Before I left California in September, I knew that if I had opportunities to travel, going to Paris was priority one. On my first European adventure to Spain and England when I was 17, I was able to visit many art museums, and being face-to-face with so many priceless and breathtaking pieces of art really affected me. I distinctly remember feeling dwarfed by Las Meninas in the Prado, and had my breath taken away by paintings by Rafael and El Greco in the Toledo Cathedral. Going from that encounter with art in Europe, to my Humanities class my first semester of college in which the same masterpieces were pictured in my textbook, was such an incredible thing to me, and I’ve been fascinated with art history every since. That experience is why I’m a history major now, and a huge motivator for wanting to studying abroad during my college years.
So if seeing masterpieces of art is what I really want to do while living in Europe, where would I go? Paris. The Louvre, the Orsay, Versailles... the city itself is a great work of art. I was determined to make a trip there happen during my three months in Spain, to get up close and personal with Manet, the Mona Lisa and the like, eat croissants and crepes and drink coffee, even if it would mean I would have to do it by myself. Luckily, there was Erica, who is now my travel buddy, partner in crime, and mi mejor amiga.
The story of Erica and I (yes, this is kinda relevant to Paris...) becoming friends is actually a funny and an “awe, this is kinda like FATE!” story that I feel the need to preface my trip to Paris with. The two of us hardly knew one another when we came to Spain, despite the fact that we had been roommates for 6 months our first year as transfer students at Cal Poly. She moved into my on-campus apartment at the beginning of Winter Quarter, and by that time I already had a group of friends from marching band and a boyfriend, and didn’t spend much time hanging out at our apartment, which was usually really dirty and overrun by our other roommate. She-who-shall-not-be-named was a terrible slob, loud, a smoker, and enjoyed watching either Country Music Television or High School Musical on the weekends with the tv cranked up obnoxiously high while she ate her microwave bean-and-cheese burritos for breakfast. To sum it up, she made me want to gauge my eyes out with a spoon, and so, for the sake of my sanity, I chose to avoid being in our apartment as often as possible. Erica, since we are basically the same person, had similar sentiments towards She-Who-Shall... meh, you get the idea... and she had began dating a guy and had friends that lived off-campus as well, and consequently, we didn’t see each other much in our apartment. I always thought she was a cool girl, but never had the opportunity to hang out since we both avoided home like it was the plague.
A year or so later, I passed Erica in the hallway at school, and we stopped to chat. We realized we were both going to an info meeting for the Cal Poly in Spain program, and excitedly, went to the meeting together. After that, we saw each other at orientations and meetings for the trip, but still lead completely separate lives in San Luis Obispo.
Once arriving in Spain, Erica and I quickly began to hang out together a lot. Being two of the four 5th year students on the trip made us click really quickly, as well as suffering though daily Spanish grammar class with Monse, who teaches like she hates her life and subsequently, us. Right off the bat I started to look at flights for Paris; I wanted my plans for this trip set in stone as soon as possible. After a few weekend adventures exploring our city and going to Barcelona in the same group, Erica was quickly becoming my closest friend on the trip (along with Kristen, my roommate whom I shared a closet-sized room with and still loved me after three months of it), and I asked if she was interested in planning a trip to Paris. She answered with her signature, “duh,” and we bought our flights (on RyanAir, mistake number one) soon after. We balance each other out really well when it comes to traveling; I’m interested in art museums and walking tours, Erica is always up for things like hiking, going out at night, and exploring places off the beaten path. We put together a list of things we wanted to see, and figured that during our 5 day trip we’d definitely be able to fit it all in. We also made another pact that if we didn’t splurge on anything else in Paris, we’d shamelessly blow money on French food. Yet another reason why we’re basically twins.
Next on our Parisan to-do list was a place to stay. Spending so much money on hostels and hotels sucks, but, like I said, Paris was my must-do trip. Three years ago, my aunt Wanda and family hosted two exchange students from Europe. Tristan was one of them, a sweet boy from Paris who stayed with my cousins, aunt, and uncle for a summer. I got to meet Tristan on a couple of occasions; we went to Monterey Bay Aquarium with him and my cousins brought him up to my house in Grass Valley for a weekend to go boating and give him a taste of California outside of the Bay Area. Tristan and I were friends on facebook, and I had emailed him after arriving in Spain telling him I was going to be here for three months and really wanted to come to Paris. He emailed me back quickly, giving advise on the must-see sightseeing and finding us websites to purchase museum passes. I told him housing was going to be an issue for us broke college students and was wondering if Erica and I might be able to crash on a couch of something while we were in Paris. Again, he responded quickly, saying of course we could, and he asked his parents and they said it was fine. He even insisted on picking us up from the airport, which, even though our tickets said it was a Paris airport, was in reality an hour outside of Paris. Tristan told me it’d be no trouble to come get me, and that the airport was “basically a tent and the parking lot a field,” and that it’d be best if he came to get us in his car. I was sure he was exaggerating, but thanked him for taking that time to come pick us up.
After our adventure, or mishap, or brain fart, whatever you want to call it, when Erica and I tried to go to Valencia, my travel confidence, needless to say, was not at its highest. Erica and I had a midnight bus from Valladolid to the Madrid Airport, and then would have 5 hours to try to sleep in the airport while we waited for our 7:30 am flight to Paris. We packed our clothes together in a super cheap carry-on suitcase Erica bought, and made sure we both had our other travel necessities and paperwork in a backpack. We kicked off our trip to Paris by running to the Valladolid bus station, with Erica behind me struggling with the SUPER cheap suitcase with wheels that were more or less useless, and her “buccaneer boots” that, adorable as they are, were not the best attire for hauling ass to a bus station to make sure we’d get there on time.
We made it to our bus, and collapsed on the seats, transit to Paris, part one, accomplished.
By the time we got to the airport in Madrid, it was 3 am and we were terribly disoriented, just wanting to sleep, but apparently not tired enough to fully pass out on the tile floor in front of our check-in gate. The hours passed, and we made our way from check-in, to security, to our terminal, completely on autopilot after so many weeks of travleling and going through this same routine every time. When we got to the gate to board the plane, the incredible sweet and docile RyanAir employee (PLEASE recognize my sarcasm) told Erica that our (carry-on) suitcase was to big, and we’d have to check it and pay 35 euro. I rolled my eyes as I glanced at the couple who just boarded with backpacks on that I could fit myself into. Erica frantically tried to squish the suitcase smaller by zipping up the extender, breaking the zipper in the process. I told her don’t stress it, we’d just pay and figure out something better on the way back. I handed the woman a 50 euro note and informed me I needed exact change.
“Bitch” I uttered, not very discreetly.
I happened to have the 35 euro in cash (miracle), I tossed it to her and we got on the plane, defeated, and hating RyanAir, just a tad.
We had the next two hours of the flight to chill out and take a nap, and before we knew it, I was gazing out the window at beautiful French countryside. My annoyance with RyanAir was quickly melting into the incredible realization that I was finally here. My dream of coming to Paris was happening, and I was just about to land.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The (Mis)Adventures of (Attempting To Go To) Valencia
Our dear friends from the Tuna de Derecho de Valencia insisted that we needed to come for a weekend visit. Between beach weather and personal tour guides who play guitar and look great in tights, Erica and I needed no further convincing. After emailing back and forth with the boys, we gleefully wrote them, saying we had put a deposit on a hostel for that upcoming weekend and had purchased bus tickets. Our tickets were incredibly cheap - only 22 euros each way. We thought it was strange, we didn’t know exactly how far Valencia was from Valladolid, but on the map it appears as far away as Barcelona, and our bus tickets there and back were far more expensive. Allowing our excitement to overshadow our common sense, we didn’t investigate the situation, nor did we look closely at our tickets. The bus company we’ve been using for all of our Spanish travels goes all over the country, and Erica and I simply assumed they offered a bus directly from Valladolid to Valencia.
Now that I have set the stage for disaster, it is now bright and early on a crisp Saturday morning in Valladolid. With my backpack filled with clothes, sandals, and my swimsuit, I met up with Erica and we were off to the bus station. We had to purchase two tickets for each way; we had a layover in León, which was very strange, since León is in the opposite direction of Valencia. Upon arrival, Erica and I camped out in the freezing cold León bus station to wait out two hours before our next bus to take us to Valencia arrived. We watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother ( I miss American tv more than I anticipated) and bought celebratory cafes con leche and croissants before the bus came. When it finally pulled in, the bus driver had no list of people who had purchased tickets; the dozen or so people boarding the bus were simply buying a ticket from the driver. Boarding the bus turned into a whole ordeal involving us and three other passengers trying to explain to the driver that we had purchased tickets online and our names should be on the list. He eventually had to call the company and use our passport codes to find our names and ticket confirmation. So frustrating and bizarre since every other bus we’d taken in Spain (which by now is too many to count) always had a list of passengers. We sat down, thanked the girl that helped us communicate with the driver, and she asked us what we were doing going to Valencia. We told her we had friends at the university we were going to visit, and were looking forward to some nice weather away from Castile-León. She looked perplexed, we could tell her mind was churning, trying to make sense of what we were saying, and then, it clicked.
“You’re going to the wrong Valencia,” she said. My stomach dropped to the floor. I couldn’t believe it for a minute.
“We are?!” Erica’s eyes were huge.
“Yeah - you’re on a bus to Valencia de Don Juan. It’s a pueblo only 35 kilometers from here. The Valencia you want is hours away, you have to travel through Madrid to get there.”
“SHIT!!” We exclaimed, jumping off the bus seconds before it pulled out of the bus station. All we could think to tell the driver was “necisitamos ir... es incorrecto autobus!!” Pitiful translation, but my mind was racing, and apologizing to the bus driver was the farthest thing from my mind.
