Hi All!
In a few short hours, I will be catching a bus to begin my long journey back to the United States. I plan to do an all-encompassing, retrospective blog entry, but right now, I don't have the time nor the energy for it. However, I did have an odd little experience today which sort of wrapped up my entire Spain experience...
I was eating lunch with my host sister, and we were watching The Simpsons. In the brief segment I watched, there was a city-wide power outage, and riots were breaking out in the street. One group of people broke into a music store and came out in marching band formation, complete with instruments. I found myself humming along to the song this newly-formed band was playing without even realizing what I was doing. Then, I took a step back and realized that the song was the Notre Dame Victory March! I was so stunned to have this completely unexpected taste of home occur on my last day in Spain. I thought it was a pretty fitting little ending, almost as if it was meant to happen. THEN I kept watching, and shortly thereafter, a group of people were seen walking away, having stolen Picasso's Guernica. At this point in time, I was utterly flabbergasted. I saw the painting in person, studied the event in history class, and wrote a research paper on it, so it's been a pretty common theme during my studies here. To see the painting in The Simpsons of all places was too bizarre for words.
After getting a taste of America and a taste of Spain in a rapid-fire sequence, I began to feel almost as if I was fated to see that little segment of The Simpsons. I feel pretty special to be one of the few people who can claim to have lived both of those experiences. Although I never would have expected it, that animated TV show has definitely provided some weird sense of closure to the semester, and I am now more ready than ever to come home!
See you TOMORROW,
Jill
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Most Anticipated Weekend EVER.
Hola!
I know, I know, it's been a while (again) since my last post, but I have a pretty good excuse, I suppose...I had visitors!!! The weekend before their visit, I had an art field trip to the Reina Sofia Museum, which was really interesting, since we got to see Picasso's masterpiece "Guernica"...it was one of the few times where I have been awed just looking at a piece of art. First of all, it was gigantic, covering the majority of the wall, floor to ceiling, side to side. It was also interesting to see all of the detail and simplicity that simultaneously existed on the canvas. For example, there are images in the painting that you just can't see on a slide in class, such as the flower that is growing out of the broken sword, or the dove that is mortally wounded. Tons of symbolism, and it was just neat to sit there and take it all in. Aside from that little jaunt to Madrid, I just worked furiously to get ahead on my papers and whatnot, so there's not too terribly much to talk about there.
However...that Wednesday (the 26th) my parents, 2 younger brothers, and boyfriend came to visit! I think it is safe to say that this visit was the most eagerly anticipated event in my memory. It seemed like it took forever to get here, but I survived! On Wednesday morning, I had class and then planned to collect the jet-lagged travelers at the Toledo train station, but the transit didn't go as smoothly as planned, so they had to catch a later train. That forced me to have to sit through a portion of another class, even though I got nothing out of it, since every 30 seconds, I was either glancing at my watch or trying to tell myself to calm down. I am not even exaggerating when I say that I was bopping up and down in my chair for the entire hour-long class. FINALLY it came time to go to the train station for the 2nd time of the day, and this time there were no problems.
I got everyone and all of the luggage onto the bus and then we lugged it the 10 minutes to my school. After resting for a bit, we went out to find some lunch, which was definitely a necessity, as the visitors were kind of like zombies at this point in time. We walked around the city and visited the Cathedral before I put them in cabs off to the hotel and returned to school to have 2 more classes. At the end of the day, I took a cab to the hotel, which was a parador. That means it was an older building that was previously used for other purposes, but they have converted it into a hotel. It was gorgeous and so nice, and the views of Toledo were the best I have ever seen. Everyone was still pretty beat on Wednesday evening, so we had dinner at the restaurant at the Parador and called it a night.
On Thursday morning (Happy Thanksgiving!), we had breakfast and then headed into Toledo to do a dinky little sight-seeing train that is reserved strictly for tourists. Quite literally, it is fashioned like a choo-choo train, and it drives all around the city as they pipe in commentary for the passengers to understand what they're seeing. Of course, Toledo was experiencing a cold snap during the visit, so everyone was a bit cold, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. After the train, we scurried over to the train station to go to Madrid.
Once we arrived in Madrid we got ourselves situated at the hotel, after a bit of a taxi conflict that consisted of our cabbie insisting that we couldn't hold bags on our laps, but there was no room in the trunk, so we were stuck....not exactly the most helpful Spaniard I've met thus far... oh well! We headed over to the Plaza Mayor to have some tapas, which turned out to be a rousing success. It was quite the Spanish Thanksgiving feast, I guess you could say...we had shrimp, calamari, pork, cheese, sangria, and many other typical spanish dishes. After filling ourselves up with that, we did a tour of the Royal Palace and then walked around the city a bit more. For dinner, we headed over to a very modern restaurant that was near our hotel. We got there at 8:30, and like most dinners we had in Spain, were the VERY first patrons at the establishment. At least there weren't other people to slow down the service! After that satisfying meal (we all agreed it felt like we were always eating!), we went to sleep, ready to go to Barcelona the next morning.
On Friday morning, we took the metro to the airport for our flight to Barcelona. During our metro experience, someone (I don't know who, so I won't lay blame) decided to ride in the surprisingly empty car on the train. Once we got into the car, though, it became clear as to why it was so empty... the floor had a nice, healthy coating of vomit. Good work, Schroeder family! We stood awkwardly in a circle around the puke and were thankful that we were only on that train for a stop or two. After the upchuck debacle, we finally made it to the airport and got through security in record time, considering that we were the only people in line. We landed in Barcelona and got settled at the hotel before deciding to explore the city a bit. We walked up Las Ramblas, the main drag in Barcelona, and had some lunch at a cafe. Barcelona is right on the sea, so the seafood is delicious, and we all enjoyed some seafood paella. We walked around a bit more, seeing a variety of street performers and stores. Finally, my mom and I ditched the boys while we did a bit of shoe shopping before dinner. We ate at a nice restaurant very near our hotel, once again, the earliest patrons, but that didn't bother us. We had a busy day planned for Saturday, so dinner ended the day for us.
On Saturday, we woke up and went to the center of the city to participate in a walking tour of the Gothic Quarter of the city. Of course, on the day of the walking tour, it decides to rain....and by rain I mean monsoon. Everyone was huddled under umbrellas, but the tour was still really interesting. We saw the famous cafe where Picasso and his friends would meet, a church whose facade was severely damaged from a bombing during the Civil War, the palace of the kingdom of Aragon, and the cathedral of Barcelona. After drying off at the conclusion of the tour, we headed over to one of Barcelona's most famous sights, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia.
This is a church that has been under construction since 1882 and still isn't finished. The famous architect Antoni Gaudi was the mastermind behind the project, and although he has died, the construction goes on, hopefully finished by 2026, the 100-year anniversary of Gaudi's death. Just to give you an idea of his sort of style...the word "gaudy" was created based on his name. Everything is over the top, there are no straight lines, just completely crazy and busy, but still beautiful (at lesat to me). The exterior of the church has a birth of Jesus entrance and a death of Jesus entrance, and these two sides of the church are completed in drastically different styles. We spent a lot of time just looking at all of the intricate sculptures and carvings on the church's exterior. For those of you who have been to Disney World, it was a lot like Animal Kingdom's Tree of Life - there was so much to see! You had to keep shifting your perceptions to notice new details or pieces of art. After looking at the exteriors, we headed into the church. I was surprised to discover that it was still a construction site! I know, I should have been able to put it together, but I assumed that by "under construction" they meant that there were times open to the public, and then there were times when construction took place and visitors weren't allowed. Definitely not the case! Inside the church, we saw beautiful stained glass windows, soon-to-be stained glass windows, and other typical church elements in addition to cranes, blueprints, wires, and other typical construction elements. It was definitely a surprise to see how much work they still had to do! After looking at the facades of the church for a bit more time, we tackled a wee bit of souvenir shopping before having lunch nearby.
Andy and Brad in the Sagrada Familia. This should give you an impression of the construction in the church in addition to an impression of how much it rained that day!
After lunch, we visited the Picasso Museum. Picasso spent a large amount of his formative years in Barcelona, and therefore a lot of his earlier works are housed there. It was interesting to see some of the lesser-known pieces of art and how his style trajectory actually unfolded. After our time in the museum, my Mom and I headed out to hunt down a few souvenirs. We unexpectedly stumbled upon a great gift idea, and through some Spanish discussion, even managed to get a great deal on it! I won't go into detail here, as some of you may be receiving this gift (how cryptic, I know!).
We had dinner that night in the restaurant in our hotel. The food was ok, and the service was a little less than ok, so Brad had the ingenious idea to hunt elsewhere for dessert. He was smart enough to suggest this, as no one really wanted to end our culinary experiences in Barcelona on this sour point. We headed back to Las Ramblas and found a gelato stand that seemed to please everyone, so Brad was the hero of sorts for the night. Good job, brother!
On Sunday morning, we flew back to Barcelona, took the metro the hotel (no puke this time) and then headed out for lunch. Afterwards, we went to the Prado, the biggest art museum in Madrid. I had a really good time taking my family to the paintings I had studied in my art class and pointing out specific aspects or sharing important historical background for the paintings. I think I wow-ed them! Unfortunately, we didn't get to make it over to the Reina Sofia, which I was really hoping to do. I didn't check the times for the museum and we missed our window of opportunity. Sorry, family....guess you'll have to come back to Spain! After our time in the museum, we walked around Madrid a bit more, and explored the Puerta del Sol, one of the larger plazas. Madrid had turned on its Christmas lights that night, so it was a very busy area! We popped into one of the biggest department stores for a bit to kill time before dinner, and it was PACKED. It wasn't as bad as a typical Black Friday, but it was at the same time worse than a typical day at the Galleria, for sure! We concluded our wonderful Spanish visit with a good dinner before calling it a night.
On Monday, we woke up and took some cabs to the airport before I saw them off. Apparently there were some technical difficulties on their plane back, so they took up, returned to Madrid, and had to take off again, resulting in quite the delay, which of course threw off the entire plan for the rest of the day. Long story short, they did all arrive home safely, and I can say without a doubt that I am now more excited than ever to go home. I am really enjoying my time in Spain, don't get me wrong, but having the opportunity to actually spend time with my family and my boyfriend has just reminded me of all I have back in the States. I can't believe at this time next week, I will be sitting in the airport, hours from setting foot on American soil for the first time in nearly 3.5 months! It is definitely bittersweet, but I can confidently say it is more sweet than bitter.
Home in a week,
Jill
I know, I know, it's been a while (again) since my last post, but I have a pretty good excuse, I suppose...I had visitors!!! The weekend before their visit, I had an art field trip to the Reina Sofia Museum, which was really interesting, since we got to see Picasso's masterpiece "Guernica"...it was one of the few times where I have been awed just looking at a piece of art. First of all, it was gigantic, covering the majority of the wall, floor to ceiling, side to side. It was also interesting to see all of the detail and simplicity that simultaneously existed on the canvas. For example, there are images in the painting that you just can't see on a slide in class, such as the flower that is growing out of the broken sword, or the dove that is mortally wounded. Tons of symbolism, and it was just neat to sit there and take it all in. Aside from that little jaunt to Madrid, I just worked furiously to get ahead on my papers and whatnot, so there's not too terribly much to talk about there.
However...that Wednesday (the 26th) my parents, 2 younger brothers, and boyfriend came to visit! I think it is safe to say that this visit was the most eagerly anticipated event in my memory. It seemed like it took forever to get here, but I survived! On Wednesday morning, I had class and then planned to collect the jet-lagged travelers at the Toledo train station, but the transit didn't go as smoothly as planned, so they had to catch a later train. That forced me to have to sit through a portion of another class, even though I got nothing out of it, since every 30 seconds, I was either glancing at my watch or trying to tell myself to calm down. I am not even exaggerating when I say that I was bopping up and down in my chair for the entire hour-long class. FINALLY it came time to go to the train station for the 2nd time of the day, and this time there were no problems.
I got everyone and all of the luggage onto the bus and then we lugged it the 10 minutes to my school. After resting for a bit, we went out to find some lunch, which was definitely a necessity, as the visitors were kind of like zombies at this point in time. We walked around the city and visited the Cathedral before I put them in cabs off to the hotel and returned to school to have 2 more classes. At the end of the day, I took a cab to the hotel, which was a parador. That means it was an older building that was previously used for other purposes, but they have converted it into a hotel. It was gorgeous and so nice, and the views of Toledo were the best I have ever seen. Everyone was still pretty beat on Wednesday evening, so we had dinner at the restaurant at the Parador and called it a night.
On Thursday morning (Happy Thanksgiving!), we had breakfast and then headed into Toledo to do a dinky little sight-seeing train that is reserved strictly for tourists. Quite literally, it is fashioned like a choo-choo train, and it drives all around the city as they pipe in commentary for the passengers to understand what they're seeing. Of course, Toledo was experiencing a cold snap during the visit, so everyone was a bit cold, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. After the train, we scurried over to the train station to go to Madrid.
Once we arrived in Madrid we got ourselves situated at the hotel, after a bit of a taxi conflict that consisted of our cabbie insisting that we couldn't hold bags on our laps, but there was no room in the trunk, so we were stuck....not exactly the most helpful Spaniard I've met thus far... oh well! We headed over to the Plaza Mayor to have some tapas, which turned out to be a rousing success. It was quite the Spanish Thanksgiving feast, I guess you could say...we had shrimp, calamari, pork, cheese, sangria, and many other typical spanish dishes. After filling ourselves up with that, we did a tour of the Royal Palace and then walked around the city a bit more. For dinner, we headed over to a very modern restaurant that was near our hotel. We got there at 8:30, and like most dinners we had in Spain, were the VERY first patrons at the establishment. At least there weren't other people to slow down the service! After that satisfying meal (we all agreed it felt like we were always eating!), we went to sleep, ready to go to Barcelona the next morning.
