Estremadura: Mérida and Caceres

Outside the Roman theater

I apologize for the lack of posting on this blog as of late, I have been rather busy with various things this past week.  I have also decided for the convenience of myself and in order to not exhaust the attention span of my readers that I will limit my posts to about once a week, and usually write them on our weekly excursions that we take almost every weekend throughout this program.

The trip we took this weekend was to the province in Eastern Spain by the name of Estremadura.  As our host mother Blanca explained to us before the trip, this area of the country is not as big of a tourist attraction as other cities like Barcelona and Sevilla.  It is rather an extremely culturally rich part of the country simply bursting at the seams with history, which I think is just as important as any modernized and beautiful city, if not far more essential.

The Roman Theater of Mérida

After a four hour bus ride, we arrived in Mérida on Friday ready to see the famous Roman Ruins of Mérida.  We had learned just the previous day about the five types of columns that the Romans used in their ancient and precise architecture, with specific instructions from our professor to complete the readings before our trip so that we could fully appreciate the wondrous sights we were to be seeing on our trip to Estremadura.  That's the wonderful thing about study abroad; we didn't just learn about Roman architecture and move on to the next unit, we learned about Roman architecture and then took a specific trip to see the ruins for ourselves.

The Roman Arena, where many
 a gladiator fight was held  

I had studied our assigned readings for class ahead of time as well as taken a good look at our itinerary for our weekend trip, but neither of these things could have prepared me for what I was about to see.  As I beheld the Roman Ruins while listening intently to the historical explanation flowing from the mouth of our tour guide in perfect Spanish, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of awe and almost insignificance as I contemplated the thousands of people who had stood in these locations hundreds of years before me.  The Roman theater was by far my favorite, but we also saw the ruins of the Roman arena, the Temple of Diana, and many other Roman ruins that day.

The famous cistern located under the
museum of Caceres

The remainder of our Friday was spent in Caceres, where we spent time in an antique bookshop before having a lovely meal at a tapas bar next to the Plaza Mayor of Caceres.  We spent the night in a hotel just outside of town with w beautiful view of the Spanish countryside, another humbling moment used to remind me just how lucky I am to be studying here in Spain for the semester.  Saturday morning began with the best continental breakfast I have ever had and then we were off to be guided through the historical portion of Caceres, which was equally inspiring as we saw countless homes of past noblemen and explored the Museum of Caceres, filled with endless treasures and knowledge of our ancestors.  I must admit, sitting through lectures on history of Europe or the United States has never been interesting to me in the slightest, but when I had the opportunity to see history for myself in the form of preserved and restored buildings, towers, theaters, and cisterns, I found myself completely enraptured and actually listening to the historical explanations of our tour guide.  Of all the things I expected to gain from this study abroad experience, a new appreciation for history was certainly not one of them.  However, now that I have been brought into the light, I am definitely not complaining.