The bus left, and there we stood, on the sidewalk, in freezing cold León, sans Valencia bus tickets, and my dreams of an amazing weekend vacation quickly slipping away.
“Okay, we’re not panicking yet,” said Erica, pulling out her laptop to get on the bus station website. I raced to the city map of León inside the station, and saw the RENFE train station was only a couple blocks away. We asked the man at the window of the train station how much it would cost to get the next train to Valencia, the man said there’s a train leaving in an hour for Madrid and we’d change trains there, and it’d be 200 euros. Not happening. We thanked him, and in utter desperation I walked to the car rental kiosk next door and explained our situation (in Spanish... be proud). To rent a car for the weekend, with a 250 kilometers per day limit would also cost around 200 euros. That’s not taking into consideration the hundreds of kilometers away Valencia is past the daily limit, and the fact that I’d have to re-learn how to drive a stick shift in the process. Also not happening.
Defeated, we stood outside the station, completely out of resources besides finding our way back to Valladolid. I called Esteban, and, completely humiliated, told him what had happened. He chuckled, and then apologized for laughing. I told him it is kinda funny, but at the moment, completely shitty and depressing. He told me that as much as they all wanted us to come visit, by this point, we were too far away, it would cost too much, and there wouldn’t be enough time left in the weekend for it to be worth the trip. He insisted that we’d stay in touch and wished me good luck and to be careful getting back home.
Back to the bus station we went, and exchanged our bus tickets home from Monday to the next bus. Erica and I treated ourselves to a pity bottle of wine and whiskey cake (delicious) while we waited for the bus to take us back home. After returning to Valladolid, and having to explain the story to our friends, roommates, and Spanish families, we went to see a movie (Luna Nueva, in Spanish) and the next day saw a Real Valladolid futbol game. It was a relaxing weekend, but couldn’t help but think about being in the sunshine in Valencia instead of barely above freezing Valladolid weather, and hanging out with our new-found Spanish friends,who probably think we’re inept American students incapable of taking care of ourselves.
...And yes, we did double-check and make sure we’re flying to the Paris in France this weekend, not Paris, Texas.
Now that I have set the stage for disaster, it is now bright and early on a crisp Saturday morning in Valladolid. With my backpack filled with clothes, sandals, and my swimsuit, I met up with Erica and we were off to the bus station. We had to purchase two tickets for each way; we had a layover in León, which was very strange, since León is in the opposite direction of Valencia. Upon arrival, Erica and I camped out in the freezing cold León bus station to wait out two hours before our next bus to take us to Valencia arrived. We watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother ( I miss American tv more than I anticipated) and bought celebratory cafes con leche and croissants before the bus came. When it finally pulled in, the bus driver had no list of people who had purchased tickets; the dozen or so people boarding the bus were simply buying a ticket from the driver. Boarding the bus turned into a whole ordeal involving us and three other passengers trying to explain to the driver that we had purchased tickets online and our names should be on the list. He eventually had to call the company and use our passport codes to find our names and ticket confirmation. So frustrating and bizarre since every other bus we’d taken in Spain (which by now is too many to count) always had a list of passengers. We sat down, thanked the girl that helped us communicate with the driver, and she asked us what we were doing going to Valencia. We told her we had friends at the university we were going to visit, and were looking forward to some nice weather away from Castile-León. She looked perplexed, we could tell her mind was churning, trying to make sense of what we were saying, and then, it clicked.
“You’re going to the wrong Valencia,” she said. My stomach dropped to the floor. I couldn’t believe it for a minute.
“We are?!” Erica’s eyes were huge.
“Yeah - you’re on a bus to Valencia de Don Juan. It’s a pueblo only 35 kilometers from here. The Valencia you want is hours away, you have to travel through Madrid to get there.”
“SHIT!!” We exclaimed, jumping off the bus seconds before it pulled out of the bus station. All we could think to tell the driver was “necisitamos ir... es incorrecto autobus!!” Pitiful translation, but my mind was racing, and apologizing to the bus driver was the farthest thing from my mind.
The bus left, and there we stood, on the sidewalk, in freezing cold León, sans Valencia bus tickets, and my dreams of an amazing weekend vacation quickly slipping away.
“Okay, we’re not panicking yet,” said Erica, pulling out her laptop to get on the bus station website. I raced to the city map of León inside the station, and saw the RENFE train station was only a couple blocks away. We asked the man at the window of the train station how much it would cost to get the next train to Valencia, the man said there’s a train leaving in an hour for Madrid and we’d change trains there, and it’d be 200 euros. Not happening. We thanked him, and in utter desperation I walked to the car rental kiosk next door and explained our situation (in Spanish... be proud). To rent a car for the weekend, with a 250 kilometers per day limit would also cost around 200 euros. That’s not taking into consideration the hundreds of kilometers away Valencia is past the daily limit, and the fact that I’d have to re-learn how to drive a stick shift in the process. Also not happening.
Defeated, we stood outside the station, completely out of resources besides finding our way back to Valladolid. I called Esteban, and, completely humiliated, told him what had happened. He chuckled, and then apologized for laughing. I told him it is kinda funny, but at the moment, completely shitty and depressing. He told me that as much as they all wanted us to come visit, by this point, we were too far away, it would cost too much, and there wouldn’t be enough time left in the weekend for it to be worth the trip. He insisted that we’d stay in touch and wished me good luck and to be careful getting back home.
Back to the bus station we went, and exchanged our bus tickets home from Monday to the next bus. Erica and I treated ourselves to a pity bottle of wine and whiskey cake (delicious) while we waited for the bus to take us back home. After returning to Valladolid, and having to explain the story to our friends, roommates, and Spanish families, we went to see a movie (Luna Nueva, in Spanish) and the next day saw a Real Valladolid futbol game. It was a relaxing weekend, but couldn’t help but think about being in the sunshine in Valencia instead of barely above freezing Valladolid weather, and hanging out with our new-found Spanish friends,who probably think we’re inept American students incapable of taking care of ourselves.
...And yes, we did double-check and make sure we’re flying to the Paris in France this weekend, not Paris, Texas.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Islas Canarias, the Reno of Spain
As much as I love my Spanish hometown of Valladolid, it’s freezing cold here. Absolutely freezing. I was warned that Spain gets cold in the winter, but the wardrobe I brought overseas did not reflect that... Needless to say, I’ve had to buy a few long sleeve shirts, sweaters and tights along the way. Being from Grass Valley I’m used to this kind of weather (although San Luis Obispo has spoiled me), but my poor friends from SoCal are not exactly pumped about the freezing temperatures here. It’s really amusing. (Sorry Erica, love you!)
When my friend Steven suggested a weekend trip to the Canary Islands, Spanish territory off the coast of Africa, I did not hesitate to say yes, picturing myself laying out, soaking up the sun on a beach lined with palm trees. Packing last week for the trip was great; I happily filled my backpack with tank tops, sandals, shorts and my swimsuit. On Friday, Steven, Laurel and I left for Madrid, making our way to the airport for our flight to Gran Canaria in the afternoon. It was a little over 2 hour flight, and I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and change into more appropriate beach clothes. We landed and I was elated at the sight of palm trees out the window of the plane. The airport was kind-of in the middle of nowhere on the island, and it took us a while to get our bearings and figure out our plan of action. Not like we could’ve done that ahead of time, this trip was all about making it up as we went along (safely, of course, Mom and Dad). We were informed about a bus that could take us to Playa del Ingles where our hotel was, and waited at the bus stop, on the side of the freeway (sketchy) for a few minutes. The bus ride was a half hour long, and we were unsure of where exactly it would drop us off. We were dropped off near the street where our hotel address was, by this point Laurel and I (being the girls we are) were starting to stress out - it was getting dark out and we had no clue where our hotel was from there. We walked down to the street corner and began frantically looking around for an address, landmark or something, and then Steven saw a giant sign illuminating the name of our hotel, directly across the street from where we stood. Ha ha. Lucky us.
We checked in and were giddy at the sight of our hotel room, which was more like an apartment - it had a kitchen!!! It was dinky, but we didn’t care. Many of us here, myself included, miss cooking so much, or at least being in control of what we eat. Being fed authentic Spanish food three times a day is amazing, and a vital part of us being immersed in Spanish culture, but once in a while it’s kinda rough. There’s always one or two meals that we’re not fans of, or sometimes I just won’t be hungry, but have to stuff myself full anyways.
After unpacking, we were on a mission to find dinner. The next few blocks from our hotel were lined with restaurants, bars, liquor stores and kitschy gift shops, and the sidewalks full of people who worked at the restaurants and clubs, offering all the bypassing tourists discounts and coupons at their restaurant. As we experienced, it was borderline harassment. They were SO pushy and insistent, overly friendly and talkative, and we got so annoyed that we abandoned the restaurant search and opted for kebabs. Doner Kebabs are like Eastern European pita sandwiches, they’re delicious and there are stores all over the place in every Spanish city I’ve been to. It’s like the equivalent of Starbucks in America. They have these giant skewers with meat on them rotating over a fire (its very carnivorous and looking at it grosses me out a bit), but they also have falafel kebabs that are way tasty. They shave the meat off the skewer and put it in a pita or wheat tortilla with lettuce, tomato, cabbage, a red sauce and a white garlic sauce and then close it up and grill it. They’re cheap and one of the few “to-go” restaurants here that’s also open late. So maybe it’s more like Taco Bell, because everyone craves them after a night out at the bars...
