Continuing with Prague

7. The Charles Bridge. This bridge is very famous as it goes over the river into the other side of Prague, where the Prague Castle is, as well as some other famous things. It used to connect the Old Town (where Old Town Square is), to the Prague Castle side. On the Charles Bridge there are tons of different statues and things to see, but the most famous is St. John of Nepomuk, which is the oldest statue on the bridge. It portrays St. John being thrown into the river before he drowned. It is famous and popular to touch this monument on one of the gold plates to bring good luck to you! You are supposed to make a wish while touching it, and luck will come your way.

8. The John Lennon Wall. This wall is filled with John Lennon inspired graffiti and Beatles lyrics. This once served as a source of irritation for the Communist regime, that Young Czechs would use to speak out against the regime. Today, the wall represents youth ideals.

9. We went bobsledding in Prague. Some might call it tobogganing, but it somewhat reminded me of Ozzy's waterpark with the go karts of sorts. I don't know why. It was actually really fun even though I was terrified to go fast. It was not scary at all it was just hilarious. The

Thats a nice picture of me.

I'm so behind on blogging it's actually a joke

Hi friends.

So I am over a month behind on blogging, but thats okay becauseeee it just is. I will tell you all about Prague, a little of Dublin and basically about the rest of the month of March. But let's be honest I dont know if I can promise I'll blog about all of that in one sitting.

So I went to Prague the weekend of February 24-28 with Audrey, Danielle, and Lauren! I had only heard the BEST things about Prague and how it was such a hidden gem basically of all of Europe and it was super fun and really really cool. It totally was this, because I'd say it was very different than all of the other places we went, it was pretty cool because it was in Eastern Europe! Rather than doing typical blogging where I tell you every detail I did, perhaps I will tell you some highlights/interesting things I learned about Prague.

1. The Christmas carol, Good King Wenceslas, originates from this city. King Wenceslas was a king here for quite some time, and to my knowledge he was quite the controversial King. Good King Wenceslas looked out..on the feast of stevennnn (I think those are the words). Today in Prague, one of the main "squares" is named after this fellow, known as Wenceslas Square.

Wenceslas Square

2. The main Square in Prague is known as Old Time Square. It's quite large, and basically the center of life in Prague. It reminded me a lot of Beauty and the Beast, not sure why. There were periods where there was civil war among the people and people did things known as "windowing" and they would literally go up to people and throw them out of windows, specifically, Catholic priests. There are tons of shops and restaurants around this square, and there is also the astronomical clock (which I will explain in a second), and another church with two towers, one called Adam and one called Eve (for the sizes!)

Old Town Square

3. In the Old Town Square is this Astronomical Clock. It is one of the main tourist attractions of Prague, because every hour on the hour (I'm not sure if this happens all through the nights but) it starts ringing, and these little figurines on the clock start moving and dancing and stuff, and there is a rooster that crows, and because its somewhat anticlimactic, they added a man to play the trumpet at the top of the tower. I actually thought it was pretty cool! This is the only astronomical clock still functioning today. There are three parts. The astronomical dial represents the position of the sun and the moon in the sky, a calendar medallion representing the months, and a "clockwork hourly show of figurines". It's really cool because there is a zodiac clock in it and it kind of shows the position of the Earth among the constellations, showing what zodiac the earth is in and stuff. It's COOL!

Prague Astronomical Clock

4. In St. James church in Prague, there is a mythical tail that exists of a homeless man who broke into a church to steal a gold necklace off of a statue of Virgin Mary. The man reached to grab this gold necklace from her to sell and make money, but at that very moment, the Virgin Mary came alive and grabbed his arm, and went back to the stance of the statue she was in before. He tried everything he could to get his arm out, but he couldn't, so he stayed stuck like that through the night. In the morning, the priests came and saw him and tried to do everything to get his arm out, but they couldn't. Finally, they decided they were going to cut the arm off. But not the arm of the Virgin Mary, the robber's arm. Today in the church hangs the "remains" of this individual's arm to warn everyone of what would happen if something similar happened.

Statue of the Virgin Mary

The arm of the robber!

5. The Prague Castle from a distance. It's awesome. It's actually somewhat similar to the Alhambra of Spain because it's a giant city within walls that is situated on a hill above the entire city. It's not actually a castle, its literally a city within guarded gates, with a palace for the President, and a bunch of other buildings and such, and a barbie museum, and a giant cathedral. The current President resides there, but previous kings lived there and guards are there ( like in London! ).

6. The Prague Toy Museum. Dare I say more? There was an entire floor dedicated to Barbies, and it had some of the oldest toys, smallest toys, etc. there. Very cool. There was a University of Illinois Barbie!

Berlin: Aren't we.... relatively close to the north pole?

Alright, here comes the final leg of my longgg European vacation. But, perhaps, my favorite city. I don't think Berlin is a place that people typically choose as their favorite city they visit. I wouldn't say that I felt at home or I thought it was the most beautiful. When we asked our English tour guide why he moved to Berlin, he just said "It's just a really cool city, and hopefully you see that by the end of this tour." And truthfully, we did exactly that. By the end of the first day, I just felt like Berlin was one of the coolest places I had ever been. But I will backtrack.

We had an early flight, but got their pretty quick. It was nice because we flew out of Frankfurt airport on Air Berlin, a legit airline, so we had comfortable seats and it was GREAT! We got to the airport and went to the information desk to ask how to get on a bus to the inner city. She said "I can't help you with that information." I was like I'm sorry, I thought this was an information desk...the only mean person I had met but WHATEVER! We managed to figure out our way into the city by taking a bus and then hopping on the U-Bahn, one of their metros. Their public transportation is kind of confusing because there are two systems, the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn and they overlap and some trains are above ground and some under and its just kind of strange but cool and it goes EVERYWHERE so it's nice. And interestingly, their ticket system is actually an honor system, so you buy a ticket and probably wouldn't get checked ever. But on the off chance that someone working there did come up to you, you'd get a huge fine.

We made it to our hostel and checked in, and were actually REALLY happy with it. We stayed at the "Heart of Gold" hostel, suggested to us by NATALIE! We put our stuff in lockers and claimed our beds in our huge "MEGA DORM" which probably literally had 50 beds within 5 different connected rooms. Surprisingly though, the rooms were HUGE and it didn't feel like tons of people were in there, so it was nice. We were exhausted so we took a nap for an hour before we headed off to go to our FREE TOUR by the "New Europe" company, where we had done our tour for London. We waited for a while, and since it was a Friday, a ton of people were there, but we eventually split up and were put with our tour guide, Mike. At first, we weren't so sure about him. But by the end of the tour, we were actually obsessed with him.

This is going to be a longer post because I saw a lot of really cool things and I loved them all so I want to put them on here. We started at one of the main parts of the city, Brandenburger Tor, which is a huge gate to the city, basically where West and East Germany were split in half. This location played a huge part in history of World War 2, as well as the cold war, when the country split in two. Brandenburger Tor is at the top of Pariser Platz, one of the famous plazas in Berlin.

At the top of Brandenburger Tor, there is a statue of a goddess Victoria, who has her head slightly turned to the side, pointing right at the French Embassy. This is kind of a joke about the French, because Napoleon had stolen this statue, and the Germans eventually stole it back. So when they put it back up, they kind of rebuilt it so that her head would look over the French Embassy, so it was always watching over the French. Also on this plaza was the famous hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby.

After here, we stopped and our tourguide pointed out the Reichstag, the big government building basically equivalent to Capitol Hill in the United States. Unfortunately, it was closed so you couldn't go in to the top of the dome. They hadn't told the citizens why, but he thought it was because of terror threats. Next, we went over to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Because Berlin was the home of Nazi Germany, it was only right that memorials to victims were put in this city. The memorial is very interesting, and was designed to basically be "whatever you want it to be". Below the memorial there is a museum that you can go into for free, that kind of goes more in depth of the lives of some of the Holocaust victims.

