Granada

The second I set foot in Granada, I fell in the love with the city. It's such a beautiful, quaint place with gorgeous buildings. We settled into our hostel, called Funky Backpacker's Hostel, once we arrived Monday morning. First hostel experience! I should've taken pictures but unfortunately I forgot to... We had a nice private, four bed room with our own bathroom too!

That day, Mu-Ping and I followed Rick Steve's Old Town self-guided tour. I swear by Rick Steves now. If you don't know, Rick Steves is the author of a series of guide books, and is AMAZING. He tells you all the good spots to hit up, yummy restaurants to go to, etc. We now refer to him as "our friend Rick" =)

MP & I exploring the city!

We met Stella later that afternoon at La Alhambra, the main tourist attraction and big site in Granada. It lived up to all the hype. Beautiful.


Charles V.

MP and me in front of Charles V palace

Me inside Charles V palace! I look tiny huh?

Nasrid Palace.

La Generalife gardens.

Afterwards, we walked to the Albaicín district, the ancient Moorish quarter of the city to see the spectacular view of La Alhambra.

It's a shame we only had one day and one night to spend in Granada. We were really sad when we had to leave already the next day.. I would have to say that Granada is definitely one of my favorite cities in Spain! But we were off to the next leg of our trip--Sevilla!

Mi corazón siempre estará en Barcelona

I truly was not ready to leave Barcelona after a short month there.. Barcelona deserves much more time than that. Anyway, that last week there I had a lot of time to reflect and think about some of the things I love most about the city, and about Spain in general.

Here are a handful of the many things I love about Spain:

• The people - I LOVE the old people who fill the city, the parks, the benches. There are always old couples just sitting on benches, chatting with their friends, walking their dogs. I also love that there are families everywhere with babies and small children saying "vale." I remember this little boy whining to his dad saying "quiero jugo! jugo!!" (I want juice!!) Cute.
  

Left: A couple of cute old women I saw while walking home from La Sagrada.
Right: I took this while waiting for Mu-Ping.. it was in a park where I saw 2 older couples sitting and chatting while these boys were totally content playing soccer with just the cement and a ball. They were amazing at fútbol!

• The dogs - there are dogs EVERYWHERE in Spain! I love it. Lots of yorkshire terriers, I don't know why... my señora had 2 yorkies :)

• The language - now that I'm not in Spain anymore I miss speaking and hearing Spanish SO much. I finally learned what it means to really immerse yourself in a culture and to pick up a language just by being there, speaking, listening, observing.. it was also interesting to hear the Catalan and to learn a few Catalan words while being in the city. Catalan is such a beautiful language (it's a mix between Spanish and French!). I'm so fortunate that while in Barcelona, I was exposed not just to Castillano but to Catalan as well. Two languages for the price of one!
  

This billboard was everywhere in Spain after the world cup. It says "It's our year. It will be our era." Love it.

• The lifestyle & pride - Spaniards live a much more relaxed lifestyle and it really puts another perspective on what's really important. Life seems to be revolved more around family and friends and less around work. One example is how it's pretty rare to "eat on the go" as we often do in the U.S. (I'm definitely guilty of this) as people view eating as an opportunity to sit and chat with family and friends and to actually enjoy the food.

Enjoying a traditional Spanish meal with Toni, Montse, and friends in Parlava. There was no real occasion but they still went all out and we had a nice chance to sit, chat, and enjoy each other's presence =)

An example of the pride that Catalunyans have.. I must say that after living in Barcelona, I do have a certain loyalty to Catalunya <3

• The buildings and balconies - Gorgeous. I loved the mixture of old and new and especially the balconies, always filled with potted plants, flowers, and the occasional clothesline. Ah, how I miss the clotheslines...

I miss Spain so much I can't even describe it. Hopefully I'll be able to return very, very soon. Until then, I have many fond memories to keep me company. Hasta pronto, Barcelona. <3>

Hasta pronto

Last week in BCN.

I love this city. As I write this entry (on a train to Chichester actually), I ache for Barcelona. I really had no idea what to expect from my time there—what the city would be like, how the people are, what the lifestyle would be like… but every day I was pleasantly surprised and grew to adore Barcelona more and more.

I spent my last week trying to soak up as much as I could and also finally do the “touristy” stuff I never got around to doing. Monday night, I went to see the Opening Ceremony of the European Athletic Championships! Barcelona hosted the 20th opening ceremony for the first time at Montjuic, one of my favorite places in Barcelona. The ceremony was really cool and interesting with women bungee-ing off the walls, and dancers dancing on the stage that was built literally on top of the magic fountain. I can't believe how lucky I've been to be in Barcelona during both the world cup championships and now this!