Anyway, after our meal, we avoided eye-contact and dodged all of the restaurant greeters, found a grocery store and bought some food for the weekend. It was hilarious to me how excited I was to be buying groceries and picking out meals to cook myself. Obviously, I booked it to the cereal aisle first, and ended up eating almost an entire box of Smacks that night out of a cooking pot, because the bowls in our apartment weren’t big enough for my gluttonous desires. While I stuffed my face with my first bowl of cereal with cold milk in MONTHS, we turned on the tv (by inserting 1 euro into the coin box attached... yeah, we had to pay to watch tv...) and got hooked on Van Helsing in Spanish. I was amazed at how many Spanish words and phrases I was able to understand, and since then I’ve tried to watch movies on tv dubbed over in Spanish and it’s really helped me keep developing my ear for the language.
The next day was beach day. Needless to say, it was fabulous. We napped on the beach, walked out to the sand dunes adjacent to Playa del Ingles, and strolled through the restaurants and gift store upon gift store lining the beach. Among the restaurants we saw, there were various “American style” diners, even a Hooters (heavy sigh). We cooked dinner, and by dinner I mean pounds and pounds of pasta, watched more Spanish television, and tried to form a game plan for the next day. The bus schedule for Maspalomas was the most confusing and convoluted thing I had ever seen, and I was quick to give up on the search for transportation (other than from our hotel to the airport) and just hang out the next day. Laurel and Steven were slightly more determined to see something else on this island other than German tourists, and decided to go to an inland pueblo called San Bartolome, just for kicks.
The next morning, unable to track down the 8 am bus to San Bartolome, we ended up taking a taxi there. 30 minutes, switchback roads in the middle of nowhere, and Kelsey with borderline intense nausea later we arrived in what appeared to be an abandoned town. It was a Sunday morning, and typically Spanish towns don’t wake up til later, except for Mass, and there was hardly anybody up and about when we got there. It was a very relaxing morning, wandering cobblestone streets and hiking up a hill to find an incredible view of San Bartolome, the mountain we came up, and the valley beyond it stretching all the way to the ocean. I took a bunch of pictures (that can’t fit on my computer because my hard drive is full... AWESOME), and we enjoyed a beer on a sidewalk cafe before catching a bus back down to Maspalomas. The decent was even less fun than the trip up; we were on a charter bus, flying down the mountain, taking every turn like nobody’s business. I think Laurel and Steven’s stomachs felt the same as mine did... we all looked pretty pale and didn’t say a word, just stared straight ahead, the entire way down.
After that, we collected our gear, bid farewell to the sun, surf, and Germans, and caught a bus to the airport to fly back home to Valladolid.
As amazing as it was to spend a weekend on a beach in a swimsuit in November, I feel like I get much more out of my trips when I can connect to the native culture of a city or country. Maspalomas is so overrun with tourism that it seemed fake.
As I conclude this blog, I’m about to start packing for my next trip; tomorrow Erica and I leave for Paris. It literally is a life long dream of mine coming true. I can hardly wrap my head around it. Much more blogging about the city of love after Erica and my romantic weekend together concludes, I still need to write about our misadventures last weekend (León is a cool city... kinda...) in addition to everything I’m looking forward to in France. Our to-do list so far looks like:
-Eiffel Tower
-Louvre
-Orsay
-Saint-Chapelle
-Notre Dame
-catacombs
-Arch de Triumph
-Jim Morrison’s grave
-Versailles
-all the crepes, croissants, wine and cafe I can stand
PLEASE don’t hesitate to email me with any more must see sights or restaurants in Paris! Much love to all, hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The countdown has officially began: California in 21 days!
When my friend Steven suggested a weekend trip to the Canary Islands, Spanish territory off the coast of Africa, I did not hesitate to say yes, picturing myself laying out, soaking up the sun on a beach lined with palm trees. Packing last week for the trip was great; I happily filled my backpack with tank tops, sandals, shorts and my swimsuit. On Friday, Steven, Laurel and I left for Madrid, making our way to the airport for our flight to Gran Canaria in the afternoon. It was a little over 2 hour flight, and I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and change into more appropriate beach clothes. We landed and I was elated at the sight of palm trees out the window of the plane. The airport was kind-of in the middle of nowhere on the island, and it took us a while to get our bearings and figure out our plan of action. Not like we could’ve done that ahead of time, this trip was all about making it up as we went along (safely, of course, Mom and Dad). We were informed about a bus that could take us to Playa del Ingles where our hotel was, and waited at the bus stop, on the side of the freeway (sketchy) for a few minutes. The bus ride was a half hour long, and we were unsure of where exactly it would drop us off. We were dropped off near the street where our hotel address was, by this point Laurel and I (being the girls we are) were starting to stress out - it was getting dark out and we had no clue where our hotel was from there. We walked down to the street corner and began frantically looking around for an address, landmark or something, and then Steven saw a giant sign illuminating the name of our hotel, directly across the street from where we stood. Ha ha. Lucky us.
We checked in and were giddy at the sight of our hotel room, which was more like an apartment - it had a kitchen!!! It was dinky, but we didn’t care. Many of us here, myself included, miss cooking so much, or at least being in control of what we eat. Being fed authentic Spanish food three times a day is amazing, and a vital part of us being immersed in Spanish culture, but once in a while it’s kinda rough. There’s always one or two meals that we’re not fans of, or sometimes I just won’t be hungry, but have to stuff myself full anyways.
After unpacking, we were on a mission to find dinner. The next few blocks from our hotel were lined with restaurants, bars, liquor stores and kitschy gift shops, and the sidewalks full of people who worked at the restaurants and clubs, offering all the bypassing tourists discounts and coupons at their restaurant. As we experienced, it was borderline harassment. They were SO pushy and insistent, overly friendly and talkative, and we got so annoyed that we abandoned the restaurant search and opted for kebabs. Doner Kebabs are like Eastern European pita sandwiches, they’re delicious and there are stores all over the place in every Spanish city I’ve been to. It’s like the equivalent of Starbucks in America. They have these giant skewers with meat on them rotating over a fire (its very carnivorous and looking at it grosses me out a bit), but they also have falafel kebabs that are way tasty. They shave the meat off the skewer and put it in a pita or wheat tortilla with lettuce, tomato, cabbage, a red sauce and a white garlic sauce and then close it up and grill it. They’re cheap and one of the few “to-go” restaurants here that’s also open late. So maybe it’s more like Taco Bell, because everyone craves them after a night out at the bars...
Anyway, after our meal, we avoided eye-contact and dodged all of the restaurant greeters, found a grocery store and bought some food for the weekend. It was hilarious to me how excited I was to be buying groceries and picking out meals to cook myself. Obviously, I booked it to the cereal aisle first, and ended up eating almost an entire box of Smacks that night out of a cooking pot, because the bowls in our apartment weren’t big enough for my gluttonous desires. While I stuffed my face with my first bowl of cereal with cold milk in MONTHS, we turned on the tv (by inserting 1 euro into the coin box attached... yeah, we had to pay to watch tv...) and got hooked on Van Helsing in Spanish. I was amazed at how many Spanish words and phrases I was able to understand, and since then I’ve tried to watch movies on tv dubbed over in Spanish and it’s really helped me keep developing my ear for the language.
The next day was beach day. Needless to say, it was fabulous. We napped on the beach, walked out to the sand dunes adjacent to Playa del Ingles, and strolled through the restaurants and gift store upon gift store lining the beach. Among the restaurants we saw, there were various “American style” diners, even a Hooters (heavy sigh). We cooked dinner, and by dinner I mean pounds and pounds of pasta, watched more Spanish television, and tried to form a game plan for the next day. The bus schedule for Maspalomas was the most confusing and convoluted thing I had ever seen, and I was quick to give up on the search for transportation (other than from our hotel to the airport) and just hang out the next day. Laurel and Steven were slightly more determined to see something else on this island other than German tourists, and decided to go to an inland pueblo called San Bartolome, just for kicks.
The next morning, unable to track down the 8 am bus to San Bartolome, we ended up taking a taxi there. 30 minutes, switchback roads in the middle of nowhere, and Kelsey with borderline intense nausea later we arrived in what appeared to be an abandoned town. It was a Sunday morning, and typically Spanish towns don’t wake up til later, except for Mass, and there was hardly anybody up and about when we got there. It was a very relaxing morning, wandering cobblestone streets and hiking up a hill to find an incredible view of San Bartolome, the mountain we came up, and the valley beyond it stretching all the way to the ocean. I took a bunch of pictures (that can’t fit on my computer because my hard drive is full... AWESOME), and we enjoyed a beer on a sidewalk cafe before catching a bus back down to Maspalomas. The decent was even less fun than the trip up; we were on a charter bus, flying down the mountain, taking every turn like nobody’s business. I think Laurel and Steven’s stomachs felt the same as mine did... we all looked pretty pale and didn’t say a word, just stared straight ahead, the entire way down.
After that, we collected our gear, bid farewell to the sun, surf, and Germans, and caught a bus to the airport to fly back home to Valladolid.
As amazing as it was to spend a weekend on a beach in a swimsuit in November, I feel like I get much more out of my trips when I can connect to the native culture of a city or country. Maspalomas is so overrun with tourism that it seemed fake.
As I conclude this blog, I’m about to start packing for my next trip; tomorrow Erica and I leave for Paris. It literally is a life long dream of mine coming true. I can hardly wrap my head around it. Much more blogging about the city of love after Erica and my romantic weekend together concludes, I still need to write about our misadventures last weekend (León is a cool city... kinda...) in addition to everything I’m looking forward to in France. Our to-do list so far looks like:
-Eiffel Tower
-Louvre
-Orsay
-Saint-Chapelle
-Notre Dame
-catacombs
-Arch de Triumph
-Jim Morrison’s grave
-Versailles
-all the crepes, croissants, wine and cafe I can stand
PLEASE don’t hesitate to email me with any more must see sights or restaurants in Paris! Much love to all, hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The countdown has officially began: California in 21 days!