As you start on the outside, the big cement blocks are flat on the ground, but they get taller and the ground goes down, so the blocks get bigger as you walk through it. It's really big, and its really, really cool. The blocks are made out of the finest cement in the world. It was actually really incredible. Right after visiting this Holocaust memorial, we went to a place nearby that actually basically signifies the EXACT opposite of the Holocaust, the site where Hitler's underground bunker was where he hid and eventually committed suicide. It was really interesting to hear the story of Hitler's last couple of days, of when the Soviet soldiers surrounded Berlin and he was hiding in the bunker, still pretty much believing that the Nazis were going to win the war. Eventually however, he wed his longtime girlfriend, kind of a symbol of him realizing his life was over, and then together they both committed suicide. And here is the spot where Hitler died:

Where arguably the most controversial man in history died, there is now... a car park. It really says something, looking at the Holocaust Memorial basically a block or so away, and seeing what a huge memorial was made to the millions of victims that died, and then seeing where Hitler eventually died. Very powerful. There is a small sign that says "THIS IS WHERE HITLER DIED", that was paid for by the residents of the nearby apartment buildings. Basically, they got sick of people coming to ring their doorbells and asking "Is this the spot where Hitler died?" So, they gathered money to put up a small sign so people would stop bothering them.

Moving on, we walked over to a building that is a perfect example of Nazi architecture. This building is still in use today, and I believe it was one of the centers of the Gestapo during the Nazi regime. It's interesting because there is a huge painting on this building that is supposed to display what life in a socialist world looks like. Everyone is equal, and everyone is happy. On the ground, there is a big panoramic photo of one of the protests that took place at this building, showing the truth of socialism, and how people really were not happy at all.

After we were at the Nazi building, we went to part of the old berlin wall. This wasnt a huge part, but throughout the city there are several parts of the Berlin Wall, which is so cool. Basically there were kind of two walls, and in between the two walls it was known as the Death Strip. It was almost impossible to even try to cross without getting killed. VERY few people ever made it across, because there were guards watching at all times. 

After this part of the Berlin wall, we went over to Checkpoint Charlie. It was one of the most famous parts of the Berlin wall where people could cross from one side to another. It was where a guard stood to watch over people. Today, there is a memorial standing over it with an American guard looking into the Eastern part of Berlin and a Russian guard looking into the West part of Berlin, in the American sector. *(West Berlin was divided into the British, French, and American sectors). 

We went on a couple other places on our tour, but we later went to the location in Berlin where there was the burning of the books. Today there is a memorial, but basically, during the Nazi regime, the Nazis began burning books written by Jews, Gypsies, and any other controversial person or about any controversial topic. Across the street from this location is Humboldt University, where Einstein went to school. Members of the staff and students from the University ran into the library nearby and starting taking books out and bringing them to burn them. Now, to apologize for basically ever, they sell used books outside of the front of the University as a tribute to the events of what happened. 

The memorial of the Burning of the Books

Humboldt University

After this, we went over to see another memorial for Holocaust Victims. The memorial is really cool because it's basically open to the air, and there is a giant circle in the ceiling, so when it rains, rain can come down into the memorial. The memorial shows a mother holding her dead or dying son, it's very moving. 

After this, we went over to Museum Island, which is literally basically an island that has several museums on it. Some of these are really awesome museums with tons and tons to see. We ended our tour over here with our guide basically explaining what happened that eventually led to the Berlin wall coming down. There had been talks of opening up the wall, and there was a meeting going on earlier in the day basically talking about what was going to happen. Nothing had ever been settled of exactly when things would start moving forward, but there was going to be a press conference that night that was going to be broadcast worldwide because everyone wanted to know what was going to happen, because it was such a huge center of problems in the past. (This was 1989). Basically the meeting said that East Berliners were going to be able to cross to West Berlin but they'd need proper documentation, which was going to be made almost impossible to get. Before the press conference, the press secretary was given a note of what happened at the meeting, but he didnt have a chance to read through it thoroughly, so he didnt really see that the berlin wall wasn't actually going to come down. He babbled for about 45 minutes of the press conference about nothing, and eventually a journalist raised their hand and asked what was going to happen with the Berlin Wall. He looked taken aback, fumbled through his papers, and read aloud the note about people being able to cross the Berlin Wall. Another person raised their hand and asked when it would be effective, and he had no idea because he was not prepared, and he said "As far as I know, immediately." Everyone ran out of the room and across the wall to the other side of West Berlin, where a huge party awaited everyone celebrating with food and alcohol, tons of things which were never allowed in East Berlin in the first place. 

FRANKFURT: Home of the Frankfurter.

Hello again.

I am trying my best to catch up on blogging because I am still so behind, but I have 3 cities more to go before I'm caught up. So here we go. We only spent a day in Frankfurt before jetting off to Berlin, but it was fabulous! We got on our plane to London, but actually while we were at the airport, we ran into another girl in our sorority who is studying abroad in East Anglia, England. THIS WORLD IS WAY TOO SMALL!

TIME OUT--I FORGOT ONE OF THE BEST PARTS OF PARIS!
When we were in Paris, I was standing outside of a random souvenir shop when all of a sudden I hear.. "KELLY ROJEK???" I look up and see Marley Leitner, a girl from my high school, walking toward me. She is studying abroad in another city in London and happened to be in Paris at the same time. Audrey and Karrah rolled their eyes at me, because of course, I would see someone that I know in another city on another continent. Funny times.

ANYWAY, we got on our plane (Ryanair..sucked), and made it to Frankfurt in no time, but unable to yet again understand the language. Luckily, a lot of people do speak English in Germany, so it wasn't hard to figure out how to get a bus back to the town of Frankfurt, where Audrey's aunt, uncle, and cousin were going to pick us up! The bus ride was only about an hour, and it was a pretty view on the way there. We made it to the stop, and Audrey's family was there waiting for us! They took us back to their house, where we were able to have the comfort of staying in a home again. You kind of forget what it's like to be in a comfortable place where you don't have to worry about all of your stuff getting stolen or waking people up. It was so nice. We all ate lunch together, which was delicious, and I discovered the BEST German bread I've ever tasted. After, we all hopped in their car and went for a drive along the Rhine River up into a couple nearby towns, to go see them and to go up to some castles!

Coast of the Rhine River

 I must say, even though my pictures aren't the best (it was kind of a cloudy day), the coast of the Rhine River and the cities around it were EXACTLY what I picked Germany to look like. It was just so.. GERMAN like. I don't even know how to describe it. It was very pretty, very very pretty. We took a ferry to the other side of the river (my first ferry ride, might I add. At least to my knowledge!) and we drove around on the other side of the river. We went up to a few castles, which had awesome views of the cities and the Rhine River.

You know, a castle in Germany

The castles were gorgeous and the views were beautiful as well.

After we drove around, we went back down to actual Frankfurt to go to a typical Germany restaurant with some German food. For some reason, I was dead set on eating a Frankfurter in Frankfurt. Perhaps because this is where they originate. Unfortunately, I didn't try one, but I did have some awesome German food. It was a crazy German restaurant, but so cool. They were famous for their apple wine, which was very interesting tasting but very good. It was not very sweet, but I was expecting it to be. It was rather carbonated. But here is what I ate..

Ummmm yeah haha, a huge plate of sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and some pork thing and sausages. I couldn't even finish a quarter of this or I would have exploded. It was delicious! I don't think I could handle eating like that all the time, however, but it was really good. After, we walked around the town of Frankfurt for a bit, and saw the new more modern area with stores, and the older area, which is the home to a HUGE market at Christmas. Just looking at it made me think that it was Christmas.