This was the crowd outside at Montjuic, waiting to get into the opening ceremony!

On Tuesday, I went to see La Sagrada Familia: a church that Gaudí started working on in 1882 but died before he could finish, and now it is STILL under construction with hopes of being completed around 2026. It’s incredible how huge La Sagrada is… I don’t really like how it looks on the outside but the inside is beautiful. I can’t believe how long it’s taking to complete… Mu-Ping and I also got the infamous chocolate churros that day =)

La Sagrada.

Wednesday night we had our farewell dinner with the program and said bye to our site director, Rich and the rest of the students. It’s funny how quickly cliques were formed… I wish I had had more time to get to know everyone but I’m fortunate for the friends I made =)

Thursday night was our last night out in celebration of Noah’s last night and we hit our favorite spots for the last time: Espit Chupitos and George Payne. It’s funny how comfortable I grew to feel in George Payne, the Irish pub where we celebrated the 4th of July and bonded together for the first time. Our favorite bartender was working at Espit Chupitos too. She makes me want to be one ;) We also went to Razzmatazz, what we thought was a 7 story club. Turns out there was just one floor in a giant warehouse, somewhere high up (maybe the 7th floor?). Um, yeah. Kinda sketch and weird. We managed to have our own fun though, as always heheh.

Friday and Saturday were spent revisiting el barrio gótico and el borne, two of my favorite districts in Barcelona, and hitting up the remaining tourist spots like Parque Guell, the Olympic stadium, and Arc de Triomf. We walked through Parque de la Ciutadella, which is huge but really peaceful and nice. We also went back to La Champagnería, where they have glasses of pink cava (champagne) for 1 euro, bottles of champagne for 2 and small but YUMMY hamburgers, called montaditos, with things like chorizo (sausage), and morcilla (this rice-like thing which according to google is pig's blood sausage?! oh well I liked it).

Parque Guell



MP, Stella and me at the Arc de Triomf!


Taken at the olympic stadium, where the European Athletic Championships were being held!

Gotta go, but promise to write more asap! I plan on blogging about all my backpacking adventures very soon, now that I have more time in Chichester.. (I'm currently staying with my Aunty Carol and cousin Rebecca at their home in Chichester, a lovely small town in the UK). AND we're going to Berlin in a week to visit my other cousin Jonathan! Can't wait. Cheers!

Lo bueno, y lo malo.

Mi tercera semana.

(My 3^rd week)

By this time, I was feeling very adjusted to living in Spain, had gotten to know the metro and bus routes better, and was feeling a lot better about speaking Spanish, after having some validation from Spanish class. I also finally started taking the night bus instead of taxi-ing home. That’s one thing I LOVE about Barcelona—it’s public transportation. Not only does it have an excellent metro system, but a really good bus system as well, AND buses that run all night! My first week here I was going out late at night and since the metro closes at midnight on weekdays, I taxied home about 3 times. Way too expensive. But finally I got comfortable enough with the city to try out the night bus and I found one that drops me off one block from my homestay! Wonderful. They should have night buses everywhere.

After work this week I went to SalaMontjuic (outdoor movie night at Montjuic), the beach at Poblenou, near my homestay and got asian food!!! There’s a chain of asian restaurants in Barcelona called Wok to Walk. What does that even mean and why it’s not “walk to wok,” I have no idea. Almost every asian restaurant I’ve seen in Spain has the word “wok” in it. Strange. Anyway it was amazingggg. Mu-Ping and I were in heaven. I miss my veggies!! It’s really been a struggle here to maintain a balanced diet since the food they have consists mostly of seafood and oil. Lots and lots of oil. Oh and bread. Lots and lots of bread. Baguettes to be more specific. So that night at wok to walk, Mu-Ping and I “splurged” on champinones (mushrooms), broccoli, bok choi, cebollas (onions), etc. And I got BROWN RICE. This made my day. Possibly my week.

Miércoles.

Wednesday was...an interesting day. A bunch of people from the program got together to have dinner at a place called the "Gran Foc" for Eric because it was his last day. Their website is www.focyou.com. ha. Then later a bunch of us went to a club called Opium to see Armin van Buuren! I had a lot of fun that night but long story short and minus the details: Andrew and I got kicked out of the club, later had to struggle to re-enter... aand at the end of the night, my purse was stolen. I won't go into the details but I'm fine and over it now. It was crappy though since my phone, camera, ipod, keys, metro pass!, and debit card were all in there. Not to mention my actual purse which I liked. Oh, and my favorite sandals which I was carrying in my purse that night since I was wearing my heels. Anyway, I've recovered. I've since bought a new phone, camera, purse, sandals, had my keys replaced and new debit card sent to my aunt's house in England where I'll soon be arriving! Oh well, material things aren't that important. Life goes on.

