Guernica y San Juan de Gaztelugatxe

So this past Friday (REALLY)our group took a trip to Guernica (Gernika, Gurnica, and others) and then to the church at San Juan de Gaztelugatxe. I think this might’ve been one of my favorite trips thus far. It could’ve been because of this:

It’s also possible that it had something to do with this:

Possibly this:

Or maybe it was because we were here:

This is the island we hiked (down and then back up a mountain) to. It was beautiful. At the top there was a church with a bell that everyone rang (10 times to get a wish). It was quite a hike, but SO worth it, let me tell you. I had a wonderful time there! It was nice to be able to get away from the whole group and do my own thing for a bit too.

Before that, though we went to Guernika. For those of you that don’t know, the city of Guernika was destroyed in 1936 by a combined Spanish and German effort. There was no clear objective in the bombing, as the arms factory, one main bridge to the city, and town hall/Basque government centers were all left nearly fully intact. For years the Franco regime told Spain that the town had burned itself down. Now there is a peace museum in the center of town with ideas on what is needed to create peace, why it’s important, and things like that. It also chronicles the Basque conflict and ETA’s history, which I found quite interesting. I think the only thing I really didn’t like about the museum is that they tried to make it seem like this bombing, in terms of scale and magnitude, was the biggest in history (they didn’t mean up to this point, they meant in all of history up until now).

Anyways, Guernica was (and still is) one of the main places in all of Pais Vasco for the government. The king is sworn in here under this tree, the Tree of Guernica:

This is the new one. Whenever the tree is dying, they plant one of it’s seeds and start a new one. Across the way, housed in a little gazebo,was the old one.

All in all, quite a fun trip. It was a bit hard on my feet, knees, legs, butt, and stomach with all the walking (jeepers I’m out of shape!), but SO worth it.

Finally, I leave you with this….

I finished a gold one earlier, but I can’t for the life of me get it to photograph well C’est la vie…they’re pretty cute little fish and all my friends here are asking for them.

Alright, time to get back to studying for two tests tomorrow. And then, this weekend…BARCELONA WITH SPARKEY*!!!!!!!! My parents (and sister and uncle) come Monday. I’m pretty psyched. YAY FAMILY!

*Sparkey is my boyfriend of almost a year, he’s pretty cute and maybe I’ll post a picture of us being cute or silly together, because that’s what we do. But only if he lets me.