March 9, 2018

Hello. My name is Auria. I will be leaving Philly in two days to go to Spain and Portugal for my Senior Project.

I’ll admit something right now. I have never taken a course in Spanish or Portuguese. I know the basic “hello” and “thank you” for Spanish, but that is the extent of my knowledge in the language. As for Portuguese, I don’t have a clue. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I want to go visit though. I love the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I try to decipher what a word means. I’ll definitely have a dictionary on hand though.

I spent this past week researching various locations in Spain and Portugal and building a more thorough itinerary. It’s been pretty exacting. Selecting where and what I will visit was fairly easy. However, determining the kind of travel and taking into account the travel time was something else. Making sure everything fits within the budget I set for myself made everything even more difficult. Needless to say, the reviews on TripAdvisor and Google Maps have been my best friends for the past week. I honestly can’t imagine what I would do without them. Thanks, guys.

I’ll first be visiting Barcelona, then Madrid and Seville. After that, I’ll be heading over to Portugal. I plan visit a variety of museums and try new foods. I also wiggled in a few palaces and churches here and there. All in all, I am excited to observe the difference in atmosphere between more modern areas to those with a few hundred more years to them.

Throughout the (coming) series of posts, I’ll sprinkle in a few photos. I hope you will enjoy reading about my travels in Spain and Portugal!

Auria