On Friday morning, we took the metro to the airport for our flight to Barcelona. During our metro experience, someone (I don't know who, so I won't lay blame) decided to ride in the surprisingly empty car on the train. Once we got into the car, though, it became clear as to why it was so empty... the floor had a nice, healthy coating of vomit. Good work, Schroeder family! We stood awkwardly in a circle around the puke and were thankful that we were only on that train for a stop or two. After the upchuck debacle, we finally made it to the airport and got through security in record time, considering that we were the only people in line. We landed in Barcelona and got settled at the hotel before deciding to explore the city a bit. We walked up Las Ramblas, the main drag in Barcelona, and had some lunch at a cafe. Barcelona is right on the sea, so the seafood is delicious, and we all enjoyed some seafood paella. We walked around a bit more, seeing a variety of street performers and stores. Finally, my mom and I ditched the boys while we did a bit of shoe shopping before dinner. We ate at a nice restaurant very near our hotel, once again, the earliest patrons, but that didn't bother us. We had a busy day planned for Saturday, so dinner ended the day for us.
On Saturday, we woke up and went to the center of the city to participate in a walking tour of the Gothic Quarter of the city. Of course, on the day of the walking tour, it decides to rain....and by rain I mean monsoon. Everyone was huddled under umbrellas, but the tour was still really interesting. We saw the famous cafe where Picasso and his friends would meet, a church whose facade was severely damaged from a bombing during the Civil War, the palace of the kingdom of Aragon, and the cathedral of Barcelona. After drying off at the conclusion of the tour, we headed over to one of Barcelona's most famous sights, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia.
This is a church that has been under construction since 1882 and still isn't finished. The famous architect Antoni Gaudi was the mastermind behind the project, and although he has died, the construction goes on, hopefully finished by 2026, the 100-year anniversary of Gaudi's death. Just to give you an idea of his sort of style...the word "gaudy" was created based on his name. Everything is over the top, there are no straight lines, just completely crazy and busy, but still beautiful (at lesat to me). The exterior of the church has a birth of Jesus entrance and a death of Jesus entrance, and these two sides of the church are completed in drastically different styles. We spent a lot of time just looking at all of the intricate sculptures and carvings on the church's exterior. For those of you who have been to Disney World, it was a lot like Animal Kingdom's Tree of Life - there was so much to see! You had to keep shifting your perceptions to notice new details or pieces of art. After looking at the exteriors, we headed into the church. I was surprised to discover that it was still a construction site! I know, I should have been able to put it together, but I assumed that by "under construction" they meant that there were times open to the public, and then there were times when construction took place and visitors weren't allowed. Definitely not the case! Inside the church, we saw beautiful stained glass windows, soon-to-be stained glass windows, and other typical church elements in addition to cranes, blueprints, wires, and other typical construction elements. It was definitely a surprise to see how much work they still had to do! After looking at the facades of the church for a bit more time, we tackled a wee bit of souvenir shopping before having lunch nearby.
Andy and Brad in the Sagrada Familia. This should give you an impression of the construction in the church in addition to an impression of how much it rained that day!After lunch, we visited the Picasso Museum. Picasso spent a large amount of his formative years in Barcelona, and therefore a lot of his earlier works are housed there. It was interesting to see some of the lesser-known pieces of art and how his style trajectory actually unfolded. After our time in the museum, my Mom and I headed out to hunt down a few souvenirs. We unexpectedly stumbled upon a great gift idea, and through some Spanish discussion, even managed to get a great deal on it! I won't go into detail here, as some of you may be receiving this gift (how cryptic, I know!).
We had dinner that night in the restaurant in our hotel. The food was ok, and the service was a little less than ok, so Brad had the ingenious idea to hunt elsewhere for dessert. He was smart enough to suggest this, as no one really wanted to end our culinary experiences in Barcelona on this sour point. We headed back to Las Ramblas and found a gelato stand that seemed to please everyone, so Brad was the hero of sorts for the night. Good job, brother!
On Sunday morning, we flew back to Barcelona, took the metro the hotel (no puke this time) and then headed out for lunch. Afterwards, we went to the Prado, the biggest art museum in Madrid. I had a really good time taking my family to the paintings I had studied in my art class and pointing out specific aspects or sharing important historical background for the paintings. I think I wow-ed them! Unfortunately, we didn't get to make it over to the Reina Sofia, which I was really hoping to do. I didn't check the times for the museum and we missed our window of opportunity. Sorry, family....guess you'll have to come back to Spain! After our time in the museum, we walked around Madrid a bit more, and explored the Puerta del Sol, one of the larger plazas. Madrid had turned on its Christmas lights that night, so it was a very busy area! We popped into one of the biggest department stores for a bit to kill time before dinner, and it was PACKED. It wasn't as bad as a typical Black Friday, but it was at the same time worse than a typical day at the Galleria, for sure! We concluded our wonderful Spanish visit with a good dinner before calling it a night.
On Monday, we woke up and took some cabs to the airport before I saw them off. Apparently there were some technical difficulties on their plane back, so they took up, returned to Madrid, and had to take off again, resulting in quite the delay, which of course threw off the entire plan for the rest of the day. Long story short, they did all arrive home safely, and I can say without a doubt that I am now more excited than ever to go home. I am really enjoying my time in Spain, don't get me wrong, but having the opportunity to actually spend time with my family and my boyfriend has just reminded me of all I have back in the States. I can't believe at this time next week, I will be sitting in the airport, hours from setting foot on American soil for the first time in nearly 3.5 months! It is definitely bittersweet, but I can confidently say it is more sweet than bitter.
Home in a week,
Jill
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Segovia + Madrid Mishaps
Hi Again! I know what you're thinking...I haven't posted in a few weeks, and now TWO posts in ONE day?! Can you believe your luck?!?!?! Well, you're not dreaming, so here is a recap of my field trip to Segovia and a silly little weekend in Madrid!
So, last Friday, our school sponsored a field trip to Segovia, a small town about 2 hours away from Toledo. After our long journey, we met up with our tour guides, one of which happened to be our history professor! Those of us in his class were pretty pumped to see him since he is such a great professor, so we made sure to be placed in his tour group. Our first stop was the Alcazar, which is an old castle that is now used as a museum and archives site. Legend has it that this specific castle served as the inspiration for the castle in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast"...you be the judge:
(ok, that's not a great picture of it, but the resemblance was uncanny, I swear!)
Anyhow, we went into the Alcazar, which was really interesting, since it was filled with suits of armor and rooms that were used by some of the royalty in Spain's history. I found it all to be pretty interesting, and the building itself was the perfect size - it wasn't so huge that by the end of the tour, I was worn out and bored. After the tour of the castle, we had the opportunity to climb to the top of the castle's tower, which was quite the undertaking. There are 152 steps to the top of the tower, and of course, no elevator. To make matters worse, there is only one staircase, so all of the people huffing and puffing their way up have to share space with all of the people on their way back down. On top of all of THAT, the staircase is super narrow...and a spiral. There are no little platforms for a person to stand on to allow another climber to pass, so it is a pretty trecherous endeavor. Hannah and I were some of the first to make it to the top, although neither of us were terribly pleased with ourselves upon our ascent, mostly since our legs killed and our lungs were on fire. It did have some pretty great views, though. Since we were the first up, it would make sense that we would be the first to begin our journey downward. Well, I am surprised I didn't fall to my death, since the staircase was filled with people heading upwards, so we had to take the inside track of the spiral staircase, meaning instead of having 10 inches to step on, we had a solid 2 or 3 inches. Amazingly, we survived!
After the Alcazar, we walked around the city a bit, seeing the church where Isabela was crowned Queen and the Plaza Mayor. We then headed to Segovia's most popular destination: the aqueduct. This is one of the longest aqueducts in the world, going on for about 5 miles, and it has been standing for 2000 years! On top of all of that, those who were in charge of designing it had the wherewithall to put little curves in the route the water takes so as to cut down on its speed; otherwise, the water would hit the end and splash out, losing precious drops. The most jaw-dropping aspect of the structure, for sure, was the fact that it has been standing for 2000 years, WITHOUT THE USE OF ANY CEMENT. That's right, the only things holding this puppy together are friction and force and pressure, and other terms I don't exactly understand. I don't even know very much about structures and force and whatnot, and I still was amazed. Here's a picture for you all:
After gazing at that marvel for a bit, we had lunch and then headed back to good ol' Toledo. That evening, I attended a play for my literature class which was pretty enjoyable, minus the fact that the theater was about 10000 degrees! After the play, a few of us went out for sodas with our professor, which was quite the experience, but definitely a ton of fun.
On Saturday, all of us packed up and prepared to spend the next 24 or so hours in Madrid. My friend Kate (from Paris) and her friend Cassi (also from Paris) were in Madrid for the weekend visiting, so I had made arrangements to meet up with them. The Toledo group made it to Madrid and when we went to check in to our hostel, we discovered that the reservation had been made for the night of the 14th (Friday) as opposed to the night of the 15th (Saturday). On top of that, that hostel was booked up for Saturday night, so we were left with no place to sleep. And guess who was in charge of the reservation? Yup, yours truly! So, I did what any self-respecting young lady does when something goes awry, and I cried a bit. Thankfully, my friends were all super understanding and brushed it off, which allowed me to get past my huge gaffe before I had to meet up with Kate and Cassi.
Sierra, Christie, and Flan branched off, seeking out symphony tickets, while Hannah and I went to meet Cassi and Kate. For the rest of the day, we toured around with the Parisians, including a bizarre series of events at the Royal Palace. It was a gorgeous day, so the 4 of us were sitting on a fountain when a Japanese man came up, camera in hand, speaking something that I couldn't quite understand. I assumed he wanted us to take a picture of him, or of him and his friends/wife, but nooooo, he instead wanted to take a picture WITH us. It was so odd! To make matters stranger, once his wife finished taking the picture, the two of them swapped positions! When all was said and done, we probably posed for about 10 pictures with random Japanese tourists. On the plus side, one Japanese woman told us "you girls so pretty" and then gave us some flavorless Japanese candy, so at least we walked away with that.
After that little charade, Hannah, Kate, and I parted ways with Cassi, who was meeting a friend, and the three of us shopped the afternoon away, which, as always, was great fun. Of course, I was in charge of finding the shopping area, and I had the street name written down. However, we were without a map, so we asked for directions and then followed the metro to the stop that matched the street name. Welllllll it turns out there is a street with this name, and a neighborhood with this same name. We took a 30 minute metro ride out to the neighborhood only to quickly figure out we were a bit off. When we asked for directions again, a nice lady explained the mistake we had made, and then we rode the metro about 25 minutes back. It turns out, we just needed to go to the next metro stop past the one where we started. Basically, we could have walked to the shopping street in about 10 minutes, instead we spent a solid hour on the metro. At least it was clean, and we all laughed it off. Another great success on my part! Once we finally hit the shopping area, we hit our stride! We all enjoyed a moderate bit of success before becoming completely exhausted and plopping down for some ice cream. We killed a bit of time there before going to a cafe to kill more time there, eating dinner, before finally killing more time at a crepe shop. Once we had depleted all of our "eat and kill time" options, Hannah and I parted with the Parisians to catch a bus back to Toledo since we had no beds to our name in Madrid. Although it was a brief little day with Kate, it was still so worth it, hostel debacle and all.
On Sunday morning, Hannah, Sierra, and I headed BACK to Madrid to do a little shopping, since there is a very reasonably-priced market on Sunday mornings in the city. Now that the semester is coming to a close, everyone has a better handle on who still requires souvenirs, so we all decided that another trip to the market would be beneficial. Although it was colder, more crowded, and a bit less successful than our journey in September, we still walked away with purchases in hand, and made it back to Toledo in time for lunch.
All in all, Segovia was fun, and our time in Madrid was like "the little weekend that couldn't" (at least for me)! I want all of you loyal readers to know: when I screw something up, I reassure myself by thinking that at the very least, that tale will be good fodder for my blog :)
So, last Friday, our school sponsored a field trip to Segovia, a small town about 2 hours away from Toledo. After our long journey, we met up with our tour guides, one of which happened to be our history professor! Those of us in his class were pretty pumped to see him since he is such a great professor, so we made sure to be placed in his tour group. Our first stop was the Alcazar, which is an old castle that is now used as a museum and archives site. Legend has it that this specific castle served as the inspiration for the castle in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast"...you be the judge:
(ok, that's not a great picture of it, but the resemblance was uncanny, I swear!)
Anyhow, we went into the Alcazar, which was really interesting, since it was filled with suits of armor and rooms that were used by some of the royalty in Spain's history. I found it all to be pretty interesting, and the building itself was the perfect size - it wasn't so huge that by the end of the tour, I was worn out and bored. After the tour of the castle, we had the opportunity to climb to the top of the castle's tower, which was quite the undertaking. There are 152 steps to the top of the tower, and of course, no elevator. To make matters worse, there is only one staircase, so all of the people huffing and puffing their way up have to share space with all of the people on their way back down. On top of all of THAT, the staircase is super narrow...and a spiral. There are no little platforms for a person to stand on to allow another climber to pass, so it is a pretty trecherous endeavor. Hannah and I were some of the first to make it to the top, although neither of us were terribly pleased with ourselves upon our ascent, mostly since our legs killed and our lungs were on fire. It did have some pretty great views, though. Since we were the first up, it would make sense that we would be the first to begin our journey downward. Well, I am surprised I didn't fall to my death, since the staircase was filled with people heading upwards, so we had to take the inside track of the spiral staircase, meaning instead of having 10 inches to step on, we had a solid 2 or 3 inches. Amazingly, we survived!
After the Alcazar, we walked around the city a bit, seeing the church where Isabela was crowned Queen and the Plaza Mayor. We then headed to Segovia's most popular destination: the aqueduct. This is one of the longest aqueducts in the world, going on for about 5 miles, and it has been standing for 2000 years! On top of all of that, those who were in charge of designing it had the wherewithall to put little curves in the route the water takes so as to cut down on its speed; otherwise, the water would hit the end and splash out, losing precious drops. The most jaw-dropping aspect of the structure, for sure, was the fact that it has been standing for 2000 years, WITHOUT THE USE OF ANY CEMENT. That's right, the only things holding this puppy together are friction and force and pressure, and other terms I don't exactly understand. I don't even know very much about structures and force and whatnot, and I still was amazed. Here's a picture for you all:
After gazing at that marvel for a bit, we had lunch and then headed back to good ol' Toledo. That evening, I attended a play for my literature class which was pretty enjoyable, minus the fact that the theater was about 10000 degrees! After the play, a few of us went out for sodas with our professor, which was quite the experience, but definitely a ton of fun.