The next day, Thursday was spent recovering from losing my main possessions, getting a new phone, etc. And then Friday Donny, Robert, Andrew, MP, and I left for Valencia. I think we were all a little bit disappointed.. It's a pretty big city that's difficult to navigate. We did really like the Old Town and of course the giant museum of sciences and aquarium! Sadly I have no pictures of Valencia (or of this entire week) since I hadn't bought a new camera yet and hadn't uploaded the few photos on my camera that I took that week. Sorryyy, you can visit MP's flickr if you want to see some :)

>>> edit >>>

I took some pics from MP from our Valencia trip! Yay! Take a look:

part of old town.

me in front of the museum of sciences

andrew and me at ciento montaditos. yum :)

Comemos, bebemos, y nos divertimos

Mi Segunda Semana.
(My second week)

My second week in Barcelona was definitely not as eventful as my first week. I had work in the mornings until 1PM and then had Spanish language intensive class from 2-6PM everyday. By the time I got out of class I was usually exhausted and just went home, rested, and sometimes went out at night. Spanish class was interesting. It was at an international school called Enforex, where people from around the world and of all ages came to take different classes. I loved that there, you would meet people from other countries who don’t know English, so both parties were forced to practice their Spanish in order to communicate. In my class, there were a couple people from the US including my friend Andrew from the program, an 18 year old guy, and a 49 year old mother of 3 from New Jersey. But there were others who were from Brazil, Germany, Poland, and Italy. And basically all of them know English! It just made me want to become multilingual even more.

Thursday was my last day of class because on Friday, there was a program-planned day trip to Tarragona. After Andrew and I left class, the German student (a 31 year old midwife/tango dancer) asked if we wanted to go to this seafood restaurant in El Borne district that evening. We did and it was amazing. The line was out the door just to get in. There was a counter full of fresh seafood, you tell them what you want and they cook it for you right there!

The fresh seafood. Crab, prawns, shrimp, scallops, tuna. Soooo delicious.

Robert and me!

Viernes: Tarragona
Friday was our day trip to Tarragona. It was a lot of fun because we got to spend time with others in our program who we don’t see very often. We also got a tour of the city, which is small and built on top of Roman ruins! Later we went to the beach where the water was WARM and played volleyball and a game called 3 Flies Up. So much fun, and by the end of the day we knocked out on the train ride home.

MP and me at the old Roman stadium.

MP and me with our friend Donny. Haha! I had to post this picture because of his face. Silly boy.

That night we went to a bar called Espit Chupitos! In Spanish “chupitos” means shots. I’m not sure what “espit” means… but anyway, there they had about 300 chupitos to choose from in a blacklight list on the wall with names from “harry potter” and “boy scout” (which involved roasting a marshmellow on the bar) to “Titty twister” and “Que ha pasao” which means “what has happened?” Haha! I would love to be a bartender there. If you want to play it safe, you can ask what the shot is. If you’re risky, you just choose one. We mixed it up. A LOT of them involved fire, and some of them we drank while it was on fire (with a straw of course). I think I should start a bar like this in SF… I think it would do well :)

Our first shot. I can't remember the exact name but I remember it was something Diablo. Cool huh??

Sábado: Costa Brava.
Saturday Mu-Ping and I went to a small city called Parlava in Costa Brava where her family-friends Montse and Toni have a house that they’ve been renting for about 20 years. It was such a relaxing weekend. Toni and Montse are such kind and generous people and took such good care of us. We went to the beach with them on Saturday and they gave us a small tour of Costa Brava, driving and then stopping so that we can get out and walk around. Costa Brava has the most gorgeous beaches with the bluest water I have ever seen. We also didn’t have to worry about getting our things stolen on the beach for once. What a relief. Oh and we also saw a nude beach, but from the top of a cliff thing so I couldn’t see toooo much. Still had to take a picture though. Haven’t zoomed in and don’t really want to… haha.

I have seen my fair share of topless women though at every single beach I’ve been to. At first it was a bit strange but I quickly got used to it. I love that in Spain, everyone is so open and there are less pretenses than in the US. So women are topless on the beach. No pasa nada. People don’t stare or judge because everyone here acknowledges that the body is a natural thing. Anyway, the rest of the weekend we rested, finally got a chance to sleep in the next day and went to the beach on Sunday. Again. How could we not?

