I still have many more blogs to write about from various trips, but I figured I would give a run down of normal Madrid life currently. I just finished my last final for my Spanish class, since I am auditing the last part of it. Thank goodness, because we started subjunctives today and I'm glad I don't have to take those tests. I can't even begin to explain how much Spanish I have learned. Considering I didn't know how to answer to "how are you" when I first got here, or know the days of the week, I have made huge progress. I can make my point, speak in multiple tenses, understand most of what is said to me, read the advertisements on the metro and know what they are saying not because of pictures, successfully take a cab ride home, give and receive directions, order anything including to-go on the phone, and have a decent conversation that almost lets me express myself. So when people say you really learn the language when you go to the country, they are correct. I wonder how my writing will be in my journalism classes next semester... English now seems hard.
I went to a Justin Bieber concert with my friend Nick last week. Now before you judge me for being 20 and spending money on a concert of a 15 year old, realize that Nick is 23, straight, male and went, and so me being there seemed much more appropriate as compared to him. You've got to see Bieber while he is young and in his prime. I think my 12 year old sister was a little jealous though. We stood out for multiple reasons. One, we were obviously the oldest. Two, Nick had to have been one of the only guys that wasn't a dad bringing his daughter or a brother being dragged along. Three, we're American. And four, we were the only people in the stadium that weren't wearing homemade "I heart Bieber" shirts. It was hilarious listening to the Spaniards sing along, because they don't actually know the words, they just know the sounds. Definitely a great Madrid experience and we both had the time of our lives.
The weather is finally nice and most afternoons are spent at Retiro park with Morgan, Anne and Meghan and some bocadillos consisting of cheese and chorizo. I'm going to miss these carefree days where we just soak up the sun and talk about Spain. The relationships I've formed with these girls is unlike any other friendship. We have traveled the world together, slept in airports, been challenged and had many many obstacles, dealt with language barriers other than Spanish, been foreigners, gained confidence in our traveling and been forced to grow up and figure out the hard things without parents help, gotten lost, and lost again, cried over the thought of leaving each other and Spain, and cried over missing home. I do not know what I'm going to do with myself when we have to say goodbyes and exchange real phone numbers. Once again, an example of how this semester is just summer camp for days.
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos is a funny school. If I need to find anyone, they will be in one of three places, and each of these places are a 20 second walk away. I want to say my elementary school is the size of this college. There was a fashion show on campus the other day. It drew quite a huge crowd and the fashion was pretty awful. There have also been a few protests. Being one of the only people in this program that goes to a public school and has dealt with budget cuts and angry students mad at the state, this was nothing new to me. But to everyone else, the shouting, whistles, trash and crowds was a big deal. We enjoyed being able to leave class early though because the protests made their way into the building and disrupted class, Chico's protests are much more considerate.
Speaking of school and doing dumb things for the future, I got the internship I wanted. It's for the Cal state fair and I'll be doing all of their P.R. and media relations. I'm pretty excited for it but not stoked to commute to Sac a few times a week. I also signed up for summer school. So this summer consists of school, internship, and my normal job, which means I'll be severely depressed and doing big kid things instead of playing in Europe for a few more months.
I still don't even believe I am living this life. I woke up the other morning in my bed in Madrid, Spain where I have studied for over three months and had a moment of is this a dream. I am so blessed and lucky to have the family I have that has been more than supportive and excited for me to have this experience. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and many people can't say they spent some of their college time in a foreign country. People say your twenties are the best times of your life, and I'm still in the first year and I fully agree. I wonder if I will ever come back here and will be able to show my family someday where I lived and studied. I sure hope so. I've gotta come back to get my cafe con leche from my cafeteria boyfriend who gave me gum for 5 cents today because that was the only euro currency I had, my wallet has a bunch of dumb pounds and pence which are probably worth a hundred sticks of gum.
Can't wait to see the whole fam in almost a month. Can't believe time has passed this quickly.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
skipping ahead
I'm going to write about my London trip even though I haven't written about others. It's my blog so I guess I can write in whatever order I want.
