Trip to Zaragoza: Day 1

6 to 8 August 2010
IAESTE is not just about working and working. It's also about fun... travelling and lots of visiting. All the regions have different IAESTE local commitees so we have sort of like an interchange of visits between the regions. IAESTE Catalunya, especially have been organizing lots of fun stuff. This time I joined a trip to Zaragoza. It's a city in the Aragon region and the people there speak real Spanish and not Catalan.

Zaragoza is located in the middle of the other main provinces like Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, with a distance of approximately 300km from each so it's kind of like in the middle when seen in the map but on land it's in the middle of nowhere. There're many ways of transportation of course.. train, bus and car. Car by far would be the cheapest especially with car pool. Travelling by train is really costly though. At first, my intention was to go there by train and I was confident with the idea. But when I check the price, I nearly choked and immediately changed the idea. The ticket costs around 90+ Euros. Probably it's high speed train considering the distance, but still not worth it. RyanAir would have been much cheaper. So in the end, since there were only four going from Catalunya, we had a car pool and it only costs me 25Euros. Going by car takes around 3 and a half hours but that’s better than spending the money for train.

One the way to Zaragoza, there's this simple arch. I was told it's the Greenwich Arch

And once a while, there'll be large bull figures on the hills. From far it looks really real but in fact that's only a 2D figure

So, we reached at around quarter to 9 at night. Met the Zaragoza local committees at their apartment. Well, when I got into the apartment, the first thing I had in mind was to take pictures.. how typical of me with my camera

Cool alcohol bottle collections. That's the first thing that caught my attention when I got into the apartment.

 And a cool clock on the wall..

Must be really fragile. Would like to have something like that too..

After some introduction and greetings, we headed to Hotel Maza which was our accomodation for the weekend. It's located right at the city centre so it's really convenient. Everything is in walking distance.

Hotel Maza. Don't judge by the looks. It's small but good..

Not exactly the grand type of hotel. But I would give it a 3 stars.. And it only costs me 40 euros for two nights. As long as there's a comfortable bed, I'm in for the offer. And it sure does..

Nice bed.. Even the one in my apartment is not as comfy as this one. Couldn't wake up on time the following day.

 And of course, the toilet is one important point to judge whether it's a good hotel or not. For Hotel Maza, it's good. Definitely worth the money.

The toilet is the most important criteria for me to rate the hotel.

They even have a cool basin. I can actually play toy ship battles in it but I don't have the time to do so

So in Zaragoza, despite being hungry, having dinner was not the first thing we do. Instead we went to this special bar. It's my first time being in this bar and I'm very sure none of my friends in Malaysia or Australia has been to this sort of bar before. It's called El Plata.

It's full of people. I wasn't surprise why there were so many. It's the only picture I manage to take in the bar

And what's so special about this bar?? So special to the point that we have to skip dinner first??
There's a show which we were just in time for. It's a cabaret. A very famous and unique one in Zaragoza. To be exact it's a nude cabaret. Male and female performers literally take everything off. And the performers do not only dance on stage but  also around the whole bar. It's pretty close to the audiences.Wooooohhh... sure is my first time watching such show and I didn't have time to blink my eyes. Spain indeed. I'm finally out from the coconut shell. It's definitely my first time watching this and it's called a 'Cabaret' so now I'm confused with the definition of cabaret, wondering if all the cabarets like the ones in Moulin Rouge are the same or is it just this one that's unique.

Cabaret El Plata as can be seen at 23:00. Can you imagine, it's that late and still no dinner but I wasn't really hungry anymore after the show =D. I'm not a pervert ok!! Just traumatised..

 My camera was totally ready but unfortunately before the show started and during every interval breaks, there's a reminder that NO phototaking or video recording is allowed. So sorry guys, it's only in my memory. NO PHOTOS. And my blog is not for explicit contents either.

As you can see, even the toilet has entertainment. It's a really creative idea though. I tried to use the cubical but I guess I was too "shy" I couldn't release, so I had to use the normal toilet bowl

I didn't know how long the show was but I know it's very late because all the restaurants are closed by the time we came out from the bar. So, we had kebabs at a nearby kebab shop which, luckily was opened. Otherwise we would have to go to bed starving.

After that, we had a short relaxing walk before doing more late night activities.

It's really relaxing to walk at night. Well, this is the quiet part. This is Spain, not Australia, so don't expect such quietness everywhere.

The very famous Cathedral in Zaragoza. I'll talk much more about this later on.

And of course, no matter how late it is, we never miss visiting the bars. This is the definition of Spain.

One of the bars and there were so many people but it's categorized average. There are more than 10 other bars around the corner.

Well, this is day one and it's not even a day. Only a few hours of night and there's so much to talk about. Stay tuned for much much much more. Seriously!! It's only a weekend trip but I've taken hundreds of photos. And it's a really packed weekend. WOW!! I sure love IAESTE.