Hello. I'm alive.

Hi there. I'm so sorry that I haven't blogged in ages! I guess I got so caught up in my life in Barcelona that I just never took the time to write about it and let you all what I've been up to. Anyway, I'm sitting here in Sants Estacio (Sants bus station) waiting for our overnight train to Granada and so, finally, I will blog. I decided it's probably best to recount what I did each weekend and week. Here goes!

Mi segundo fin de semana in España (My 2nd weekend in Spain):

Viernes.
Even though my first week was crazy busy, my first weekend was no different. On Friday, Mu-Ping and I met with our friend Stella in San Sebastian, a city in northern Spain. We had decided to be ambitious and go to 3 cities in 3 days: Friday - San Sebastian, Saturday - Pamplona, and Sunday - Bilbao. Overall, the weekend was a success. San Sebastian is a beautiful city. We met up with Stella and got tapas for lunch. We heard tapas were supposed to be excellent in San Sebastian and they were right! After, we just explored the city, went to the beach, and did some window shopping before catching our bus to Pamplona. Ended up having to wait an hour for our bus with drunk Pamplona-goers dressed completely in white and red, ready for the craziness that is San Fermín.

The gorgeous buildings along the water.

Tapas!

Las chicas! <3

Sábado.

Pamplona was... a bit of a disappointment. We stayed in a hostel/hotel which was decent for the price. We woke up the next morning around 515AM to get to the center of the city to see the bulls run at 7am. But we ended up barely making it and not even getting to see any bulls! I felt bad for the city because it was TRASHED. There were drunk people passed out on the streets, trash everywhere, and you can guess how it smelled. Disgusting. It's amazing that this tradition takes place over the course of 9 days, where each and every day, people come, drink, trash the city, and the city works to clean everything up during the morning/day after to get ready for the festivities to begin at night again. After the run, as the city slowly was cleaned up, I realized it really is a beautiful place as well. And it was amazing that all types of Pamplona locals really get into the spirit of San Fermín--not just the jovenes (young people) but families and the elderly all participated. The entire city was a slate of white and red. So of course, we had to join in :)

This is where we were when we tried to see the bulls. Obviously it was impossible unless we were on a balcony or something. Oh well, at least we had the experience of being there while it happened. And we got to hear the bulls run by!

Like our outfits? Mu-Ping and I bought white genie pants the previous day in San Sebastian just for Pamplona :) Good souvenir, I must say.

That afternoon we went to Bilbao! LOVED IT THERE. Bilbao is such a cute little city and we all felt really comfortable there. We stayed in an amazing hotel for only $40 each for one night. We spent the evening walking around the old town, and got dinner where our cute waiter kept making conversation in Spanish with us. That was until the entire Old Town lost power and we had to finish our dinner in the dark. Such a funny experience because no one really cared. Everyone just continued to eat in the dark. Oh how I love Spaniards. There's a saying that goes "No pasa nada" which literally means "Nothing happens" --it's the Spaniard's way of saying "No worries" or "No big deal." Love it. No pasa nada. Later we walked down to the Guggenheim Museum to see it at night. Beautiful.

The Guggenheim. I think I should make my own postcard.

Domingo.

Sunday we actually went inside the Guggenheim museum and got to see the exhibits and take more pictures of the museum during the day. Some of the exhibits were interesting.. others were a bit of a stretch. I particularly liked one exhibit of these gigantic metal pieces that were free standing and you're supposed to walk through them and as you do, you're supposed to lose your sense of time. It really does happen.

This is the art exhibit that I was talking about. I took this from above but these things were gigantic! You can see how the people were so small!


After, we bused back to Barcelona and were incredibly sad to miss the Final World Cup game. BUT we arrived back at around 10pm and the game was still going! Double overtime! We rushed to a bar across the street from the bus station and caught the last 10 minutes, including a replay of the winning goal. Perfect. There was no deciding, we had to go out and celebrate. And we did. The streets were filled with life! Fireworks, singing, music, chanting, and of course, seas of red. We met up with some friends in Placa Catalunya and also went to Placa Espanya to just be there and experience the festivities, the happiness, the pride. I am so proud to say that I was here, in Barcelona, when we won the World Cup. Yeah I just said we. There's a chant that everyone was singing that night that goes "Yo soy español, español, español!" Not gonna lie, I sang my heart out to that song that night, even though I'm not Spanish. I'm starting to feel like I am a little bit. I already gave part of my heart to Barcelona on this trip. <3>

This definitely doesn't capture the craziness and excitement of that night but it's a glimpse. I'll try to post videos later.

Mis amigos :)