On Saturday, all of us packed up and prepared to spend the next 24 or so hours in Madrid. My friend Kate (from Paris) and her friend Cassi (also from Paris) were in Madrid for the weekend visiting, so I had made arrangements to meet up with them. The Toledo group made it to Madrid and when we went to check in to our hostel, we discovered that the reservation had been made for the night of the 14th (Friday) as opposed to the night of the 15th (Saturday). On top of that, that hostel was booked up for Saturday night, so we were left with no place to sleep. And guess who was in charge of the reservation? Yup, yours truly! So, I did what any self-respecting young lady does when something goes awry, and I cried a bit. Thankfully, my friends were all super understanding and brushed it off, which allowed me to get past my huge gaffe before I had to meet up with Kate and Cassi.
Sierra, Christie, and Flan branched off, seeking out symphony tickets, while Hannah and I went to meet Cassi and Kate. For the rest of the day, we toured around with the Parisians, including a bizarre series of events at the Royal Palace. It was a gorgeous day, so the 4 of us were sitting on a fountain when a Japanese man came up, camera in hand, speaking something that I couldn't quite understand. I assumed he wanted us to take a picture of him, or of him and his friends/wife, but nooooo, he instead wanted to take a picture WITH us. It was so odd! To make matters stranger, once his wife finished taking the picture, the two of them swapped positions! When all was said and done, we probably posed for about 10 pictures with random Japanese tourists. On the plus side, one Japanese woman told us "you girls so pretty" and then gave us some flavorless Japanese candy, so at least we walked away with that.
After that little charade, Hannah, Kate, and I parted ways with Cassi, who was meeting a friend, and the three of us shopped the afternoon away, which, as always, was great fun. Of course, I was in charge of finding the shopping area, and I had the street name written down. However, we were without a map, so we asked for directions and then followed the metro to the stop that matched the street name. Welllllll it turns out there is a street with this name, and a neighborhood with this same name. We took a 30 minute metro ride out to the neighborhood only to quickly figure out we were a bit off. When we asked for directions again, a nice lady explained the mistake we had made, and then we rode the metro about 25 minutes back. It turns out, we just needed to go to the next metro stop past the one where we started. Basically, we could have walked to the shopping street in about 10 minutes, instead we spent a solid hour on the metro. At least it was clean, and we all laughed it off. Another great success on my part! Once we finally hit the shopping area, we hit our stride! We all enjoyed a moderate bit of success before becoming completely exhausted and plopping down for some ice cream. We killed a bit of time there before going to a cafe to kill more time there, eating dinner, before finally killing more time at a crepe shop. Once we had depleted all of our "eat and kill time" options, Hannah and I parted with the Parisians to catch a bus back to Toledo since we had no beds to our name in Madrid. Although it was a brief little day with Kate, it was still so worth it, hostel debacle and all.
On Sunday morning, Hannah, Sierra, and I headed BACK to Madrid to do a little shopping, since there is a very reasonably-priced market on Sunday mornings in the city. Now that the semester is coming to a close, everyone has a better handle on who still requires souvenirs, so we all decided that another trip to the market would be beneficial. Although it was colder, more crowded, and a bit less successful than our journey in September, we still walked away with purchases in hand, and made it back to Toledo in time for lunch.
All in all, Segovia was fun, and our time in Madrid was like "the little weekend that couldn't" (at least for me)! I want all of you loyal readers to know: when I screw something up, I reassure myself by thinking that at the very least, that tale will be good fodder for my blog :)
My Big Fat Greek Weekend!
Hi Everyone! Sorry the updates have been few and far between...the time just slips away before you even realize it! Anyhow, here is the much-awaited post about my weekend in Athens...
Hannah and I started our Greek weekend by celebrating the fact that our flight didn't leave Madrid until about 11:00, so we, for the first time in three weeks, did NOT have to drag ourselves out of bed at 4:30, nor did we have to pay for a taxi to get ourselves to the bus station. Just like always, we took the bus to Madrid, and then took the God-foresaken metro ride from the bus station to the airport. For whatever reason, those who designed the city of Madrid and its metro system decided it would make perfect sense to put the bus station and the airport as far away from each other as humanly possible, and every time we travel, Hannah and I spent a fair amount of time on the metro, grumbling about the stupid layout of the city. Nevertheless, we made it to the airport and got through security, blah blah blah.
We normally fly out of terminal 4, but this time we had the pleasure of flying out of terminal 4-S. Not all that different, but the good news is the 4-S terminal had an American newsstand and a Starbucks, so we were pretty much jumping for joy. I was glad to find the newsstand, since this was only a few days after the election, so all of the magazines were plastered with Obama's face and I was able to actually read some American coverage of the election!
Sidenote about the election: prior to November 4, when a person in any country (Spain, France, or Italy) found out I was an American, he or she immediately wanted to know, "McCain or Obama?" (keeping in mind, of course, that neither name was pronounced correctly, but at least they tried, I guess!) I got a very warm reception when I told them I was supporting Obama. During Election Night (since I am 6 hours ahead of the East Coast), I stayed up watching the results come in on Spanish CNN and I kept looking at various American news websites for updates. I ended up staying up until 5:00 AM to see the historic event arrive, and although I was quite the zombie the next day, it was so so worth it! It was kind of interesting to be in a different country during the end of the campaign season, since I got to witness a different perspective of the entire thing. I kid you not, "El País", the Spanish national newspaper, devoted its first 21 pages of the edition on November 6 to coverage of the election. I was stunned! I don't even think a lot of American newspapers have that much coverage!
Back to my Greek weekend (or my Greekend?), Hannah and I had managed to snag ourselves some exit row seats, which was exciting since it means extra leg room, yaaaay! I am not going to lie, I was secretly worried that this would be the flight where something would go awry and I would be responsible for helping people...fortunately, not the case. We even got a meal on our flight, which was exciting, too! Thus, we were all rested and recharged and ready to take Athens by storm by the time our flight landed.
We caught the airport express bus to take us into the heart of the city, which ended up taking about an hour. Surprisingly, the sun had completely set by the time we got off the bus at about 7:00, so we were a little skittish about being in a strange place with no bearings after dark, but we obviously survived. We managed to find our hostel and then headed out for some traditional Greek food for dinner. We had minced meat and spices, which we both agreed was....ok. At least we tried, right? Then we tracked down some delicious-looking pastries only to be heart-broken to discover that they were anything but delicious. They had some weird molasses-like coating which made them feel like an absolute brick in your stomach, so that was a disappointing experience. On our way back to the hostel, a man asked me for change for a euro, and I just brushed him off, and then Hannah wisely pointed out that that request was absurd, since a 1-euro piece is already a coin, so why would he need coins in place of a coin? We then put the pieces together and assumed his intentions were not that honorable, so we decided to call it an early night and play a few hours' worth of 20 Questions in the hostel before going to bed. Not exactly the most wild and crazy first night in Greece, but it was a blast nonetheless.
On Saturday, we woke up early and had our eyes on the prize: The Parthenon! We figured it was pretty close, since Athens isn't terribly large, but we still didn't have very good bearings, so we decided to take the metro. We walked about 5 blocks to the metro stop only to have the metro take us about 7 blocks in the opposite direction...therefore, we could have saved ourselves a bit of time and money by walking the 2 blocks in the other direction, but oh well. It wasn't really until our last few hours in Greece that we realized the Parthenon was directly behind our hostel...since we couldn't see in that direction, we had no idea! Anyhow, we got to the Acropolis (the giant hill that the Parthenon is on) and trekked up. It was really warm, which was nice, but when you are walking up and up and up under the direct sunlight, it was REALLY warm, and we were both icky by the time of our ascent. Along the way up the hill, we saw a few ancient ampitheaters and temples, and then finally saw the Parthenon. It was so gigantic! It was pretty amazing to see this structure that is so old still standing in relatively good shape. Fun fact: the Parthenon is in ruins because the French used it to store gunpowder, and then the gunpowder exploded. Nice job, Frenchies.
After touring around the Parthenon for a few hours and taking in the views of the city, we walked down to the ruins site of Ancient Agora, which was pretty cool, too. However, along the way, we had to walk down a set of stairs in the Temple of Nike. These steps are made of marble and have 1000s of people walking up and down them every day, so they are pretty smoothed down. I was walking down the steps, when all of a sudden, my foot slipped out and I started to fall toward the foot of the staircase. Hannah's contribution to helping me was a super-loud gasp which attracted the attention of many people standing nearby. Somehow, thankfully, I was able to catch myself (almost) and basically just bopped down on the step, and then hopped right up again. No injuries, aside from my sore ego (just like the metro in Rome). I was pretty embarrassed, so after that little episode, Hannah and I booked it away from there and toward the other ruins. We toured around the other sites for a little bit, but in all honesty, they have a tendency to kind of blur together in my memory, since they all have very long and hard to pronounce Greek names, and they look relatively similar, with columns and ruins and white marble, etc. After so much time looking at ruins, Hannah and I decided to have some lunch.
Lunch was a bit of a let-down, since I was pretty aggravated with the environment. In many places in Europe, I have had the experience of sitting outside a cafe, enjoying a drink or meal, when street vendors and beggars come directly up to your table and will not leave you in peace until you are borderline rude to them. It is a pretty frustrating process, since you never really feel at ease at the cafe. It seemed like every 5 minutes or so, another person was coming up to the table, and the meal was anything but relaxing. Additionally, my ham and cheese sandwich had ham, cheese, and 1/2 pound of mayo, so that was less than appetizing. Since Hannah and I were a little unenthused by our lunch experience, we decided we had to soothe our wounds with some shopping! Coincidentally, we then stumbled upon the shopping district of Athens and spent the rest of the afternoon there, looking at the regular stores in addition to the 100s of touristy stores that all sell basically the same amount of stuff. During the middle of the afternoon, we headed over to the Olympic Stadium, a recreation of the stadium used in the 1896 Olympics. This wasn't the stadium where the Opening and Closing Ceremonies were held in 2004, but some events were held in the stadium we visited. It was all decked out in Greek flags and Olympic Rings, and it was especially exciting to see it that day, since the Athens Marathon was being held, and the finish line was inside the stadium. Thus, the entire stadium area was very well decorated and a really cool place to see!
After the Stadium, we headed out for some dinner, and we decided to try some traditional Greek food again. We picked a random cafe and this time, the results were much better. On top of the good food, our waiter quickly ascertained we were Americans, and it turns out, he was born in Wisconsin! Therefore, during the entire meal, every time he came back to the table for refills or something like that, he would just go on and on about how much he loves America, and how great it is, and how Europeans are so cold and uninviting while Americans are very warm and friendly. He apparently was moving back to Wisconsin relatively soon and was enthralled with the idea of us being from his idea of heaven-on-earth. We chit-chatted with him, since it was one of the few interactions I have had in Europe where someone is pleased to discover our homeland, and then at the end of the meal, he gave us free dessert, so all in all, it wasn't a bad series of events! After dinner, we did a bit more shopping and then called it a night, having had a much better 2nd evening in Athens than the 1st.
On Sunday, we slept in a bit and then checked out of the hostel, but kept our bags there while we toured around the city a little bit more. We headed over to the Temple of Zeus, which now consists of a few columns in a field, but it was still fun to see. We then explored one of the rustic little neighborhoods and had some brunch. I snagged some baklava which was really really yummy, and then we headed out to the airport. To get to the Athens airport from the center square of the city, you can take a bus or the metro. Well, for whatever reason, we were told the bus wasn't going to our stop that afternoon, so we decided to take the metro. It was a little confusing, since all of the signs were in Greek and English, and then there were also signs for regular tickets and airport tickets, so we had to wade through many lines of text to make sure we were buying what we actually needed. All of the guidebooks we had really emphasized that you NEED to have your ticket with you (and it NEEDS to be the right type of ticket) and it NEEDS to be validated for that journey, or else you'll be slapped with a hefty fine. Well, the "validation" process consists of feeding the ticket into a machine, the machine beeps, and the ticket shoots back out at you. You have no way of telling if that beep was "good job, you did it right, carry on" or if that beep was "you're an idiot and screwed it up, therefore this ticket hasn't been validated". Hannah and I fed our joint ticket through 2 machines and hoped that was enough, then hopped onto the metro.
The ride to the airport was about an hour, as the airport was the last metro stop on the line. At the 2nd to last stop, 2 men in suits with badges hopped onto the train and not-so-politely demanded that all passengers exhibit their tickets. I woke Hannah up so she could dig ours out, and then nervously waited while the men with badges surveyed the situation. Thankfully, it appears as though we succeeded in the ticket puzzle. However, there were 2 other girls on the metro who were clearly American and had purchased regular metro tickets as opposed to airport metro tickets. I was certain that the men with badges would say something to the effect of "don't let it happen again" or "when we get to the airport, you need to pay the difference". Instead, the not-so-polite demands continued, and he demanded to see both of the girls' passports. He issued them a fine! It was 4o euros, which I thought wasn't too bad, until I realized that it was 40 euros per person. Granted, that amount won't ruin your bank account, but definitely bites a big one. I genuinely felt bad for the girls, since their faces definitely displayed a combination of their shock, fear, and disappointment. Oh well!
On the flight back, we again had exit row seats, so that was exciting for the 2nd time (it obviously doesn't take much to excite us, huh?). There was a guy in his mid-20s sitting next to me, and throughout the first half of the flight, he spoke to me in a combination of Greek, Spanish, and English, mostly when he needed help getting his tray out or asking for the time. About 2/3 of the way through the flight, he got out his fanny pack and was rooting through it for a bit, very secretively, but I thought nothing of it. He then got up and went to the bathroom and was gone for about 10-15 minutes, so I figured there was just a line for the stall. However, when he came back he REEKED of cigarette smoke. It was such a strong smell! He then immediately put on a sweatshirt and popped about 10 mints. Sure enough, within 5 minutes, the flight attendant came up and asked if he had smoked. He claimed not to understand her question, although he seemed pretty good with his English when he spoke to me. She then made the motion of smoking, and his response was this: "(10 seconds of silence)....no?" The flight attendant walked away, but I was just in shock. I was shocked that he smoked in the first place, I was shoked that she couldn't smell it on him, I was shocked that she bought his answer (it was honestly like a 5-year-old denying something after thinking if it would be better to tell the truth and get in trouble or take a chance and lie, potentially getting in more trouble or no trouble whatsoever), and I was shocked that he was getting away with it! Oh, Europe...the land of the cigarettes.
