Improve my Spanish for travelling around Spain

Portuguese and Spanish look very similar so we can generally read the other language without too much struggle. But when it comes to the spoken forms things get a bit more complicated. There’s an almost 90% lexical similarity between the two, which means that 90% of Spanish words have a cognate (equivalent) in Portuguese.

Being a Portuguese speaker and already having an advanced level in Spanish has been a great help to improve my Spanish for my next trip in Barcelona (It's my favourite city in Spain). The opportunity to be in the teacher’s house for 2 weeks has been amazing. I made more progress in 2 weeks than in a whole academic year at my language school back home. Also to mix with Mónica’s friends and family, learn about gastronomy and culture has broadened my horizons in general.

We had a varied social programme with plenty of excursions and things to do. I love nature and animals so my favourite excursions were all the visits we did around the Parc del Montnegre i el Corredor, the first 'park of silence' in Spain; the Donkey Reserve: Rukimon, a park where all the donkey breeds of the Peninsula live together. I really enjoyed petting and feeding them. They love cuddles and carrots!

But the contact with nature was not only limited to the Montnegre i Corredor park and our furry friends; we also visited Can Gel, a cow farm that allows you to interact with the animals and learn many relevant facts about their care. I even got the amazing opportunity to bottle feed a baby cow.

All in all it was an amazing experience that I would recommend to any travel lover wanting to experience Spain at first hand!