Andalucia--Merida

I'm going to have to do this in segments, because there is so much to tell.

We started our five day trip in Merida, which was an old Roman strongpoint. They built an amazing amphitheater arena as well as a regular theater for plays. And the best part is, the ruins are still there! The amphitheater was pretty awesome, but they had let it continue to decay. It was really cool to see though. You could definitely see where they kept the animals, where the gladiators would enter from, and how it was a definite possibility to have a water-naval battle there. They actually flooded the place to have this mock battle!

Then I moved on to the theater. This was staggering. I kinda just stood there for a minute. I'm more of a play type of girl myself, so I enjoyed the theater more. Although they had also redone the seating and kept this from falling apart further. They still hold festivals in these ruins--that would be amazing to see! I spent the remaining 30 minutes we had in this portion of the 'entertainment complex'. It was absolutely beautiful. I took some awesome pictures which I'm pretty proud of.

But, before we explored the theaters, we had free time to explore the city. We found an amazing market, which turned out to be huge. It was a holiday there, so everyone was dressed up in Renessaince style clothing and selling fun trinkets. It was really fun to explore all the little booths and talk to people.

Merida was a great stop. It was incredible to see the ruins and imagine what it would have been like in Roman times. Plus, we got to explore an awesome market with tons of hand-made cool stuff.