What is this strange language?

This past weekend Anne and I traveled to Paris to visit Dani and Kaitlin, who have been studying there since September.  This is what our day of traveling looked like on Thursday:

Woke up at 6amàtook a city bus to the bus stationà5 hour bus ride to Madridàmetro to airportàhung out in the Madrid airport for  4 hoursà(delayed) flight to Parisàbus into cityàmet up w/ Dani and Kaitlin at 9pm

Meeting up with Dani and Kaitlin was awesome as usual, and seeing as it had been a whole 2 weeks since we had seen them we were starting to feel the withdrawal symptoms. They took us to their building and we finally got to see where they have been living all year. Needless to say, their rooms are small (lovingly called their “shoeboxes”).  We had a pretty low-key night after such a long day of traveling. 

Strolling through some Parisian gardens

Friday morning we got up and took a walk around the area in which D and K live (the 14^th for those of you who know Paris).  They took us through this cool cemetery (which was actually really pretty and not depressing and dark like cemeteries tend to be), through some gardens, past countless “French-looking” buildings, by there school and down their favorite street.  I couldn’t get over the fact that everything looked just like what I imagined Paris to look like.  I’ve realized since I’ve been in Europe that it is really hard to have an accurate picture in your mind of what a place is going to be like.  It seems that everywhere we have been has been different in one way or another from how I pictured it to be, but this was not the case in Paris.  Every apartment building had pretty balconies, the cafes had florescent signs and there was an abundance of wine. 

 

Just your average street corner

The cemetery 

After stopping for a light lunch (crepes, of course) the four of us headed back across town to meet some of D and K’s friends at an agricultural fair.  Now, why would we go to an agricultural fair in one of Europe’s biggest cities? This fair is a big deal, apparently, for it only happens once a year and it is a chance for all the little Parisian children to see horses, cows and donkeys and for their parents to buy wine, cheese and honey from all different regions of France.  We spent most of our time in the Provinces of France building of the fair wandering around and tasting local food and drinks from all over the country.  It’s hard to convey how crowded and big this place was, but I’ll just say that I definitely would have gotten lost in the cheese section if it weren’t for my French-speaking friends. At one point we stopped to watch some bread-makers in action.  As we watched them pull a fresh loaf of bread out of the over we realized that our lives would not be complete without it.  I have never tasted better bread in my life.

 

Some of the colorful treats being sold 

Just one of the many wine stands

This doesn't even capture how good that bread was

Every Friday night the Louvre is free for people under 26, so naturally we took advantage of that opportunity.  We only had about an hour and half in the museum, but we figured that there was no possible way were going to see everything so we may as well just focus on the most famous pieces.  Among other things, we saw the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa and my personal favorite, the Winged Victory.  It was really breathtaking to stand at the bottom of a huge staircase and look up at this gorgeous sculpture.  When I saw it I thought of a documentary that I watched with my dad last summer about the Nazi invasion of France and the scramble to save all the art.  The Louvre employees had to evacuate as much of the art as they could, including this statue, and getting it safely down the stairs was one of their biggest challenges.  Actually being in the Louvre really made me appreciate how difficult a job that was! 

Outside of the Louvre–Picture courtesy of Kaitlin Bailey (Thanks Kaitlin!!)

The Winged Victory

Venus de Milo

Before going to Paris I had heard that the Mona Lisa was really a bit of a disappointment. While it was awesome to see such a famous piece of art in person, it does make you wonder why certain painting become famous and others do not.  I think the Mona Lisa is one of the smallest paintings in the entire museum. 

 

She has a whole wall to herself

The free museum night ended at 9:30 so we left to go to a really unique wine bar.  The main part of the bar is in what looks like a tunnel–arched ceilings and walls made out of stone.  We got there around 10:30 and it was already packed (so different from Spain!), but we fought our way in and found some standing space.  This bar was the ultimate French experience: Edith Piaf playing, wine bottles everywhere, drunk French people singing and a strong b.o. stench! After hanging out there for a while we made out way to another bar where we ordered 6  beers (Paris is so expensive!) and eventually headed back home. 

