Zaragoza 10 de Octubre 2010

So, I'm like a month behind on my blog and I have a lot to update so here we go.... During the weekend of oct 10th I went to Zaragoza Info on Zaragoza and the city was celebrating the Festival of Pilar.  Here is a good description of the holiday Festival of Pilar So I went with Erasmus on a Trip to the city.  We left at 8 am on Sunday morning and we got home at 7am on Monday morning.  (We didn't have class on that Monday in observation of the holiday)

This is the group of friends I went with.  We are all from the Residencia

This is me just messing around.  We were at a rest stop.

These are the buses that took us to Zaragoza.

The rest stop.  All of these people are the people who went on the trip with us.

Just waisting time.... no, this is not the Prime Meridian.

This is a little pueblo that was next to the parking lot at the rest stop.

Landscapes of Spain, this would be what some of the land looks like NE of Madrid.

Bus 4

My friends David and Morgan.

There are alot of windmills on the drive to Zaragoza.  The bull is just a decoration.  there are three of them along the road to Zaragoza.

This is the Iglesia se llama basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar from the bus.

When we got to Zaragoza they gave us all maps and we had until like 3 or 4 am to do whatever we wanted in the city. So here is what we did:

Inside the church.

this is a performance of something.... no one really knows what it was.  See the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDHqEg9GTvo

Plaza del Pilar

the church from the outside standing in the Plaza del Pilar.

me in front of the church.

Winnie the Poo "donde está la cámara... Donde está la cámara?!?" he couldn't see out of his mask so he was freaking out and yelling, "where is the camera?"

My friends walking along the streets of Zaragoza.

This was the menu at the restaurant where we ate lunch.

Plaza de Toros Zaragoza

me in front of the Plaza de Toros.

 

 

 

 

 

While we were at the Plaza de Toros, we noticed that they were selling some tickets for a Toros show called "Espectáculo de Toros" At this show they don't Kill the bulls, they put fire on their horns and its like a competition to see what group does it best.  So we bought tickets for the show later that night.  I'll explain it more later.  As soon as we had bought the tickets, we walked by a demonstration of people who were protesting against the cruelty of the bull fights:

Here is a video of the Demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXLvOHTobt0


After that, we headed to the a castle called  la Aljafería :

After the castle, we walked around the city and explored a little bit before the Espectáculo de Toros started.  

Plaza de Toros again.

The street we walked on to get to the Plaza de Toros and la Aljafería called Conde Aranda.

these are some more people protesting against bullfights

 

Here is a video of the March against bullfighting:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoNayKk3X44

The streets are starting to get really crowded as everyone arrives for the parade and events that happen later on in the evening.

Puente de Piedra

Puente del Pilar

Diana and me :)

we did a lot of walking that day and Diana was tired so Jaime gave her a piggy back ride :)

we ate dinner at a Chinese food restaurant.  Look at # 82, I couldn

't stop laughing about this!

So this is the Espectáculo de Toros that we went to.  I thought that it was going to be ok to watch because they don't kill the bulls, they just attach flaming torches to their horns, but it still was really sad because the bulls don't know whats going on and they freak out.

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Inside the Plaza de Toros

They actually let the kids run around and play on the stuff before the bulls come out.  I was really surprised about that.

here they are introducing the teams that are going to compete in the show.

So whats happening here is that they put a rope around the bull's horns when he is in a cage.  Then they let him out and everyone in the competition pulls the bull against a post.  then the team (who's turn it is) has to attach flaming torches to each of the bull's horns.  they you see how long the torches stay on the bull.  The teams are judged on 2 things: 1) how long it take them to attach the torches and 2) how long the torches stay on the bull = how good of a job the team did in attaching the torches. 

 Here is a video of how they attach a the torches to the bull: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnVt2BDlHik

Anyone from the audience is allowed to go into the rink and interact with the bulls.  the objective of the people in the rink is to get the bull to ram things and knock off the torches.  It is a little strange.

Here is a video of people trying to get the bull to ram things with his horns.  You can see that he is like freaking out, poor thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-3l8UCW1cY

When it is time to obring the bull back inside, they let out 4 female cows ans the bull stops what he is doing and follows them.  this is really cool, its like an instinctual thing. 

you can barely see it, but there is a guy laying down on top of the cage.  He is the one who attaches the rope to the bulls horns before they let the bull out of the cage. 

this bull wouldn't follow the female cows out of the rink do they had to call in a matador to lure him to the exit!

this is just the hallway in the Plaza de Toros.

After the Espectáculo de Toros we still had time to kill before we met the bus to  return to Madrid.  Most of the people from Erasmus went to a club and then went to some bars but we all just wanted to chill and hang out.  It was freezing and raining abut there was nowhere we could go inside so we just hung out outside. 

Puente de Santiago at night

we had like an hour and a half to kill so we were joking that if we walked really really slow we would make it to the bus in an hour and a half. (The bus was a 2 minutes of normal walking away)

we played limbo for a little bit.

Angel and Diana were practicing cheer leading :)

So, that is the end of the Zaragoza trip :) It was really fun but really cold all day.  It also reined a little bit the first half of the day but that tapered off. Oh, and if you would like to know where Zaragoza is, check out this map: http://maps.google.es/maps?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox&rls=com.yahoo:en-US:official&biw=1332&bih=540&q=Zaragoza&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=il