For our first day in Madrid, we visited two of the most important squares in the city, Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol. Puerta del Sol is actually the point from which every distance in Spain is measured. We then walked down to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia to see the museum's addition, designed by French architect, Jean Nouvel in 2005. The rest of the museum is housed in an 18th century hospital. The art on display is from the 20th century, incl...

La Rioja, Spain's famous wine country, and subject of our group's own personal adventure as we traveled from Bilbao to Madrid. We woke up early yesterday morning to get aboard the bus that had been chartered to take us from Bilbao to Madrid, via the lovely, rolling hills of the wine country. Most of the Rioja consists of bodegas, or wineries, and the villages that support them. We started out at Vina Tondonia, to see the small exhibition building designed by...

Since the train ride would have been too long, our group flew from Barcelona to Bilbao. After the flight finally got off the ground, there were delays because of rain, we all ended up sleeping on the plane ride. After finding our hotel, we took off to see the famous Bilbao Guggenheim Museum of Art, designed by Frank Gehry. Unfortunately, most of the museum was closed off for changing exhibits, but we did get to see the Richard Sera exhibit, which was very cool...

On Tuesday, we started the day out at the Barcelona Olympic complex to see the Calatrava Radio Tower and the Jardi Botanicos Barcelona - a fairly new botanical garden designed by a local Barcelona design firm that included different sections devoted to plants from areas around the world with the same climate as Barcelona. We then went to visit the famous Barcelona Pavilion, designed by Mies van der Rohe and on permanent display near the Museu Nacional d'Art de...

My first experience in a sleeper train was, at the least, an interesting one. Sleeping on a carpet covered slab of wood isn't my best idea for fun, but suspend 6 such slabs from the wall, three on either side, with about 2 feet clearance between them and you have a world of entertainment. It really wasn't too bad, though. We arrived yesterday morning in Barcelona, parked our luggage in the train lockers, and went to find where we would be meeting our next profess...