Sorry my picture is not of the highest quality, it is hard to get my camera to focus without using a flash, which makes pictures better in the dark/at night! After, we went back and chatted for a while, drank some tea, and went to BED! It was nice to sleep in a house and feel safe and in a REALLY NICE BED.  But, me and Karrah had to get up the next morning at 5 am to go to BERLIN, for the final leg of our trip.

Mind the Gap between the train and the platform

The title of this blog post was probably the phrase I have heard the MOST in a 3 day span since I have been in Europe. Every time we were on the London tube, before every stop we would hear, in a harsh British accent, "Mind the Gap between the train...and the platform." There were even shirts you could buy that say "MIND THE GAP". I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Buckingham Palace

So I will make these blog posts shorter instead of telling you every single detail of my life. So we got to London on Sunday night and had to make our way to the hostel. LUCKILY IT WASN'T HARD BECAUSE EVERYONE SPOKE ENGLISH!!!!! It was definitely a nice refresher from Paris where I spoke 0 French. We hopped on "the tube" and made our way to our hostel, and in the train station.. I spotted first thing... DIET COKE! Everywhere in Europe is coke light so diet coke was a refresher. Holla. We made it to our hostel, called the "White Ferry Inn", above a bar in the neighborhood of Victoria. It was a cute hostel with a bunch of amenities, so we liked it. We stayed in a 21 person dorm.. which was fun, especially with the fact that it was mostly guys and all of them snored and smelled. How nice. But it actually was totally fine. We went to bed early because we were exhausted so we could spend the next couple days seeing everything we wanted to!

We slept in a little bit and finally got up and got ready, and decided we wanted to go see a musical in London. We went over to Oxford and Reagent Streets, the center of shopping in London, to check out the area and take out money, and spotted the apple store there, so we went in to use their internet. We picked a musical we wanted to see.. ironically, Chicago, and decided to go over to find out how much tickets were for day of shows. First, however, we stopped at "Pret", a cheap place to eat, suggested to us by a friend. I'm sorry, but they need one of these somewhere in Chicago. So cheap, and the food is fresh and delicious! They had a bunch of stuff to go, so we took it and went to eat in a nearby park.

The park we ate in for lunch

So afterward, we hopped on the tube and went over to this area known as Covent Garden, where the theater was where Chicago was playing. This tube stop had either lifts to take to the top, or 193 stairs. Audrey and Karrah didn't see the sign that said 193 stairs, so they started walking up, and I was like .. "umm guys you know this is 193 stairs right?" and they were like "oh.. no". But we kept walking anyway. We went to the theater and kind of forgot it was Valentine's Day, so we had to go back the next day for half price tickets. So, since we were in a really nice shopping area, we decided to do some shopping around and exploring for the day, and we would go sight seeing the next two days. We shopped around and bought some things, and hopped on the tube to go over to the famous bakery called Hummingbird Bakery. Again, we forgot it was Valentine's Day, so the line was crazy, but we managed to get a table outside and grabbed some cake and I got COLD FRESH SKIM MILK (because they had it in LONDON). It was fabulous.

Vanilla cake with frosting and my freezing cold skim milk

After, we went back to our hostel to get ready, because we were going to meet up with Danielle, Lauren, and Caroline, three girls I hang out with a lot from my program, who were also in London. We went on the "Pub Crawl" which turned out to be a complete joke and the guide was weird and creepy and 28 and asked Karrah if she did drugs.. Not really okay. So we went home for the night and went to bed.

The next morning we woke up and went to go see the changing of the guard! In the winter it is every other day, so we caught it on a day it was happening. It was a decently long ceremony, with a marching band and stuff, and the changing of the guard actually takes place right in front of the palace outside of the gates. We basically hung on the gates to see everything happening, but it was so cool to see! I was surprised because I thought the guards would be wearing red but instead they had on grey. Sometimes, the marching band is different because they invite bands from all over the world to play. Apparently, one time, there was a band that played the Darth Vader song while the Queen was pulling up to the palace. Not really okay! haha. There were also some horse drawn carriages roaming around the area that looked like they were driving important people, so I was interested to see who was inside!!

After changing of the guard, we grabbed some lunch and ate it at our hostel, then went over to Westminster Abbey to take a tour, because it's beautiful and I hope I get married there someday. But, we couldn't go in without taking some of the famous photos in the red telephone booths, and pictures of Big Ben and Parliament first!

Hello

Anyway, we went inside Westminster Abbey and did the audio tour, which was sooooooo cool. It is has a really cool history. Tons of famous people are buried there, that is where all of the coronation ceremonies are held, as well as most royal weddings and funerals. Thus, Kate Middleton, who once was just a common person, who happened to meet a prince, will now get married in Westminster Abbey. Sigh. It was beautiful and I am just so fascinated by all of the royalty stuff that it was really cool to see and learn about it's part in the British Monarchy. After we took the tour, we decided to stay for the 5:00 mass they had, which was a REALLY cool thing to do. If you ever go to London, definitely do it because it has beautiful singing and we got to sit right up with the choir. It was really really cool. After, we went back to our hostel and got ready, and went over to Covent Garden again to go see the musical, Chicago! I had never seen Chicago, the musical, nor the movie, but I thought it was fabulous! They had really good actors and the singing was phenomenal. It was a great story, and I loved it! We went home and went to bed so we could get up and go explore more on Wednesday!

We woke up the next morning for a day completely devoted to site seeing. We hopped on the tube and went over to the Tower of London, a famous medieval castle/building/city, where prisoners were kept before being beheaded on Tower Hill, or inside the tower of London. It was also a castle for royals for some time. We went on a free tour, guided by the Yeeman Warders, who are people who dress up and live with their families AT the Tower of London. Kind of strange, because it is really creepy and people were killed there, but it's also really cool. Every night, there is a curfew of midnight, so no one can leave or enter the Tower of London after midnight.

Tower of London!

Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded there, inside the Tower of London, while many of the other traitors were taken up on the nearby Tower Hill, executed publicly, and their head was carried around for all of the town to see. As the Yeeman Warder told us, when the traitors were being brought up to be executed, they had to pay their executer so they could have a "clean" death, basically. Most of the stories that we were told were of people being beheaded, which was not so nice but whatever. We made it to the chapel inside of the Tower of London, where we were finally told a happy story of a woman sneaking her husband, who was to be executed the next day, out of the Tower of London! She went to visit her husband often, and usually brought ladies in waiting. On the eve of her husband's execution, she went with a bunch of ladies in waiting to his cell, and brought extra clothes. He dressed up as a woman, and was able to sneak out, and the woman faked her husband's voice pretending he was there. She told the guard not to disturb him as he was praying and going to bed, and he was able to escape and they lived happily ever after. What a nice story! When the tour was over, we went to the place in the Tower of London where the crown jewels are held. It was SO cool to see because there were crowns and diamonds and plates and tons of stuff from so long ago. I am so fascinated by the royal family. There was also a video of Queen Elizabeth getting coroneted, which was soooo cool to see!

