"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home." - Bill Cosby

In the past three weeks I turned 25, had my best friend pluck out my first gray hair (thanks Bridget), packed up my life and headed back to Spain, stayed out til 6:30 am with some French guys I just met, and found a new apartment.  This past week, I started back up at school,  gave a presentation about my experiences last year to this year’s group of new teachers at orientation, and have been bombarded by teachers who want private classes for their kids.  So needless to say it’s been a little crazy, but nothing that I can’t handle. So let’s fill you all in on what I’ve been up to.  Before I left for Spain I had planned to stay with a teacher from my school until I found an apartment, but I couldn’t get a hold of her.  So Mary asked Rafa if I could stay the night at his place with them to give me a night to make arrangements.  He happily obliged, so we made the long trek back to his apartment after they came and met me at the bus station.  I was finally able to get a hold of me teacher and she said she would be more than happy to have me stay with her until I found a place.  So now that I had that settled I really just wanted to sleep.  I took a nap for a couple hours until Mary woke me up pretty much just to see if I wanted to eat dinner or keep sleeping.  Well, actually Rafa woke me up by tickling my nose with a feather, but that’s beside the point.  I didn’t want to sleep for 18 hours straight like I did last time I got here, so I dragged my butt out of bed and Mary and I went for a walk.  We ended up sitting down for a drink then ordering Chinese take-out.  Yes, I travelled across the Atlantic Ocean just to order Chinese food in Spain.  Anyways, we ate our dinner, watched some TV and then went back to sleep.  I made arrangements to take all my stuff over to my teacher’s house the next evening, so during the day, Mary and I continued our hunt for apartments.  

 We had an appointment to go see one right in our old neighborhood.  It was an apartment of four rooms, with two available so we went to go check it out.  It turns out that they had just rented out one of the rooms and there was actually only one available.  Good to know.  What we didn’t know then, was that this was only the beginning of a series of mishaps and bad luck until we actually found a place that worked for us. I could seriously write page after page about this, but instead I’ll try and give a quick run down

1.        We showed up at the first place and there was actually only one room available. No go.

2.       We saw a really nice place with three bedrooms.  No oven or dishwasher. Also, we both decided that the location wasn’t ideal for either of us.

3.       We saw a place with two rooms available out of three.  Cool girl, but the place was pretty beat up.  Also, no TV.  Anyone who knows me should know that this is pretty much deal breaker.  Oh, and did I mention the cat?  Now I am an animal lover, but not a huge fan of cats. Especially ones that look like part of their ear was bitten off possibly by another cat.

4.       We saw a place in a perfect location for me, near the bus station. It had five bedrooms, so it would have been a little hectic, but possibly a lot of fun.  Unfortunately it was a dump, and overpriced for the quality of the room. We also didn’t get the best impression of the lady showing the place.  She seemed really nice, but in a used car salesman kind of way. 

5.       I went to go see a place owned by a friend of the teacher I was staying with, but honestly it was just to humor her and show her that I appreciated her helping me look.  The location was way too far from anywhere we needed to be.  The place was kind of cool though, very retro.

6.       The next one is a real doozy.  We went to see a place with two rooms available out of four.  Awesome location right between the bus station and the center and really just close to everything.  We walked in, and the building was really nice.  The girl greeted us and explained that while there are four rooms it would normally just be us two and one other Spanish girl because she only came back and used her room for holidays. The place seemed great.  Not the best looking rooms and not really spectacular in any way, but it worked for us.  Also it had a great balcony with awesome views of the river.  We were sold.  Then, the girl, who was married but couldn’t be more than 30ish starts talking about “keeping the peace” because there were lots of families in the building.  We said that was no problem because we lived in a building with lots of families last year and didn’t have a problem.  Then she starts saying things like for the first few months we can’t have anyone staying over there, but maybe after a while if we had friends visit we could ask her permission to have them stay over, oh and absolutely no boys are allowed to sleep over.  Ummm what?  She didn’t even care if they were just friends, there were absolutely no boys allowed.  I wonder if she applied that rule to her and her husband, or just to us unwed heathens of the world.  We were so shocked and turned off by that we just left and never went back.   I was utterly disappointed after that and thought all hope was lost for finding an apartment.

7.       This next one I think is my favorite.  Mary read an ad for a place with four bedrooms, two available in the same building as the dump with the 5 bedrooms.  Then she saw the number and it was the same lady. I insisted that we give it a try because the ad was different and maybe this place would be a little nicer.  At least, I hoped it would be nicer because I really loved the location. So we get there and she recognizes us, and we say oh yeah we saw the other place with you but we thought that place would have too many people for us.  What I really wanted to say was yeah, your other place is a dump and we’re really curious to see this apartment.  So we get off the elevator and she unlocks the door to the same exact apartment. She’s like oh, you guys already know this apartment, and we were like uhhh yeah we didn’t realize we were coming to see the same one.  I was seriously so deflated.  I was thinking to myself, could this seriously get any worse.  And she continues to try and sell it to us all over again, turning on that car salesman charm, using the word “quality” over and over again.  After about ten minutes of blah blah blah she basically told us to name our price to get us to live there.  Unfortunately neither of us was assertive enough to say that we just flat out didn’t want to live there.  The price was the least of our worries.  So we told her we would think about it and call her.