After that little escapade, Hannah and I made the now-routine trek from the airport to the bus station and successfully completed our big fat Greek weekend. It was fun, but at the same time a little sad, since it was our last international journey together.
More updates to come soon, I swear!
Hasta luego,
Jill
Hannah and I started our Greek weekend by celebrating the fact that our flight didn't leave Madrid until about 11:00, so we, for the first time in three weeks, did NOT have to drag ourselves out of bed at 4:30, nor did we have to pay for a taxi to get ourselves to the bus station. Just like always, we took the bus to Madrid, and then took the God-foresaken metro ride from the bus station to the airport. For whatever reason, those who designed the city of Madrid and its metro system decided it would make perfect sense to put the bus station and the airport as far away from each other as humanly possible, and every time we travel, Hannah and I spent a fair amount of time on the metro, grumbling about the stupid layout of the city. Nevertheless, we made it to the airport and got through security, blah blah blah.
We normally fly out of terminal 4, but this time we had the pleasure of flying out of terminal 4-S. Not all that different, but the good news is the 4-S terminal had an American newsstand and a Starbucks, so we were pretty much jumping for joy. I was glad to find the newsstand, since this was only a few days after the election, so all of the magazines were plastered with Obama's face and I was able to actually read some American coverage of the election!
Sidenote about the election: prior to November 4, when a person in any country (Spain, France, or Italy) found out I was an American, he or she immediately wanted to know, "McCain or Obama?" (keeping in mind, of course, that neither name was pronounced correctly, but at least they tried, I guess!) I got a very warm reception when I told them I was supporting Obama. During Election Night (since I am 6 hours ahead of the East Coast), I stayed up watching the results come in on Spanish CNN and I kept looking at various American news websites for updates. I ended up staying up until 5:00 AM to see the historic event arrive, and although I was quite the zombie the next day, it was so so worth it! It was kind of interesting to be in a different country during the end of the campaign season, since I got to witness a different perspective of the entire thing. I kid you not, "El País", the Spanish national newspaper, devoted its first 21 pages of the edition on November 6 to coverage of the election. I was stunned! I don't even think a lot of American newspapers have that much coverage!
Back to my Greek weekend (or my Greekend?), Hannah and I had managed to snag ourselves some exit row seats, which was exciting since it means extra leg room, yaaaay! I am not going to lie, I was secretly worried that this would be the flight where something would go awry and I would be responsible for helping people...fortunately, not the case. We even got a meal on our flight, which was exciting, too! Thus, we were all rested and recharged and ready to take Athens by storm by the time our flight landed.
We caught the airport express bus to take us into the heart of the city, which ended up taking about an hour. Surprisingly, the sun had completely set by the time we got off the bus at about 7:00, so we were a little skittish about being in a strange place with no bearings after dark, but we obviously survived. We managed to find our hostel and then headed out for some traditional Greek food for dinner. We had minced meat and spices, which we both agreed was....ok. At least we tried, right? Then we tracked down some delicious-looking pastries only to be heart-broken to discover that they were anything but delicious. They had some weird molasses-like coating which made them feel like an absolute brick in your stomach, so that was a disappointing experience. On our way back to the hostel, a man asked me for change for a euro, and I just brushed him off, and then Hannah wisely pointed out that that request was absurd, since a 1-euro piece is already a coin, so why would he need coins in place of a coin? We then put the pieces together and assumed his intentions were not that honorable, so we decided to call it an early night and play a few hours' worth of 20 Questions in the hostel before going to bed. Not exactly the most wild and crazy first night in Greece, but it was a blast nonetheless.
On Saturday, we woke up early and had our eyes on the prize: The Parthenon! We figured it was pretty close, since Athens isn't terribly large, but we still didn't have very good bearings, so we decided to take the metro. We walked about 5 blocks to the metro stop only to have the metro take us about 7 blocks in the opposite direction...therefore, we could have saved ourselves a bit of time and money by walking the 2 blocks in the other direction, but oh well. It wasn't really until our last few hours in Greece that we realized the Parthenon was directly behind our hostel...since we couldn't see in that direction, we had no idea! Anyhow, we got to the Acropolis (the giant hill that the Parthenon is on) and trekked up. It was really warm, which was nice, but when you are walking up and up and up under the direct sunlight, it was REALLY warm, and we were both icky by the time of our ascent. Along the way up the hill, we saw a few ancient ampitheaters and temples, and then finally saw the Parthenon. It was so gigantic! It was pretty amazing to see this structure that is so old still standing in relatively good shape. Fun fact: the Parthenon is in ruins because the French used it to store gunpowder, and then the gunpowder exploded. Nice job, Frenchies.
After touring around the Parthenon for a few hours and taking in the views of the city, we walked down to the ruins site of Ancient Agora, which was pretty cool, too. However, along the way, we had to walk down a set of stairs in the Temple of Nike. These steps are made of marble and have 1000s of people walking up and down them every day, so they are pretty smoothed down. I was walking down the steps, when all of a sudden, my foot slipped out and I started to fall toward the foot of the staircase. Hannah's contribution to helping me was a super-loud gasp which attracted the attention of many people standing nearby. Somehow, thankfully, I was able to catch myself (almost) and basically just bopped down on the step, and then hopped right up again. No injuries, aside from my sore ego (just like the metro in Rome). I was pretty embarrassed, so after that little episode, Hannah and I booked it away from there and toward the other ruins. We toured around the other sites for a little bit, but in all honesty, they have a tendency to kind of blur together in my memory, since they all have very long and hard to pronounce Greek names, and they look relatively similar, with columns and ruins and white marble, etc. After so much time looking at ruins, Hannah and I decided to have some lunch.
Lunch was a bit of a let-down, since I was pretty aggravated with the environment. In many places in Europe, I have had the experience of sitting outside a cafe, enjoying a drink or meal, when street vendors and beggars come directly up to your table and will not leave you in peace until you are borderline rude to them. It is a pretty frustrating process, since you never really feel at ease at the cafe. It seemed like every 5 minutes or so, another person was coming up to the table, and the meal was anything but relaxing. Additionally, my ham and cheese sandwich had ham, cheese, and 1/2 pound of mayo, so that was less than appetizing. Since Hannah and I were a little unenthused by our lunch experience, we decided we had to soothe our wounds with some shopping! Coincidentally, we then stumbled upon the shopping district of Athens and spent the rest of the afternoon there, looking at the regular stores in addition to the 100s of touristy stores that all sell basically the same amount of stuff. During the middle of the afternoon, we headed over to the Olympic Stadium, a recreation of the stadium used in the 1896 Olympics. This wasn't the stadium where the Opening and Closing Ceremonies were held in 2004, but some events were held in the stadium we visited. It was all decked out in Greek flags and Olympic Rings, and it was especially exciting to see it that day, since the Athens Marathon was being held, and the finish line was inside the stadium. Thus, the entire stadium area was very well decorated and a really cool place to see!
After the Stadium, we headed out for some dinner, and we decided to try some traditional Greek food again. We picked a random cafe and this time, the results were much better. On top of the good food, our waiter quickly ascertained we were Americans, and it turns out, he was born in Wisconsin! Therefore, during the entire meal, every time he came back to the table for refills or something like that, he would just go on and on about how much he loves America, and how great it is, and how Europeans are so cold and uninviting while Americans are very warm and friendly. He apparently was moving back to Wisconsin relatively soon and was enthralled with the idea of us being from his idea of heaven-on-earth. We chit-chatted with him, since it was one of the few interactions I have had in Europe where someone is pleased to discover our homeland, and then at the end of the meal, he gave us free dessert, so all in all, it wasn't a bad series of events! After dinner, we did a bit more shopping and then called it a night, having had a much better 2nd evening in Athens than the 1st.
On Sunday, we slept in a bit and then checked out of the hostel, but kept our bags there while we toured around the city a little bit more. We headed over to the Temple of Zeus, which now consists of a few columns in a field, but it was still fun to see. We then explored one of the rustic little neighborhoods and had some brunch. I snagged some baklava which was really really yummy, and then we headed out to the airport. To get to the Athens airport from the center square of the city, you can take a bus or the metro. Well, for whatever reason, we were told the bus wasn't going to our stop that afternoon, so we decided to take the metro. It was a little confusing, since all of the signs were in Greek and English, and then there were also signs for regular tickets and airport tickets, so we had to wade through many lines of text to make sure we were buying what we actually needed. All of the guidebooks we had really emphasized that you NEED to have your ticket with you (and it NEEDS to be the right type of ticket) and it NEEDS to be validated for that journey, or else you'll be slapped with a hefty fine. Well, the "validation" process consists of feeding the ticket into a machine, the machine beeps, and the ticket shoots back out at you. You have no way of telling if that beep was "good job, you did it right, carry on" or if that beep was "you're an idiot and screwed it up, therefore this ticket hasn't been validated". Hannah and I fed our joint ticket through 2 machines and hoped that was enough, then hopped onto the metro.
The ride to the airport was about an hour, as the airport was the last metro stop on the line. At the 2nd to last stop, 2 men in suits with badges hopped onto the train and not-so-politely demanded that all passengers exhibit their tickets. I woke Hannah up so she could dig ours out, and then nervously waited while the men with badges surveyed the situation. Thankfully, it appears as though we succeeded in the ticket puzzle. However, there were 2 other girls on the metro who were clearly American and had purchased regular metro tickets as opposed to airport metro tickets. I was certain that the men with badges would say something to the effect of "don't let it happen again" or "when we get to the airport, you need to pay the difference". Instead, the not-so-polite demands continued, and he demanded to see both of the girls' passports. He issued them a fine! It was 4o euros, which I thought wasn't too bad, until I realized that it was 40 euros per person. Granted, that amount won't ruin your bank account, but definitely bites a big one. I genuinely felt bad for the girls, since their faces definitely displayed a combination of their shock, fear, and disappointment. Oh well!
On the flight back, we again had exit row seats, so that was exciting for the 2nd time (it obviously doesn't take much to excite us, huh?). There was a guy in his mid-20s sitting next to me, and throughout the first half of the flight, he spoke to me in a combination of Greek, Spanish, and English, mostly when he needed help getting his tray out or asking for the time. About 2/3 of the way through the flight, he got out his fanny pack and was rooting through it for a bit, very secretively, but I thought nothing of it. He then got up and went to the bathroom and was gone for about 10-15 minutes, so I figured there was just a line for the stall. However, when he came back he REEKED of cigarette smoke. It was such a strong smell! He then immediately put on a sweatshirt and popped about 10 mints. Sure enough, within 5 minutes, the flight attendant came up and asked if he had smoked. He claimed not to understand her question, although he seemed pretty good with his English when he spoke to me. She then made the motion of smoking, and his response was this: "(10 seconds of silence)....no?" The flight attendant walked away, but I was just in shock. I was shocked that he smoked in the first place, I was shoked that she couldn't smell it on him, I was shocked that she bought his answer (it was honestly like a 5-year-old denying something after thinking if it would be better to tell the truth and get in trouble or take a chance and lie, potentially getting in more trouble or no trouble whatsoever), and I was shocked that he was getting away with it! Oh, Europe...the land of the cigarettes.
After that little escapade, Hannah and I made the now-routine trek from the airport to the bus station and successfully completed our big fat Greek weekend. It was fun, but at the same time a little sad, since it was our last international journey together.
More updates to come soon, I swear!
Hasta luego,
Jill
Monday, November 10, 2008
Weekend at Benny's (as in, Pope Benedict XVI)
Greetings from Spain!
I realize I have been a bit lax on my posting, so get excited for a barrage of posts in the upcoming days (hopefully...)!
On the weekend of October 31 to November 2, Hannah, Flan, and Christie, and I went to Rome. Hannah and I flew out separately from the other two to meet them there. We, once again, woke up at the absolute crack of dawn to take a cab to the bus station, a bus to Madrid, the metro to the airport, and then the plane to Rome. About 85% of those travels were spent with at least one of us in a comatose state. We arrived in Rome without problems and then managed to catch the train from the airport into the city after breaking into a near sprint in order to catch the one that departed about 10 minutes after our plane landed. We arrived at the city, no problems, and checked into our hostel, which turned out to be our very own apartment as opposed to a dirty multiple people hostel. That was a pretty nice surprise. Unfortunately, Hannah and I didn't have much time to enjoy this fact, as we had made arrangements to have a "skip the line" entrance to the Vatican Museums at 2:30, so we had to book it over there to meet our group.
We successfully navigated the metro system with one tiny "oops". Two stops were marked as the Vatican Museum, and Hannah and I zoned out on the metro. When I snapped to attention, we had arrived at the 1st one, which I assumed was ours, so I hopped off and insisted Hannah come with me. She then insisted that I come back onto the train and consequently pulled me back onto the train just as the doors were shutting. Essentially, my one arm and my face was completely smushed between the doors, and Hannah couldn't get them open, so it was altogether embarrassing and painful. We managed to pry the doors open, get me back onto the train, and complete the ride without any additional issues, aside from my bright, burning red cheeks. I had been in Rome for about an hour before looking like a big fat dumb tourist. Oh well...
We tracked down our group outside the Vatican Museum entrance and got right into the museum without any obstacles. This museum is HUGE, GIGANTIC, AND OVERWHELMING. In all seriousness, the amount of artwork in the museum was ridiculous. Some of the display rooms looked like storage units for statues or busts rather than actual museum exhibits. We walked and walked and walked, following the signs for the Sistine Chapel. Along the way, we saw some notable paintings from Raphael, including The School of Athens which was pretty cool to see in person. We saw the Hall of Maps, which had paintings of maps of Italy throughout its history, which was also interesting to observe. Finally, we arrived at the heralded Sistine Chapel, and it was a lot different than I expected. In all honesty, I thought the ceiling would consist only of that famous painting with God and Adam nearly touching fingers. In reality, this painting was about 1/100th of all of the art in the chapel. There were creation scenes all over the ceiling, and the art was just overwhelming. I wish I would have had binoculars to see the details, especially after learning that Michelangelo became frustrated with his assistants and decided to fire them all, completing the vast majority of the work himself! We technically weren't allowed to take pictures in the chapel, and by technically, I mean large Italian men would bellow at you if you did, but I managed to snag a few pics AND avoid being the target of an Italian bellowing, so all in all, I call this trip to the chapel a success.
