Semana Santa con mi familia

So before I start this blogpost let me just say that I did about 40000 things over Semana Santa and this will just be a very brief outline because I'm sure no one wants to read a book about my vacation!

Semana Santa, or holy week, was absolutely amazing! My parents and brother and sister came to visit me! We met up in Venice, Italy, which meeting itself was an adventure! I planned to meet my family near baggage claim until I realized I had flown into a different airport from them! DISASTER! A lady told me that the water taxi's were on strike so my only option was to walk an hour (with my heavy suitcase) to the hotel or take an expensive taxi to the airport where my family was at! I took the airport and thankfully my dad was able to call me on my spanish phone and I finally found them! What a scary start to the trip!

Venus was amazing in total! We took a gondola ride, went to Murano to see glass blowing (and got some pretty cool earrings), rode a few too many long water taxis (which turned out not to be on strike), and ate DELICIOUS pasta, pizza, and gelato!

Fam in Venus

Near St. Mark's square

murano

near gondola

murano!

Next stop was Florence! We took a 1.5 hour train to Florence and were happy to check in and grab some more delicious pasta! We spent the day at the Ufizzi art museum that Jamie, my brother, was dying to go to! That night we met up with my friend Kyle from Elon and he took my family to a cute little italian place for dinner! I loved it and seeing him! The next day in Florence we went to the il duomo and before we left Florence we climbed both the il duomo dome and the bell tower (and ate a ton more Italian food).

Kyle and I in Florence

We made a quick pit stop in Madrid to sleep (and eat delicious calamari sandwiches) before heading to my hometown of Sevilla! I accidentally got on the bus going the wrong way in Sevilla (what's new?) so it took us a long time to get to the hotel, but after we were there I took my family on a tour of Sevilla in true sevillano fashion! We went to a frutería (a fruit store) and ate our plums while going to see the cathedral (and Christopher Columbus' grave). We had tapas for lunch and then went to see the alcázar! For dinner we went to my host family's house! It was funny because my host family doesn't speak english and my family doesn't speak spanish so I played translator the whole time! My host mom made a really delicious meal (paella and spanish tortilla) and we all left stuffed!

in alcazár

All family pic!

The next day we went to Granada! Here we had tapas and delicious sangria that we all were in love with! The waiter kept bringing us random tapas and we couldn't quite figure out what was going on, but that's Spain for you! We spent the evening at the Alhambra and on our way back to the hotel we saw a processional and then got some ice cream for "dinner."

Last stop was in Madrid! We went to parque de los retiros, rode a cable car over the city, went to a tour of the royal palace, ate menú diarios (two courses, dessert, bread, and a drink), drank more sangria and ate chocolate and churros for dinner two nights in a row!! Sunday, Easter Morning, was sad saying goodbye! I didn't want to see my family leave! The week spent with family was amazing and I can't wait to see them again soon!