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuna is not a food: Epic Weekend at home
Two weeks ago was my first weekend in Valladolid. No plans, no day trips with Cal Poly, just here. I was really looking forward to exploring Valldolid, make it more my own, and spend some quality time with my friends I haven’t been traveling with. Little did I know what I was in for.
Friday afternoon I was in the “wifi room” at school that us Poly students use, there was a group of us there talking on Skype, emailing, facebook-ing, doing whatever. For whatever reason, I wasn’t having an awesome day, not feeling well or something, and I just wanted to go home and take a nap. I was kind-of waiting around for my roommate and friends who live in the same building as I do to finish up what they were doing online so we could go home, and my friend Jill asked me if I wanted to go to this concert thing that was going on. I had not a clue what she was talking about, she said it was some kind of university band playing outside in one of the plazas. Since I was in my stupid whiny mood, I said I didn’t really feel up to it, and instead we all went home for dinner.
That night a group of us girls planned to go out for a glass of wine, and so after dinner we dressed up and braved the cold, meeting up at a bar/club near our school. We were sitting on couches in the middle of the club, and we saw a guy in some kind of uniform walk by, carrying a guitar. He had a black velvet outfit, with a big cape covered in patches and tights under his... I don’t even know what they’re called - pantaloons? knickers? (later I learned they are referred to as 3 Musketeers pants) A few minutes later he approached us, and started to chat, saying he wanted to practice his English because “it was crap.” His name was Julio, and he told us he was here with his band from the University of Valencia, for a competition this weekend, the same concert Jill had mentioned earlier that day. The bands, called Tunas, are a big tradition at Spanish Universities (leave it to me to meet the Spanish equivalent of marching band kids, right?) and different departments have different bands, many of them founded over a century ago or more. The competition this weekend was for the bands from the different law schools, or Derechos.
Before long, Julio was sitting on the couch in the middle of all of us, serenading us with “Black or White” by Michael Jackson and “Sweet Home Alabama.” It was hilarious, and we were all singing along. Afterward, he told us he was going to call his friends to come hang out, and in no time at all they arrived, filling the bar with boys in capes and black velvet outfits, carrying guitars, mandolins and tambourines, playing for us, dancing with us... needless to say, the Tuna de Derecho de Valencia knows how to party.
They told us that the next day they had another performance in Valladolid, and we told them we’d try to make it. A group of ten or so of us went, and cheered for Valencia’s Tuna de Derecho like they were the Beatles when they took the stage. The poor old Spanish ladies sitting in front of us were scared to death when we started to yell and whistle. The boys saw (more like heard) us in the audience right away, and they proceeded to play a great concert, shamelessly showing off to the crowd of American girls cheering them on. Julio played the tambourine during the concert and performed, what was supposed to be, a traditional Spanish dance, but incorporated some break dancing, to our utter delight. I was lucky enough to get a little wink and kiss from a boy named Esteban while they were on stage; all of us girls were giggling like we were 14 year-olds at a slumber party.
After the concert, we walked over to say hello, and were introduced to the entire band; “These are the girls from CALIFORNIA!!!” Esteban approached me and asked how they sounded, I replied that it was crap. He laughed and invited us all out for drinks that night. So once again, after dinner, all us girls dressed up (I finally got to wear this rad black dress I bought in Bilbao - I’m not a shopping whore by any means but I LOVE this dress) and met up with the boys in Plaza Mayor. It felt like a high school homecoming dance, all of us dressed up, anxiously waiting for our Spanish dates to show up. We were unsure how we’d find them , since Plaza Mayor is pretty huge, and we assumed they’d be in regular clothes this time.
Wrong. There they were, still in uniform, and they greeted us all with dos besos (two kisses, one on each cheek, in Spanish tradition). We had an awesome (and pretty late) night, also in Spanish tradition, dancing and hanging out with them.
Many of us exchanged email addresses and phone numbers, and have been staying in touch since, which is really great. It was especially cool for me to meet musicians from another country and be able to level with them about things we’re both passionate about. I had a great conversation with Esteban about American popular music and the bands we’re in at our respective schools. Interactions like this make me think that this is what my experience here is really about; it teaches me so much about how similar college students are around the world, and how much we do have in common in some respects. Esteban even says that he wants to visit California sometime soon. Hopefully some of them do come visit, and we can show them a good of a time as we all had that weekend in Valladolid.
Friday afternoon I was in the “wifi room” at school that us Poly students use, there was a group of us there talking on Skype, emailing, facebook-ing, doing whatever. For whatever reason, I wasn’t having an awesome day, not feeling well or something, and I just wanted to go home and take a nap. I was kind-of waiting around for my roommate and friends who live in the same building as I do to finish up what they were doing online so we could go home, and my friend Jill asked me if I wanted to go to this concert thing that was going on. I had not a clue what she was talking about, she said it was some kind of university band playing outside in one of the plazas. Since I was in my stupid whiny mood, I said I didn’t really feel up to it, and instead we all went home for dinner.
That night a group of us girls planned to go out for a glass of wine, and so after dinner we dressed up and braved the cold, meeting up at a bar/club near our school. We were sitting on couches in the middle of the club, and we saw a guy in some kind of uniform walk by, carrying a guitar. He had a black velvet outfit, with a big cape covered in patches and tights under his... I don’t even know what they’re called - pantaloons? knickers? (later I learned they are referred to as 3 Musketeers pants) A few minutes later he approached us, and started to chat, saying he wanted to practice his English because “it was crap.” His name was Julio, and he told us he was here with his band from the University of Valencia, for a competition this weekend, the same concert Jill had mentioned earlier that day. The bands, called Tunas, are a big tradition at Spanish Universities (leave it to me to meet the Spanish equivalent of marching band kids, right?) and different departments have different bands, many of them founded over a century ago or more. The competition this weekend was for the bands from the different law schools, or Derechos.
Before long, Julio was sitting on the couch in the middle of all of us, serenading us with “Black or White” by Michael Jackson and “Sweet Home Alabama.” It was hilarious, and we were all singing along. Afterward, he told us he was going to call his friends to come hang out, and in no time at all they arrived, filling the bar with boys in capes and black velvet outfits, carrying guitars, mandolins and tambourines, playing for us, dancing with us... needless to say, the Tuna de Derecho de Valencia knows how to party.
They told us that the next day they had another performance in Valladolid, and we told them we’d try to make it. A group of ten or so of us went, and cheered for Valencia’s Tuna de Derecho like they were the Beatles when they took the stage. The poor old Spanish ladies sitting in front of us were scared to death when we started to yell and whistle. The boys saw (more like heard) us in the audience right away, and they proceeded to play a great concert, shamelessly showing off to the crowd of American girls cheering them on. Julio played the tambourine during the concert and performed, what was supposed to be, a traditional Spanish dance, but incorporated some break dancing, to our utter delight. I was lucky enough to get a little wink and kiss from a boy named Esteban while they were on stage; all of us girls were giggling like we were 14 year-olds at a slumber party.
After the concert, we walked over to say hello, and were introduced to the entire band; “These are the girls from CALIFORNIA!!!” Esteban approached me and asked how they sounded, I replied that it was crap. He laughed and invited us all out for drinks that night. So once again, after dinner, all us girls dressed up (I finally got to wear this rad black dress I bought in Bilbao - I’m not a shopping whore by any means but I LOVE this dress) and met up with the boys in Plaza Mayor. It felt like a high school homecoming dance, all of us dressed up, anxiously waiting for our Spanish dates to show up. We were unsure how we’d find them , since Plaza Mayor is pretty huge, and we assumed they’d be in regular clothes this time.
Wrong. There they were, still in uniform, and they greeted us all with dos besos (two kisses, one on each cheek, in Spanish tradition). We had an awesome (and pretty late) night, also in Spanish tradition, dancing and hanging out with them.
Many of us exchanged email addresses and phone numbers, and have been staying in touch since, which is really great. It was especially cool for me to meet musicians from another country and be able to level with them about things we’re both passionate about. I had a great conversation with Esteban about American popular music and the bands we’re in at our respective schools. Interactions like this make me think that this is what my experience here is really about; it teaches me so much about how similar college students are around the world, and how much we do have in common in some respects. Esteban even says that he wants to visit California sometime soon. Hopefully some of them do come visit, and we can show them a good of a time as we all had that weekend in Valladolid.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
good times in Southern Spain
Ahh still so much to blog about. I can’t believe how fast the time is flying by; I want to have everything I see and every experience I have written down so I never forget, but the days are getting away from me. This trip is 2/3 over already. It’s insane.
Halloween was a three day weekend, and I spent it with seven other ladies from Cal Poly on an adventure to Southern Spain. Between my first trip to Spain after high school and this trip so far, I have Northern Spain pretty well explored, but any place south of Madrid was completely unknown territory. We spent our time in Granada and Sevilla, probably the two most tourist-y cities in Andalusia. The biggest attraction in Granada is La Alhambra, a Moorish palace built when they ruled Spain, and Sevilla has the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Both were incredible to see in person, but let me backtrack and recount my trip from the beginning.