Thursday afternoon we took the now familiar trip to Madrid Barajas Airport. After these 5 months here, I am for sure a travel expert. The trip consisted of Morgan, Anne, Jake, and myself. Since we were leaving the EU we got our passports stamped. It's about time. I have been so mad each other trip when they don't stamp my passport because its part of the same union. We had a nice flight to London and had to go through customs and all of that, something we aren't used to. They asked why we have a Spanish Visa, why we are there, for how long, who we're with, and how long our program was. I think we all gave kinda different answers, but we got through even though we all said our program was done a different day and we were in Madrid for different reasons. As soon as we left the airport, we hopped in an adorable cab that they call "cabbies" and headed straight to Chipotle. If you don't understand this, then you obviously haven't had Chipotle. We have been without it for over 3 months now, and to be honest it was about 80% of the reason I wanted to go to London. It was awesome. Even though it was as many pounds as it normally is dollars, which means that converts to like a 100 dollars, it was the best meal I've eaten in months. It tasted the same, if not better, and I ate my chicken tacos in about 3 seconds. My only regret is that I didn't eat it for every meal. By this time we decided we should check into our hotel, since it was 11 and we hadn't even put our bags down before getting food. Our hotel was adorable. It was in Notting Hill and right next to Hyde park. There was a loft with 2 beds and one single bed downstairs, obviously the man pad for Jake. We bought pajama shorts with the London Metro map on them on our way to the hotel since Morgan forgot to pack Pjs, and it was probably the best purchase of the trip. We went to bed early and got ready for the jam packed day of traveling.
Our hotel said they served breakfast in the morning, so after hurrying to make this awesome continental breakfast, it turned out to be black coffee, water, a weird juice, and a few slices of bread. There were hard boiled eggs as well but it definitely wasn't the bacon, egg, sausage, bagel breakfast I was hoping for. We walked through Hyde park on the way to our bus tour and it was nice to see people appropriately dressed for the weather. In Madrid all week, I have gotten countless stares for tank tops, shorts or flip flops. I'm sorry, but if it's 85 degrees then I am going to dress like it is 85 degrees, whether it's actually the season of "summer" or not. The guy we bought our bus tour tickets from said he liked my American accent, weird. The tour was awesome though, we got to see everything! We saw: Big Ben (shout out to dad), Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, The London Eye, The London Tower, The London Bridge and many other bridges, Buckingham Palace, Parliament Building, Westminster Abbey, and probably more things that I can't think of right now. But it was an awesome way to see the city. I was a little disappointed when I realized/found out that Shakespeare's Globe is a replica, not the original with the thatched roof and all. Still cool. We went on a ferry tour after this and had a presh little tour guide who had fun facts about the city. I think I got sunburned on this tour. After the tour we went and took a risk to see if they had student tickets at Wicked for that nights showing. We were willing to pay for it, and much to our surprise they had tickets for only 27 pounds. Wicked is my favorite musical and seeing it in London is definitely a once in a lifetime chance. I was concerned it would be really different than when I saw it in SF a few years ago, especially because of the accents, but it was almost exactly the same. There were times you could tell they were British actors but for the most part I didn't even notice. Since we have lived in Spain for the past 3+ months where dinner isn't served until 10 or 11 and places are open all night long, we didn't think we would have any trouble finding food after the amazing show. Wrong-o. After wandering around the neighborhood and almost getting hit by many cars and busses while trying to cross the streets with cars going the wrong way, we realized we were out of luck and ordered pizza to our room. Can't ever complain about pizza. I ordered it and had a hard time, and it was in English. Maybe I've lost my ability to communicate in any language? Who knows. Anne fell asleep before the pizza even got there, and Morgan and I gave Jake our best rendition of Wicked in our matching pajama pants and used the entire loft/stairs/railing/room as our stage. Easily one of my favorite memories of this entire trip, not just to London but in Europe. I only had one Wicked song on my ipod so we had to do the rest a capella. I'll leave it to your imagination of how good we were. My abs hurt in the morning from laughing so hard.
