After a 7 hour train ride, Mary and I arrived safely (and exhausted) to the beautiful city of Zaragoza, Spain. Mary had slept for five of the even hours on the train (why this surprised me I do not understand) and therefore she was ready for a nighttime adventre when we arrived! After cooking dinner that yet again consisted of pasta and stir fried vegetables, we headed out to experience Zaragoza at night. We were so happy we did because the view over the big, roman-style bridge was beautiful. The basilica in the distance was all lit up against the deep blue night sky and we were in awe (while we ate our ice cream). After walking around for a while, it began to rain so we decided to turn in for the night.

The next morning, we decided that we were going to make the trek to the palace to do the hardest thing first. We wouldn't have done this if we knew it was going to rain for the entire walk there and back, but it was worth it! The palace was an old castle but it had been refurbished quite a bit, leaving it looking a little bit newer than it used to, obviously. Mary and I wound our way through the rooms, being directed by every guard in the place since we always seemed to want to enter from the wrong door or walk in the wrong direction. Oops! Typical Americans.. :) On the way back to the city center we stopped at the really colorful bull ring and then at a cafe and caught up with some more stories and chats. We became sleepy and decided we would join in on the Spainish Siesta, and we went to our B&B to nap for a couple of hours-it was raining anyway, right?!

That evening, we went to find some bars downtown. It was a little bit more difficult than we had thought it would be! We finally decided on one bar and hung out there for a couple of drinks before turning in for the night. At the hostel we watched a movie and had some wine to go with it. It was some nice sister bonding!

The next day we did a lot of exploring. We went inside the insanely beautiful basilica (which took my breath away) and then walked around downtown. We saw some old ruins, went to the big food market and got some fruit, saw the old Roman Theater that Zaragoza had preserved, an hung out in the main plaza in front of the basilica eating our oranges. We also happened to get sunburned sitting outside at a cafe in the broad sunlight, which we cured by finding an Irish bar and having a nice cold beer. :)

That night we cooked our last pasta dinner (I cooked while Mary half worked out/half danced around the kitchen-but no worries because she cleaned everything up!). We decided to watch another movie together before we went to sleep for the night.

The next morning came all too quickly and we were lugging our suitcases out the door and down the elevator to meet up with our blabla car of the day, then off to Salamanca we went!