9/11/10 Leon

Today we woke up and had an amazing continental breakfast at the hotel.  We left as a group for our tour of Leon.  Our art history professor came along with us on the trip, so he did all of our tours for us.  We started out in front of the original walls of the city, built by the Romans in siglo I B.C. (First century B.C.).  The Romans built their cities in very practical ways, with roads in a grid system, aqueducts and a sewer system. 

         We then went on to tour San Isidoro.  A church built in the 12^th century (A.D.), during the Romanesque period.  We learned about the architecture of the building and what aspects of it made it Romanesque, including the archways, the paintings on the ceilings without much perspective and columns with large capitals.  It is hard to summarized everything we learned, but those are the basic points.

We then looked around the Palacio de los Guzmanes, a palace built by the Guzmanes family during the Renaissance.  Built in a different time period, it had architecture unique to the time period, including family crests built into the building, an open courtyard and columns with small and simple capitals.  After these tours, we had a lunch break and I went with a few other people to a Turkish restaurant to buy a Donor Kebab. Morgan, Naoto and I walked to a park that we had seen earlier and hung out there for a while.  All the stores were closed for siesta, so the park was a perfect place to visit.

After siesta, the group met up again to tour the cathedral!  It was amazing to go inside.  The cathedral is from the pure gothic period or thirteenth century.  Architectural characteristics of this period include that everything is built upwards (towards the sky/ heaven) and the floor plan of the building is in the shape of a cross.  The stained glass in the church is a new feature for the time period as well. 

After our tour of the church, some people went to the Saturday afternoon mass.  I chose to go back to the hotel and I played cards.  I went to dinner with a small group of kids at an Italian resteraunt that overlooked San Isidoro, where we had visited before.  The food was pretty good and after dinner we went to different tapas places and hung out.  At the tapas places, there is no place to sit down usually.  A different atmosphere than the U.S., you walk in and order your drink/ tapas and then stand along the wall inside or outside.  There are small counters on the wall that you can put your plates and glasses on. 

Returning a little before midnight, 5 of us ended up staying up until 3 a.m., just talking on the 3^rd floor terrace of the hotel.  I have really enjoyed getting to know everyone in the group and it was fun to stay up and talk about pretty much everything from does life exist on other planets to the work of FBI agents.