The next morning we slept in on accident because of lack of alarms going off, maybe I should charge my ipod after using it for 3 days. Whoops. It wasn't a big deal though, we weren't that behind schedule. We got an English breakfast consisting of an egg, toast, sausage, bacon, and for some reason a mushroom and a tomato. It was delicious and we all literally licked our plates clean. Off to more touring! We took a cab to the London Eye and watched a 4d video of it before we stood in line. Might I add that the weather was beyond amazing this entire trip and I think London would've sucked if it was rainy and gross. We got on the London Eye with 10 other people and went picture crazy. It was beautiful! Somehow I have seen a pretty good aerial view of almost every city I've been to, it definitely adds a lot to the trip. We got street hot dogs afterwards, and they were nothing short of ehhh. Then we needed water, and it was Kirkland Brand! Oh how I've missed Costco brands and products. It tasted just like home. We walked to Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace afterwards. The palace was huge and the guards are goofy. It wasn't how I pictured it, maybe because in all of the pictures it is grey and foggy. We also realized we know little to nothing about the Royal Family. American education sure does a good job of informing us of Europe or any other country for that matter. Not. Abbey Road was next and well, it's just a road. A busy road actually that makes it hard to take fun Beatles-ish pictures. Our attempt was enough. The Abbey road recording studio was right there and the walls were covered with Beatles lyrics and signatures. This made the cab ride more worth it. Oh, and the "Tube" is 4 pounds a trip, which is like 6 euros which is basically 100 dollars. Cabs ended up being more efficient and cheaper. And the Tube was crammed and shaky. Once again, Madrid Metro beats all. We shopped around at Harrods and I bought a bear who ended up bringing us tons of entertainment the rest of the trip. He was clipped to my backpack for my trip home and got tons of funny looks. I don't care that I'm 20 and have a bear strapped to my chest, also the bear is wearing a leather jacket. We then finally found dinner. Even though it wasn't fish and chips, it was American barbecue. They had Sierra Nevada mustard and beer and hot wings and bleu cheese and pulled pork sandwiches and ketchup and everything else wonderful and American. I was shocked at the presence of Sierra Nevada products. While holding up a beer to take a picture with, a guy asked if I was some sort of spokesperson for them. Well it's from my town, so duh. We bought our souvenirs and went to bed to wake up and say goodbye to the wonderful town that is London. Best trip I've had with amazing people. Not ready to say goodbye to Europe anytime soon.
Thursday afternoon we took the now familiar trip to Madrid Barajas Airport. After these 5 months here, I am for sure a travel expert. The trip consisted of Morgan, Anne, Jake, and myself. Since we were leaving the EU we got our passports stamped. It's about time. I have been so mad each other trip when they don't stamp my passport because its part of the same union. We had a nice flight to London and had to go through customs and all of that, something we aren't used to. They asked why we have a Spanish Visa, why we are there, for how long, who we're with, and how long our program was. I think we all gave kinda different answers, but we got through even though we all said our program was done a different day and we were in Madrid for different reasons. As soon as we left the airport, we hopped in an adorable cab that they call "cabbies" and headed straight to Chipotle. If you don't understand this, then you obviously haven't had Chipotle. We have been without it for over 3 months now, and to be honest it was about 80% of the reason I wanted to go to London. It was awesome. Even though it was as many pounds as it normally is dollars, which means that converts to like a 100 dollars, it was the best meal I've eaten in months. It tasted the same, if not better, and I ate my chicken tacos in about 3 seconds. My only regret is that I didn't eat it for every meal. By this time we decided we should check into our hotel, since it was 11 and we hadn't even put our bags down before getting food. Our hotel was adorable. It was in Notting Hill and right next to Hyde park. There was a loft with 2 beds and one single bed downstairs, obviously the man pad for Jake. We bought pajama shorts with the London Metro map on them on our way to the hotel since Morgan forgot to pack Pjs, and it was probably the best purchase of the trip. We went to bed early and got ready for the jam packed day of traveling.
