Rain in Spain stays mainly in the Plain: First day in Caceres

So today we actually got to see Caceres. We started off the nice cool morning with a tour of some of the older places in the city, starting in Plaza Mayor. It is a beautiful city and much more modern around the plaza than Toledo was. But once we got to the old buildings, it shared similarities with the other cities I've visited. We saw castles and churches as usual and our tour guide kept talking about a lower level of the palace that he called (as I heard it) "sisters". I just could not tell what he was talking about until we visited an area beneath a cathedral that had a "cistern" that collected rain water that was used in the household. It was nice to have that little light come on lol. As we were walking in the lower level of the cathedral, they had mannequins lined up that were all dressed up as saints if I heard correctly. In Catholicism, there were ceremonies where people dressed up and paraded through the streets in cloaks and pointed hoods. To see figures wearing these outfits took everyone in the group by surprise. Thanks to a bunch of crazy Americans, all we were seeing was the outfits used by racist, hateful individuals. It was frightening and at the same time disheartening to think how skewed that image had become due to hatred. It was almost a relief to get out of the room with all those mannequins. We continued our tour, but our tour guide today was a little hard to understand so I didn't gain as much knowledge as I would have liked to. For example, he told us a story about a monkey, a woman, and a baby and when he did he was trying to tell us the monkey kidnapped the baby but instead he said the monkey raped the baby which is obviously much more graphic and just not nice in general. Thankfully, we had someone there to decipher the real meaning lol. Once the tour ended, we made our way to a park area that had a market there for the day. We encountered a bike race and a parade in the process haha. It was an interesting combination. Afterwards, Holly and I tagged along with our professors and the two amazing girls that have organized our trip to have lunch in Plaza Mayor. It was fun to get a different perspective on this trip from them. Another group of our students found a very drunk guy passed out in the Plaza and someone called the cops to come get him. That was interesting lol. They definitely did the right thing by calling the cops but I was tempted to say leave him because if you get yourself in that bad of a position, its up to you to recover from it. After resting at the hotel for a few hours, some of us went to a festival that is going on outside of town. That was definitely an experience lol. It was essentially the equivalent of a county fair or whatnot in Texas but MUCH louder and a little sketchier. Everyone was yelling and playing loud music and selling knock-offs of every sort. I'm very glad I got to see that, but I'm not sure if I need to every experience it again lol. Caceres has turned out to be a beautiful city and I'm a little disappointed that we won't be staying here longer.

Love y'all muchos!