We left on Friday night, taking a bus from Valladolid to Madrid. We had to wait in Madrid for over an hour before our bus left for Granada. Hopefully that will be my last overnight bus ride - it turns me into grouchy sleep-deprived zombie for the entire following day. We arrived in Granada at 6:30 am, tried to wake up, pull ourselves together, and figure out our hostel situation... Dalia, one of the girls who did a lot of planning for this weekend trip, had booked a hostel for our night in Granada, but when she called or tried to email to confirm our reservation, we couldn’t get through. Turns out the hostel wasn’t registered, and the day before we arrived in Granada, it had been shut down, along with a good half a dozen other hostels in the area, almost all of which we had tried to contact and make a reservation. Upon our arrival we didn’t know for sure that hostel had been closed up, so we decided to take taxis to the hostel and try to figure out what was going on. Obviously, that did not pan out, but we did find a hostel on the same street that wasn’t closed, and miraculously, could put up all 8 of us for the night. We were so relieved to have a place to stay after that whole ordeal, but the hostel we ended up in turned out to be the coolest hostel I’ve ever stayed in. It was set up like a villa, with a hang-out area in the middle, hammocks hung up all over, an outdoor brick oven and bar, and then all the rooms around it. It was a really social hostel, throughout that day and night we met traveling students from Oregon, Australia, Chile, Italy, and one guy from Denmark who ran out of money during his travels and just stayed at the hostel and started working. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to toss life plans to the wind and say “oh hell, I’ll just stay in Granada for a while.” As much as I’d love to be that spontanious and ballsy, I think I need some sort of structure, or goal, or schedule in my life... I’m more conventional American than I want to admit.
Priority one in Granada was obviously La Alhambra. I was impressed at all of our abilities to remain awake and attentive the entire day, not just that, but thorougly enjoy our tour. The gardens around palace were gorgeous - blooming flowers everywhere, fountains, beautifully decorated staircases and fences, no detail left untouched. The palace was the same way - every wall, every ceiling, hallway, archway, everything decorated. In my humanities class we talked a lot about how influential eastern art was on Spain and how incredibly talented Moorish artisans were; after Christians conquered Spain, they hired back Moorish artists to decorate Christian churches and buildings. Their art contains no people or iconography, it is all based on geographic shapes and intricate patterns. The attention to detail is immaculate, I can’t even begin to fathom the amount of time spent perfecting every design covering so many of the surfaces inside the palace.
After wandering around in awe and taking pictures of everything (and I mean everything) for a few hours, we left for lunch and a stroll around the city. Granada (and Sevilla, as we’d discover the next day) both feel like southern California. Palm trees (!!!!) wide avenues with lots of shops and gift stores, restaurants with patios lining every street, and the typical Spanish Plaza at almost every turn. We had AMAZING helado (ice cream!) at a shopdowntown, and ended up walking back later that night for seconds.
The cathedral in Granada is right in the middle of downtown, but it’s kindof hidden, (seems weird to say that, because it’s humongous), tucked in between commercial buildings and shops. We decided to take a tour before heading back to our hostel for dinner. I always think I’m burned out on visiting cathedrals, and walk inside thinking, yes, another Jesus on yet another cross, another huge organ... seen it all before... but I have yet to step inside the nave of a cathedral and not have my breath taken away. Visiting the Granada cathedral was especially nice because we weren’t with a giant tour group - it was jus t us girls walking around, spending however much time we wanted taking it in at our own pace. I chose to sit in a pew, and pull out my ipod.
Being in choir at Nevada Union tought me a lot about spirituality. I am not a Christian (it’s the History major in me that struggles with blind faith), but singing sacred music in choir for years, especially in European cathedrals, is absolutely a spiritual experience regardless of what I do or don’t believe. It makes me feel weightless and cleansed, body and soul; making music is the most liberating thing I know how to do. So there I sat, dwarfed by this huge expanse of a building, with my headphones on. I listened to songs that I sang in Spain with my high school choir, and it wasn’t long before my eyes welled up with tears and I had goosebumps all over my body. I felt reconnected with the me four years earlier that recorded those songs, and I was completely at peace. I feel like cathedrals are built to overwhelm you with the incredible elegance and wonder that God is, and music is the vessel that makes me feel spiritual, whole, and connected to the world.
Back to reality...
We returned to our hostel to figure out some plans for dinner, there was a small kitchen and we were thinking of buying some pasta or something and cooking ourselves (oh, how I miss cooking!), but the people running the hostel offered us homemade paella, cooked over an open fire on the patio. How could we resist?! It was hands down one of the best meals I’ve had in Spain. Paella is probably the mostwell-known Spanish dish, it’s rice cooked with usually seafood, shellfish or some type of meat. It’s very flavorful (especially for Spanish cuisine, which in my opinion has been fairly bland) and really filling. They served it with homemade sangria, which was also delicious. To top of our night in Granada, we took a walk through the neighborhood after dark.Our hostel was tucked away on a hillside near the Alhambra, and it was gorgeous to see at night. We walked up and down cramped cobblestone streets that don’t seem wide enough for a Vespa, much less two lanes of traffic (it’s beyond me how Spaniards make that work without head-on collisions every 5 minutes), and sat on a rock wall and gawked at the Alhambra all lit up on the hill facing us. It was one of those surreal moments, where I all-of-a-sudden get hit with a wave of “no way is this reality...” I’ve had lots of those moments in the past two months...
The next morning it was up early and back to the bus station to get ourselves to Sevilla.We took it easy that afternoon, resting up a bit in our hostel, making lunch, and eventually departing on a walking tour of Sevilla organized by our hostel. Our tour guide was a girl from Austria, probably my age, who showed us around the city, discussing both historic sites of Sevilla and places famous for superstitions and Spanish folklore. We saw the Plaza del Toros, and were informed in detail about the process of a Spanish bullfight. Disgusting. I get that it’s a deeply-rooted part of Spanish culture, and I can respect customs different than those of my own country, but I cannot bring myself to have any respect or understanding of the sick and brutal tradition of bullfighting. On a happier note, we saw some gorgeous buildings and parks throughout the city, and I fell in love (yet again) with the vibe of this city. The Rio Guadilquivir runs through the heart of the city, and there are beautiful towers and bridges lining it, lit up at night, it was breathtaking. Only drawback to Sevilla was the FOUR Starbucks I saw on the tour... It had been a wonderfully refreshing 6 weeks without it, but, alas, there they were, on multiple streetcorners in downtown Sevilla.
After the tour, we all saw a traditional Flamenco show. It was not at all what I expected, for some reason I had pictured tons of guitars and other instruments, and lines of dancers in shiny outfits prancing around like Vegas showgirls or something. The show was much more intimate and classy, with a singer, a guitarist who was amazing, and male and female dancer who hardly ever danced together, when one was dancing, the other was clapping, the only percussion in the whole show. There is so much passion in Flamenco, and so much of the dancing and music was improved like jazz, you could sense all of the performers totally tuned in to one another making music.
When the show ended, we went straight back out for a pub crawl with our hostel, one of the stops being an American bar, complete with Hooters bumper stickers and a Packers game on the tv. That was a trip.
After a fun night of dancing and roaming the streets of Sevilla (safely, mom and dad), the next morning we returned to the cathedral we saw on our tour the day before, and went inside. Like I said, the cathedral in Sevilla is the largest Gothic style cathedral, and third largest cathedral in the world, only St. Peters in the Vatican and St. Pauls in London are bigger. Columbus’s tomb resides in the cathedral, which was cool to see, but anticlimatic after our tour guide the day before told us that the only thing in the full-size tomb lavishly decorated and held up by four statues, is Columbus’s finger. BUT they ran tests, and they know for sure it’s his finger. The rest of his body? Many claim to have had it, but no one knows.
After paying tribute to the founder of the New World’s finger, we climbed the tower for a full view of the city. Every city I’ve traveled to on this trip I’ve happened to go on some tour, or hike, or visit some building in which I’ve had a view of the entire city laid out in front of me. It’s a great feeling to take in a city all at once, it make me feel like I’ve conquered another place in the world, not to mention all the pictures will make for an epic picture collage when I get back to the states. The breath-taking view of Sevilla from the cathedral tower was our farewell, right after we left it was back to the bus station for our trek back to Valladolid.
Leaving Sevilla and Granada was sad for me - I felt like one weekend was not enough to do either city justice, like I had just barely scraped the surface of what these places had to offer, and just as I was getting my barings, had to leave. Only seeing a day’s worth of sights in each city definitely made me want to come back, and one day, hopefully in the near future, I will.
Halloween was a three day weekend, and I spent it with seven other ladies from Cal Poly on an adventure to Southern Spain. Between my first trip to Spain after high school and this trip so far, I have Northern Spain pretty well explored, but any place south of Madrid was completely unknown territory. We spent our time in Granada and Sevilla, probably the two most tourist-y cities in Andalusia. The biggest attraction in Granada is La Alhambra, a Moorish palace built when they ruled Spain, and Sevilla has the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Both were incredible to see in person, but let me backtrack and recount my trip from the beginning.
We left on Friday night, taking a bus from Valladolid to Madrid. We had to wait in Madrid for over an hour before our bus left for Granada. Hopefully that will be my last overnight bus ride - it turns me into grouchy sleep-deprived zombie for the entire following day. We arrived in Granada at 6:30 am, tried to wake up, pull ourselves together, and figure out our hostel situation... Dalia, one of the girls who did a lot of planning for this weekend trip, had booked a hostel for our night in Granada, but when she called or tried to email to confirm our reservation, we couldn’t get through. Turns out the hostel wasn’t registered, and the day before we arrived in Granada, it had been shut down, along with a good half a dozen other hostels in the area, almost all of which we had tried to contact and make a reservation. Upon our arrival we didn’t know for sure that hostel had been closed up, so we decided to take taxis to the hostel and try to figure out what was going on. Obviously, that did not pan out, but we did find a hostel on the same street that wasn’t closed, and miraculously, could put up all 8 of us for the night. We were so relieved to have a place to stay after that whole ordeal, but the hostel we ended up in turned out to be the coolest hostel I’ve ever stayed in. It was set up like a villa, with a hang-out area in the middle, hammocks hung up all over, an outdoor brick oven and bar, and then all the rooms around it. It was a really social hostel, throughout that day and night we met traveling students from Oregon, Australia, Chile, Italy, and one guy from Denmark who ran out of money during his travels and just stayed at the hostel and started working. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to toss life plans to the wind and say “oh hell, I’ll just stay in Granada for a while.” As much as I’d love to be that spontanious and ballsy, I think I need some sort of structure, or goal, or schedule in my life... I’m more conventional American than I want to admit.