Our hotel said they served breakfast in the morning, so after hurrying to make this awesome continental breakfast, it turned out to be black coffee, water, a weird juice, and a few slices of bread. There were hard boiled eggs as well but it definitely wasn't the bacon, egg, sausage, bagel breakfast I was hoping for. We walked through Hyde park on the way to our bus tour and it was nice to see people appropriately dressed for the weather. In Madrid all week, I have gotten countless stares for tank tops, shorts or flip flops. I'm sorry, but if it's 85 degrees then I am going to dress like it is 85 degrees, whether it's actually the season of "summer" or not. The guy we bought our bus tour tickets from said he liked my American accent, weird. The tour was awesome though, we got to see everything! We saw: Big Ben (shout out to dad), Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, The London Eye, The London Tower, The London Bridge and many other bridges, Buckingham Palace, Parliament Building, Westminster Abbey, and probably more things that I can't think of right now. But it was an awesome way to see the city. I was a little disappointed when I realized/found out that Shakespeare's Globe is a replica, not the original with the thatched roof and all. Still cool. We went on a ferry tour after this and had a presh little tour guide who had fun facts about the city. I think I got sunburned on this tour. After the tour we went and took a risk to see if they had student tickets at Wicked for that nights showing. We were willing to pay for it, and much to our surprise they had tickets for only 27 pounds. Wicked is my favorite musical and seeing it in London is definitely a once in a lifetime chance. I was concerned it would be really different than when I saw it in SF a few years ago, especially because of the accents, but it was almost exactly the same. There were times you could tell they were British actors but for the most part I didn't even notice. Since we have lived in Spain for the past 3+ months where dinner isn't served until 10 or 11 and places are open all night long, we didn't think we would have any trouble finding food after the amazing show. Wrong-o. After wandering around the neighborhood and almost getting hit by many cars and busses while trying to cross the streets with cars going the wrong way, we realized we were out of luck and ordered pizza to our room. Can't ever complain about pizza. I ordered it and had a hard time, and it was in English. Maybe I've lost my ability to communicate in any language? Who knows. Anne fell asleep before the pizza even got there, and Morgan and I gave Jake our best rendition of Wicked in our matching pajama pants and used the entire loft/stairs/railing/room as our stage. Easily one of my favorite memories of this entire trip, not just to London but in Europe. I only had one Wicked song on my ipod so we had to do the rest a capella. I'll leave it to your imagination of how good we were. My abs hurt in the morning from laughing so hard.
The next morning we slept in on accident because of lack of alarms going off, maybe I should charge my ipod after using it for 3 days. Whoops. It wasn't a big deal though, we weren't that behind schedule. We got an English breakfast consisting of an egg, toast, sausage, bacon, and for some reason a mushroom and a tomato. It was delicious and we all literally licked our plates clean. Off to more touring! We took a cab to the London Eye and watched a 4d video of it before we stood in line. Might I add that the weather was beyond amazing this entire trip and I think London would've sucked if it was rainy and gross. We got on the London Eye with 10 other people and went picture crazy. It was beautiful! Somehow I have seen a pretty good aerial view of almost every city I've been to, it definitely adds a lot to the trip. We got street hot dogs afterwards, and they were nothing short of ehhh. Then we needed water, and it was Kirkland Brand! Oh how I've missed Costco brands and products. It tasted just like home. We walked to Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace afterwards. The palace was huge and the guards are goofy. It wasn't how I pictured it, maybe because in all of the pictures it is grey and foggy. We also realized we know little to nothing about the Royal Family. American education sure does a good job of informing us of Europe or any other country for that matter. Not. Abbey Road was next and well, it's just a road. A busy road actually that makes it hard to take fun Beatles-ish pictures. Our attempt was enough. The Abbey road recording studio was right there and the walls were covered with Beatles lyrics and signatures. This made the cab ride more worth it. Oh, and the "Tube" is 4 pounds a trip, which is like 6 euros which is basically 100 dollars. Cabs ended up being more efficient and cheaper. And the Tube was crammed and shaky. Once again, Madrid Metro beats all. We shopped around at Harrods and I bought a bear who ended up bringing us tons of entertainment the rest of the trip. He was clipped to my backpack for my trip home and got tons of funny looks. I don't care that I'm 20 and have a bear strapped to my chest, also the bear is wearing a leather jacket. We then finally found dinner. Even though it wasn't fish and chips, it was American barbecue. They had Sierra Nevada mustard and beer and hot wings and bleu cheese and pulled pork sandwiches and ketchup and everything else wonderful and American. I was shocked at the presence of Sierra Nevada products. While holding up a beer to take a picture with, a guy asked if I was some sort of spokesperson for them. Well it's from my town, so duh. We bought our souvenirs and went to bed to wake up and say goodbye to the wonderful town that is London. Best trip I've had with amazing people. Not ready to say goodbye to Europe anytime soon.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
so many trips, so little time
Spain time isn't real life time. I don't have time to sleep, much less write about the fun things I'm doing. Let's start with the Andalucia trip.