 

Saturday morning we got up and took a stroll through a weekend market.  One vendor gave us a taste of these garlic olives and some tomato slices.  The sunshine and the delicious food made for the perfect picnic conditions so we bought some olives, cheese, tomatoes, bread and headed up to the Sacre Cour.  Still in the mindset of a small city, I asked Dani if we could walk since it was such a beautiful day.  She just laughed and told me I could walk if I wanted to get there four hours later. So Paris is a big city…

 

Weekend market

After a few metro rides and walking up too many stairs to count, we arrived at the top of one of Paris’ only hills.  It was truly and incredible day.  The sun was shining, we had a great view of the city, and there were musicians everywhere. 

 

Sacre Cour

Our lunch!

We decided to take advantage of the sunshine so we headed over to the Eiffel Tower.  We climbed the steps to the middle level, which is as high as you can go by stairs, and had some pretty cool views of the city in the sunlight.  You have to take and elevator up to the top level and by the time we got up there the sun was setting.  I’m not sure you can beat seeing the sunset from the top of the Eiffel Tower.  We finally tore ourselves away and headed down, just in time for the lights to come on! The whole Tower flashes all of it’s lights ever hour on the hour, and we still had a couple flights of stair to go when the lights stated flashing.  Dani and I ran down the rest of the stairs and made it out in time to get a sweet view of the Tower.  I don’t think we could have timed our trip any better: we go to see the ET in the sun, see the city at sunset, and see the ET again with all of it’s lights turned on and a really pretty deep blue sky behind it.  

Eiffel Tower by day

Group picture! 

Lots of sunset pictures–taken from the top of the Tower

Eiffel Tower by night

Saturday night D and K and two other GU girls took us to one the restaurants they get to eat at every week (I’m not even going to try to spell the French name). I had a peach kir to drink, a delicious bleu cheese appetizer, a lamb entrée and a creme brulee dessert.  Needless to say, it was amazing. 

After diner we headed back to D and K’s building armed with a couple of beers each.  To make things interesting, we decided to bring out a little American college culture and play Edward 40 Hands (but not with 40s!).  For those of you who are a little removed from college life (won’t name any names) or have yet to go to college, here is a brief description: you have a beer duct-tapped to each hand and are limited to doing only what you can do with beer can hands until you finish them. [Note to my younger audience: DON”T GET ANY IDEAS!]

 

Once we all regained the use of our hands, we headed to a so-called Disney bar that D and K had heard a lot about, but never been to.  The idea is that you go to this bar, have to draw out your drink order (all named after Disney and cartoon characters) on a whiteboard, play trivia games and sign Disney songs.  The kicker is that all the drinks are served in baby bottles. Creepy, I know.  But anyway, the bar did not live up to expectations.  Instead of having Disney trivia, the bar tenders played clips of children’s French songs and each table had to guess what they were. We were all useless.  The idea of a Disney bar is great, but the execution just wasn’t quite right.  We left in time to barely catch the last metro.

On Sunday we walked around the Latin Quarter and headed to a really cool bookstore across the street from Notre Dame called Shakespeare and Company.  This bookstore was a little slice of heaven for me. The sell some new books, but they also sell tons of used books, and the whole upstairs is a library.  While there are different sections (fiction, history, science, etc.), there were also just a ton of books stacked on every stair and in every little nook of the store available for purchase.  The clutter was what made this bookstore so appealing. It’s the type of place you could spend hours in. You could go there with no idea of what you want to read and come out with a gem.

After leaving the bookstore, reluctantly, we walked across the river to Notre Dame. This church really is impressive.  It’s amazing to think that such a large and intricate building was built in the 13^th century. 

 

Notre Dame

It took a lot of skill to stand on something that small

Lovely 

We then made our way to another one of the restaurants that D and K eat at often. This time it was a crepe place and the meal was delicious, once again.  I had an egg and steak crepe for lunch a nutella and walnut crepe for dessert.  It made me very happy.

