L-I-F-E simply put.: Our time in Extremadura

I spent most of my 12 day vacation in Extremadura, a region of Spain which has the most natural parks in all the country-- it also boarders Portugal. My friend lives here, and we spent a few days visiting small towns of 500 people or less, farms, castles, running over small hills, going to dinner parties and eating traditional food from Extremadura, which includes Migas, fried old bread with Garlic, Gazpacho, cold tomato soup, and drinking home made wine. It was great, and a NICE break from the city rush.

We started out in Villalba, a small Pueblo where everyone is a farmer, the main town square is smaller than half a NYC block, All the people know everyone and leave their doors open. This village is also known for it's wine. It won the prize for the #1 wine in the world this year in NYC!

We spent two nights here in a friend of my friends house. Their backyard had a well where they get their water. Me, coming from a big city, I was surprised that people still rely on well water; it was so interesting for me to see.

We drove around, occasionally stopping our car to pick flowers or taste a fruit from a tree that was growing on the side of a road. I'm not too much of a nature girl, so it took me a while to get used to this whole picking shit from the earth thing, lol. That was a joke, but for real...

We drove and drove until we made it to another village called Feria, this one was even smaller than the first and on the top of the hill was a castle. We drove up and up and up passed by donkeys in the street, ha, and then we finally reached it, the castle. Luckily it was a beautiful day, so the view was gorgeous. I felt like I was looking out the window of an airplane.

We spent the rest of the afternoon, going to all of the four bars in Feria and tasting different types of local wine, and whatever else was made locally, like a bag of chips that someone bought for us to welcome us to the village.

The next day was a big day in Villalba. It was the day before ash Wednesday, and in this village, they celebrate the beginning of Lent by having a funeral, FOR SARDINES! Yes, you heard me correctly, SARDINES! The whole town gets dressed in Black (LIKE TRADITIONAL BLACK, I had to borrow a jacket and hat from a neighbor, ha) and they march through the street mourning the Sardines that are about to be killed because people give up meat for 40 days and eat more fish! After the marching, everyone meets in the town hall and eats Sardines and drinks wine for free! I met everyone in the village that night and the Mayor of the town heard Americans were there and celebrated the first foreign visitors (us) by bringing us a present, free bottles of wine, aged, from the town! It was very sweet, later we took a picture with him to hang in the town hall. It was a very interesting, unique experience for me.

Diggin for... sardines, ha.

poor poor sardines.

The mayor and us :)

It was an interesting time that we had there. We were the last ones to leave after too much local sweet wine. We passed out right after that and the next day headed to Mel's town, Jerez de los Caballeros! YAY! Jerez is bigger than the other villages we visited, but it was still the country. We ran together everyday through farms, passing by pigs, sheep, horses and donkeys. The bugs were runnin deep too, ha. I spent most of my time relaxing, running, walking around exploring, and eating at neighbors houses.

I had a lot of time to beautify myself, AND a lot of space, haha.

We went to mass on Ash Wednesday. We were a bit impatient to wait out the whole mass, so we left and went across the road to get a coffee, by the time we got back, the mass was over, whooops, we were yapping too long. We found out later from the priest (who is a friend of my friends and went out drinking with us, lol) that the mass was only for children anyway. I always knew that organized religion wasn't for me, this proved it. I'll stick to my spirituality. The church was gorgeous though.