Andalucia is the southern region of Spain, and saying it is beautiful doesn't do it justice. It was a long 4 hour bus ride at 7 in the morning with 25 of us USAC kids, and obviously we hardly slept. The first city we went to was Cordoba, which was a very very small community surrounded by olive trees in the hills and was absolutely gorgeous. We toured the mezquita, which is a giant mosque that is also beautiful. If I had a dollar for every famous mosque, cathedral etc, I would have a bunch of dollars. We had free time and got to roam around the city. Our tour guide told us about the best restaurant in the town, and after quite the trek we found it and it was closed. Cool. So we found another restaurant and ate tapas and drank sangria. Of course we had to have gazpacho, which southern Spain is famous for. It was good but I prefer Branding Iron's in Merced. The weather was nice and before we knew it, we had to load the bus and go to our next city. I thought all of the cities we were going to were close in distance, boy was I wrong. About 3 1/2 hours later, we arrived in Granada. I assumed this city would also be small and quaint, but when I woke up the first thing I saw was an El Corte Ingles, the biggest department store in Spain, and a whole street of shopping and big buildings. Thought I was back in Madrid. It was dinner time (10 pm, silly Spain), and our hotel was awesome. We casually walk down for dinner at the hotel buffet, and much to my surprise there was amazing food. I can't figure out if it was just normal hotel buffet food that you would find in America which is why I loved it, or if it really was good. That is a battle I face often these days, whether food is actually good or if I'm just hungry. Anyways, they had salad. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a salad. After eating lots of food, we went to a flamenco show, and toured the sacramonte district and the albayzine. We also had a great view of the Alhambra at night. The flamenco show was really cool and unique. It was in a cave like room and we were all front row, there was only one row. The sacramonte neighborhood is famous for being the place where all the gypsies used to live, and now it is a rich neighborhood with many people wishing they could live there. Afterwards we attempted to find a place for us all to go out that was close to the hotel and failing, Morgan and I stayed up talking for hours instead of going to bed to be well rested for our long day of touring the next day. Needless to say we were exhausted and pretty angry when we woke up just a few short hours later.
We toured the Alhambra early in the morning, but after we had the best hotel continental breakfast ever. Bagels. Can't explain how much I miss bagels. The Alhambra was beautiful! And getting there was also really pretty as well. We had beautiful weather, which is good because almost the entire tour was outside and it was supposed to rain. Our tour guide was hilarious and kept calling things "the ol", like "the ol' Alhambra", and "the ol' cathedral." It was presh. Afterwards we had free time and went and ate at a weird trying-to-be-modern-and-hip-slash-mexican restaurant. It was alright. We went to the cathedral of Granada afterwards and saw King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's graves. The cathedral was huuuuuge and squished inside the middle of a bunch of other buildings. We went on a hunt for some ice cream, and there was a shop with a huge sign that said gelateria. So, we go inside to get this gelato, and the only ice cream they have is prepackaged like the kind you get from the ice cream man, push pops and ice cream sandwiches. Lame, thats not gelato. We found good gelato right next door though, so no worries. Eventually we loaded the bus once more and were off to our final destination.