After lunch we walked along the Seine to the Musée d’Orsay and spent about an hour and half there before it closed.  We got lucky because the first Sunday of every month is museum free day, so we didn’t have to pay! We saw a lot of Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh, among many others.  I really liked this museum, for it was much more manageable than the Louvre (although there was still a ton to see) and it had some very interesting (and famous!) paintings. 

 

Musée d'Orsay–the building is an old train station

Monet– Les Coquelicots a Agenteuil

Van Gogh–Self Portrait

We then made our way down to see the Arc de Triumph, which is absolutely huge.  After hanging around there for a bit we finally went back home.  We got Moroccan food for dinner and then surprised Kaitlin with a birthday cake (courtesy of Mama Bailey) and some champagne (her birthday was 2 days after Anne and I left, so we decided to do an early b-day celebration).  We went out and got here a birthday drink and after some serious birthday craziness (and some awesome videos!) we made it back home. 

Arc de Triumph

 

Birthday celebration

Unfortunately on Monday morning all four of us woke up with food poisoning from our Moroccan dinner.  That kept us holed up in the room for the better part of the morning and by the time we were feeling better Anne and I had to leave.  We went out and got one last Parisian treat (croissants and pain et chocolat) and made our way back to Granada.

MetroàBusàairportàflight to Madridàmetro to bus stationà4 hour wait for the next busàbus to Granadaàback in our house at 5am

Granada greeted us with pouring rain.  Everyone keeps telling us it has never rained this much in Granada. What luck.  

He should also sell socks

Today in my grammar class we were learning about sentence construction for giving advice.  In order to practice, our teacher told us to get in groups and give 6 different pieces of advice to Zaptero, the Spanish Prime Minister on how he should deal with the economic crisis.   [For those of you who haven't taken any Spanish classes, zapatero means cobbler/shoemaker]  Anyway, each group had to go around and read out their 6 pieces of advice­­­–most were silly (he should get a new job; he should talk to Obama; etc, etc) but the third group had some very interesting suggestions.  They started out by saying there should be more rebajas (sales) and we all though it was a strange suggestion to give the PM but we were willing to let it slide. There second suggestion was that he should hire more employees and at this point everyone was genuinely confused. When they said that he should start selling socks in addition to shoes, we were all struggling to hold in our laughter. The group (there were 3 of them) was completely clueless that we were all talking about the PM and not a cobbler! The teacher was really gracious and admitted that while we were all talking about the PM, the economic crisis does affect everyone, including shoemakers.

I was seriously embarrassed to even be in the same class as these people.  Even if they didn’t know who Zapatero was before coming to Spain, knowing the name of the leader of the country in which you are currently living is a rather important detail, at least in my humble opinion.  But I’ll let you be the judge. 

José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spanish PM        

vs.    

a zapatero, ie: cobbler

No wonder she could write Harry Potter–the magical city of Edinburgh

Leave 4pm Friday; Bus ToledoàMadrid; Metroàairport; Madrid airportàDublin airport; sleep on Starbucks’ couches in Dublin airport; flight to Edinburgh (delayed); Bus airport to hostel; arrive 9 am Saturday.

We finally made it!

After checking into our hostel, Anne, Dani, Kaitlin and I went to find some breakfast before going on a walking tour of Edinburgh.  The breakfast was really tasty, the walking tour was a bit too long.  It would have been fine except that Edinburgh really isn’t a very big city, so it was more of a standing-in-the-cold tour, with a little bit of walking thrown in there. It was really cool to walk around the city and recognize things that I saw last time I was in Scotland with my family (7 years ago?).  I didn’t recognize most of the city, but certain parts really stood out in my mind–namely, the castle.  Later that night we went and got some dinner at a pub and watched the Ireland/France rugby game, although we had a hard time understanding much of the game.