Priority one in Granada was obviously La Alhambra. I was impressed at all of our abilities to remain awake and attentive the entire day, not just that, but thorougly enjoy our tour. The gardens around palace were gorgeous - blooming flowers everywhere, fountains, beautifully decorated staircases and fences, no detail left untouched. The palace was the same way - every wall, every ceiling, hallway, archway, everything decorated. In my humanities class we talked a lot about how influential eastern art was on Spain and how incredibly talented Moorish artisans were; after Christians conquered Spain, they hired back Moorish artists to decorate Christian churches and buildings. Their art contains no people or iconography, it is all based on geographic shapes and intricate patterns. The attention to detail is immaculate, I can’t even begin to fathom the amount of time spent perfecting every design covering so many of the surfaces inside the palace.
After wandering around in awe and taking pictures of everything (and I mean everything) for a few hours, we left for lunch and a stroll around the city. Granada (and Sevilla, as we’d discover the next day) both feel like southern California. Palm trees (!!!!) wide avenues with lots of shops and gift stores, restaurants with patios lining every street, and the typical Spanish Plaza at almost every turn. We had AMAZING helado (ice cream!) at a shopdowntown, and ended up walking back later that night for seconds.
The cathedral in Granada is right in the middle of downtown, but it’s kindof hidden, (seems weird to say that, because it’s humongous), tucked in between commercial buildings and shops. We decided to take a tour before heading back to our hostel for dinner. I always think I’m burned out on visiting cathedrals, and walk inside thinking, yes, another Jesus on yet another cross, another huge organ... seen it all before... but I have yet to step inside the nave of a cathedral and not have my breath taken away. Visiting the Granada cathedral was especially nice because we weren’t with a giant tour group - it was jus t us girls walking around, spending however much time we wanted taking it in at our own pace. I chose to sit in a pew, and pull out my ipod.
Being in choir at Nevada Union tought me a lot about spirituality. I am not a Christian (it’s the History major in me that struggles with blind faith), but singing sacred music in choir for years, especially in European cathedrals, is absolutely a spiritual experience regardless of what I do or don’t believe. It makes me feel weightless and cleansed, body and soul; making music is the most liberating thing I know how to do. So there I sat, dwarfed by this huge expanse of a building, with my headphones on. I listened to songs that I sang in Spain with my high school choir, and it wasn’t long before my eyes welled up with tears and I had goosebumps all over my body. I felt reconnected with the me four years earlier that recorded those songs, and I was completely at peace. I feel like cathedrals are built to overwhelm you with the incredible elegance and wonder that God is, and music is the vessel that makes me feel spiritual, whole, and connected to the world.
Back to reality...
We returned to our hostel to figure out some plans for dinner, there was a small kitchen and we were thinking of buying some pasta or something and cooking ourselves (oh, how I miss cooking!), but the people running the hostel offered us homemade paella, cooked over an open fire on the patio. How could we resist?! It was hands down one of the best meals I’ve had in Spain. Paella is probably the mostwell-known Spanish dish, it’s rice cooked with usually seafood, shellfish or some type of meat. It’s very flavorful (especially for Spanish cuisine, which in my opinion has been fairly bland) and really filling. They served it with homemade sangria, which was also delicious. To top of our night in Granada, we took a walk through the neighborhood after dark.Our hostel was tucked away on a hillside near the Alhambra, and it was gorgeous to see at night. We walked up and down cramped cobblestone streets that don’t seem wide enough for a Vespa, much less two lanes of traffic (it’s beyond me how Spaniards make that work without head-on collisions every 5 minutes), and sat on a rock wall and gawked at the Alhambra all lit up on the hill facing us. It was one of those surreal moments, where I all-of-a-sudden get hit with a wave of “no way is this reality...” I’ve had lots of those moments in the past two months...
The next morning it was up early and back to the bus station to get ourselves to Sevilla.We took it easy that afternoon, resting up a bit in our hostel, making lunch, and eventually departing on a walking tour of Sevilla organized by our hostel. Our tour guide was a girl from Austria, probably my age, who showed us around the city, discussing both historic sites of Sevilla and places famous for superstitions and Spanish folklore. We saw the Plaza del Toros, and were informed in detail about the process of a Spanish bullfight. Disgusting. I get that it’s a deeply-rooted part of Spanish culture, and I can respect customs different than those of my own country, but I cannot bring myself to have any respect or understanding of the sick and brutal tradition of bullfighting. On a happier note, we saw some gorgeous buildings and parks throughout the city, and I fell in love (yet again) with the vibe of this city. The Rio Guadilquivir runs through the heart of the city, and there are beautiful towers and bridges lining it, lit up at night, it was breathtaking. Only drawback to Sevilla was the FOUR Starbucks I saw on the tour... It had been a wonderfully refreshing 6 weeks without it, but, alas, there they were, on multiple streetcorners in downtown Sevilla.
After the tour, we all saw a traditional Flamenco show. It was not at all what I expected, for some reason I had pictured tons of guitars and other instruments, and lines of dancers in shiny outfits prancing around like Vegas showgirls or something. The show was much more intimate and classy, with a singer, a guitarist who was amazing, and male and female dancer who hardly ever danced together, when one was dancing, the other was clapping, the only percussion in the whole show. There is so much passion in Flamenco, and so much of the dancing and music was improved like jazz, you could sense all of the performers totally tuned in to one another making music.
When the show ended, we went straight back out for a pub crawl with our hostel, one of the stops being an American bar, complete with Hooters bumper stickers and a Packers game on the tv. That was a trip.
After a fun night of dancing and roaming the streets of Sevilla (safely, mom and dad), the next morning we returned to the cathedral we saw on our tour the day before, and went inside. Like I said, the cathedral in Sevilla is the largest Gothic style cathedral, and third largest cathedral in the world, only St. Peters in the Vatican and St. Pauls in London are bigger. Columbus’s tomb resides in the cathedral, which was cool to see, but anticlimatic after our tour guide the day before told us that the only thing in the full-size tomb lavishly decorated and held up by four statues, is Columbus’s finger. BUT they ran tests, and they know for sure it’s his finger. The rest of his body? Many claim to have had it, but no one knows.
After paying tribute to the founder of the New World’s finger, we climbed the tower for a full view of the city. Every city I’ve traveled to on this trip I’ve happened to go on some tour, or hike, or visit some building in which I’ve had a view of the entire city laid out in front of me. It’s a great feeling to take in a city all at once, it make me feel like I’ve conquered another place in the world, not to mention all the pictures will make for an epic picture collage when I get back to the states. The breath-taking view of Sevilla from the cathedral tower was our farewell, right after we left it was back to the bus station for our trek back to Valladolid.
Leaving Sevilla and Granada was sad for me - I felt like one weekend was not enough to do either city justice, like I had just barely scraped the surface of what these places had to offer, and just as I was getting my barings, had to leave. Only seeing a day’s worth of sights in each city definitely made me want to come back, and one day, hopefully in the near future, I will.
Monday, November 9, 2009
notes on attending a university abroad...
I realized that 99% of my blogs so far has been about trips I’ve taken on the weekends since coming to Spain, but believe it or not, I’m in school as well. AND I even go to class. Consistently, in fact. Since I’ve hardly discussed my classes in my blogs, I figured now is a good time to start, to at least ease my parents’ minds that I am in fact, getting something academic out of my 3 months here. (Also Mom and Dad, just wanted to clarify that when I bought beer off the street in Barcelona it was:
1. My friend Brian’s idea
2. In a sealed can, and
3. It was the first COLD beer I’d had in weeks, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted it)
anyway...
I’m in Spanish class every morning, Monday through Friday, at 9:30 in the morning. All of us from Cal Poly are taking grammar, oral expression, and culture classes, completely in Spanish taught by the Castilian spanish-speaking professors from the Universidad de Valladolid. Needless to say, day one was quite intimidating. My mind is exhausted every day after class; I’ve gotten far too used to Cal Poly, where one lecture class only requires about 5 hours of time in class a week and then lots of reading and homework outside of the the classroom. And usually no class on Fridays. This quarter, with just my Spanish classes alone, I’m in a classroom speaking and being taught Spanish 20 hours a week.
My grammar teacher is incredibly smart, and very good about speaking only in Spanish but still in ways that we can understand completely, but I get the vibe more often than not that she doesn’t enjoy teaching us. I assume it’s because I’m in the lowest-level Spanish class, and can only imagine she sees it as an insult that she has to teach us dummies who didn’t bother learning the language before coming here. It’s an exaggeration I’m sure, but that’s just the impression I get.
Ruth is my oral expression teacher, and she’s a kick. She has more energy than most of us put together (even after our daily cafe con leches) and everything I’m learning from her is really useful knowledge that I can apply in my day-to-day interactions with my family and in public. She teaches us a lot of colloquial terms, how to order things in bars and restaurants, translations for types of clothing, and we have a lot of conversations comparing the cultures of everyone in our classes.
Our culture class is taught by Alfredo, who speaks Spanish in a way that I can understand everything he says, but I feel like he’s not dumbing down his language so we can keep up. It definitely makes me feel like I’m developing a better ear for the language. In his class we learn about the political system of Spain, the geography, Spanish family life and religion (meaning Catholic).