This bus trip took another 4 ish hours. We bonded through music and talked about favorite old songs for the majority of this leg of the race. We ate dinner at the hotel when we got to Sevilla and it was pretty ehh. After the best hotel buffet I had ever had, I was expecting the same. Sevilla already looked a lot different than Granada and Cordoba. The bus couldn't go down the small streets so we had to carry our luggage 7 blocks from the parking lot to the hotel. And now is when it started raining, obviously. I don't think anyone cared though because we were finally off that dumb bus. The hotel was cute and Morgan and I got put in a room way far away from everyone else, but we had a sweet balcony. We also couldn't figure out how to work the shower and a maintenance man had to come "fix" it, when really he just turned it on. Whoops. I think for dinner we had something similar to biscuits and gravy, and then a meat of some sort. I do know I was hungry afterwards. Anne and I ventured off to find a store after dinner, and asked a man for directions. He gave us dumb far directions so we just wandered by ourselves. 10 minutes later, we see the same guy on a random street. We awkwardly say hello and keep going. On our way back to the hotel, we say the same guy again, and he thinks its hilarious we keep running into each other. Morgan, Anne and I go down to a bar down the street to get some food and drinks, and what do you know, the same guy is eating in the restaurant. So obviously we giggle and think its super funny and act immature. Jake and Hannah joined us for a bit then we decided to go out. We get in a cab since it's raining, and ask to go where the guy told us is a cool street to hang out on. While at a red light, we spend however many minutes that racks up 10 euros. Longest red light of my life. We were pretty mad because the cab should've been about 4 euros, instead of 14. We get to this bar and walk in and it might as well have been America. Only english was spoken, everyone was tall and American looking, they served Budweiser, and there were annoying blonde bimbos dancing on the bar. After a few minutes of that we decided to leave. We go to the bar next door and of course we run into everyone else in our program. Were in Sevilla, one of the largest cities in Spain, and we run into everyone. It ended up being a blast and we kind of took over the bar and dance floor since there was 25 of us and the place was tiny. Going to bed at 430ish and waking up to do more tours was a bad idea. No wonder in high school on field trips and soccer trips they didn't allow you go to out, or stay up past 10. Seven a.m. wake up call was awesome, and walking the whole city of Sevilla was even more awesome. not. The place was pretty beautiful though. There were orange trees everywhere which made the city smell great, and it had super cute neighborhoods on tiny cobblestone streets. We went to the cathedral of Sevilla and got to see Christopher Columbus's grave. His coffin is above ground with 4 statues of men holding it. Morgan and I were saying out loud how weird it was that his coffin was above ground. Everyone around us was like, umm obviously its underground and this is just a statue for show, duh. Well, minutes later our tour guide told us that right before Chris died he said he would not be buried in Spanish soil. So, they didn't bury him in the soil, he's above it. So duh, everyone else. We walked up 36 ramps to get to the top of a bell tower connected to the church. There are ramps because the men used to ring the bells a bunch of times a day and would get to the top by horse, and obviously horses can't climb stairs. 36 ramps later we got to see a great 360 view of the city. Keep in mind this is also the third day and going on no sleep and 36 ramps sounds like the worst punishment USAC could've given us. It was really cool though. We got free time and lunch time afterwards, and we ate at an italian restaurant where we would later find out Morgan got food poisoning from. Sorry Morgan, but Anne and I loved our food. We had tons of time until dinner and while they gave us a packet of cool things to do in the city, everyone single person in our group went back and napped instead. We needed it. We ate dinner at a local restaurant and they served us tapas. Since we figured it would be a normal tapa meal, with just a few plates going around, we were eating everything. Little did we know they would serve 12 different tapas. After the 3rd round which took about an hour, we were ready to be done and were stuffed. Dinner lasted about 4 hours and we didn't even touch the last few rounds. Spaniards do things so differently. I also drank about 7 bottles of water during this time. It was nice though because we could try things we normally wouldn't order. At this point Morgan had to leave dinner and had food poisoning pretty bad. Anne and I got back to the hotel and decided not to go out, and just cuddled in bed instead. Oh, it was also on this trip that I figured out how to make my iphone work with internet and such. Good thing I've been here for 3 months and am just now learning. The next day we woke up, got breakfast, and had even more free time. The weather was better and we rented a 3 person bike cart thing to ride around Plaza de Espana. P.S., they filmed Star Wars Attack of the Clones in this plaza. It was a really cool park and the bike ride took up some of our free time, by this point we just wanted to head home. Around 2 we loaded the bus again. Each time we took a rest stop, the bus driver made us all get off the bus, even if we were sleeping. This made many people mad. We played some iphone games, tried to sleep, and ended up having a 4 hour discussion of every movie we could think of. It would start with talking about an actor, then every movie he is in, then co stars, and so on. That helped pass some of the 8 hour bus trip home. I sure was glad to be home, but it really was a great trip. Without going with the program there is no way I would've been able to see everything and take the tours and cram it all in. When I fell asleep that night I kept waking up thinking I was on a bus and was falling. Too many hours. On to the next trip....