After, we went over to the meeting point for our free walking tour of London! Our tour guide was the one on the brochure, so we were pumped. The free tours are great because you basically just tip between 5 and 10 euro at the end, and you get to see all of the main sights of the city and tons of different stuff. We saw EVERYTHING including Wellington Arch, Hyde Park, Green's Park, St. James's Park, Trofalger Square, Buckingham Palace, a bunch of free museums, where Prince Charles lives, Gentleman's club that apparently Hitler belonged to, Charlie Wilson war rooms, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and more. We don't go inside them, but we basically get a history of the city and see tons of different stuff, so it was PERFECT! Surprisingly, a few people have been able to break into Buckingham Palace. The best story we were told was of a drunk homeless man who broke through a window, and when that happened, the guard looked at the alarm system going off and thought "there is no way someone is breaking in, it has to be malfunctioning", so he shut the alarm system off. The man wandered through the palace, dripping blood everywhere from his hand breaking the window, gorged himself on dog food, and made his way to the queen's room, where he got in bed with her. She stayed up talking to him and he seemed fine, but asked her for a cigarette, and she said, "let me call someone to have them bring you one." She did, and the guards were able to arrest him, and the rest is history. However, at the time it was not illegal to break into a royal building (including the royal palace), so he could only be charged with stealing dog food. Needless to say, now it is a crime to break into a royal building.

After the tour, we went back to our hostel to get ready to go meet up with our friend Abby. Abby was a senior when we were sophomores who was in our sorority, who studied abroad in London and ended up moving there for her master's degree and to work there! We went over to her apartment, which happened to be literally across the street from our hostel (truthfully, across the street). We chatted for a while, hopped on the tube and went over to Covent Garden for dinner. It was delicious and wonderful to catch up with friends, and its weird to think that soon enough we will all have friends all over the country/world. Strange! We went out for drinks after to a couple bars, including one called Bar Academy. At Bar Academy, you basically can order anything, and they have the MOST intricate, beautiful looking, decorative drinks. It was so cool! But strangely, when we were walking in, the bouncer pointed to me and said "You all are fine but I need to see YOUR ID." I think that was the first time in my life someone thought that I was the youngest person of the group, especially when I was the 2nd oldest.. funny times.

We went back to our hostel to go to bed for 4 hours before we had to hop on a bus out to London Stansted to take a flight out to Frankfurt! The end of my time in London with diet coke and skim milk, but I enjoyed it as long as I possibly could. 

Oui la sen?

Truth be told, I have no idea if the title of this blog post is how you spell it, but basically it asks "where is the river?" in French. Thus begins my blog post of the first leg of my 10 day vacation in Paris, the city of lights! Where to even begin (truthfully, because the city is so enormous, I almost don't even know where to start). To begin, our school has two spring breaks, one was February 11-20, and the other is in April. I have never heard of "Semana Blanca" which was our first vacation, so I kind of think it was just an opportunity for our school to give us more time to travel. Which I'm not mad about, so moving on. For our vacation, I was going with Karrah and Audrey to Paris, London, and Frankfurt, and from there Audrey would stay with her uncle while Karrah and I continued onto Berlin. I will finish my posts about London, Frankfurt, and Berlin tomorrow, but for now, I will tell you all about Paris.

We began our trip Thursday night/Friday morning by taking a midnight bus to Madrid to fly out to Paris at 7:30 am. I'm getting kind of tired of taking the 5 hour bus rides, but if thats how I get around, thats how I get around. We got to Paris around 1030, and we had to navigate our way to our hostel knowing 0 French. Literally, barely even 5 words. It wasn't too hard, and Audrey had looked up directions/transportation to get to our hostel, so it was perfect. It actually didn't take too long either, which was nice! We grabbed a map and made our way to our hostel, "Hotel Gerando". Surprisingly, it ended up being pretty nice. Basically every hostel in Paris was extremely expensive and not that nice, so we kind of just did the one that looked the best to us with the most stuff for the price, and we ended up having a 3 person room with our own bathroom and balcony, so it was perfect. It was a nice change up from the huge dorm hostels and stuff, and we had a key to our room so we could mostly leave our stuff where we pleased. The beds were packed to smitherines though, so we were all basically on one bed, but whatever. 

We got to the hostel and put our stuff down, freshened up, and we were off to go explore Paris! At this point, we had not realized how extremely large the city is, so we looked at the map to where the Eiffel Tower was, and it was decently far from us, because we were to the northeast of the city by Moulin Rouge, and the Eiffel Tower is in the southwest. In Amsterdam AND in Madrid, the distance between far things on the map was actually not that big, so I didn't think it'd take forever to get down there. Ummm, yeah that was definitely not the case because it took us over two and a half hours to walk there. HOWEVER, we actually got to see a lot of cool and beautiful stuff on the way, and kind of got to know the city on our own at first. We were ALSO so lucky because the day was absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! It just made Paris seem like everything I imagined it to be and more, because it was so beautiful. We took a scenic route and got to see some of the extremely famous shopping in Paris, and some beautiful beautiful buildings. We got closer to the Eiffel Tower, and saw this massive ferris wheel (which I don't remember the name but I think it is pretty important). Audrey suggested we go up in it to get a great view of the entire city, including the Eiffel Tower. So we did, and it seriously was SOOOO beautiful! Paris is a gorgeous city. Absolutely beautiful and enchanting!! We spent a little while in the ferris wheel, and then got off to continue on down toward the Eiffel Tower! We crossed over the river, and took pictures, and after a while FINALLY made it the Eiffel Tower. It was SO COOL! AND GORGEOUSSSS!! It's even cooler in person than in pictures. It sounds cheesy, but it seriously is so beautiful and I love it and would go back there in a second and live in the Eiffel Tower. We walked around there for a bit, and debated going up in the tower, but the line was ridiculous and we were starving, so we went over to a nearby cafe and grabbed some lunch. I got delicious french onion soup... fabulous. Afterward, we went back over to the Eiffel Tower and laid down on a bench and chatted and enjoyed the view of probably the most famous structure on the planet. I still can't believe I saw it in person, it was so cool. There is also a huge park behind it, and we were talking about how it would be really cool if the French government put something up so you could like.. "check in" where you were from, and you could see all of the different places in the world people were from who were also at the Eiffel Tower at the same time as you. It was really cool to see because you could tell there were people from so many different places all basking at this amazing structure. Very, very cool. We had planned to go over to the Louvre later that night, because it was free at 6:30, and I will take anything that is free. Oh by the way, at this point I had also bought my mom a 20 inch Eiffel tower that you can take apart, so for the rest of the day I walked around holding the eiffel tower because it didn't fit in my purse, and I had on my money belt around the neck thing, and my camera out. Needless to say I looked like a huge tourist, but I enjoyed it.

So, we walked on over down through some of the town, grabbed coffee, and continued walking. We walked past some government buildings, and actually ( I think this was Friday ), we saw a huge group of people talking and chanting and stuff with Egyptian flags, and I think that the Egyptian President had just stepped down or was talking about resigning, so it was kind of cool to see a demonstration going on in another country. Anyway, we kept walking over to the Louvre, over the bridge with locks on it where you put a lock on the metal, engrave your initials in it, and throw the key into the river, and through a park toward the Louvre. We walked past this man who was playing 5 instruments and singing, one of the coolest things I've probably ever seen. And, he was SO GOOD at it!! 

Anyway, we walked through the park when Karrah and I decided we wanted ice cream more than anything in the world. We walked around forever and couldn't find any, so we bought some candy and we all sat by one of the gorgeous fountains in between the ferris wheel and the Louvre (it's a giant park between the two). We chatted and talked about how thankful we are to be here (thank you mom and dad :)), and eventually, we decided to get up and mosey on over to the museum. UMMMM IT IS SO COOL! I was obsessed with the Da Vinci Code book and movie so it was unreal to see it in person. And, the inside of the museum is literally so beautiful also, it's a building important in its own because it is just so pretty and extensive. We walked around and saw the Mona Lisa, paintings by Boticelli and other artists, and saw some ancient Egyptian stuff, and Greek statues. Very very cool museum! I wish we had more time there because there is so much to see and it is an enormous museum, so I will have to go back!