The weekend we were in Edinburgh just so happened to be the Six Nations Rugby Tournament (France, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England) and two of the games were actually being played in Edinburgh.  No one was too riled up about the Ireland/France game, but the next day Wales played Scotland, which was a big deal.  

On a walking tour

No explanation needed!

View of city and mountains

View of castle from below

The other side of the castle

Sunday we had a pretty laid back morning–cooked ourselves some eggs and toast and then went for a walk around the city.  We walked down the main drag (The Royal Mile) to the Queen’s official Scottish residence, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and then up and around the city. There is a hill in the city that has all sorts of monuments built on top of it, including a model of one corer of the Parthenon, and there is a great view of the city. From one angle you can see the old half of Edinburgh and from the other you can see the new half of the city, with a view of the water behind it. Very beautiful.

Scottish hillside

New part of Edinburgh 

The Palace of Holyroodhouse

After our walk we went down to the grass market–the main pub spot–and got some lunch. We ate fish & chips and haggis!!! Surprisingly, the haggis was not bad at all–better than the fish & chips. We watched about half of the Scottish/Wales game while eating lunch then at half time headed next door to a more popular pub.

We just had to–needless to say, after this picture was taken the pay phone jammed into my back really started to hurt

There were actually a lot more Welsh fans that Scottish fans, and I was never quite sure if most of the them were Scottish people who like the Welsh team better (Scotland’s team is “rubbish”) or if they were Welsh people who had just come up for the weekend.  We did meet one man in particular who was quite a riot. His name was Gordon, he was about 5 feet tall, wore a kilt w/ a Welsh jersey, looked about 65 but was actually only 52 and called us bonnie lassies. It was super fun being surrounded by a bunch of drunk Scottish and Welsh men and women of all ages, everyone celebrating regardless of which team won.  Keep in mind that this was all happening between 3 and 7 in the afternoon on Sunday.  Once we decided we needed to get dinner, the four of us left (although I think the party was just getting started) and walked back to our hostel singing and dancing in the snow.  We cooked dinner in our hostel and were able to have a relaxed night, but still felt like we had gone out and partied. 

Celebrating in the pub

Our friend Gordon (the Welsh/Scottish/leprechaun man)

Gordon so kindly let me wear (ie: put it on my head) his leprechaun hat

We just got accepted to Hogwarts!

The castle by night

Cooking dinner in the hostel

Monday was our last day in Edinburgh, and we spent it by first going to the National Museum of Scotland to see Dolly the cloned sheep’s body.  The museum was awesome, although we never made it outside of the kid’s section.  After we realized that we were all 20/21 years old, we decided to get lunch at the Elephant House Café, which is where JK Rowling first started writing Harry Potter.  We got the best table in the house, with an amazing view of the castle coated with a light layer of snow.  Not to diminish JK’s skill, but I think anyone who had that view would be hard pressed not to create a world of witchcraft and wizardry.

Yes, I am 21 years old

Dolly the first cloned sheep!!!

High Street/Royal Mile after it snowed

Enough said

View from our table in the Elephant house

That afternoon we headed to Glasgow by train.  Not an impressive city, but Kaitlin and Dani had a concert to see there.  Anne and I went to see Revolutionary Road (only go see that movie if you are in the mood to be very depressed) and then we all had a pretty relaxed night. Unfortunately, Anne and I had to leave our hotel (we had a room just to the four of us!) by 3:45 am to catch our flight. 

Busàairport; GlasgowàDublin; DublinàMalaga; BusàGranada; home by 5pm

Cinderella's Castle and Marzipan

From Monday the 2^nd of Feb to the Friday the 6^th, our group had an excursion planned to Madrid/Toldedo/Segovia.  When we first got to Madrid we went to the Reina Sofia museum, which is Madrid’s modern art museum. Anne and I sprung for and audio guide, which ended up being the best decision we could have made.  While art is always interesting to look at, it is a whole lot more significant if you actually understand the painting. We spent nearly all of our allotted 3 hours on one floor of the museum looking at the painting by Dali, Picasso and many other well-known artists.  This museum houses Picasso’s Guernica, which is an absolutely unbelievable piece (and it's gigantic!) that reflects the horrible consequences of the Civil War. 