Andalucia is the southern region of Spain, and saying it is beautiful doesn't do it justice. It was a long 4 hour bus ride at 7 in the morning with 25 of us USAC kids, and obviously we hardly slept. The first city we went to was Cordoba, which was a very very small community surrounded by olive trees in the hills and was absolutely gorgeous. We toured the mezquita, which is a giant mosque that is also beautiful. If I had a dollar for every famous mosque, cathedral etc, I would have a bunch of dollars. We had free time and got to roam around the city. Our tour guide told us about the best restaurant in the town, and after quite the trek we found it and it was closed. Cool. So we found another restaurant and ate tapas and drank sangria. Of course we had to have gazpacho, which southern Spain is famous for. It was good but I prefer Branding Iron's in Merced. The weather was nice and before we knew it, we had to load the bus and go to our next city. I thought all of the cities we were going to were close in distance, boy was I wrong. About 3 1/2 hours later, we arrived in Granada. I assumed this city would also be small and quaint, but when I woke up the first thing I saw was an El Corte Ingles, the biggest department store in Spain, and a whole street of shopping and big buildings. Thought I was back in Madrid. It was dinner time (10 pm, silly Spain), and our hotel was awesome. We casually walk down for dinner at the hotel buffet, and much to my surprise there was amazing food. I can't figure out if it was just normal hotel buffet food that you would find in America which is why I loved it, or if it really was good. That is a battle I face often these days, whether food is actually good or if I'm just hungry. Anyways, they had salad. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a salad. After eating lots of food, we went to a flamenco show, and toured the sacramonte district and the albayzine. We also had a great view of the Alhambra at night. The flamenco show was really cool and unique. It was in a cave like room and we were all front row, there was only one row. The sacramonte neighborhood is famous for being the place where all the gypsies used to live, and now it is a rich neighborhood with many people wishing they could live there. Afterwards we attempted to find a place for us all to go out that was close to the hotel and failing, Morgan and I stayed up talking for hours instead of going to bed to be well rested for our long day of touring the next day. Needless to say we were exhausted and pretty angry when we woke up just a few short hours later.
We toured the Alhambra early in the morning, but after we had the best hotel continental breakfast ever. Bagels. Can't explain how much I miss bagels. The Alhambra was beautiful! And getting there was also really pretty as well. We had beautiful weather, which is good because almost the entire tour was outside and it was supposed to rain. Our tour guide was hilarious and kept calling things "the ol", like "the ol' Alhambra", and "the ol' cathedral." It was presh. Afterwards we had free time and went and ate at a weird trying-to-be-modern-and-hip-slash-mexican restaurant. It was alright. We went to the cathedral of Granada afterwards and saw King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's graves. The cathedral was huuuuuge and squished inside the middle of a bunch of other buildings. We went on a hunt for some ice cream, and there was a shop with a huge sign that said gelateria. So, we go inside to get this gelato, and the only ice cream they have is prepackaged like the kind you get from the ice cream man, push pops and ice cream sandwiches. Lame, thats not gelato. We found good gelato right next door though, so no worries. Eventually we loaded the bus once more and were off to our final destination.
