Merida, a Miniature Rome

So last weekend I went to Merida with my roommate Jade!  I’ve been wanting to go to Merida for a while, ever since I saw pictures of it from many friends of mine who stopped there for a day trip or who visited for a weekend.  And since Camille had already been a couple times and had no desire to make a third visit I finally decided I was going to go either by myself or I’ll ask my roommate to go with me.  SO, a weekend was booked and born in a matter of one night.  I returned from a day trip with Camille and the following night I had booked my trip to Merida.  It was very swift and I think the fastest I’ve ever planned a trip. 

Anyways!  The weekend weather was less than ideal, but it was still totally worth it.  Unfortunately, the weather was fantastic the whole week leading up….and then it got cloudy and rainy and rained pretty much all weekend in most of Andalusia, and it continued to rain for the entire week following it.  It was depressing. BUT, we still managed to have a good time in Merida. 

So we arrived on Friday mid-afternoon just in time to see a few things and grab some lunch.  Of course we paid too much for not really good food because we stopped at the closest place rather than looking for a good place to eat.  We were both too tired and hungry and sickly to do much searching.  But after lunch we walked down to the river front and also went to the museum of old things.  It’s not actually called that but they pretty are all museums of old things, and I can’t remember the real name of it.  But it had all the old original pieces from the old theatre, lots of head stones, burial stones, statues, columns, and other old roman things.  They had cool coins, pieces of pottery, rungs, pieces of art etc.  We actually walked around the museum for a good two hours and walked down to the bottom of the museum where it was an old graveyard basically.  But there were not bodies, only old stones, and old stone street and even the remains of a house.  It was really cool, but the lighting was terrible, so no pictures there.  

 

 

Oh, and we also saw this temple called the Temple of Diana.  Even though I’m pretty sure it was never made to give homage to a goddess name Diana, it was just named that later on.  And then later it became the house of an important person when the Spanish took over and found the building.  So you can see some Muslim architecture at the back of the temple.

 

The next day Jade and I headed to the Roman Theater and bought our joined tickets so we could go see everything there is to see in Merida, which honestly only takes like a day.  We headed tothe Theater first, where we took a bunch of pictures.  The thing is huge and the columns are still in good shape and so are most of the seats in the stadium as well.  They actually perform during the summer at the theater!  What I wouldn’t give to go see one of those performances….Ah!  So we walked around the whole place and took lots of pics and soaked up the amazing oldness of the place.

 

 

 

In another area there’s a large stadium where the gladiators used to perform as well!  We were able to go down into it, and on the way down they had cut outs all along the way with the different types of Gladiators that they used to have, what they fought, what they fought with, and all sorts of interesting info.

 

Later, after we left the theater we walked down to the Casa Miltreo where we saw ruins of an old house, and across the street was the old bull ring as well!

 

 

And then we headed over to the Alcazaba, because what old Spanish town doesn’t have one of those!!?? Basically, it’s just an place where important people used to live and where the military defended the city. 

 I’m walking on an old Roman Road!

And lastly, we took a walk over to the old Aquaduct.  It’s not nearly as impressive as the one in Sevogia, since the one in Segovia is still completely intact and still works, but this is still quite impressive. 

 

And the sun finally came out! Those are pretty much the highlights of the trip.  We saw a couple other things too, but they were just things we found while walking around, or weren’t as cool. 

Now, off to see my parents!!!!  They show up on Sunday morning all wonderfully jetlagged and beautious. But we’ll walk around Madrid and get ready for our tour through Spain.  They’ve never been to Europe before, so this will be quite an experience.  AND it’s been 8 months since I’ve seen my parents in the flesh.  So I can’t decide if I’ll love seeing them and spending so much one on one time with them, or if I’ll want to kill them by the end of the week, haha.  Either way, I honestly can’t wait to see them.  And after they leave, only 1 1/2 more months before home!