Oh... this is also a part of Spain??????

So, let's just say that Ally and I didn't quite plan this trip out that well, and to be completely honest, we didn't know anything about the northern part of Spain. We've only heard about beautiful cities, and that it's a lot different from the south, but if asked to name a few cities I don't think we could have passed that test.
We left Barcelona very early in the morning with our car. After getting on the road, Ally and I began to see something we've never seen before in Spain... trees, but these trees had leaves and were GREEN, it was just breathtaking. Then I caught a sight of some mountain things and because we didn't have anything really planned we decided to pull over and it turned out what we had spotted was something quite famous, we knew this due to all the tour buses and people there. It was called Monserrat and a mountain range in Cataluna. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in Spain. These were just regular mountain formations, they were different. We spent a good 4 hours there, hiking and taking in the sights... I'm not going to attempt to describe what I saw because words can not do justice to what we saw... so maybe a photo... but I'm sure you can only enjoy this place if you go there yourself.
After visiting the park area, we headed off to our official first stop of the trip... a city called Zaragoza... have you heard of it???? Well it's only the 5th largest city in Spain and it's the capitol of the Aragon region and if that name sounds familiar... it's because there was some guy named Fernando of Aragon, that's just a little bit about the city. Either way, we arrived into the city... and had no clue what was in they city... attractions we should see...
After driving on the highway my confidence was up and I wasn't that scared to be driving in Spain, however, once I entered Zaragoza... I feared for my life. Let's just say driving in a Spanish city is ridiculous. First off... Zaragozans love their traffic lights, they are a little obsessed... I mean it is necesarry to have one every 5 feet... I mean if it's green, shouldn't it be green for atleast a car's length? Also what is up with Spain putting the street signs on the side of buildings???? Who's idea was that anyways? Some of us can't afford GPS okay, and so we have to rely on the poor's man GPS... a regular paper map. Of course, because I'm the luckiest person in the world... my partner in crime didn't ever have the chance to take a map reading course, so it's not one of her strong points...But Ally's lack of map reading skills aside, how the heck is a person suppose to find a street and turn when they have to take their eyes off the road to look for the road signs???? Spain it's time to move to putting the street signs in the street rather on buildings, it's for the sake of all drivers...
Either way, we managed to survive. We saw something really big and old, and we assumed that it was something of importance. One of the bad things about a car is... parking... yeah we had to find a place to park... and if you think its a pain to park at the UW, think again.... Spain it's almost impossible. But I do have to give props to the Spanish, they are parking machines... I bow down to them in that aspect. Anyways, we found a pretty nice spot in a park... the only problem... i had to parallel. I'm going to say, I'm allergic to parallel parking, after trying really hard, and having people honking at me... I gave up and let Ally take the wheel... she managed to get the car parked. Let's say Ally can't read a map and at times thinking may be a little hard for her, but she can park a car, so that's why i keep her around... (besitos guapa!!!!).
Oh about parking, this fancy car has this system for parking, with sensors and it tells you if your close to something... but it's sooooo annoying.... beep, beep, beep even when I wasn't even close to anything. I'm blaming that horrible display of parking skills on the stupid system because it was making me sooo nervous.
The city of Zaragoza is actually very pretty. The most famous thing there is el Pilar, which was a pretty cool place looked old, and inside it was pretty cool. We saw a Spanish wedding, which was also pretty cool. Their plaza was also a lot bigger than anything in Huelva, but I guess that's not a fair comparasion. Our host was Jorge, a nice and fluent in English Spaniard. He had traveled the world for a year... and let's say our traveling adventures were not on his level. He was very nice to introduce us to his friends, and in the morning we all went for a lighting speed tour of the city. We saw a little fortress thing that reminded me of the Alhambra in Granada... but of course it was definitely not on Alhambra level. We got to walk through their market, saw lots of churches, trees and beautiful flowers. Jorge filled us in on a lot of history about Zaragoza... but unfortunately I can't be asked to recite anything from memory... I was listening at the time.. just it didn't quite stick. However, it was very interesting!!!
All in all, the city was a great way to begin the trip because we actually saw some things and it showed us there are other things outside of Andalucia. We nexted headed off to our next destination San Sebastian.

Ngoc :)