After the Sistine Chapel, we headed over to St. Peter's, the main church of the Vatican. This, similar to the Museum, was gigantic and overwhelming. We saw Michelangelo's Pieta, which was securely locked up behind glass after a lunatic took a hammer to it in the 1970s. We got to walk around this massive church, which is more than 2 football fields long (fact courtesy of Jenna Lusk). It was gigantic, and everything was beautiful and/or gigantic as well. Coincidentally, we met up with Flan and Christie there, and the four of us headed out into the rainy Roman day to continue our adventures.
Christie, Hannah, and I stopped at a cafe near the Vatican for a little pick me up, and our waiter was ridiculously enthusiastic in addition to surprisingly knowledgeable about the United States and American pop culture. He knew Pennsylvania, and then started asking if we were Amish from Lancaster. Once he determined we were more Pittsburgh than Philadelphia, he started rattling off the sports teams, saying that the Steelers were good and the Pirates were bad. It was such a shock to be talking Pittsburgh sports in Rome! He also found it necessary to compare Christie to Demi Moore, although he could never seem to remember the name "Demi" so he decided instead to call her "Michael Moore" until we corrected him, as Demi Moore and Michael Moore are a bit different, to say the least. He then called her "Denny" about 1000 times, including shouting it to her from the opposite side of the cafe. It was definitely a surreal experience, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.
After dinner, the three of us met up with some of Christie's friends who are studying abroad in Rome, and we had amazingly delicious pasta and gelato for dinner. Afterwards, we walked around a bit and saw the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps at night, which was very nice. Unfortunately, Hannah and I had been up since about 4 AM, so we were ready to call it an early night.
On Saturday, Hannah and I got up and went straight to the Colosseum, which completely took me by surprise, since we literally ascended from the Metro Station, and THERE IT WAS. It was so huge, and really amazing to see in person. We waited in line and then toured the inside, which was well worth both the wait and the admission price. They had reconstructed 1/5 of the floor of the colisseum, where the gladiators and beasts would fight, but they left the other 4/5 undone so that we could see the ruins of the holding pens where the competitors were kept before actually fighting on the floor. The stadium held 50,000 at is peak, and after being inside, I am honestly surprised that that number is so low. The stadium was completely gigantic and just made you feel like a tiny little ant as you stood inside of it and gazed all around you. After the Colisseum, we headed over to the Roman Forum, and waited in line for an obscene amount of time, since the European notion of "a line" largely consists of people going wherever they want, whenever they want, regardless of who was there first. Additionally, there was a bit of a bottleneck as the admission gate had one worker who had to scan everyone's ticket, and the scanner was a bit antiquated, so each visitor's interaction with the worker was probably a full minute. Before entering in line for the Forum, we had decided to see the Forum and then grab lunch, since we were already hungry by that point in time. Well, by the time we actually got into the Forum, we were starving and pretty frustrated, so our time in the Forum was pretty brief. We toured around and saw tons and tons of ruins, way more than I initially expected, and then decided to call it a day and head out for lunch. We stopped at a little cafe, had some more delicious pasta, went to the Trevi Fountain to see it during the day and had some more delicious gelato (notice a trend?). We then walked over to the Pantheon to see Rome's best-preserved ancient building. It was pretty intimidating of a building, very huge and dark and manly, I guess. After the Pantheon, we were ready to shop, which was a moderate success. Hannah and I both managed to track down some pretty good souvenir stuff and then had less success shopping for ourselves, as all of the stores were packed to the brim with other shoppers. We decided to cut our shopping trip short and then went back to the hotel for a nap.
After our rest, we headed out for dinner, which was more pasta at another completely random cafe. That was one of my favorite parts about Rome...you could eat ANYWHERE (or at least all of the places I saw looked at least good if not great) and walk away very satisfied. During the meal, my Mom texted me the halftime score of the Pitt-Notre Dame game, and I read it out loud to Hannah. Shortly thereafter, an elderly couple at the table next to us asked me to repeat what I had said, and they turned out to be Notre Dame fans! The wife explained that the husband had been unhappy that he had no way of tracking down the score, so they were excited to have me as an unanticipated source of ND information. It always amazes me how small the world is...I definitely did not expect to be discussing Notre Dame football with anyone in Rome, except maybe Hannah! After satiating ourselves with super yummy and super carb-y pasta, we had gelato...again...and it was delicious....again. We then headed back to the hostel and watched "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in Italian, which was interesting to say the least.
On Sunday, we woke up and were set on going to mass at St. Peter's. I was a bit nervous, since I had a tiny rolling suitcase, and some public locations won't let you in with luggage, as a safety precaution. We decided to take a chance, and I made it through the metal detectors without any problems, and then I found a luggage storage room which was a blessing, since it was free, there was no line, and the people were super friendly, which is not something that can be said for every European I have encountered thus far. Some, yes, others...not so much. We then headed into mass, which was pretty long, but it was really kind of awing to be at mass in the Vatican. The processional had tons of bishops, priests, and even cardinals, and the choir was absolutely amazing. Hannah and I left the church feeling pleased with having successfully gone to mass in one of the most famous churches in the world when we noticed a huge group of people in St. Peter's Square. There was also some sort of barricade holding the crowd back. I thought it might be for the next mass in the Basilica, but then Hannah noticed everyone peering up at a window in one of the buildings surrounding the square. From the window sill hung a deep red cloth that looked pretty darned Papal to me. We decided to wait it out for a little bit, and sure enough, within about 5 minutes, Pope Benedict XVI came to the window and spoke to the masses. He prayed the angelus with the crowd, in Italian, and then provided a blessing in Italian. As Hannah and I were secretly wishing we understood Italian, he switched to French, which led us to secretly which we understood Italian OR French. Then, he switched to English, and a large section of the crowd cheered. I'll be honest, his English had such a heavy accent that I didn't even notice it was English until Hannah told me...yikes! He welcomed us and then provided a blessing, which I managed to catch on my camera. I am pretty sure Papal blessings that are captured on digital camera and then uploaded to a blog still count, so you should all feel very spiritually touched after watching this: (note...he switches to German toward the end, so don't be confused)
We then left, hearing a Spanish blessing in the background. I actually had an easier time understanding his Spanish than his English, which I guess means either (a) I am getting better at listening to Spanish, or (b) his English was RIDICULOUSLY accented, to the point of being difficult to understand. I vote A.
We were all spiritually fulfilled after being blessed by the Pope himself, so we decided to be fulfilled stomach-wise, as well, and had some more pasta and gelato before catching the train back to the airport. The only real notable point in our journey home occurred when Hannah declared she had to go the bathroom upon our arrival to the train station (fyi: this sort of declaration from Hannah is not terribly rare, and I'll leave it at that.). However, when she sought out the bathroom, it was nowhere to be found, and we had to board the train, so she was not pleased. We then had a 30 minute train ride and went straight to security after getting to the aiport. Hannah carries a tin water bottle with her, and at this point in time, it was completely full of water. Not surprisingly, this did not pass the "3 ounces" rule for liquids on carry-ons, so she was presented with the options of throwing away the entire bottle or returning to the very beginning of the security line to pour out the water. She wasn't pleased with either of these choices, so she decided to return to the other side of the metal detector, chug her water, and then go through security for the 2nd time. I had assumed she was just going to pour her water out, so after a few minutes, I started looking around to see where she was. I was surprised to find her chugging away at her water, bouncing from foot to foot with a pained expression on her face. Of course, adding insult to injury, when she passed through the metal detector for the 2nd time, some piece of metal caused the machine to beep after she had had no issues the 1st time through. She then had to be patted down by a lovely Italian security guard, all the while she is bouncing up and down, hoping not to lose bladder control in the airport. Once she passed through security, she scurried as fast as anyone can scurry to the nearest bathroom. It was definitely a comical series of observations from my point of view.
So, all in all, Rome was pretty much amazing, and all the sites were huge and overwhelming while all of the food was delicious!
Love from Spain,
Jill
(I realize this post doesn't have many pictures, so you will just have to check out my albums on Picasa!)
I realize I have been a bit lax on my posting, so get excited for a barrage of posts in the upcoming days (hopefully...)!
On the weekend of October 31 to November 2, Hannah, Flan, and Christie, and I went to Rome. Hannah and I flew out separately from the other two to meet them there. We, once again, woke up at the absolute crack of dawn to take a cab to the bus station, a bus to Madrid, the metro to the airport, and then the plane to Rome. About 85% of those travels were spent with at least one of us in a comatose state. We arrived in Rome without problems and then managed to catch the train from the airport into the city after breaking into a near sprint in order to catch the one that departed about 10 minutes after our plane landed. We arrived at the city, no problems, and checked into our hostel, which turned out to be our very own apartment as opposed to a dirty multiple people hostel. That was a pretty nice surprise. Unfortunately, Hannah and I didn't have much time to enjoy this fact, as we had made arrangements to have a "skip the line" entrance to the Vatican Museums at 2:30, so we had to book it over there to meet our group.
We successfully navigated the metro system with one tiny "oops". Two stops were marked as the Vatican Museum, and Hannah and I zoned out on the metro. When I snapped to attention, we had arrived at the 1st one, which I assumed was ours, so I hopped off and insisted Hannah come with me. She then insisted that I come back onto the train and consequently pulled me back onto the train just as the doors were shutting. Essentially, my one arm and my face was completely smushed between the doors, and Hannah couldn't get them open, so it was altogether embarrassing and painful. We managed to pry the doors open, get me back onto the train, and complete the ride without any additional issues, aside from my bright, burning red cheeks. I had been in Rome for about an hour before looking like a big fat dumb tourist. Oh well...
We tracked down our group outside the Vatican Museum entrance and got right into the museum without any obstacles. This museum is HUGE, GIGANTIC, AND OVERWHELMING. In all seriousness, the amount of artwork in the museum was ridiculous. Some of the display rooms looked like storage units for statues or busts rather than actual museum exhibits. We walked and walked and walked, following the signs for the Sistine Chapel. Along the way, we saw some notable paintings from Raphael, including The School of Athens which was pretty cool to see in person. We saw the Hall of Maps, which had paintings of maps of Italy throughout its history, which was also interesting to observe. Finally, we arrived at the heralded Sistine Chapel, and it was a lot different than I expected. In all honesty, I thought the ceiling would consist only of that famous painting with God and Adam nearly touching fingers. In reality, this painting was about 1/100th of all of the art in the chapel. There were creation scenes all over the ceiling, and the art was just overwhelming. I wish I would have had binoculars to see the details, especially after learning that Michelangelo became frustrated with his assistants and decided to fire them all, completing the vast majority of the work himself! We technically weren't allowed to take pictures in the chapel, and by technically, I mean large Italian men would bellow at you if you did, but I managed to snag a few pics AND avoid being the target of an Italian bellowing, so all in all, I call this trip to the chapel a success.
After the Sistine Chapel, we headed over to St. Peter's, the main church of the Vatican. This, similar to the Museum, was gigantic and overwhelming. We saw Michelangelo's Pieta, which was securely locked up behind glass after a lunatic took a hammer to it in the 1970s. We got to walk around this massive church, which is more than 2 football fields long (fact courtesy of Jenna Lusk). It was gigantic, and everything was beautiful and/or gigantic as well. Coincidentally, we met up with Flan and Christie there, and the four of us headed out into the rainy Roman day to continue our adventures.
Christie, Hannah, and I stopped at a cafe near the Vatican for a little pick me up, and our waiter was ridiculously enthusiastic in addition to surprisingly knowledgeable about the United States and American pop culture. He knew Pennsylvania, and then started asking if we were Amish from Lancaster. Once he determined we were more Pittsburgh than Philadelphia, he started rattling off the sports teams, saying that the Steelers were good and the Pirates were bad. It was such a shock to be talking Pittsburgh sports in Rome! He also found it necessary to compare Christie to Demi Moore, although he could never seem to remember the name "Demi" so he decided instead to call her "Michael Moore" until we corrected him, as Demi Moore and Michael Moore are a bit different, to say the least. He then called her "Denny" about 1000 times, including shouting it to her from the opposite side of the cafe. It was definitely a surreal experience, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.
After dinner, the three of us met up with some of Christie's friends who are studying abroad in Rome, and we had amazingly delicious pasta and gelato for dinner. Afterwards, we walked around a bit and saw the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps at night, which was very nice. Unfortunately, Hannah and I had been up since about 4 AM, so we were ready to call it an early night.
On Saturday, Hannah and I got up and went straight to the Colosseum, which completely took me by surprise, since we literally ascended from the Metro Station, and THERE IT WAS. It was so huge, and really amazing to see in person. We waited in line and then toured the inside, which was well worth both the wait and the admission price. They had reconstructed 1/5 of the floor of the colisseum, where the gladiators and beasts would fight, but they left the other 4/5 undone so that we could see the ruins of the holding pens where the competitors were kept before actually fighting on the floor. The stadium held 50,000 at is peak, and after being inside, I am honestly surprised that that number is so low. The stadium was completely gigantic and just made you feel like a tiny little ant as you stood inside of it and gazed all around you. After the Colisseum, we headed over to the Roman Forum, and waited in line for an obscene amount of time, since the European notion of "a line" largely consists of people going wherever they want, whenever they want, regardless of who was there first. Additionally, there was a bit of a bottleneck as the admission gate had one worker who had to scan everyone's ticket, and the scanner was a bit antiquated, so each visitor's interaction with the worker was probably a full minute. Before entering in line for the Forum, we had decided to see the Forum and then grab lunch, since we were already hungry by that point in time. Well, by the time we actually got into the Forum, we were starving and pretty frustrated, so our time in the Forum was pretty brief. We toured around and saw tons and tons of ruins, way more than I initially expected, and then decided to call it a day and head out for lunch. We stopped at a little cafe, had some more delicious pasta, went to the Trevi Fountain to see it during the day and had some more delicious gelato (notice a trend?). We then walked over to the Pantheon to see Rome's best-preserved ancient building. It was pretty intimidating of a building, very huge and dark and manly, I guess. After the Pantheon, we were ready to shop, which was a moderate success. Hannah and I both managed to track down some pretty good souvenir stuff and then had less success shopping for ourselves, as all of the stores were packed to the brim with other shoppers. We decided to cut our shopping trip short and then went back to the hotel for a nap.
