Spain and Portugal 2017

Sarah, Allie and Jess After waking up at 8am, the group enjoyed a delicious breakfast of fresh pastries, fruit, eggs, bacon, and more. We departed for our first activity of the day; a bus tour of Madrid with our tour guide Mati.  During the tour, we were able to stop briefly at the plaza de toros, which is a famous bull ring. It holds 35,000 spectators and is the largest in Spain. We were able to take pictures with the statues of famous bullfighters and the Dr. Fleming who they have a statue for because of his discovery of penicillin .  Our tour ended at the Prado museum fora guided tour of  many of the museums incredible paintings by painters such as Velazquez, Goya and Morillo which many of these, the students had seen at one point in school. Next we had an hour and a half to explore the center of town for lunch. Sara, Allie, and I found ourselves at an adorable little café where we indulged in fresh fruit smoothies and tried tortilla española. Afterwards, we wen...

Max and AJ First we went to Retiro Park as soon as we dropped off our luggage at Apartamentos Gran Via. Retiro Park is the largest park in all of Spain and is centrally located in Madrid. Sure we were all tired from the flight but the walk was definitely worth it! We hopped on row boats in the artificial lake and we rowed and enjoyed the views while racing some Spanish kids that we met on the boat.  Later,we viewed Pablo Picasso's Guernica mural that he painted in 1937 that is used for propaganda against war. It was  an amazing museum and was honestly lit. It was a lot of fun getting to know people today At first, everyone was shy and hung out in cliques but today, it was awesome to get to know a lot of new people. After all, we are going to spend the next 7 days together. Later at night, we at at La Cueva It was good authentic Spanish food. We tried a Salmorejo that was a tomato based soup which was then followed a rice and pork dish that was extremely good. I have no dou...

Dylan and Jason's Day 1 On our ride to Newark, the ride was smooth and uneventful. However, upon entering the TSA had changed everything since we were last there and the group was split but everyone was found. Jason, Dylan and I bought a hamburger to enjoy prior to our departure as we were both hungry and did not know what we would be ordering on the plane. As we were eating we found out our gate changed, but it was not too bad as it only moved over three gates! Being group three was pretty lucky because we got to board the plane prior to the rest of the group, but that only meant we could enjoy the 7 hour flight a little more. As it was a long flight we watched a lot of good movies, ate pasta that tasted more like pie, got very little sleep because I could not find a great position to sleep in. As morning came,we were greeted with a croissant and some yogurt one hour prior to landing.  As we went through customs and immigration, there was Raquel our tour guide waiting for us o...

It's been just over 475 days since our first meeting and our first participant and now, our 9th tour and ACIS's Iberian Peninsula educational tour will take us to Spain and Portugal! Over the next 9 days, we'll be seeing Madrid, Córdoba, Sevilla, Mérida and then cross the border into Portugal to visit Lisbon. Over the next week and a half, the 22 students will have a chance to write the blog of their experience each day. We hope you will be following along as we have a chance to bring the classroom to life!