Then, in the afternoons, I have to switch gears from Spanish to English (it’s starting to get difficult - I’ve been forgetting how to spell words in English, making English words masculine or feminine and pluralizing them with “es” instead of “s” more and more frequently... problems I never expected to encounter...). Three days a week I have my Culture of Spain class with Dr. Hiltpold (one of the coolest professors at Poly in my opinion), and the experience of learning the history and culture of a country while being there and living it is simply amazing. Class always begins with Dr. H asking “why do Spaniards do it that way?,” where we get to make sense of some of the quirks about our families and oddities of Spanish people. Questions have ranged from serious ones about Franco’s dictatorship or the Basque region wanting independance to “why don’t they have doorknobs?” (my house included) and “why do they all smoke?”. The lectures where we focus on art and architecture are my favorite, especially lately, when I’ve gotten to study the baroque building in Valladolid where my culture class is held. It’s so cool to glance through notes and see where I’ve written the word “here,” and I realize all over again that I’m smack in the middle of this incredible history, completely immersed and living in it every day.
The other history class offered here is about the Witchhunt in Europe - a fascinating history that isn’t in a whole lot of textbooks, but it devastated most of Europe during the Renaissance. I already took this class from Dr. H, but still wanted to apply for the Spain program, so he had me sign up for an independent study course where I’d write him a research paper about Valladolid. A part of Valladolid’s history that I find fascinating is that Ferdinand and Isabel, probably the most famous monarchs in Spanish history, were married in Valladolid. The building is a 10 minute walk from my Spanish class. Their marriage was a scandal - they were not arranged to be married to one another, and they were also second cousins. Eww. I’m stoked he allowed me to do this and be able to come to Spain, but I’m really struggling with the paper for two reasons. First, since it’s an independent study class, I don’t have lectures, I don’t meet with my professor on a regular basis, or have a schedule of assignments or portions of my paper to turn in throughout the quarter, and I desperately need structure when it comes to school. So, because of that, I’m definitely behind in writing my paper. Secondly, my paper needs to be about Valladolid, which is awesome because there is so much history here and a lot of different directions to take my paper, but writing it here also means I have to research it here. And they don’t speak English here. Yet another reason why I’m behind - I’m far too intimidated to go to a Spanish library and try to find books on my topic, much less try to actually READ THEM.ugh. Scary.
So there’s a glance at my academic life in Spain, parentals, I imagine you’re relieved to know I have one at all.
Oh, and about the creepy-weird hairdos... punky rebel guys don’t have mohawks... they have mullets. and the long mullet part they make DREADLOCKS. It’s disgusting, and it’s EVERYWHERE. It’s the part of culture shock in Spain that I don’t think I’ll ever recover from. I’ll try to sneak some photographic evidence, I’m sure some of you don’t believe me.
I’ve been listening to this artist named Frank Turner a lot lately. My good friend Chris burned me his CD and gave it to me the night before I left for Spain, and so much of his lyrics I can relate to when it comes to traveling and living life to the fullest. One song especially has come to be my theme song thus far in my trip, and I wanted to share some lyrics with whoever reads this:
"Yeah I am sick and tired of people who are living on the b-list
Yeah they're waiting to be famous, and they're wondering why they do this
And I know I'm not the one who it habitually optimistic
But I'm the one who's got the microphone here so just remember this
Well life is about love, lost minutes and lost evening
About fire in our bellies and about furtive little feelings
And the aching amplitudes that set our needles all flickering
And they help us with remembering
that the only thing left to do is live"
-Frank Turner, "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous"
Love Ire & Song
1. My friend Brian’s idea
2. In a sealed can, and
3. It was the first COLD beer I’d had in weeks, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted it)
anyway...
I’m in Spanish class every morning, Monday through Friday, at 9:30 in the morning. All of us from Cal Poly are taking grammar, oral expression, and culture classes, completely in Spanish taught by the Castilian spanish-speaking professors from the Universidad de Valladolid. Needless to say, day one was quite intimidating. My mind is exhausted every day after class; I’ve gotten far too used to Cal Poly, where one lecture class only requires about 5 hours of time in class a week and then lots of reading and homework outside of the the classroom. And usually no class on Fridays. This quarter, with just my Spanish classes alone, I’m in a classroom speaking and being taught Spanish 20 hours a week.
My grammar teacher is incredibly smart, and very good about speaking only in Spanish but still in ways that we can understand completely, but I get the vibe more often than not that she doesn’t enjoy teaching us. I assume it’s because I’m in the lowest-level Spanish class, and can only imagine she sees it as an insult that she has to teach us dummies who didn’t bother learning the language before coming here. It’s an exaggeration I’m sure, but that’s just the impression I get.
Ruth is my oral expression teacher, and she’s a kick. She has more energy than most of us put together (even after our daily cafe con leches) and everything I’m learning from her is really useful knowledge that I can apply in my day-to-day interactions with my family and in public. She teaches us a lot of colloquial terms, how to order things in bars and restaurants, translations for types of clothing, and we have a lot of conversations comparing the cultures of everyone in our classes.
Our culture class is taught by Alfredo, who speaks Spanish in a way that I can understand everything he says, but I feel like he’s not dumbing down his language so we can keep up. It definitely makes me feel like I’m developing a better ear for the language. In his class we learn about the political system of Spain, the geography, Spanish family life and religion (meaning Catholic).
Then, in the afternoons, I have to switch gears from Spanish to English (it’s starting to get difficult - I’ve been forgetting how to spell words in English, making English words masculine or feminine and pluralizing them with “es” instead of “s” more and more frequently... problems I never expected to encounter...). Three days a week I have my Culture of Spain class with Dr. Hiltpold (one of the coolest professors at Poly in my opinion), and the experience of learning the history and culture of a country while being there and living it is simply amazing. Class always begins with Dr. H asking “why do Spaniards do it that way?,” where we get to make sense of some of the quirks about our families and oddities of Spanish people. Questions have ranged from serious ones about Franco’s dictatorship or the Basque region wanting independance to “why don’t they have doorknobs?” (my house included) and “why do they all smoke?”. The lectures where we focus on art and architecture are my favorite, especially lately, when I’ve gotten to study the baroque building in Valladolid where my culture class is held. It’s so cool to glance through notes and see where I’ve written the word “here,” and I realize all over again that I’m smack in the middle of this incredible history, completely immersed and living in it every day.
The other history class offered here is about the Witchhunt in Europe - a fascinating history that isn’t in a whole lot of textbooks, but it devastated most of Europe during the Renaissance. I already took this class from Dr. H, but still wanted to apply for the Spain program, so he had me sign up for an independent study course where I’d write him a research paper about Valladolid. A part of Valladolid’s history that I find fascinating is that Ferdinand and Isabel, probably the most famous monarchs in Spanish history, were married in Valladolid. The building is a 10 minute walk from my Spanish class. Their marriage was a scandal - they were not arranged to be married to one another, and they were also second cousins. Eww. I’m stoked he allowed me to do this and be able to come to Spain, but I’m really struggling with the paper for two reasons. First, since it’s an independent study class, I don’t have lectures, I don’t meet with my professor on a regular basis, or have a schedule of assignments or portions of my paper to turn in throughout the quarter, and I desperately need structure when it comes to school. So, because of that, I’m definitely behind in writing my paper. Secondly, my paper needs to be about Valladolid, which is awesome because there is so much history here and a lot of different directions to take my paper, but writing it here also means I have to research it here. And they don’t speak English here. Yet another reason why I’m behind - I’m far too intimidated to go to a Spanish library and try to find books on my topic, much less try to actually READ THEM.ugh. Scary.
So there’s a glance at my academic life in Spain, parentals, I imagine you’re relieved to know I have one at all.
Oh, and about the creepy-weird hairdos... punky rebel guys don’t have mohawks... they have mullets. and the long mullet part they make DREADLOCKS. It’s disgusting, and it’s EVERYWHERE. It’s the part of culture shock in Spain that I don’t think I’ll ever recover from. I’ll try to sneak some photographic evidence, I’m sure some of you don’t believe me.
I’ve been listening to this artist named Frank Turner a lot lately. My good friend Chris burned me his CD and gave it to me the night before I left for Spain, and so much of his lyrics I can relate to when it comes to traveling and living life to the fullest. One song especially has come to be my theme song thus far in my trip, and I wanted to share some lyrics with whoever reads this:
"Yeah I am sick and tired of people who are living on the b-list
Yeah they're waiting to be famous, and they're wondering why they do this
And I know I'm not the one who it habitually optimistic
But I'm the one who's got the microphone here so just remember this
Well life is about love, lost minutes and lost evening
About fire in our bellies and about furtive little feelings
And the aching amplitudes that set our needles all flickering
And they help us with remembering
that the only thing left to do is live"
-Frank Turner, "I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous"
Love Ire & Song
Friday, November 6, 2009
Basque Country... me encanta.
