4th OF ESO PROM TRIP-by Paula Heras

4th OF ESO PROM TRIP

Last march 23rd  at 7:30 am, our long awaited ESO trip began. It was a sunny day , not in all of Spain though, (we'll talk about that later)
and all of us were so excited to get into the bus so that this unforgettable experience could begin.

That day we traveled from Madrid to Guadalupe, 3 hours by bus. We went to the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Guadalupe.
This monastery is one of the most important outstanding repository of the Spanish religious Architecture, thanks to Columbus' arrival in the Americans and the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Catholic Kings. This building symbolizes these two important events in the Spanish history.
later we saw the statue of the Virgin and we went to eat "Ensaladilla rusa" and chicken and French fries, for desert ice cream.

After 2 hours and hundreds of curves we finally made it to Trujillo. Everything seemed so beautiful and so old... We were able to see the statue of Pizarro and his house but we actually couldn't see anything else due to the rain. It was not a normal rainy day, oh no, it was POURING.
When we got back to the hotel my roommates had to dry their shoes and purses with the hairdryer, by that I mean everything.
For supper we ate some spaghetti and burgers, for desert ice cream (again).



Thanks to our teacher's advice and phone calls to our rooms we woke up at around 6:45 am (we really appreciated it, teachers :)).
The hotel buffet was great and I personally ate as I had never before in my life.

During the morning we visited the city of Caceres. It's the largest municipality of Spain and it's a land area of 1,705.33 km².
The walled city has been also declared a UNESCO world Heritage Site.
We ate in a kind of a road restaurant, were I found out that sausages can be green too. I seriously don't know what was in mine and in fact I don't want to know it either... For desert ice cream (again).

In the afternoon we crossed the border and went to Coimbra, Portugal. I'd never been to Portugal before and I found it so beautiful and more different than what I thought compared to Spain. My friends and I took some pretty good shots in the beautiful views of the city.
We ate dinner at the hotel. Portuguese food... not that good actually.

The rooms were of two and three people. It was so fun being with your friends alone in a hotel room with no parents saying "tidy up" or "go to bed".
 I had the chance to spend those nights with my best friends and I'm so thankful to them for making me laugh so much.

In our second last day we visited Lisbon, in my opinion all the hours spent in the bus were worth it. It was even more overwhelming than Coimbra.
Our guide took us to the main attractions in the city such us "The Plaza del comercio", "Torre de Belem", "Plaza del Rossio".
She taught us some words that are completely different in Portuguese and in Spanish, for example "Borracho" (drunk) means "guapo" (handsome).
With this word we had kind of an incident.. those who came to the trip will understand.

We spent the night in Merida, the capital of the autonomous community of Extremadura. Our guide in that place was Manuel, our teacher and he explained to us that the city was founded in 25 BC with the name of "Emerita Augusta" by Emperor Augustus. That word means the veterans and retired soldiers of Augustus army.
We got to see the Roman Theater and Amphitheater. This was, with Lisbon my favorite part of the trip.
For dinner we had meat, salad and ice cream. I'm not kidding, we ate the same thing throughout the whole trip...
I guess we all agree the food wasn't the best part of the trip.:)

On our way back to Madrid we had the chance to listen to the wide repertory of song that our driver, Javi, had. Hip hop, rap, even flamenco.
My friend Natalia and I tried to imitate and sing the songs... We wouldn't have a future as flamenco singers though...

After 16 days of our trip and 30 hours travelled by bus I could not be more thankful to my friends that helped me to have this awesome time; to my classmates in general; Javi, the bus driver for stopping so that we could go to the bathroom  and of course to our teachers: Beatriz, Aurelio, Maite and Manuel.
Thank you so much for letting us have this experience and endure us.