Picasso's Guernica 

One artist that I had never heard of but really enjoyed was Juan Gris. He had a very refreshing perspective on still-life (abstract) painting.  I still don’t understand the artistic value of a white canvas with a stripe of black paint, but for the most part I really enjoyed what I saw at this museum. 

  Juan Gris–Front of a Window

The next day we took a walking tour of Madrid, which was a great way to get to know such a big city (and our tour guide looked the Spanish version of Kramer).  

Gonzaga group in Madrid

These bulls are all over the city of Madrid

Afterwards, we went to the Museo del Prado, which Anne and I had already been to. I wasn’t too excited to go back and look at paintings of Saints again, but it just so happened that there was a Francis Bacon exhibit that had just opened that day.  His paintings were very interesting, although most were dark and sad. 

Francis Bacon–Three Studies For Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion 

On Wednesday our group took a trip to El Escorial and el valle de los caidos (valley of the fallen).  El Escorial is a palace/monastery outside of Madrid in which nearly all of the past kings and queens of Spain have been buried since King Felipe II commissioned it in the 16^th century.  The kings and queens, however, are not buried in a cemetery but are rather in coffins (elaborate ones!) on the bottom floor of the palace. It was very strange to be in a room with 24 dead Spanish kings and queens. 

After leaving the palace, which represented Spain’s most powerful years, we went to valle de los caidos, which represented Spain’s worst years.  There is a huge basilica (bigger than St. Peter’s), commissioned by Franco and built by his prisoners, built into the mountain.  While basilicas typically are beautiful, this one looked like a prison (which I guess is rather appropriate).  In addition to the dark appearance of the building, the mountain is the final resting place of 30,000 known and at least 10,000 unknown people who died in the Civil War (from both sides).  Franco is buried in the floor in front of the alter.  Above the basilica on top on the mountain is a gigantic stone cross.  Especially considering that it was a super foggy, rainy day, the cross just seemed really creepy.  Although I’m not religious, I can usually appreciate religious symbols if for nothing other than their artistic value. This one, however, did not seem like a symbol of hope and beauty but rather of darkness and domination. 

  Valle de los caidos–the basillica is in the foreground 

The next day we went to Segovia.  I guess it is usually one of the coldest places in Spain, but we had excellent weather! We took a walking tour and went to the castle, which Disney used as a model for Cinderella’s castle! It’s a small city– very quaint and very beautiful.

The aqueduct in Segovia

Gonzaga girls in Segovia

Anne and me in front of the castle in Segovia (ie: Cinderella's castle!)

My knight in shining armor 

View from the top of the Castle

On Friday we went to Toledo, which is also a small city with a lot of personality (it is famous for marzipan and weaponry).  Whereas Segovia was described to us as a “feminine” city, Toledo is a “masculine” city–a labyrinth of narrow streets, hills and old buildings.  I can’t wait to go back to both of these places with my mom and sister in June! 

View of Toledo

The perfect storm

Thursday the 29^th of January became known as the perfect storm for some very good reasons.  First, it was the last day of intensivo classes, which meant that we had a break before content classes started.  Second, two of my best friends from GU, Dani and Kaitlin, were getting into Granada that day to spend the weekend with Anne and me. Third, it was my 21^st birthday.  I’ll let you do the math.

  Reuniting 

After an awesome reunion at the bus stop, Dani, Kaitlin, Anne and I went to find the hostel that Dani and Kailtin were staying in and then went for a “quick” (2 hours) drink and tapas.  Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about after 5 months of not seeing each other! To start off the birthday celebration in style, Dani and Kaitlin brought me chocolate in the form of Bueno! bars, which have been appropriately re-dubbed nutella babies, and a very pretty scarf. 