After our rest, we headed out for dinner, which was more pasta at another completely random cafe. That was one of my favorite parts about Rome...you could eat ANYWHERE (or at least all of the places I saw looked at least good if not great) and walk away very satisfied. During the meal, my Mom texted me the halftime score of the Pitt-Notre Dame game, and I read it out loud to Hannah. Shortly thereafter, an elderly couple at the table next to us asked me to repeat what I had said, and they turned out to be Notre Dame fans! The wife explained that the husband had been unhappy that he had no way of tracking down the score, so they were excited to have me as an unanticipated source of ND information. It always amazes me how small the world is...I definitely did not expect to be discussing Notre Dame football with anyone in Rome, except maybe Hannah! After satiating ourselves with super yummy and super carb-y pasta, we had gelato...again...and it was delicious....again. We then headed back to the hostel and watched "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in Italian, which was interesting to say the least.
On Sunday, we woke up and were set on going to mass at St. Peter's. I was a bit nervous, since I had a tiny rolling suitcase, and some public locations won't let you in with luggage, as a safety precaution. We decided to take a chance, and I made it through the metal detectors without any problems, and then I found a luggage storage room which was a blessing, since it was free, there was no line, and the people were super friendly, which is not something that can be said for every European I have encountered thus far. Some, yes, others...not so much. We then headed into mass, which was pretty long, but it was really kind of awing to be at mass in the Vatican. The processional had tons of bishops, priests, and even cardinals, and the choir was absolutely amazing. Hannah and I left the church feeling pleased with having successfully gone to mass in one of the most famous churches in the world when we noticed a huge group of people in St. Peter's Square. There was also some sort of barricade holding the crowd back. I thought it might be for the next mass in the Basilica, but then Hannah noticed everyone peering up at a window in one of the buildings surrounding the square. From the window sill hung a deep red cloth that looked pretty darned Papal to me. We decided to wait it out for a little bit, and sure enough, within about 5 minutes, Pope Benedict XVI came to the window and spoke to the masses. He prayed the angelus with the crowd, in Italian, and then provided a blessing in Italian. As Hannah and I were secretly wishing we understood Italian, he switched to French, which led us to secretly which we understood Italian OR French. Then, he switched to English, and a large section of the crowd cheered. I'll be honest, his English had such a heavy accent that I didn't even notice it was English until Hannah told me...yikes! He welcomed us and then provided a blessing, which I managed to catch on my camera. I am pretty sure Papal blessings that are captured on digital camera and then uploaded to a blog still count, so you should all feel very spiritually touched after watching this: (note...he switches to German toward the end, so don't be confused)
We then left, hearing a Spanish blessing in the background. I actually had an easier time understanding his Spanish than his English, which I guess means either (a) I am getting better at listening to Spanish, or (b) his English was RIDICULOUSLY accented, to the point of being difficult to understand. I vote A.
We were all spiritually fulfilled after being blessed by the Pope himself, so we decided to be fulfilled stomach-wise, as well, and had some more pasta and gelato before catching the train back to the airport. The only real notable point in our journey home occurred when Hannah declared she had to go the bathroom upon our arrival to the train station (fyi: this sort of declaration from Hannah is not terribly rare, and I'll leave it at that.). However, when she sought out the bathroom, it was nowhere to be found, and we had to board the train, so she was not pleased. We then had a 30 minute train ride and went straight to security after getting to the aiport. Hannah carries a tin water bottle with her, and at this point in time, it was completely full of water. Not surprisingly, this did not pass the "3 ounces" rule for liquids on carry-ons, so she was presented with the options of throwing away the entire bottle or returning to the very beginning of the security line to pour out the water. She wasn't pleased with either of these choices, so she decided to return to the other side of the metal detector, chug her water, and then go through security for the 2nd time. I had assumed she was just going to pour her water out, so after a few minutes, I started looking around to see where she was. I was surprised to find her chugging away at her water, bouncing from foot to foot with a pained expression on her face. Of course, adding insult to injury, when she passed through the metal detector for the 2nd time, some piece of metal caused the machine to beep after she had had no issues the 1st time through. She then had to be patted down by a lovely Italian security guard, all the while she is bouncing up and down, hoping not to lose bladder control in the airport. Once she passed through security, she scurried as fast as anyone can scurry to the nearest bathroom. It was definitely a comical series of observations from my point of view.
So, all in all, Rome was pretty much amazing, and all the sites were huge and overwhelming while all of the food was delicious!
Love from Spain,
Jill
(I realize this post doesn't have many pictures, so you will just have to check out my albums on Picasa!)
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
My Parisian Adventure
Bonjour! (That's French for "hello")...
I have returned from my weekend trip to France, and it was an absolute blast!!! Here's the play by play:
Hannah and I woke up at the crack of dawn to catch the 6:00 AM bus to Madrid from Toledo. Once we completed that leg of the journey, we were on the metro for about an hour, getting from the train station to the airport. Finally, we arrived at the airport, made it through security, and found our gate. The flight was not very noteworthy, mostly because Hannah and I were both in deep comas before the plane even pulled away from the jetway. We landed in Paris refreshed and ready to take on the French capital city.
However, we didn't really take into account the huge language barrier, since neither of us know any French with the exceptions of please, thank you, hello, and good-bye. Therefore, navigating the airport was a bit confusing, and we spent probably a solid hour before orienting ourselves. We finally figured out that we had to take a combination of a train and a metro in order to reach our hotel. Once we figured that out, we assumed it would be an easy journey, but we had a little trouble finding the appropriate metro line after we had arrived at the correct station. I decided to take it upon myself to ask a cashier at a newsstand, but I didn't want to be a presumptuous traveler, simply assuming that everyone speaks English. Also, I ruled Spanish out (for whatever reason, I guess because we were in France), and instead resorted to the international language of charades. I pointed to the metro station on our map and then put up 4 fingers to signify the 4 line of the metro. I was a little nervous as to how he would choose to respond, but surprisingly, he returned a message via charades, by pointing left, down, and then right, and putting up 4 fingers. Once we completed that caveman-like interaction with signals and grunts, Hannah teased me immensely, but we managed to find the metro and arrived at our hotel with no additional problems.
After checking into our hotel (which consisted of the man behind the desk asking if I was German, based on my last name, and then asking which candidate I voted for after finding out I am from the US), we decided to forage for lunch. We found a little cafe but could not communicate what we wanted, so we again resorted to charades, pointing and grunting until we had Diet Cokes and sandwiches. Thankfully, shortly after lunch, my friend Kate, who is studying abroad in Paris for the semester, met us and rescued us from our world of confusion. She took the lead and was an immense help, since she could speak to people while we looked confused. We went to the Eiffel Tower, which was amazing, of course, and rode the elevator all the way to the top to see the beautiful panoramic views of Paris. We then took the stairs back down, pausing for some sweet jumping pictures. Like 99% of French people take jumping pictures on the Eiffel Tower, so I am essentially sure that we did not stand out as tourists while snapping idiotic pictures of ourselves on a historic monument. Trust me.
After the Tower, we enjoyed the traditional French treat of crepes. So so so yummy. We then headed over to the Louvre to become cultured and other stuff like that. We saw the Mona Lisa, talked about the Da Vinci Code, and everything else that people are supposed to do while spending time in the Louvre. Oh, and we also took more jumping pictures outside the famous pyramid. I think there is a slight chance that this time we looked like tourists, but a big part of me still says no.
Once we finished with the Louvre, we met one of Kate's friends for some Mexican. Surprisingly, Mexican food in France after spending a long time in Spain is very delicious! After stuffing ourselves on the most multi-cultural burrito ever, we called it a night, since Hannah and I were pretty much zombies by this point in time, and we had a long Saturday ahead of us.
We woke up on Saturday with the intention of meeting Hannah's Parisian friend Chloe. We encountered a bit of a snafu at the metro stop, since we needed to buy tickets and the line was full, of course populated largely by people who had never attempted to operate an automatic ticket machine before. After spending an excruciatingly frustrating 40 minutes in line, we finally got the tickets and hopped onto the metro. Chloe, like Kate, was pretty much a godsend, since she knew her way around the city, and we just had to follow behind her. We started our day having croissants in the Luxembourg Gardens, watching cute little European children in their cute little European clothes do cute little European things, like play with sailboats in fountains. After the gardens, we headed over to the Pantheon, where Napoleon is buried. We then walked all the way over to Notre Dame, and of course Hannah and I had thought ahead to bring Notre Dame t-shirts to wear while taking dorky pictures in front of Notre Dame. They were pretty much the highlight of the day, no lie.
Chloe then took us through a part of Paris with a ton of modern art, before we hopped on the train to ride back into the center of the city, so we could see the Arc de Triomphe and walk down the Champs-Elysses, gawking at all of the ridiculous stores. For lunch, we headed to one of Chloe's favorite cafes and had fruit smoothies. I obviously couldn't read a single word on the menu, so I told Chloe some basic food items that I like, and she took it from there. I ended up having a mixed plate of turkey pitas, chicken and goat cheese pitas, curry chicken, and french fries. Overall, I was pretty impressed with myself for being that adventurous, and relieved that I liked what turned up on my plate!
After lunch, we then took the metro to Monmarte, the artists' district of Paris, and took in the views of the city from Sacre Coeur, a famous church in Paris. We decided to have crepes...again, and rested for a bit, since we had basically walked our poor little feet off. After our break, we headed over to see Moulin Rouge, which is in a neighborhood in which about 90% of the businesses are related to sex in some way, shape, or form. Finally, we headed back into the center of the city to see the Opera, and then went into the Galeria Lafayette, which is like a mall on absolute wealth steroids. The stores in this mall were totally unreal, with one floor having Prada, Dior, Chanel, and Armani next to each other. Needless to say, we suffered from a bit of sticker shock! For dinner, we met Kate and another of her friends for crepes, then headed back to the hotel to rest. Hannah and I went back into the city to see the Eiffel Tower at night, which was so pretty and a great way to end the day. We spent some time in Kate's apartment, which was GIGANTIC, especially compared to the housing sizes in Spain. After a few hours, Hannah and I took the metro back to our hotel, and were able to enjoy the spectacle of a drunken French man standing on his seat, yelling French phrases until another French guy, with a joint in hand, walked over and started making out with him. It was quite the experience, to say the least...
On Sunday, we woke up and headed back over to Notre Dame to go to mass. Technically, you're not supposed to bring luggage into the Cathedral for security purposes, but we had no other option, so we smuggled ours in. We were on edge the entire mass that we would be kicked out, but that never happened. Instead, the ushers scolded Hannah for taking a picture before the mass began and for having her shoe resting on the chair in front of her. In case you were wondering, I was the picture of perfect behavior, minus the luggage smuggling, so no ushers reprimanded me. Jill: 1, Hannah: 0.
After mass, which we didn't understand, as it was in French, we met with Kate for lunch and had a super yummy and super satisfying meal, topped off with a deliciously rich chocolate mousse. Once we finished lunch, we hopped onto the train, got to the airport, had our flight, rode the Madrid metro, and made it to the bus station with about 4 minutes to spare to catch our bus back to Toledo. It was quite the whirlwind weekend overall, with a lot of time traveling from point A to point B, but it was so so so worth it. It was great to see another country, since I felt that I needed a bit of a break from Spain. However, upon my return, I definitely felt a sense of returning home, and I am confident that now I appreciate Spain even more, since I know its ways, its customs, and most importantly, its language!
Love from Spain,
Jill
I have returned from my weekend trip to France, and it was an absolute blast!!! Here's the play by play:
Hannah and I woke up at the crack of dawn to catch the 6:00 AM bus to Madrid from Toledo. Once we completed that leg of the journey, we were on the metro for about an hour, getting from the train station to the airport. Finally, we arrived at the airport, made it through security, and found our gate. The flight was not very noteworthy, mostly because Hannah and I were both in deep comas before the plane even pulled away from the jetway. We landed in Paris refreshed and ready to take on the French capital city.
However, we didn't really take into account the huge language barrier, since neither of us know any French with the exceptions of please, thank you, hello, and good-bye. Therefore, navigating the airport was a bit confusing, and we spent probably a solid hour before orienting ourselves. We finally figured out that we had to take a combination of a train and a metro in order to reach our hotel. Once we figured that out, we assumed it would be an easy journey, but we had a little trouble finding the appropriate metro line after we had arrived at the correct station. I decided to take it upon myself to ask a cashier at a newsstand, but I didn't want to be a presumptuous traveler, simply assuming that everyone speaks English. Also, I ruled Spanish out (for whatever reason, I guess because we were in France), and instead resorted to the international language of charades. I pointed to the metro station on our map and then put up 4 fingers to signify the 4 line of the metro. I was a little nervous as to how he would choose to respond, but surprisingly, he returned a message via charades, by pointing left, down, and then right, and putting up 4 fingers. Once we completed that caveman-like interaction with signals and grunts, Hannah teased me immensely, but we managed to find the metro and arrived at our hotel with no additional problems.
After checking into our hotel (which consisted of the man behind the desk asking if I was German, based on my last name, and then asking which candidate I voted for after finding out I am from the US), we decided to forage for lunch. We found a little cafe but could not communicate what we wanted, so we again resorted to charades, pointing and grunting until we had Diet Cokes and sandwiches. Thankfully, shortly after lunch, my friend Kate, who is studying abroad in Paris for the semester, met us and rescued us from our world of confusion. She took the lead and was an immense help, since she could speak to people while we looked confused. We went to the Eiffel Tower, which was amazing, of course, and rode the elevator all the way to the top to see the beautiful panoramic views of Paris. We then took the stairs back down, pausing for some sweet jumping pictures. Like 99% of French people take jumping pictures on the Eiffel Tower, so I am essentially sure that we did not stand out as tourists while snapping idiotic pictures of ourselves on a historic monument. Trust me.
After the Tower, we enjoyed the traditional French treat of crepes. So so so yummy. We then headed over to the Louvre to become cultured and other stuff like that. We saw the Mona Lisa, talked about the Da Vinci Code, and everything else that people are supposed to do while spending time in the Louvre. Oh, and we also took more jumping pictures outside the famous pyramid. I think there is a slight chance that this time we looked like tourists, but a big part of me still says no.