At this point, my feet were killing me (and it was only day one). We went to go to try figure out the metro and how to get back, and on our way, we actually found ice cream, ironic. Whatever so we bought it (don't judge), and made our way over to the metro. We made it back up to the north of the city to our hostel, and grabbed some groceries from a nearby supermarket, and sat in our room and just munched on some stuff before going out to meet up with Christine, a girl in our sorority (if youre reading this and dont know her), who is studying in Paris. Funny story in the meantime, however. So we had a balcony that you could go out on, and looked into the building/rooms across the street from us. Umm, lets talk about how that night, our lives were actually from the sitcom friends, because we had ugly naked guy across the street. Literally, a man walking around his room with red lights on, completely naked. He waved to us. How funny. It was hilarious.

We left, and made it over to this bar called Cafe Oz to meet up with Christine, this girl Courtney who was the President of her sorority and was in Business Council with me, and some of her friends in her program, and my OTHER friend Michele who was staying with one of the girls in her program. Luckily, Karrah and Michele both have BBM and we could bbm eachother and chat to figure out plans and stuff. Heres another funny story. Natalie, one of my roommates for next year and one of my best friends (incase you didnt know her), also from my sorority, was going to be in Paris that weekend with people from her program. However, we didn't exchange phone numbers or anything before hand and she didn't have internet so we really didn't have any way to communicate. We were standing in line waiting to get in, and I randomly turned around and I saw Natalie walking toward us. Ummm so of course, my immediate reaction was to run to her and jump on top of her, while we were all screaming and crying and making fools of ourselves. WHATEVER!! All of them were going to the same bar with us, and we all made it in and the same jumping and screaming happened when I saw Christine and Courtney and Michele!! It was really really fun and the music was fabulous and it was super fun! 

We made it home after a while and had to take a cab because the metro stopped running and it was WAY too far to walk. The next morning we woke up and packed up our stuff, because we were going to go to stay with Christine for Saturday night. We finally made it over to her apartment, but not without problems of course. We took the metro, which is kinda confusing because the stop we had to get off at, Gare de Lyon, is HUGE!!!!!! There were like 10 exits, and so we took the #2 because we thought thats what Christine told us to take, but it brought us to this 2nd level parking lot which was hilarious because some random guy was following us because he thought we knew where we were going but we didn't. Eventuallyyyyyy we finally made it to Christines. We dropped our stuff off, then headed over to the Catacombs! If you haven't heard of them, you should definitely check them out, it's really interesting. Basically, the city of Paris had this cemetery called the Cemetery of the Innocents, and people started getting diseases from it and it smelled gross, so the city had to do something to relocate the bones/bodies of people, and they built this intricate underground system and put all of these bones there in this cool array of patterns and stuff. VERY COOL! It took a couple hours, and then afterward, we grabbed lunch, and then headed over to the Arc de Triomph and the Champs de Elysees, the most famous street probably in the world, with extreme shopping and it is overall just absolutely gorgeous. We took pictures of the arc de triomph, which is HUGE. You could fit probably like 10 of the Wellington Arch in London inside the Arc de Triomph, its absolutely huge and gorgeous. We wandered down the street and stopped in some stores, including Louis Vuitton. I am going to have to save my money to buy myself a real Louis Vuitton bag from Paris because the store was so cool, and I just really want one now. They are gorgeous bags and I WANT ONE! Unfortunately, it started raining on our walk, and I hadn't brought my umbrella because Christine said she didn't think it'd rain. LIES. Kidding, oh well, so we walked back in the rain, but actually had been planning to stop in the Longchamp store to make sure we could all buy a bag for ourselves. After we searched for it for quite some time, we finally made it, looking like wet dogs. The sales people did not seem extremely interested at first because we were all sopping wet. We all made purchases though, and I am extremely happy with my new color bag, I LOVE ITT! We hopped on the metro and went back to Christine's to go out to dinner for one of her friends, Monica's, birthday!

Someone had made reservations at this local fondue place, but it actually took forever to get over there because the city is so huge, so we missed our reservation by half an hour, and because the restaurant was so small and popular, they gave it away. It's okay though, because we went to this nearby italian restaurant that ended up being absolutely delicious, and I was fine with it. I got pesto gnocchi, the combination of the two best things on the planet. The people who went out to dinner were: Me, Karrah, Audrey, Christine, Courtney, Michele, Jamie (a girl from Christine's program), Monica (birthday girl, from Christine's program), Corey (one of Monica's friends, studying in Milan), and Torey (from Christine's program). Monica, Jamie, Corey, Torey and Michele are all in the sorority Sigma Delta Tau, so it was a huge reunion and it was a ton of fun. We headed back to Christine's apartment, and got crepes on the way ( I probably should have waited to try one when I was actually hungry) but it was the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. With nutella and bananas.. I was refreshed of my DYING LOVE for bananas. The most wonderful things on the planet. 

We got back to Christine's and got ready and hung out for a while, before going out to this bar called the Frog and the Princess. It was a pretty cool, chill place, but it closed at 2 am, which is rare for any place in Europe (at least in places I have been to!). But, we were all exhausted anyway, so we tried to hop on the metro to go home, because the metro usually closes at 2. We missed the LAST metro by probably 10 seconds, we watched it pull away. So, whatever, we decided it wasn't TOO far, we would walk back to Christine's. Her and Courtney said it was probably 20 minutes away. NOT true. It took us over an hour to walk home, and this absolutely destroyed my feet for the rest of the 10 day vacation. ITS OK THOUGH because it wasnt that big of a deal and it was cool to see more of the city at night, it was just really really far. It was fun though. We got back and went to bed, and Karrah and I made beds out of coats for us to sleep on. It was surprisingly really really comfortable.

We woke up the next morning, and planned to go over to the Eiffel Tower to go up in it this time and take pictures. Unfortunately, the day was really gloomy, and we decided it wouldn't really be worth it to go up and not see anything. So, we took some pictures (despite the clouds), and then headed over to Les Du Falafel, an extremely famous falafel restaurant in Paris. I had never eaten falafel, but it was SO DELICIOUS. They are basically these fried chick pea balls, and you eat them in a pita with cucumber and cabbage and hummus and it is just the most wonderful thing in the world. We stood in line for like 30 minutes because it was prime lunch time and everyone goes there because it's super famous and delicious, but it was so worth the wait. Most of our time in Paris was focused around eating, but whatever. Afterward, we went back to Christines, and then headed over to Notre Dame Cathedral for a free organ show and to take pictures. It's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL cathedral. It is so huge and intricate, I cannot even imagine how long it would take to build a place like that. But, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is still being built, so I kind of can, but not really. It's just absolutely huge and sooo pretty. It was very cool to see. After, we went over to this nearby island and got ice cream (OK I PROMISE NO OTHER CITIES REVOLVED AROUND EATING) at this world famous ice cream place, which was delicious, of course. Then, we headed back to Christine's because we needed to hop on the train to get to the airport on time. Our flight was at 9:50, and we left at about 7:00 to get there in plenty of time. However, the train line we needed to take split in two and had two different destinations depending on the train you were on. One train would go to the airport, but the other went to some other random location. We hopped on the train and were pretty positive we were going to the right place, when the train was stopped at the last location before the split, and the train said that it was a service going to _______ (don't remember the name). We all looked up and were like.. this is not right, so we grabbed our stuff and tried to run off the train, but the doors shut on us, and we had to go to the next stop, which was the first one in the wrong direction. SO, we had to get off the train, and take it back a stop, to then hop on the new train. We got on the next train in the other direction and were waiting on the platform for the new train going to the airport to come. A couple trains came and went by, and we were waiting, when I looked behind me to 2 platforms over, and saw a screen say that the train currently there was going to CDG, which was the airport we needed to go to. I looked at Audrey and I was like "Audrey I think that's our train", because the monitor didn't really show the platform you were supposed to be on. She went and stared at the monitor, and then turned around and goes "I don't understand how that happened". There was no way we could run to the train in time with our luggage, so we moseyed on over to the correct platform yet again, and had to wait another 20 minutes for the next train to come. We FINALLY made it to the airport and had to SPRINT to our flight, and made it right before they called us to board. TALK ABOUT A JOKE. Hilarious though. It was so funny. 