Northern Spain was at the top of my list of places I wanted to visit in Spain. My trusty Rick Steve’s Spain book informed me that San Sebastian was a picturesque beach town and a wonderful place to relax, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was a must-see. I absolutely agree. (Rick Steves is my homeboy)
Eight of us ladies from Cal Poly took a bus Friday afternoon from Valladolid to Bilbao, arriving at night. We took a tram across town to our hostel, and I was loving everything I saw right away. The tram was a great way to see the city; it followed along the river through the heart of Bilbao, right by the Guggenheim, train station, cathedral, and other old and very official looking buildings. We checked into our hostel, that was in reality a cheap hotel, (exposed piping, janky hallways, but remodeled bathrooms so I didn’t care) and the group of us ordered pizza and had an impromptu girly slumber party. It was really nice to catch up with a lot of the girls, it sounds silly to say that we don’t see each other much but it’s true! We can’t chat during lectures, and since moving to Valladolid, we’re spread all over the city (some of us over a half-hour walk from each other) and not all packed into the same hotel like we were in Madrid. We ordered from Pizza Hut (no judging) and it was delivered in Domino’s Pizza boxes. Interesante. All I can say is, American pizza only exists in America.What we ate wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good old American pizza. Friends back home, next time you have Woodstocks pizza in SLO or Northridge pizza in GV, appreciate it. Just for me.
The next morning we woke up bright and early (kinda) and went straight to the Guggenheim, walking back along the river through town. It was supposed to rain the whole weekend, but the sky was beautiful and clear, and the weather mild. It was so nice to not have to bundle up to go outside! (Valladolid is freeeeeeeezing cold) We drank cafe con leche (latte) and munched on pan de fruta (kinda like banana bread... mine tasted like a donut. No joke.) and tortilla espanola (potato omelet that I’m addicted to) outside of the Guggenheim.... so delicious!
We got to see most of the building as we walked around it and up the stairs to the entrance, where we were greeted by a gigantic chia-pet. It’s name is Puppy, and it’s a work of art by James Koonz (I think that’s his name...), and it’s a giant puppy covered in flowers, like the most humongous and adorable Rose Parade float you’ve ever seen.
I could have spent hours just admiring the building alone, much less all the art inside it. There are no 90º angles anywhere; the floor is the only straight line in the building, which makes this psychedelic web of metal, glass and sandstone ( I think). There’s a light, airy feeling inside, I felt less grounded and crowded by all the open space and curved walls. We explored the exhibits on all three floors, and had our fill of modern art for quite some time. The second floor had an exhibit about Frank Lloyd Wright which was cool to see, and the top floor (my fave, and didn’t know it would be there) was a showcase of art from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. I came face-to -face with Manet, Van Gogh, and Jackson Pollack, just to name a few. The art historian in me was quite content :)
That afternoon, we walked to the Old Town to find lunch and explore. We found a random rock concert in a retail store (no idea what the deal was, but they sounded good! And sang in English. Go figure), did a little shopping, saw the cathedral, and..... ATE MEXICAN FOOD. This doesn’t seem like a big of a deal, but after a solid month with not a single tortilla or anything resembling picante salsa, we were so pumped. We got plates of tacos and burritos, which turned out to be appetizer-sized, but we didn’t care, and just ordered a second round, dousing everything in guac and salsa. I’ve never enjoyed the burning sensation of spicy food in my mouth so much. It was fabulous. And to top it off, we had imported Pacificos, instead of the staple Spanish beer called Mahou (think Bud Light. Not that great, no idea why Spaniards drink the stuff by choice). After filling our bellies with tacos, we were on an emotional high for the rest of the day, and the big group of us took a 100-year old tram up the mountain for a view of the whole city, which was fantastic! It started to sprinkle right before we left, but we got some amazing pictures of the view, and us of course. :)
For dinner, the pelirojas (means redheads, and refers to Julie, Erica and myself) bought brie cheese (YUM), bread and wine and shared it while watching a Spanish futbol game - aren’t we assimilating so well?! Later on we enjoyed a night out and found a bar that played just rock music - mostly American, to my delight. Nothing like rocking out to Pat Benetar in a crowded bar of Spaniards, getting beer spilled all over your shoes. Believe it or not, that night I practiced the most Spanish at the bar than any other time in the last 6 weeks - us redheaded American girls were bombarded with Spaniards (Basques, to be correct), guys and girls, wanting to know where we were from, why we were there, if we liked Arnold, if we listened to this kind of music, why weren’t we smoking cigarettes... it was insanity. Sadly, we discovered towards the end of the night that Erica’s camera and phone were stolen out of her purse. Not fun at all, but at least it wasn’t something irreplaceable.
The next morning we were back on another bus to San Sebastian for the day. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with yet another coastal city. We walked by the most perfect beach I’ve ever seen (being a California native I think that says something), complete with a boardwalk, seafood restaurants, a carousel, and amazing helado! (Helado means ice cream, and it’s a highly used word in my spanish vocabulary) Sadly, our time in the Basque Country was cut short - we had to make an afternoon bus back to Valladolid since it was the only bus available that day. I could’ve spent much more time exploring both Bilbao and San Sebastian, but it was a wonderful weekend adventure!
Still to come: weekend trip to Granada and Sevilla, how I did on midterms (fam, be proud), and the weirdest hair-dos I’ve ever seen in my life.
Eight of us ladies from Cal Poly took a bus Friday afternoon from Valladolid to Bilbao, arriving at night. We took a tram across town to our hostel, and I was loving everything I saw right away. The tram was a great way to see the city; it followed along the river through the heart of Bilbao, right by the Guggenheim, train station, cathedral, and other old and very official looking buildings. We checked into our hostel, that was in reality a cheap hotel, (exposed piping, janky hallways, but remodeled bathrooms so I didn’t care) and the group of us ordered pizza and had an impromptu girly slumber party. It was really nice to catch up with a lot of the girls, it sounds silly to say that we don’t see each other much but it’s true! We can’t chat during lectures, and since moving to Valladolid, we’re spread all over the city (some of us over a half-hour walk from each other) and not all packed into the same hotel like we were in Madrid. We ordered from Pizza Hut (no judging) and it was delivered in Domino’s Pizza boxes. Interesante. All I can say is, American pizza only exists in America.What we ate wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good old American pizza. Friends back home, next time you have Woodstocks pizza in SLO or Northridge pizza in GV, appreciate it. Just for me.
The next morning we woke up bright and early (kinda) and went straight to the Guggenheim, walking back along the river through town. It was supposed to rain the whole weekend, but the sky was beautiful and clear, and the weather mild. It was so nice to not have to bundle up to go outside! (Valladolid is freeeeeeeezing cold) We drank cafe con leche (latte) and munched on pan de fruta (kinda like banana bread... mine tasted like a donut. No joke.) and tortilla espanola (potato omelet that I’m addicted to) outside of the Guggenheim.... so delicious!
We got to see most of the building as we walked around it and up the stairs to the entrance, where we were greeted by a gigantic chia-pet. It’s name is Puppy, and it’s a work of art by James Koonz (I think that’s his name...), and it’s a giant puppy covered in flowers, like the most humongous and adorable Rose Parade float you’ve ever seen.
I could have spent hours just admiring the building alone, much less all the art inside it. There are no 90º angles anywhere; the floor is the only straight line in the building, which makes this psychedelic web of metal, glass and sandstone ( I think). There’s a light, airy feeling inside, I felt less grounded and crowded by all the open space and curved walls. We explored the exhibits on all three floors, and had our fill of modern art for quite some time. The second floor had an exhibit about Frank Lloyd Wright which was cool to see, and the top floor (my fave, and didn’t know it would be there) was a showcase of art from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. I came face-to -face with Manet, Van Gogh, and Jackson Pollack, just to name a few. The art historian in me was quite content :)
That afternoon, we walked to the Old Town to find lunch and explore. We found a random rock concert in a retail store (no idea what the deal was, but they sounded good! And sang in English. Go figure), did a little shopping, saw the cathedral, and..... ATE MEXICAN FOOD. This doesn’t seem like a big of a deal, but after a solid month with not a single tortilla or anything resembling picante salsa, we were so pumped. We got plates of tacos and burritos, which turned out to be appetizer-sized, but we didn’t care, and just ordered a second round, dousing everything in guac and salsa. I’ve never enjoyed the burning sensation of spicy food in my mouth so much. It was fabulous. And to top it off, we had imported Pacificos, instead of the staple Spanish beer called Mahou (think Bud Light. Not that great, no idea why Spaniards drink the stuff by choice). After filling our bellies with tacos, we were on an emotional high for the rest of the day, and the big group of us took a 100-year old tram up the mountain for a view of the whole city, which was fantastic! It started to sprinkle right before we left, but we got some amazing pictures of the view, and us of course. :)
For dinner, the pelirojas (means redheads, and refers to Julie, Erica and myself) bought brie cheese (YUM), bread and wine and shared it while watching a Spanish futbol game - aren’t we assimilating so well?! Later on we enjoyed a night out and found a bar that played just rock music - mostly American, to my delight. Nothing like rocking out to Pat Benetar in a crowded bar of Spaniards, getting beer spilled all over your shoes. Believe it or not, that night I practiced the most Spanish at the bar than any other time in the last 6 weeks - us redheaded American girls were bombarded with Spaniards (Basques, to be correct), guys and girls, wanting to know where we were from, why we were there, if we liked Arnold, if we listened to this kind of music, why weren’t we smoking cigarettes... it was insanity. Sadly, we discovered towards the end of the night that Erica’s camera and phone were stolen out of her purse. Not fun at all, but at least it wasn’t something irreplaceable.
The next morning we were back on another bus to San Sebastian for the day. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with yet another coastal city. We walked by the most perfect beach I’ve ever seen (being a California native I think that says something), complete with a boardwalk, seafood restaurants, a carousel, and amazing helado! (Helado means ice cream, and it’s a highly used word in my spanish vocabulary) Sadly, our time in the Basque Country was cut short - we had to make an afternoon bus back to Valladolid since it was the only bus available that day. I could’ve spent much more time exploring both Bilbao and San Sebastian, but it was a wonderful weekend adventure!
Still to come: weekend trip to Granada and Sevilla, how I did on midterms (fam, be proud), and the weirdest hair-dos I’ve ever seen in my life.
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