8.       Home sweet home. The same day of the disastrous second time seeing that apartment, I got a call from Mary saying she just walked by a place for rent, called, and we had an appointment to see it at 7:30.  At this point I was so ready to just get settled, but I really didn’t have high hopes for this place. I mean how could I after the previous debacles.  We got there a few minutes late because I misjudged how long it would take me to get there, but upon arrival I found that the location was perfect and the grounds of the place were really nice. It was in the same neighborhood I live in last year, but a totally different part, and it was really close to the bus stop I use to get to work.  So far so good.  We met the owner’s son Jose and he took us up to the apartment on the 9^th floor.  As soon as we walked in, it felt really good.  Nice spacious living and dining area, two bathrooms, four bedrooms – one double bed and three twin bed rooms.  Kitchen was a little small, but at least there was an oven and microwave. No dishwasher, but that was something I was willing to compromise on.  It also reminded me a bit of our last apartment which is probably why I liked it. It had great views of the city from our windows, a nice balcony, and access to the roof.  As soon as we were done with the tour I was ready to sign on the dotted line.  The only problem was we were only two people, and the place was four bedrooms.  So, we made a deal.  The total rent of the place is 900 euros, which comes out to 225 a person, and that includes water and community utilities – electricity, gas, and internet would be separate.  So he decided that we could rent the place, just the two of us, but we would have to pay 250 each until we found two other roommates.  This sounded fair to us, especially since even with the increase, that was still less that we paid last year.  Another thing I was worried about was that it was only September 23^rd, and we were going to draw the contract up for October to June.  But Jose was really accommodating and said we could move in whenever we wanted, but we didn’t have to pay until October.  Perfect!  So we were sold. 

      I’ll fast forward to now because we’ve already found our other two roommates, so the increase of rent never even applied and we’ll all pay the 225 right off the bat.  I really like the two girls that moved in too.  They’re both studying here.  One of the girls, Milena, is an Italian girl who was born in and lives in Germany and speaks like 20 different languages.  She’s really fun and goofy and I already love hanging out with her.  The other girl Andrea is also Italian, and pretty much only speaks Italian and limited Spanish.  It’s ok for her because Milena speaks Italian, but communicating with us has been pretty comical.  She’s really nice though, a little more reserved, but cool.  Oh, and she cleans a lot, so that’s works for me haha. 

So anyways, everything’s going great so far in the apartment, we had to buy new sheets and comforters and things like that because they were either not here or they were hideous.  We also had to buy a few things for the kitchen and bathrooms, but other than that we pretty much had everything ready to go.  Here are some pictures of the new place!

 This was my bed before I went shopping.  If my memory serves me well, which it usually does, this is what my parents' bed looked like in the 90s.  Needless to say I bought a new comforter.

 My bed now!  I love it.  Take a good look, because I only make my bed about once a month haha. Since Mary and I took first choice of the bedrooms, I took the big one.  We decided it was fair because I had the smallest room last year. 

Mirror, mirror on the wall.  My cool, kind of creepy old mirror decorated with pictures from home.

My giant desk.  You'll never see it this organized again!

                     

 Here's the view from my room. Not too bad, huh?

The bathroom

The kitchen

Our little semi indoor semi outdoor laundry room.  No dryer of course because they don't exist here.  Still something I'll never get over.

Dining/living room area.  Note the GIANT mirror on the wall.  It's really funny when we're sitting on the couch and you accidentally look at each other in the mirror.

 Living room consisting almost entirely of Ikea furniture.  What you can't see is that you can slide out the bottom part of the coffee table to display things from the glass.  There's a really old school landscape puzzle in there currently. 

Balcony!

View of the Cathedral from up on the roof.  AWESOME!

Mary and I enjoyed some tinto de verano and olives up on the roof and watched the sunset.  If you can't already tell, I pretty much love my life here!

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” Leonardo Da Vinci

Ok folks, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.  My first blog entry of the new school year.  Ok, well maybe you were also waiting for all the ones I haven’t written about last time, but we’ll cross that bridge when the time comes. This one’s going to be a little wordy since I haven’t taken many pictures yet, but bear with me.  So first things first, I made it.  My travels went really well for the most part, but I’ll give you a detailed break down because there were definitely some interesting moments.  My parents and best friend Bridget came with me to the airport to bid me farewell.  It went a lot smoother than I thought…meaning there were less tears than I thought there would be.  They watched closely as I made my way through security. I got the third degree on one of my carry-on bags only to find out it was because I was carrying a candle in it.  I guess they thought I could be carrying dynamite or something.  You know me, trying to sneak dangerous items on planes is a thrilling hobby of mine…not. 