Our plane was pretty empty, so we all got window seats. And here is the best part.. when asking for what beverages we wanted, Karrah asked for a Coke light, because that's what they have in basically all of Europe. The flight attendant replies, "Actually it's diet coke, is that okay?" I HAVE DREAMT ABOUT DIET COKE FOR 2 MONTHS!! Finally I was going to be reunited with it for a few days in London.

That's all for now, I WILL BLOG tomorrow about London, Frankfurt, and Berlin!! Hopefully Prague too but I can't make any promises seeing as this post was already extremely long. I'll do my BEST THOUGH I PROMISE I AM SO BEHIND and I am so tired and sick and I think my clavicles are broken from when I went skiing but its okay because I LOVE TRAVELING AND EUROPE!!! 

I'm still so far behind

I'm going to have to backtrack quite a while to the beginning of February when I went to Amsterdam. Now, I realize this what quite some time ago so please don't judge me, but this will also be a rather quick post and then I can get to my extremely long vacation which will probably take me 5 hours to write a blog post about. So. I left off going to Madrid the last weekend in January. Karrah Castillo, Jake Wyffels (a guy in my program) and I had planned to go visit Amsterdam the first weekend in February. We bought our tickets and got ready to go and yada yada. I have the most supreme paranoia so when I was going to meet them at the bus stop to take the bus to the bus station (at 11 pm at night) I literally stood in this huge lighted area with my backpack on the front of me and it was just really a paranoid thing to do because their bus stop is off of this street called "Camino de Ronda" and its normally a REALLY busy street but unfortunately there is a ton of construction going on so no one is really over there anymore and thus it is scary. Anyway, I met them at the bus stop and we had to make it to the bus station to take a 12:30 am bus to Madrid because our flight was very early in the morning. The 5 hour early morning bus rides are not my favorite, and this was the first one I took. I hadn't been able to sleep much so that kind of sucked but oh well. So eventually we got to Madrid after a longggg 5 hours, and we had to wait for the metro to open at 6 am to take it all the way to Barajas. Little did I know that the metro trip would end up taking almost an hour to get there, but we were fine overall on time. We got to Barajas and checked in and went through security and hopped on our Iberia plane.

Now, I have taken Iberia a few times, including my group flight to Spain, but I wasn't expecting the extremely extremely cramped space that I would be sitting in. So, our plane was set to land in Amsterdam at about 11:30 am. I'm on the plane sleeping a bit, not worried at all. I wake up at about 11:00 thinking oh you know we should be landing soon. 5, 10 minutes pass, and nothing, no sign of us landing. 11:30 comes, and the pilot comes on the intercom and says we should be landing in about half an hour. I'm thinking, alright you know half an hour later than scheduled, not too big of a deal. However, you would think that we would kind of be descending into our destination and our ears would be popping, but rather it seemed to me and everyone else on the plane that we were just kind of chillin in the air. The pilot finally gets on the intercom and tells us we're going to have to land in Brussels because of the crazy winds in Amsterdam and only one runway being open. The intercom didn't really do the pilot justice, especially with his Spanish accent, so no one could really understand what he was saying. Basically though, it sounded to just about everyone on the plane that we had to find our own transportation from Brussels to Amsterdam. The two cities are close, but it would still be a three hour bus ride. Everyone, including myself, was freaking out at this point, and the Iberia staff wasn't really doing anything to answer any of our questions. I whip out my "LETS GO EUROPE" book (thanks Katie!) and I flipped through all of the pages to find Amsterdam transportation, and find a bus and train that go there. People in surrounding seats asked me if I had found something we could all take, and I looked at the map and tried to figure out the relative location incase we were forced to take a bus or something there. But, truthfully, if that was the case I would not have been a happy camper because I am pretty sure that wouldn't be legal to not bring us to the destination we paid for. Anyway, so we land in Brussels but not exactly what I would call a smooth landing, considering I thought I was going to die on the plane. We just kept going toward grass, no where near anything remotely resembling an airport. I kept saying "Are we seriously about to land in a field?" but luckily, we landed in the MOST remote area of the airport haha. The pilot then says "Well we don't know if it is going to be an hour or 3 hours before we are able to take off or what, so we will keep you guys on the plane until we know." The plane was extremely hot and uncomfortable, so that was fun. We all complained but then the airline gave us free water and then eventually we took off and got to Amsterdam at about 3 pm, a few hours later than planned.

We wandered around the airport and attempted to figure out how to get to central Amsterdam so we could make it to our hostel. Unfortunately a lot of the signs were in Dutch, so it was fun trying to figure it out. And, their train system is really strange and doesnt really have signs saying which train is which so we had to guess. And, we couldn't pay with cash which was really annoying.

ANYWAY, we eventually made it to downtown Amsterdam and had to wander around and try to figure out how to get to our hostel. I had written down directions but they weren't really that helpful, so we had to stop in a hotel and ask for a map and eventually asked how to get there. We finally got to our hostel, which was a Christian hostel in the middle of the red light district, so a slight contradiction I must say. We checked in and got our stuff ready and went to go explore the lovely city of Amsterdam.


It was pretty inevitable that we would walk through the Red Light District to go places and stuff, and I mean it is a tourist attraction so it was something we needed to see. It was very strange. Prostitution is legal there, so there were women in windows all through the few streets that were the red light district. We took a bunch of pictures and stuff of some beautiful churches and the buildings which are actually really really cool. Since we had gotten there later though, we didn't really have time to do that much, so we kind of walked around and explored and got some dinner and walked around some more and called it a night. The Red Light District at night was literally crazy. We walked through it to get back to our hostel and I kept saying that I felt like I was in a fun house because there were tons of people EVERYWHERE with a lot of bright signs and it was just kind of strange. A good experience for sure, but very odd.


The next morning we got up and went to the old Heineken factory for a tour. The actual brewery was moved outside the city, but it is a really cool set up and it was extremely interesting. They had all of the history of Heineken, how it is brewed and stuff, and then more modern stuff going on with their company. The cool thing was we got to taste the wort before it was turned into beer, so it was pretty cool to see that. After, we grabbed some lunch and went on a canal cruise. Amsterdam is famous for being built around TONS of different canals, so it was actually a beautiful city set up around all of these gorgeous canals. It took as all over and gave us some of the history of Amsterdam, so it was really really cool to see. Later, we went to the Anne Frank Huis. I had no idea before I went to Amsterdam that it was there, but I found out from some people when I was trying to figure out what to do there and stuff, and people recommended it. Luckily we bought tickets before, but the line was hugeeee, so we didn't have to wait. The house was done sooo well, it was really sad but really interesting to see at the same time. I hadn't known the entire story of everything, so it was really cool to see how the family was hiding in a big annex with another family, and find out what happened to all of them. Anne Frank's father actually lived and went back and eventually published her diary and set up the Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam. It was very cool, and definitely my favorite part of Amsterdam.

Sorry, this was not so detailed because we didn't have tons of time to do stuff there, but I am moving on to blog about our super long trip because I have tons to talk about and little time to blog before I leave yet again!

Well I suck at blogging

Well okay, I apologize because I am probably the worst blogger in the history of someone studying abroad. I am really sorry because I haven't actually updated anyone on what I've been doing. Rather, I have been giving you updates on the Top 10 list of Spain. But, it's time I will tell all of you what I spend my time doing.