Once we finished with the Louvre, we met one of Kate's friends for some Mexican. Surprisingly, Mexican food in France after spending a long time in Spain is very delicious! After stuffing ourselves on the most multi-cultural burrito ever, we called it a night, since Hannah and I were pretty much zombies by this point in time, and we had a long Saturday ahead of us.
We woke up on Saturday with the intention of meeting Hannah's Parisian friend Chloe. We encountered a bit of a snafu at the metro stop, since we needed to buy tickets and the line was full, of course populated largely by people who had never attempted to operate an automatic ticket machine before. After spending an excruciatingly frustrating 40 minutes in line, we finally got the tickets and hopped onto the metro. Chloe, like Kate, was pretty much a godsend, since she knew her way around the city, and we just had to follow behind her. We started our day having croissants in the Luxembourg Gardens, watching cute little European children in their cute little European clothes do cute little European things, like play with sailboats in fountains. After the gardens, we headed over to the Pantheon, where Napoleon is buried. We then walked all the way over to Notre Dame, and of course Hannah and I had thought ahead to bring Notre Dame t-shirts to wear while taking dorky pictures in front of Notre Dame. They were pretty much the highlight of the day, no lie.
Chloe then took us through a part of Paris with a ton of modern art, before we hopped on the train to ride back into the center of the city, so we could see the Arc de Triomphe and walk down the Champs-Elysses, gawking at all of the ridiculous stores. For lunch, we headed to one of Chloe's favorite cafes and had fruit smoothies. I obviously couldn't read a single word on the menu, so I told Chloe some basic food items that I like, and she took it from there. I ended up having a mixed plate of turkey pitas, chicken and goat cheese pitas, curry chicken, and french fries. Overall, I was pretty impressed with myself for being that adventurous, and relieved that I liked what turned up on my plate!
After lunch, we then took the metro to Monmarte, the artists' district of Paris, and took in the views of the city from Sacre Coeur, a famous church in Paris. We decided to have crepes...again, and rested for a bit, since we had basically walked our poor little feet off. After our break, we headed over to see Moulin Rouge, which is in a neighborhood in which about 90% of the businesses are related to sex in some way, shape, or form. Finally, we headed back into the center of the city to see the Opera, and then went into the Galeria Lafayette, which is like a mall on absolute wealth steroids. The stores in this mall were totally unreal, with one floor having Prada, Dior, Chanel, and Armani next to each other. Needless to say, we suffered from a bit of sticker shock! For dinner, we met Kate and another of her friends for crepes, then headed back to the hotel to rest. Hannah and I went back into the city to see the Eiffel Tower at night, which was so pretty and a great way to end the day. We spent some time in Kate's apartment, which was GIGANTIC, especially compared to the housing sizes in Spain. After a few hours, Hannah and I took the metro back to our hotel, and were able to enjoy the spectacle of a drunken French man standing on his seat, yelling French phrases until another French guy, with a joint in hand, walked over and started making out with him. It was quite the experience, to say the least...
On Sunday, we woke up and headed back over to Notre Dame to go to mass. Technically, you're not supposed to bring luggage into the Cathedral for security purposes, but we had no other option, so we smuggled ours in. We were on edge the entire mass that we would be kicked out, but that never happened. Instead, the ushers scolded Hannah for taking a picture before the mass began and for having her shoe resting on the chair in front of her. In case you were wondering, I was the picture of perfect behavior, minus the luggage smuggling, so no ushers reprimanded me. Jill: 1, Hannah: 0.
After mass, which we didn't understand, as it was in French, we met with Kate for lunch and had a super yummy and super satisfying meal, topped off with a deliciously rich chocolate mousse. Once we finished lunch, we hopped onto the train, got to the airport, had our flight, rode the Madrid metro, and made it to the bus station with about 4 minutes to spare to catch our bus back to Toledo. It was quite the whirlwind weekend overall, with a lot of time traveling from point A to point B, but it was so so so worth it. It was great to see another country, since I felt that I needed a bit of a break from Spain. However, upon my return, I definitely felt a sense of returning home, and I am confident that now I appreciate Spain even more, since I know its ways, its customs, and most importantly, its language!
Love from Spain,
Jill
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Longest Post in the History of Mankind
Hi, Everyone!
I realize that I have been a bit lazy and not keeping this blog up to date, so now that midterms are over, I have decided to hunker down and fill you in on each and every detail that I can remember about the past few weeks. I was forward-thinking enough to write down all of the major things that happened, so that's pretty awesome on my part. So let's get started!
October 10-12: Sevilla (AKA Seville)
On this weekend, I had my second trip to the Prado Museum in Madrid with my art class. After our brief stay in the museum, Christie, Sierra, and I had some time to kill before our bus left. To be precise, we had about 8 hours to kill in Madrid, since we had decided to take a bus that left at 1:00 AM and arrived in Sevilla at 7:00, since our other option was to arrive in the dead of the night, which wasn't exactly ideal. Thus, we planned to carry our stuff with us the whole time, trekking through Madrid and killing time like it was our job. Fortunately, Hannah's parents were in Spain at this point in time, and were in Madrid that evening. They let us drop our stuff off in their hotel room, and then treated us to dinner! We were all elated since we found this restaurant that had American-esque food, including something pretty similar to chicken fingers, and a burger that probably would have passed American standards. We decided to forage out into the big, bad city of Madrid to find dessert, since when we are casually walking the streets of any city, there always happens to be about a dozen dessert stands. However, when we set out with the intent of finding a delicious dessert, we had absolutely no success. None! We finally settled for buying pints of Ben and Jerry's from a little corner shop and then sharing them in the lobby of the hotel. We felt pretty American, but we then encountered a man who was intent on finding his own Ben and Jerry's, and excitedly asked us where on earth we had found them. It was a pretty humorous exchange, mostly because we never expected to encounter someone who treated us like we had the holy grail of desserts in Chunky Monkey form.
The time came for the overnight bus group to head over to the station and hop onto the bus. Surprisingly, the overnight journey was about as comfortable as any overnight bus in Europe should be. We survived, and that's all that matters. We pulled into Sevilla before sunrise and decided to kill some time (notice a theme) in the bus station before heading out into the city. Thankfully, that was the right decision, since we were able to watch a horrendous storm blow into the city from the warmth and dryness of our bus station table. Once we finally decided to explore the city, we went to the cathedral, which is one of the biggest in all of Europe. It was ridiculous and gilded and domed ceiling-ed and everything else that exists in all of the cathedrals I have seen thus far. The cool and unique parts consisted of Christopher Columbus's tomb being in the cathedral, and climbing to the top of the bell tower to see the entire city of Sevilla from above. After our time in the cathedral, we grabbed some much needed lunch and then an even much more needed nap at the hostel. For our evening entertainment, we made arrangements to go see a Flamenco show, which is what Sevilla is known for. The "theatre" (or whatever the place that has a flamenco show is called) was really small, and we were able to sit in the 2nd row. The show lasted for 2 hours, and every 15 minutes or so, they changed performers. This kept the show really interesting, since everyone had their own specialty in the world of Flamenco dancing. It was such a fascinating show, and it is DEFINITELY one of my favorite things I have done in Spain!
After Flamenco, we grabbed some tapas and called it a night. On Sunday, we went back to the cathedral for mass and then hopped on the bus home. The only bad part of the weekend was that it poured the majority of the time, but that's certainly not the end of the world. A note about the bus ride home: I somehow managed to screw up ordering our tickets, so we ended up sitting in the seats right behind the bus driver. These seats allowed us to see through the windshield, as opposed to just seeing the seats in front of us. LET ME TELL YOU: the driving here is INSANE. The bus was changing lanes and tailgaiting so much, I was fake-braking every time I looked up. Yeesh!
Language School
The Monday after Sevilla, Hannah and I began our volunteer work at a local school for adults who want to learn English. It was so amusing! The class we work with consists of students between the ages of 18 and 50, and they were all so sheepish to speak in front of us! Moreover, when I spoke, I felt like I was speaking unbelievably slowly and using very simple words. When I asked the students I was working with if they understood, I was met with wide eyes and nervous nods. It was pretty clear when they would encounter a word they knew, since their eyes would light up, but at the same time, you could still see the nervousness, since understanding one word out of entire sentence doesn't take you too far...trust me! I could not get over how reminiscent it was of my first day/week/month in Spain. I know that it was evident when I understood and when I didn't, even though I tried to hide it. I was explaining the similarities between the students and my own experiences to my host mom, and she said that it was 100% obvious when I understood and when I didn't, and she could see right through my lies when I claimed to be following the conversation but was actually off in English la-la land. I guess it's reassuring that I have to lie less now (I said less...). One of the most amusing aspects of this language class was the technique used to teach the language. Our first day, they were studying and discussing whether the private lives of celebrities are actually private, along with the historical significance of ABBA...as in ABBA, the most famous product from Sweden, minus Swedish Fish. The students had to complete an exercise, formulating English phrases, and then they had to listen to an ABBA song and put the phrases into the blanks in the song's lyrics. For whatever reason, the song of the day was "The Winner Takes it All", and Hannah, Tommy (another ND student helping out), and I had the hardest time keeping a straight face. It was definitely an interesting experience through and through!
New Bus Experience
At the end of last week, Hannah and I had bought ice cream about 20 seconds before our bus came to take us back to our apartments, so we weren't allowed on. There is another bus line that runs near our neighborhood that other students have used, so we decided to try that out. We knew exactly where we were when we hopped off the bus, but it was after sunset, so it was the slightest bit eerie because of the darkness. We were walking back, and I saw a large blob on the ground, about the size of a silver dollar. It looked sort of like a spider, but I decided that no way could a spider ever be that big. I stepped down next to the blob, AND IT MOVED. WITH EIGHT LEGS. BECAUSE IT WAS A SPIDER. THE BIGGEST SPIDER I HAVE EVER SEEN. I had a bit of a freak-out and scurried forward a few steps. Like I said, it was a bit eerie, so Hannah was already on edge, and decided that my reaction was prompted by a creepy person, so she decided to take off running. I saw that she was running, so I had to run, too! I am sure we looked like complete fools, breaking into a full-speed run in the middle of our normal walk. Once we collected ourselves and figured out the chain of events, it was pretty funny how easily spooked we were. Our hearts were still beating a bit fast as we continued our walk home. We passed near a dumpster that opened and closed when we neared it. As we turned the corner, I assumed that someone would have had to be behind the dumpster, opening it and closing it. Therefore, I was keeping my eye out for that mystery person, just so I wouldn't be caught off guard. I kept looking and looking and looking while we rounded the corner, and then I saw a female body laying in a heap on the ground. Her back was to me, so I couldn't tell how old she was, or what sort of condition she was in. I stopped dead in my tracks and kind of stared, trying desperately to recall the necessary Spanish to ask her if she was ok. After what seemed like an eternity, it came to me. When I asked her, she rolled over toward us, and it turned out to be a preteen girl who was just taking a rest on the sidewalk....how could I have not figured that out myself? Needless to say, between the spider and the discovery of the body in a heap, we booked it home...at least we came away with some good stories!
Alcala de Henares
This past Friday, our school sponsored a trip to Alcala de Henares, a small town a little bit outside of Madrid. Since it was already paid for, we all decided to go. We toured the university, considered to be the 2nd most prestigious university in Spain, behind Salamanca, and also toured a theater where Cervantes had put on some of his plays while he was still alive. Alcala is where Cervantes was born, so we walked past his house, and took silly tourist pictures on the bench that has a statue of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza talking to each other. This trip was short and relatively non-descript, so that's actually all I have to say about that!
Real Madrid Game
This past Saturday, Hannah and I went to our much-awaited Real Madrid game. We got into Madrid at 6:00 for the 8:00 start time, so I figured we would have no problem getting to the stadium. I quickly realized how wrong I was...the metro was absolutely packed, the streets were absolutely packed, the sidewalks were absolutely packed. It was just a sea of people as far as you could see. Coincidentally, the game we bought tickets to happened to be the Real Madrid game against their cross-town rivals, Atletico Madrid (think Yankees-Mets times A BAJILLION). The game was actually at Atletico's stadium, so as we were nearing the neighborhood with the stadium, it was red and white stripes, Atletico's colors, EVERYWHERE. Hannah had boldly decided to wear her Real Madrid jersey, but quickly decided to leave her jacket zipped up to avoid any sort of drunken European confrontation. By the time we waded through the sea of people and got to our seats, it was about 7:40. The opening ceremonies were really cool. We sat behind one goal, and behind the opposite goal, they unfurled three gigantic banners, 2 Atletico flags, and 1 banner that showed a soccer player entering a church...I guess it was sort of like Atletico is the promised land in the world of soccer. Anyways...it was such an electric environment that I was half-expecting some veelas or leprechauns to start out before the game actually started (bonus points for catching that reference!). We noticed that the next section over from ours was filled with Real Madrid fans, and it was also completely barricaded by a wall of police. Not rent-a-cops, like at homecoming dances in high school, but riot control cops, with giant shields, helmets, and night sticks. That was pretty intimidating. Once the game got started, though, it was clear why there was such a strong police presence. Every time something relatively noteworthy happened, one group of fans would start yelling at the other, making obscene gestures. Thankfully it didn't go any farther than that! Real Madrid scored within the first minute, and fortunately the man in front of me was standing, so I didn't actually see the goal happen. It was a really even game, and very physical. What surprised me was that every time there needed to be a re-start, the team without possession would throw or kick the ball away...pretty juvenile, but no one else seemed to mind. There was a red card handed out right before halftime, so Atletico Madrid played the entire 2nd half with a 1-man advantage. They still weren't able to score until there were about 10 minutes left, and Real Madrid answered with a goal off a PK in the final few minutes. Overall, it was just a crazy environment, without a doubt the most dynamic and unified sports environment I have EVER been a part of. It absolutely puts Notre Dame to shame, I hate to admit...
