Once we got to Galacia (which is in a northern harbor type part of Spain) we settled in to our cozy hostal. This was my first ever hostal experience. It was pretty much the same as a hotel, but with a common area, a variety of differently decorated rooms, and an adorable old couple who ran the place. Staying in the hostal turned out to be super fun because every night was like a sleepover. (Cultural note- in Oviedo, or maybe all of Spain, it's very uncommon to have friends, neighbors, and sometimes even family members come over to your house or apartment. So since we can't normally hang out in each other's homestays, this weekend of sleepoverness was awesome). Driving and hanging in the hostal were the majority of Friday's activities.
Saturday the AHA group explored Galacia. I should mention that the AHA group wasn't actually chaperoned by any AHA officials. The only consistent "adult supervision" was an art professor from the university, the visiting professor from OSU, and our bus driver. But I guess we're all in college and technically don't need supervision. Anywho, Saturday was kicked off with a trip to a beautiful lookout point. The look out point was cool, but I got distracted by a playground in the area. This playground had the most legit teeter-totter I've ever played on. It was huge, spun, and had a giant spring in the middle so you bounced as you whirled round and round. There was also a giant hedge maze. With five minutes left to spare at the lookout point, four of us decided it was a good idea to attempt the maze. Bad idea. We ended up getting intensely stuck inside for more than ten minutes, which forced the bus driver and our fellow students to wait for us as we fought our way out. Oops. After that extravaganza we all headed to El Torre De Hercules. It was a giant tower, maybe a lighthouse at one point, along the ocean front. We climbed our way to the top and were able to see for miles. After venturing back down the tower we were let loose on the city. Some of us decided to check out the local aquarium. It was awesome. I love aquariums. This one had a huge room dedicated to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. There were sharks, eels, stingrays- the whole shebang. Although I must say it was nothing compared to my favorite aquarium, The Monterey Bay Aquarium.
On Sunday we bused it out to Santiago. Santiago is an ancient city with some neat significance. The coolest part of Santiago is the cathedral. People make pilgrimages from all over Europe to The Cathedral. There were people inside attending mass adorned in hiking gear with giant packs on their backs. It was really neat to get to see all these people at the end of their doubtlessly long journeys. I only felt slightly guilty for having taken a bus there. Not only did we get to go inside of the cathedral, but we also got to go on top of it. That's right, up to the roof. It was flipping awesome. At first our tour started out pretty normal. We went through some old rooms, learned some stuff, blah blah blah. And then things got crazy. We went up some stairs that headed to a door, and beyond the door was the cathedral roof. Then we got a sky view tour of the rest of the city from the bajillion year old roof, no big deal. I felt like a BAMF for sure. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that it was pouring down rain that day. This wasn't any normal I'm-from-California-and-don't-understand-the-concept-of-rain kinda storm, it was so crazy that even Oregonians appreciated it. Umbrellas were breaking left and right. I loved every drop of it.
On Monday we made the trek back to Oviedo. At some point we stopped and saw a Roman style cathedral in some city, but I couldn't tell you what cathedral it was or which city we were in, so enough about that. All in all it was a good first overnight excursion and I'm looking forward to the next one.
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