So the last thing I think I blogged about (about what I do in Spain) was going to the Sierra Nevada. I apologize because that was like 3 weeks ago. So, I had class the second week, and then I made plans to go to Madrid the last weekend of January. I had already been there from when we visited my sister, Katie, who studied abroad in Spain, so I kind of had a general sense of what was there and where things were and stuff. I went with Audrey, Danielle Smith, Lauren Pusateri, and Caroline Argall. We took a bus at 7 am on Friday to Madrid. Sidenote - the bus system is really popular in Spain, which is actually pretty cool because it's cheap and efficient (kind of). Anyway, we left at 7 am to get to Madrid at about noon. This was our first of many 5 hour bus rides to Madrid, because most flights go out of Madrid, so in the future (including this weekend) we have to leave at midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning to take a really early flight on Friday morning. ANYWAY back to Madrid.

On the 5 hour bus ride to Madrid, we have a half hour stop at a bus station on the way there. The bus station we stop at seriously is like the Wildfire of Spain. Not really but, it's so nice, its pretty close. They have pastries and sandwiches everywhere and all of this stuff, kind of strange but SO nice, especially compared to bus stations I have seen in my lifetime. Anyway, we got to the Madrid bus station at about noon, and figured out how to get to the metro stop that was right by our hostel. The metro is such an efficient system, I wish they had something more like it in Barrington, but that's probably not really realistic. We have the El in Chicago but its kind of sketchy, in my opinion. Anyway, we took the metro (cautious for pick pocketers), and got to our hostel at about 1. Our hostel was in the PERFECT location, right in between Palacio Real/Plaza Mayor and the museums, kind of directly in between the two. We couldn't check in until 1:30, so we waited in one of their common rooms for about half an hour. We checked in and were able to go to our room, which was this..




Audrey and I stayed in 8 person room, and Danielle, Lauren, and Caroline stayed in a different 6 person room. There was a girl from New York staying with us, a couple girls from France, a couple girls from Italy and a girl from Ireland. Very interesting to try to communicate when your only common language is Spanish. It wasn't hard, just kind of funny. Anyway, we got all settled in, and then decided to go get some lunch, the menú del día to be exact, because it's such a good deal. I said it before but you get an appetizer, a main course, dessert, beverage, and pan (bread). The girl from New York in our hostel came with us, and we got a delicious meal. Actually to be completely honest I got scared when our main dish was coming out because I got fish, but it wasn't just a filet of fish, it was literally a GIANT slab of fish meat with the skin half on. I gagged, but tried it and it was delicious. For dessert I got an orange. By the way, I forgot to mention in my last blog post that another of the main food groups in Spain are oranges. I have eaten more oranges in the last month that I have in my life in total. They are grown here and are SO DELICIOUS, so I eat 3 a day. So tasty.

After we ate, we walked over to Plaza Mayor, the GIANT Plaza in Madrid. There are a lot of "plazas" in Spain, which are literally just like big squares but have restaurants and seating and a lot of people go there. Plaza Mayor is probably equivalent to 8 plazas in Granada put together.



GIANT. I love it though. We walked through for a while, and took lots of pictures. There are a ton of people in plaza mayor, including some very interesting street entertainers, including this fellow..



Please tell me what this is.... it's a goat type aadvark animal in a confetti suit. I don't understand what some people do. After, we walked over to Puerta del Sol, kind of the giant collection of streets and stuff in Madrid, which is in between Plaza Mayor and the museums. We walked around there for a little bit and went to some stores around there, and then went and stopped and got a café. We planned our trips to the museums around the times that they were open to the public free. We waited at a café and then went over to Museo del Prado, which is one of the most famous museums in Spain. A ton of people went while it was free, so there was a line but it moved really quickly. Museo del Prado has a lot of works of Diego Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, and more! There are a ton of beautiful paintings there, so it was great to see. One of the most famous ones is "Las Meninas", which is a painting of an infant of the royal family with some ladies in waiting helping her. It's HUGE! I learned about it in my art class freshman year of college, so when I went and saw it this time it was really awesome.

We walked around the museum for a long time, and then we went back to our hostel to rest for a little bit. We got up and got ready and then went over to to a nearby plaza to get dinner. The prices in Madrid are kind of expensive, but we got sandwiches and drinks. After, we went back to the hostel to have some drinks with other people staying in our hostel, and we met some French guys staying in our hostel, which was hilarious. We hung out with them, and then it was one of the guy's 21st birthday, so we went with them to some nearby bar which was kind of a club but bar. It was really really fun. We went to a couple other places, and then went home. Fun times.

The next morninggg we woke up and got ready. The hostel had free breakfast which was basically toast, and corn flakes with warm milk. Not my favorite but whatever. We decided to go on a free walking tour of Madrid that started at 11:30. We went for about half an hour and then decided to not do it because we had already seen half of the stuff that he was going to show us, and we needed the time to go do some other stuff. The guide was really cool, but we just didn't have the time. We walked over to Palacio Real to go on the tour there. Palacio Real is the royal palace of Spain. It's HUGE and BEAUTIFUL.



We took tons of pictures, then went inside and got a student discount (win). Since it was so cheap, we decided to rent these giant phone type things that were kind of an audiotour. You look ridiculous because it looks like a giant phone, but it was actually really cool. The Palacio is HUGEEEE and soo beautiful. There is so much decoration everywhere, and tons of famous paintings. It's literally gorgeous. I wouldn't mind marrying into the Spanish royal family, just saying. The tour took a couple hours, but it is so worth it. After, we walked over to a nearby restaurant and got lunch (at like 330), we were LITERALLY starving. The food was delicious. We knew we were going to go over to the Reina Sofia at 6 pm because it was free, and lunch took about an hour, so we went and walked around and went into some shops and markets. At about 6, me and Audrey went over to the Reina Sofia, which is a really interesting museum, because most of the exhibits are a lot more modern, AND you are allowed to take pictures (which is strange because I've never heard of that in a museum), but it was so cool.


Guernica by Picasso


Guernica (above) is one of the most famous paintings by Picasso and it's in the Reina Sofia. You had to stand behind a thing to take pictures of it, but it was awesome. Audrey and and I went up to this other exhibit that was temporary, but it had some of the COOLEST things I had ever seen. There was a room with a photo of different people, all from ages 1 to 100. It was awesome. There was another exhibit in another room with the front page of newspapers from ALL over the work from September 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks. It was so cool. Very moving.

We left and went back to the hostel and rested, and then went and got some dinner at this random place, but it actually turned out to be delicious. I got tortilla española, which is kind of like this egg quiche thing with onions and potatoes. So tasty and delicious. After we went and drank at the hostel, and then went out for a while.

The next morning, we went to EL RASTRO! El Rastro is this GIANT flea market, and it was pretty close to our hostel, so that was awesome. They have sunglasses, clothes, purses, jewelry, shoes, and tons of stuff everywhere. It is a pick pocketer's paradise, but it's so cool! I got a pair of sunglasses and some scarves. I want to plan my trips around stuff so I can go back to El Rastro because there is tons of stuff I want to go back and get. Everything is super cheap, but it's so cool. After, we grabbed some lunch, and then went back to the hostel, grabbed our stuff, and then got to the bus station to take our bus back home. On the way home our bus probably stopped 10 times, who knows why, but it went by quick, and we got home. OH! Best part, I forgot, our bus driver ran into a sign. It was hilarious. Anyway, we got home safely and life was good.

This is all for now, I will blog again later today about my week and then Amsterdam. Preview: weirdest city ever.

Love you all!

Top 10 Things I've learned to love (or hate) about Spain!