Eating Nutella babies

Hanging out with my amigas

Later that night, we went out to get tapas and drinks and a few of my friends from school joined us.  Afterwards we made our way around to a few more bars and stopped in at a dancing bar.  We definitely brought the party! There was plenty of singing along (Rihanna’s Umbrella, anyone?) and dancing and overall merriness. Eventually we went up to a club in the Sacromonte called Camobrio, which usually has a great view of the Alhambra at night, but unfortunately it was not lit up that night.  Again, more dancing, singing and drinking.  

  Why drink one glass of sangria when you can drink two?

After a long but really awesome night we made it back home around 6 (latest yet!).  It’s really strange to think that when I get back into the US I will be able to drink legally. 

Needless to say, the next morning was not quite as fun as the night had been. I had to get up to take a practice test at school, and 4 hours of sleep usually isn’t the best way to go into a test (although it turns out that I did really well!).  Anne and I met Dani and Kaitlin at a café and it turned out to be one of the most beautiful days we have had in Granada thus far. After our test, Anne and I took D and K up to the Mirador de San Nicolas and it was absolutely beautiful.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the Sierra’s were perfectly covered in snow, and there was a guy playing the guitar. We brought up some brie, bread, and apples and had a perfect picnic. 

Mirador de San Nicolas

Later that night was equally as fun.  D and K’s hostel was hosting a paella night, so for 5 euro we each got a drink and all you can eat paella. It was super awesome to watch the woman cook the paella—she had a pan that was probably 4 feet in diameter.  Needless to say, it was really tasty (this paella was much different from the kind our host mom cooks. It had veggies and seafood in it = yum!).

  Paella

We weren’t quite as lucky with the weather on Saturday.  The rain, however, didn’t stop us from taking a walking tour of the Albayzin. Although this was something that Anne and I had done, it was nice to get a new perspective (in English!) from a much younger, funnier tour guide.  When he was describing the Sultans that lived in the Alhambra, he very eloquently put it: Anything can happen when the Sultan’s crunk.  So true.  In order to emphasize how Catholic Isabel and Ferdinand were he told us that if you took all the past popes and wrapped them into a little pope bundle, they still wouldn’t be as Catholic as Isabel and Ferdinand.  I think that should give us all an idea of how much Catholicism is ingrained in the Spanish tradition.

That night we went back up to our favorite cave bar and were planning on just getting a pitcher of sangria, but our plans changed when a guitar playing, flamenco singing gypsy walked in and fell in love with Dani.  

Gypsy men-the one on left is the one that fell in love with Dani

Now, you may think I am kidding but this is not an exaggeration! This 60-year-old man came in and immediately professed his love for our friend, and when he realized that she didn’t speak Spanish he decided to serenade her.  We thought it was some sort of routine (pick a girl, sing to her, get on with the show), but four hours later when he was still singing only to Dani we could not stop laughing.  After every song he would try to say something to her, seemingly having forgotten that in the past 5 minutes she probably hadn’t learned to speak Spanish. To make things even more difficult, he spoke “gypsy,” so Anne and I could barely understand what he was saying half the time.  One thing we did catch: he said Dani was como un tren (like a train), which in Spain is actually saying that someone is beautiful (lost in translation?).  Really hilarious night.

Sunday was our last day in Granada for a while.  Anne and I had a group trip planned to the Alhambra and D and K bought tickets for the same day.  As amazing as it is to see the Alhambra from the outside, it is a whole other experience to see it from the inside.  First of all, the gardens outside the palace are really beautiful (I can’t wait to see them in the spring when the flowers are actually in bloom!).  There are fountains and pools all over, which reflect the importance of water, and orange trees all throughout the gardens which are there simply to bring color to winter gardens. 

The inside walls of the palace are carved with intricate details, have inscriptions from the Qur’an and beautifully painted tiles.  Luckily, the Catholics didn’t change too much when they took over the city (but they did make sure to put a cross on top of the tower). The Alhambra is really a beautiful place, if a bit much to absorb in one visit.

 

So that concludes weekend number 1! Sorry if it’s a bit long, but there is just so much to say!