This bus trip took another 4 ish hours. We bonded through music and talked about favorite old songs for the majority of this leg of the race. We ate dinner at the hotel when we got to Sevilla and it was pretty ehh. After the best hotel buffet I had ever had, I was expecting the same. Sevilla already looked a lot different than Granada and Cordoba. The bus couldn't go down the small streets so we had to carry our luggage 7 blocks from the parking lot to the hotel. And now is when it started raining, obviously. I don't think anyone cared though because we were finally off that dumb bus. The hotel was cute and Morgan and I got put in a room way far away from everyone else, but we had a sweet balcony. We also couldn't figure out how to work the shower and a maintenance man had to come "fix" it, when really he just turned it on. Whoops. I think for dinner we had something similar to biscuits and gravy, and then a meat of some sort. I do know I was hungry afterwards. Anne and I ventured off to find a store after dinner, and asked a man for directions. He gave us dumb far directions so we just wandered by ourselves. 10 minutes later, we see the same guy on a random street. We awkwardly say hello and keep going. On our way back to the hotel, we say the same guy again, and he thinks its hilarious we keep running into each other. Morgan, Anne and I go down to a bar down the street to get some food and drinks, and what do you know, the same guy is eating in the restaurant. So obviously we giggle and think its super funny and act immature. Jake and Hannah joined us for a bit then we decided to go out. We get in a cab since it's raining, and ask to go where the guy told us is a cool street to hang out on. While at a red light, we spend however many minutes that racks up 10 euros. Longest red light of my life. We were pretty mad because the cab should've been about 4 euros, instead of 14. We get to this bar and walk in and it might as well have been America. Only english was spoken, everyone was tall and American looking, they served Budweiser, and there were annoying blonde bimbos dancing on the bar. After a few minutes of that we decided to leave. We go to the bar next door and of course we run into everyone else in our program. Were in Sevilla, one of the largest cities in Spain, and we run into everyone. It ended up being a blast and we kind of took over the bar and dance floor since there was 25 of us and the place was tiny. Going to bed at 430ish and waking up to do more tours was a bad idea. No wonder in high school on field trips and soccer trips they didn't allow you go to out, or stay up past 10. Seven a.m. wake up call was awesome, and walking the whole city of Sevilla was even more awesome. not. The place was pretty beautiful though. There were orange trees everywhere which made the city smell great, and it had super cute neighborhoods on tiny cobblestone streets. We went to the cathedral of Sevilla and got to see Christopher Columbus's grave. His coffin is above ground with 4 statues of men holding it. Morgan and I were saying out loud how weird it was that his coffin was above ground. Everyone around us was like, umm obviously its underground and this is just a statue for show, duh. Well, minutes later our tour guide told us that right before Chris died he said he would not be buried in Spanish soil. So, they didn't bury him in the soil, he's above it. So duh, everyone else. We walked up 36 ramps to get to the top of a bell tower connected to the church. There are ramps because the men used to ring the bells a bunch of times a day and would get to the top by horse, and obviously horses can't climb stairs. 36 ramps later we got to see a great 360 view of the city. Keep in mind this is also the third day and going on no sleep and 36 ramps sounds like the worst punishment USAC could've given us. It was really cool though. We got free time and lunch time afterwards, and we ate at an italian restaurant where we would later find out Morgan got food poisoning from. Sorry Morgan, but Anne and I loved our food. We had tons of time until dinner and while they gave us a packet of cool things to do in the city, everyone single person in our group went back and napped instead. We needed it. We ate dinner at a local restaurant and they served us tapas. Since we figured it would be a normal tapa meal, with just a few plates going around, we were eating everything. Little did we know they would serve 12 different tapas. After the 3rd round which took about an hour, we were ready to be done and were stuffed. Dinner lasted about 4 hours and we didn't even touch the last few rounds. Spaniards do things so differently. I also drank about 7 bottles of water during this time. It was nice though because we could try things we normally wouldn't order. At this point Morgan had to leave dinner and had food poisoning pretty bad. Anne and I got back to the hotel and decided not to go out, and just cuddled in bed instead. Oh, it was also on this trip that I figured out how to make my iphone work with internet and such. Good thing I've been here for 3 months and am just now learning. The next day we woke up, got breakfast, and had even more free time. The weather was better and we rented a 3 person bike cart thing to ride around Plaza de Espana. P.S., they filmed Star Wars Attack of the Clones in this plaza. It was a really cool park and the bike ride took up some of our free time, by this point we just wanted to head home. Around 2 we loaded the bus again. Each time we took a rest stop, the bus driver made us all get off the bus, even if we were sleeping. This made many people mad. We played some iphone games, tried to sleep, and ended up having a 4 hour discussion of every movie we could think of. It would start with talking about an actor, then every movie he is in, then co stars, and so on. That helped pass some of the 8 hour bus trip home. I sure was glad to be home, but it really was a great trip. Without going with the program there is no way I would've been able to see everything and take the tours and cram it all in. When I fell asleep that night I kept waking up thinking I was on a bus and was falling. Too many hours. On to the next trip....
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