With a new culture comes change and learning about different things people do that might be completely different than what you are normal to. I've been here for about 3 weeks now and there have been plenty of things that are different than the United States. Some, are genius, and some just don't even make sense. Here we go.

10. LA SIESTA
This is a very popular tradition in Spain, especially in Andalucia (the Southern region of Spain). EVERY DAY at about 2:30, the entire country stops, and goes home to eat lunch with their family and then take a nap. Can you say genius? I wouldn't complain if I was told to eat and then nap immediately after. However, because the entire country (or literally in Andalucia and Granada) COMPLETELY stops. Almost every store is closed, so even if you had to run some errands after your huge meal, you couldn't, because nothing would be open. El Corte Inglés is usually open, which is this giant shopping center/mercado/Macy's type store, but besides that and restaurants, there is pretty much nothing open. Everyone is on the streets heading home to eat or heading to a restaurant. Then after you eat, nap. Then go back to work, or your work is over for the day. Win.



This is the real Corte Ingles in Granada!


9. PAN
The food groups of Spaniards include bread (pan), ham, and wine. Bread is served with every meal. For breakfast, people typically eat a tostada (piece of toast or half of a baguette toasted) with butter and marmalade, or they eat a cracker type cookie. For lunch, it depends on what is made (and this is usually what my señora makes), but it is often ham or pork, vegetables (which usually is kind of a mix with some little pieces of ham in it) and a big basket full of pan (bread). I'm not complaining, my señora is a fantastic cook. But I think I have been offered bread at every single meal. When you go out to eat, tapas usually have some bread with them, or they bring bread out and it's usually free. Or, the tapas are bread and ham, and some sort of cheese. Again, delicious. Or the bocadillos (DELICIOUS sandwiches), are made on huge baguettes with a small amount of ham and cheese. Lots of bread, and lots of ham. If you look at my Madrid pictures, there is a picture of a ham store. These are very plentiful throughout Spain. "Quieres pan?" meaning, "would you like some bread?" is probably the phrase I've heard most since I've been here.


8. JAMÓN
The next food group in Spain is ham. My host mom is wonderful and I told her I like chicken and seafood alot so she has made it a decent amount, but typically, everything has ham. Some teachers try to trick you and think Spaniards eat a lot of seafood. This is not true. They eat lots of ham. (I'm kidding most people do eat seafood! Ham is just really plentiful). The most delicious type of ham I've ever eaten, and is extremely common here, is jamón serrano. This is cured ham, which is cut from a specific portion of pig, and then smoked and cured for a really long time. It's phenomenal. Jamón serrano is usually on sandwiches, on pizza, in peas and other vegetable mixes. Sometimes tapas are a slice of bread with jamón serrano and cream cheese, something else, and it is absolutely fantastic.

I would put a picture here but if people don't like meat I don't want to scare them.

7. SLEEPING IN


My host mom laughed when I told her that my mom wakes up at 5:15 every morning. People here sleep in until at least 8:30 everyday, even people with jobs. Most things don't really start going until about 930 or 10 every morning, so it's okay if people sleep in late. I am the first one up in my house on Mondays and Wednesdays when I have class at 9 am. I wish I could be sleeping too.

6. WARM MILK


This is probably one of my least favorite things to talk about because thinking about it makes me gag. I absolutely LOVE skim milk. Except, I am really picky about it and it has to be ICE cold. Not JUST cold -- IT HAS TO BE FREEZING or I won't drink it. However, most people in the United States are aware that milk at the stores is refrigerated at all times. When going to the supermercado here, the milk is simply in cardboard containers or plastic containers sitting on store shelves. Not refrigerated. I'm sorry but I'm not going to drink it. It is also rather thick and creamy tasting, another reason why I will not be drinking it. My host mom keeps it in the fridge, but most people I believe do not. I will be skipping out on the milk while I'm here.


I know it's the culture, but GAG. I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend but I just can't do it.


5. LACK OF CENTRAL HEATING


Although Granada is in Southern Spain, about 40 minutes from a beach, the lack of central heating in MANY Spanish homes does not make it seem like the city is near a beach. Many apartments, including mine, do not have central heating. Either it is quite expensive (utilities are really expensive here!) or the buildings are too old and don't have it. Because my apartment, and the apartments of many others, do not have it, I think I am yet to feel truly warm since I have been here. It's okay because you learn to wear a ton of layers and socks and a robe and walk around holding blankets, but it is a hard thing to get used to. Most people who don't have central heating have space heaters to keep the rooms warm, but it is still pretty cold. The nice thing is that even though I say it's freezing, its in the low 40s, so realistically that is nothing compared to Illinois which is always freezing. It's pretty warm so we're lucky, but usually it comes off as being freezing.



4. BRASEROS


With the lack of central heating comes one of God's greatest gifts to the Spanish people - braseros. Although we don't have one (they are actually kind of dangerous), we sometimes make makeshift ones, and everyone who has one raves about it. Basically a brasero is a table with a space heater underneath it, covered by a massive blanket. You sit at the brasero/table and put the blanket over you and get warm. Unreal. You can sit and do homework or eat or have coffee or whatever and you are so warm. We don't have one, so my host mom puts a giant blanket over the space heater and we take parts and sit underneath it. It's dangerous, but the warmth is unreal.



3. TAX IS INCLUDED IN EVERYTHING AND YOU DO NOT TIP WAITERS


Talk about the smartest idea ever. Tax here is called VAT, and whenever you see prices on the menu, that is exactly what they are. The only time they charge you more in a sneaky manner is when they bring out pan and the pan is not actually free (bread). Happened once, and now we know to always ask if the bread is free. When you see 10 Euro at a store on a pricetag, you can whip out a ten euro bill and not have to worry about rummaging through your purse to make up for the extra thousand taxes that tend to find their way onto American receipts. Also, waiters here are paid a full time salary. Tipping is not a common thing to do unless the bill is about 10-50 cents off and you don't want to wait for the change. I LOVE NOT HAVING TO TIP!! It makes everything so much easier. SO smart.

2. TAPAS GRATIS


This is a tradition in Granada. Tapas are common ALL over Spain, and they are basically just small appetizers or portions of things that you get and can share with other people, eat before a meal or whatever. Granada is the only place in Spain where tapas are FREE! Yes that's right FREE (gratis). Whenever you order a drink (which can usually include soft drinks), you get a tapa. If you are with someone else, they get a tapa as well. The type of tapa can vary, and every time you order another drink, the tapas get better and better. One place we went to gave us a piece of baguette with cream cheese and jamón serrano (delicious). However, another place gave us burgers and fries. Some places you get to choose your tapa, but most places they just bring you some. The deal is a drink and tapa, between 1,50 and 3 euro (usually around 2). Total. Win. You can make a complete meal out of tapas by ordering drinks and getting tapas and never having to pay to actually eat dinner. Phenomenal. I love Granada.



1. LIVE TO WORK OR WORK TO LIVE?


People in Spain say Americans live to work, but they work to live. Most people here don't have crazy jobs where they are working all the time trying to make money. Most people tend to have pleasant jobs that they can make money to live on, and have what they need and enjoy life, but don't go crazy trying to make as much money as they possibly can. It's an interesting way to view life, because people here take their time walking places, take their time looking at things, and in general, have a much slower pace of everyday life. They aren't in a rush to get somewhere or aren't trying to be the very best person at this or that. They are simply content with living, and don't need to purchase tons of things to be happy. They are perfectly fine going for a walk by the river or watching TV in the afternoon instead of going to buy the most expensive thing. They enjoy getting drinks with friends and laughing and eating all day, and don't need to work all the time. Coming here made me remember what it's like to have time to yourself and not be busy all the time. And I kind of like it.