Basque Country and Portugal

Santander Beach

Spanish Tapas

Michael and I at the beach

Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum

Bilbao (Basque Country)
Even if you're not Catholic, in Spain you at least love everyone who is because it's because of this wonderful religion that we get "puentes" (bridge weekends). When one of the 20+ saint days falls on a Thursday, Spain decides to take off the whole weekend and thus you get a four day weekend. This week was GREAT as we had TWO puentes....one on Tuesday and one on Thursday so therefore it was only Wednesday that we had class. The first part I spent in Bilbao and Santander Spain (in Basque Country) with my friend Michael. We spent four great days on the beach and exploring the towns. I was shocked at how nice Biblao is. It is very unique as it is both part of the Basque Country and very modern due to the addition of the Gooogenheim (sp?) Museum in 1997. Santander is a great little beach town on the North coast of Spain. We got super sunburned and loved every minute of it!

I flew back for a few hours to Madrid and was soon on a bus to Lisbon, Portugal with my good friend Katie Sheahan and two other new friends I met here. We spent a few days exploring the town and other small cities outside of Lisbon. We even spent one day at a small beach town and we just had a blast. I have never laughed so hard in my life! Highlight of the trip: one of our friends told us about this GREAT burger place called "Barbus Burger". She told us the burgers were as big as our head and sold out of the back of a cart. Of course we were on a mission to find them and we asked EVERYONE we could where this place was with the huge hamburgers. After about 20 people who had no idea what we were talking about, we got a little suspicious. Everyone would laugh at us and point us to McDonalds if we wanted a hamburger. Turns out, our friend did this as a joke so and there is no Barbus Burger!!!! haha we had a good laugh but were REALLY sad we would have to wait for our burgers. Typical Americans!

Anyways, back to life and reality here in Spain. At least for a week and a half before I got to Ireland! Here are a few pictures and I'll post more later!