Anyways, I sat down at a café and ordered some chicken gumbo in a bread bowl and it was delicious. After about a half hour of waiting, I boarded the giant Iberia plane and much to my delight, I discovered I had an aisle seat in a section that only has two seats per row.  Ok, so technically my ticket said I had the window seat, but there was a girl sitting in the window seat, and I certainly wasn’t going to fight her for it.  So, I kept my mouth shut and took my seat. Keeping to my usual ways, I fell asleep almost instantly and slept through the take-off.  I did wake up, however, for the delectable airplane dinner of beef and green beans with some bread and brie cheese.  I never touch the shrimp salad that is a staple on Iberia flights, but I did enjoy the banana cake.  After the meal, I tried to fall asleep, but wasn’t very successful.  So, I listened to music and anxiously waited to find out what movie they would show on board.  Drum roll please…Men in Black 3. Whoop dee doo. Since I couldn’t sleep, I ended up watching the whole movie, which actually wasn’t that bad.  However about ¾ into the movie the plane hit some turbulence that scared the absolute bejeesus out of me. (I have no idea how to spell bejeesus, but you get the idea).  Now you’d think with how many flights I’ve been on in my life I could handle it, but this was no run of the mill turbulence.  Out of nowhere, it felt like the plane was plummeting to the ground while simultaneously leaning heavily to the left.  I just about crapped my pants. I couldn’t bring myself to look anyone else in the eye because I was afraid that if other people looked scared, I would just lose it.  So I sat completely still clutching the armrests, as if that would really do anything if the plane was actually crashing. Then about 5 or 10 minutes later it subsided.  I couldn’t really get myself to relax after that even though the rest of the flight was pretty smooth.   

Another thing that made the flight slightly less than pleasant was the crying baby.  Now, I’m not going to bore you with the typical “How did I get stuck by the only crying baby on the plane” spiel. Let’s be honest, that’s happened to everyone who’s ever been on a plane at least once in their life.  This was no ordinary crying baby.  About every half hour or hour this baby would start wailing out of nowhere and the sound was unlike anything I had ever heard.  The best I can do is to compare it to a low-pitched squealing pig that sounds like it’s slowly being tortured, and perhaps turned into some delicious bacon. Yummm. Anyways, it was so alarming that every time it happened everyone in the proximity would perk up and try to see where that horrendous noise was coming from.  I started wondering if it was really that strange or if I just forgot what crying babies sounded like.  Then another baby started crying and I said, OK, now that is what a normal baby cry sounds like.  Needless to say I was happy to have my feet back on the ground after that flight. Then I had a 3ish hour layover in Madrid.  It was pretty boring, but it went by fast enough.

They have this sign on all of the luggage carts in Madrid, and I always get a laugh at the first line.  The Spanish part basically says Feel VIP for only 25 euros.  But check out the translation - Feel yourself (VIP) for just 25 euros.  They should hire a new translator for the marketing department if you ask me.

My flight from Sevilla to Madrid went fine.  It’s so short I feel like by the time we reach full altitude it’s time to start landing already. At around 1 pm Spanish time I landed in sunny Sevilla and made the trek down to get my bags.  I was trying to wrap my head around how exactly I would get on and off the bus (which is typically packed like sardines) with two suitcases and two backpacks, but I just didn’t want to waste my money on a taxi.  It ended up working out perfectly because the bus was hardly crowded at all, and an airport employee helped me get my bags on.  After the 25 minute bus ride I was back in the heart of Sevilla and my friend/roommate Mary and her boyfriend Rafa were waiting for me.  It was such a relief to see them after my travels.  But, I’m going to cut if off here before I write a novel. Next time I’ll fill you in on my first week here and the ridiculous encounters we had looking for an apartment.  

My first glass of tinto de verano.  So refreshing!

How's this for a view?