Brownies
Last but not least, is the tale of my brownies. Before coming to Spain, we received the suggestion to bring our families some sort of thank-you gift, and the ideal gift would be something that promoted an activity, like a brownie mix. I followed that suggestion exactly, bringing a box to Spain. The box has been sitting in our kitchen cupboard, completely untouched, mostly because both my host mom and I have to be present to make them, since I don't know where she keeps things, and she can't read the English instructions. Finally, this past weekend, my host mom declared that she would make the brownies if I would translate the directions into English. I did as I was told, but somehow managed to forget that ounces, like cups, is an English form of measurement. I put all of the liquid ingredients into ounces, which was a bit confusing for my host mom, and totally my fault. She thought I meant 1.5 liters of water, when I meant 3 tablespoons...yikes! After talking through a bit of the confusion, I thought she asked me that if she had 1 spoon that held 1.5 ounces, how many spoonfuls would she need, and I responded with saying she would only need one. Then, I left to go study at school for the remainder of the day, and returned to find what appeared to be the brownies, already made. They looked a bit different, but I was willing to give it a try. My host mom said she was nervous that something had gone awry, but I insisted everything was fine. After dinner, she excitedly suggested I cut myself one, and I was excited to finally have something chocolatey from home. I took my knife to the brownies, only to discover that it was like trying to cut a cinderblock. Once I finally managed to cut myself one, I tried it, and found that the taste was correct, but the texture was a bit off. Then came the all-important discovery...my host mom asked me to tell her again how many spoonfuls she was supposed to use, but this time I actually understood her question. She had asked how many tablespoons to use, since she had a set of measuring spoons from a former student. The correct answer was three, as opposed to the one I told her...that explains the hardness of the brownies! My host mom decided to try one, and it was pretty clear she wasn't a fan, and so she pushed them off on my host brother and dad. They didn't appear to be to crazy about them, but they were all afraid of hurting my feelings, so they ate them and commented on how "interesting" they were. Meanwhile, I was afraid of hurting my mom's feelings, so it was the most polite conversation filled with fibs I have ever had. I kept insisting that they turned out exactly how they do at home, and I am sure that my insistence led the rest of my family to think something along the lines of "if this is American food...it's TERRIBLE!" Oh well. All in all, I had most of the pan to myself, and my host mom was continually encouraging me to eat them, almost as if the sooner they were gone, the better!
(phew!) That, in a relatively large and wordy nutshell, has been my life over the past few weeks. I am confident that I will return to my somewhat regular frequency of posts starting now that midterms are over. I am off to Paris in about 4 hours, so I best be heading to bed! Love and miss you all!
I realize that I have been a bit lazy and not keeping this blog up to date, so now that midterms are over, I have decided to hunker down and fill you in on each and every detail that I can remember about the past few weeks. I was forward-thinking enough to write down all of the major things that happened, so that's pretty awesome on my part. So let's get started!
October 10-12: Sevilla (AKA Seville)
On this weekend, I had my second trip to the Prado Museum in Madrid with my art class. After our brief stay in the museum, Christie, Sierra, and I had some time to kill before our bus left. To be precise, we had about 8 hours to kill in Madrid, since we had decided to take a bus that left at 1:00 AM and arrived in Sevilla at 7:00, since our other option was to arrive in the dead of the night, which wasn't exactly ideal. Thus, we planned to carry our stuff with us the whole time, trekking through Madrid and killing time like it was our job. Fortunately, Hannah's parents were in Spain at this point in time, and were in Madrid that evening. They let us drop our stuff off in their hotel room, and then treated us to dinner! We were all elated since we found this restaurant that had American-esque food, including something pretty similar to chicken fingers, and a burger that probably would have passed American standards. We decided to forage out into the big, bad city of Madrid to find dessert, since when we are casually walking the streets of any city, there always happens to be about a dozen dessert stands. However, when we set out with the intent of finding a delicious dessert, we had absolutely no success. None! We finally settled for buying pints of Ben and Jerry's from a little corner shop and then sharing them in the lobby of the hotel. We felt pretty American, but we then encountered a man who was intent on finding his own Ben and Jerry's, and excitedly asked us where on earth we had found them. It was a pretty humorous exchange, mostly because we never expected to encounter someone who treated us like we had the holy grail of desserts in Chunky Monkey form.
The time came for the overnight bus group to head over to the station and hop onto the bus. Surprisingly, the overnight journey was about as comfortable as any overnight bus in Europe should be. We survived, and that's all that matters. We pulled into Sevilla before sunrise and decided to kill some time (notice a theme) in the bus station before heading out into the city. Thankfully, that was the right decision, since we were able to watch a horrendous storm blow into the city from the warmth and dryness of our bus station table. Once we finally decided to explore the city, we went to the cathedral, which is one of the biggest in all of Europe. It was ridiculous and gilded and domed ceiling-ed and everything else that exists in all of the cathedrals I have seen thus far. The cool and unique parts consisted of Christopher Columbus's tomb being in the cathedral, and climbing to the top of the bell tower to see the entire city of Sevilla from above. After our time in the cathedral, we grabbed some much needed lunch and then an even much more needed nap at the hostel. For our evening entertainment, we made arrangements to go see a Flamenco show, which is what Sevilla is known for. The "theatre" (or whatever the place that has a flamenco show is called) was really small, and we were able to sit in the 2nd row. The show lasted for 2 hours, and every 15 minutes or so, they changed performers. This kept the show really interesting, since everyone had their own specialty in the world of Flamenco dancing. It was such a fascinating show, and it is DEFINITELY one of my favorite things I have done in Spain!
After Flamenco, we grabbed some tapas and called it a night. On Sunday, we went back to the cathedral for mass and then hopped on the bus home. The only bad part of the weekend was that it poured the majority of the time, but that's certainly not the end of the world. A note about the bus ride home: I somehow managed to screw up ordering our tickets, so we ended up sitting in the seats right behind the bus driver. These seats allowed us to see through the windshield, as opposed to just seeing the seats in front of us. LET ME TELL YOU: the driving here is INSANE. The bus was changing lanes and tailgaiting so much, I was fake-braking every time I looked up. Yeesh!
Language School
The Monday after Sevilla, Hannah and I began our volunteer work at a local school for adults who want to learn English. It was so amusing! The class we work with consists of students between the ages of 18 and 50, and they were all so sheepish to speak in front of us! Moreover, when I spoke, I felt like I was speaking unbelievably slowly and using very simple words. When I asked the students I was working with if they understood, I was met with wide eyes and nervous nods. It was pretty clear when they would encounter a word they knew, since their eyes would light up, but at the same time, you could still see the nervousness, since understanding one word out of entire sentence doesn't take you too far...trust me! I could not get over how reminiscent it was of my first day/week/month in Spain. I know that it was evident when I understood and when I didn't, even though I tried to hide it. I was explaining the similarities between the students and my own experiences to my host mom, and she said that it was 100% obvious when I understood and when I didn't, and she could see right through my lies when I claimed to be following the conversation but was actually off in English la-la land. I guess it's reassuring that I have to lie less now (I said less...). One of the most amusing aspects of this language class was the technique used to teach the language. Our first day, they were studying and discussing whether the private lives of celebrities are actually private, along with the historical significance of ABBA...as in ABBA, the most famous product from Sweden, minus Swedish Fish. The students had to complete an exercise, formulating English phrases, and then they had to listen to an ABBA song and put the phrases into the blanks in the song's lyrics. For whatever reason, the song of the day was "The Winner Takes it All", and Hannah, Tommy (another ND student helping out), and I had the hardest time keeping a straight face. It was definitely an interesting experience through and through!
New Bus Experience
At the end of last week, Hannah and I had bought ice cream about 20 seconds before our bus came to take us back to our apartments, so we weren't allowed on. There is another bus line that runs near our neighborhood that other students have used, so we decided to try that out. We knew exactly where we were when we hopped off the bus, but it was after sunset, so it was the slightest bit eerie because of the darkness. We were walking back, and I saw a large blob on the ground, about the size of a silver dollar. It looked sort of like a spider, but I decided that no way could a spider ever be that big. I stepped down next to the blob, AND IT MOVED. WITH EIGHT LEGS. BECAUSE IT WAS A SPIDER. THE BIGGEST SPIDER I HAVE EVER SEEN. I had a bit of a freak-out and scurried forward a few steps. Like I said, it was a bit eerie, so Hannah was already on edge, and decided that my reaction was prompted by a creepy person, so she decided to take off running. I saw that she was running, so I had to run, too! I am sure we looked like complete fools, breaking into a full-speed run in the middle of our normal walk. Once we collected ourselves and figured out the chain of events, it was pretty funny how easily spooked we were. Our hearts were still beating a bit fast as we continued our walk home. We passed near a dumpster that opened and closed when we neared it. As we turned the corner, I assumed that someone would have had to be behind the dumpster, opening it and closing it. Therefore, I was keeping my eye out for that mystery person, just so I wouldn't be caught off guard. I kept looking and looking and looking while we rounded the corner, and then I saw a female body laying in a heap on the ground. Her back was to me, so I couldn't tell how old she was, or what sort of condition she was in. I stopped dead in my tracks and kind of stared, trying desperately to recall the necessary Spanish to ask her if she was ok. After what seemed like an eternity, it came to me. When I asked her, she rolled over toward us, and it turned out to be a preteen girl who was just taking a rest on the sidewalk....how could I have not figured that out myself? Needless to say, between the spider and the discovery of the body in a heap, we booked it home...at least we came away with some good stories!
Alcala de Henares
This past Friday, our school sponsored a trip to Alcala de Henares, a small town a little bit outside of Madrid. Since it was already paid for, we all decided to go. We toured the university, considered to be the 2nd most prestigious university in Spain, behind Salamanca, and also toured a theater where Cervantes had put on some of his plays while he was still alive. Alcala is where Cervantes was born, so we walked past his house, and took silly tourist pictures on the bench that has a statue of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza talking to each other. This trip was short and relatively non-descript, so that's actually all I have to say about that!
Real Madrid Game
This past Saturday, Hannah and I went to our much-awaited Real Madrid game. We got into Madrid at 6:00 for the 8:00 start time, so I figured we would have no problem getting to the stadium. I quickly realized how wrong I was...the metro was absolutely packed, the streets were absolutely packed, the sidewalks were absolutely packed. It was just a sea of people as far as you could see. Coincidentally, the game we bought tickets to happened to be the Real Madrid game against their cross-town rivals, Atletico Madrid (think Yankees-Mets times A BAJILLION). The game was actually at Atletico's stadium, so as we were nearing the neighborhood with the stadium, it was red and white stripes, Atletico's colors, EVERYWHERE. Hannah had boldly decided to wear her Real Madrid jersey, but quickly decided to leave her jacket zipped up to avoid any sort of drunken European confrontation. By the time we waded through the sea of people and got to our seats, it was about 7:40. The opening ceremonies were really cool. We sat behind one goal, and behind the opposite goal, they unfurled three gigantic banners, 2 Atletico flags, and 1 banner that showed a soccer player entering a church...I guess it was sort of like Atletico is the promised land in the world of soccer. Anyways...it was such an electric environment that I was half-expecting some veelas or leprechauns to start out before the game actually started (bonus points for catching that reference!). We noticed that the next section over from ours was filled with Real Madrid fans, and it was also completely barricaded by a wall of police. Not rent-a-cops, like at homecoming dances in high school, but riot control cops, with giant shields, helmets, and night sticks. That was pretty intimidating. Once the game got started, though, it was clear why there was such a strong police presence. Every time something relatively noteworthy happened, one group of fans would start yelling at the other, making obscene gestures. Thankfully it didn't go any farther than that! Real Madrid scored within the first minute, and fortunately the man in front of me was standing, so I didn't actually see the goal happen. It was a really even game, and very physical. What surprised me was that every time there needed to be a re-start, the team without possession would throw or kick the ball away...pretty juvenile, but no one else seemed to mind. There was a red card handed out right before halftime, so Atletico Madrid played the entire 2nd half with a 1-man advantage. They still weren't able to score until there were about 10 minutes left, and Real Madrid answered with a goal off a PK in the final few minutes. Overall, it was just a crazy environment, without a doubt the most dynamic and unified sports environment I have EVER been a part of. It absolutely puts Notre Dame to shame, I hate to admit...
Brownies
Last but not least, is the tale of my brownies. Before coming to Spain, we received the suggestion to bring our families some sort of thank-you gift, and the ideal gift would be something that promoted an activity, like a brownie mix. I followed that suggestion exactly, bringing a box to Spain. The box has been sitting in our kitchen cupboard, completely untouched, mostly because both my host mom and I have to be present to make them, since I don't know where she keeps things, and she can't read the English instructions. Finally, this past weekend, my host mom declared that she would make the brownies if I would translate the directions into English. I did as I was told, but somehow managed to forget that ounces, like cups, is an English form of measurement. I put all of the liquid ingredients into ounces, which was a bit confusing for my host mom, and totally my fault. She thought I meant 1.5 liters of water, when I meant 3 tablespoons...yikes! After talking through a bit of the confusion, I thought she asked me that if she had 1 spoon that held 1.5 ounces, how many spoonfuls would she need, and I responded with saying she would only need one. Then, I left to go study at school for the remainder of the day, and returned to find what appeared to be the brownies, already made. They looked a bit different, but I was willing to give it a try. My host mom said she was nervous that something had gone awry, but I insisted everything was fine. After dinner, she excitedly suggested I cut myself one, and I was excited to finally have something chocolatey from home. I took my knife to the brownies, only to discover that it was like trying to cut a cinderblock. Once I finally managed to cut myself one, I tried it, and found that the taste was correct, but the texture was a bit off. Then came the all-important discovery...my host mom asked me to tell her again how many spoonfuls she was supposed to use, but this time I actually understood her question. She had asked how many tablespoons to use, since she had a set of measuring spoons from a former student. The correct answer was three, as opposed to the one I told her...that explains the hardness of the brownies! My host mom decided to try one, and it was pretty clear she wasn't a fan, and so she pushed them off on my host brother and dad. They didn't appear to be to crazy about them, but they were all afraid of hurting my feelings, so they ate them and commented on how "interesting" they were. Meanwhile, I was afraid of hurting my mom's feelings, so it was the most polite conversation filled with fibs I have ever had. I kept insisting that they turned out exactly how they do at home, and I am sure that my insistence led the rest of my family to think something along the lines of "if this is American food...it's TERRIBLE!" Oh well. All in all, I had most of the pan to myself, and my host mom was continually encouraging me to eat them, almost as if the sooner they were gone, the better!
(phew!) That, in a relatively large and wordy nutshell, has been my life over the past few weeks. I am confident that I will return to my somewhat regular frequency of posts starting now that midterms are over. I am off to Paris in about 4 hours, so I best be heading to bed! Love and miss you all!
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