their aesthetic value almost more than their functionality. and it is wonderful.

I had a wonderful time. The food was great (except for the paella) and it was so exciting to be somewhere where everything was so different! I liked Barcelona the best.. it’s such a beautiful, friendly city. I happened to be partial to Bilbao, however, because I found a fabric store. And a bead store. I was in heaven.

You can click any of the photos to see them larger sized in my flickr set from the trip, and there’s also a flickr badge in the sidebar with even more pictures. I only bought a half yard meter of fabric (una media metro de tela) – it’s green with white polka dots and it was in the “precios especiales” (clearance) section. Todo la tela fue very expensive (muy cara). The woman at the fabric store did not speak english, so I got to order fabric in Spanish.. something I had practiced plenty of times before going, so I was glad. Speaking in Spanish was very, very exciting. I found it easier to speak than listen, though, because when they’d speak back to me I wouldn’t be able to understand it – especially numbers and prices, because they said it so fast and I couldn’t figure out where the line was between euros and cents – like “20.50” I was like what? two thousand dollars? ha.

The fabric store and bead shops were definitely the highlights of my trip. I loved seeing all the museums, the cathedrals got boring after we saw about 20 of them, but the best part was by far the free time, exploring the culture on our own and finally putting a use to Spanish class. I went with my good friend Alex, who was very patient with me in my crafty shops, and then I’d tag along with her to record stores. It all worked out very nicely, and was a very fun and exciting trip!