“In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it’s on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.” - Roman Polanski

A view of Paris from the top of Notre Dame

Ok, now on to Paris!  My roommates Mary and Hayley and I decided to spend a weekend in Paris, France: the city of lights, the city of love, or the city of crepes, whatever you want to call it.  We had pretty much two full days to see as much as we can, and I think we made the best of it.  I arrived in the Paris airport by myself because I took a different flight than my roommates due to our different work schedules.  Mary gave me a heads up on how to get to the hostel so I wasn’t completely lost. I started my journey on the metro as per usual.   I have to admit, a metro is typically not the most appealing part of a city, but Paris ranks pretty far down the list.  It was pretty hideous and looked really old and dirty.  When I got off at my stop, I came across super long wind tunnels and police attending to a man with his head bashed in and bleeding. Whooo Paris!  But really, besides the less-than-savory first impression, Paris went uphill from there.  I made my way to the hostel, which was a few short blocks from the metro station, found my roommates, and went upstairs to check out our room.  I found out we were sharing our four-person room with a nice Serbian guy who just got a job in Paris and was staying at the hostel while he looked for a place to rent.  You never know who you’re going to meet in hostels.  It was pretty late by the time I got settled in, so we decided to hit the hay and get ready for a long two days ahead.  Let me tell you a little bit about the beds in our hostel.  Now, I usually don’t complain about hostels because, well, they’re hostels and you usually get what you pay for.  We’ve had great experiences so when there are little things wrong they don’t bother me.  However, these beds are worth writing about.  Not only were they among the least comfortable beds I’ve slept in, they were by far the noisiest – perhaps in the world.  This may sound like an exaggeration, but I assure you it is not. You couldn’t even take a deep breath without the bed squeaking, so forget even thinking about rolling over or getting up to go the bathroom.  I found it difficult to sleep because I was concentrating so hard on trying not to make noise. My efforts, however, were futile.  What made the terrible beds somewhat easier to swallow was the fact that we woke up at around 8:30 to one of the best hostel breakfasts we’d had.  Fresh, buttery croissants and baguettes with cereal and juice.  Pretty standard as far as hostel breakfasts go, but everything was somehow better.    Ready for our Parisian adventure, we headed to the Museum D’Orsay, which I would say is the second most famous art museum after the Louvre.  I really liked this museum.  They had a lot of paintings that I actually recognized.  Now since, I’m not the biggest art aficionado, you know a painting has to be famous if I recognize it.  I’m talking big names Van Gogh, Manet, Renoir, Monet, Picasso – just to name a few.  Let’s just say I was really impressed.  Standing in front of paintings with such history and prestige is an inexplicable sensation. Another thing I liked about the Museum D’Orsay was that it was pretty easy to conquer.  It was really big, but still pretty accessible.  I didn’t feel overwhelmed or like it was impossible to see everything.  (Although this is completely cheating, I’m going to tell you all that this is what we like to call foreshadowing to a future rant about how awful the Louvre is).  After a full dose of culture we headed to the famous Notre Dame cathedral – look out, Quasimodo!  We had to wait about 45 minutes to climb to the top, but it was worth it.  It was a typical claustrophobic, windy, stone staircase that takes you up most famous European cathedrals.  Is it snobby that I’ve climbed enough cathedrals to be able to say that? Nah.  Anyways, the view from the top was really great, but my favorite part was all of the gargoyles.  Something about being amidst these creatures really takes you back in time.  And what surprised me most is that they were all different. This creepy guy over here was my favorite.  Something tells me that painter Francisco Goya got his inspiration for his "Saturn Devouring his Son" from this statue. (Look it up, it's super creepy.)  Next, you can climb up even further to explore the bell tower.  After we soaked in the view and took various silly pictures imitating gargoyles, we headed down the stairs to go inside the cathedral.

 

So like I just bragged about 10 sentences ago, I've been in a lot of super old churches, but Notre Dame really is impressive.  It is enormous and really beautiful.  There were also lots of separate little chapels honoring various saints.  Of course, I had to light a candle for and take a picture with Saint Denis! So we made our rounds through the crowds, took a few pictures and moved on to our next stop:  the Arc de Triomphe. Now, I expected Paris to be big, since it's a European capital and all, but everything just seemed so far from everything else.  In a lot of other cities you can hit a lot of the touristy things in a short amount of time.  Not in Paris.  Everything seemed to be at least a 40 minutes walk from one stop to the next.  But we forged ahead.  The walk to the Arc was pretty cool because we passed through the shopping district down one of the famous shopping streets, Avenue des Champs-Elysees. I was actually really glad we got to the Arc at the time we did because the sky was the perfect shade of blue.  Just an FYI (since I didn't know what it was for either) The Arc de Triomphe is engraved with names of generals who commanded French troops during Napoleon's regime.

 Our next and final stop for the night, and the most anticipated for me, was the Eiffel Tower.  We were able to see it in the daylight from afar, but I was really excited to see it at night.  So we walked, and we walked, and we walked.  Finally, through some thick trees, I spotted my first glimpse of the glistening tower. However, we still had a ways to go.  When we finally got there, I breathed a sigh of relief because I would have walked another hour to see what we saw, but I was sure glad I didn't have to.  The Eiffel Tower is everything I thought it would be and more. 

 

Let's get to the good stuff though, we weren't there just to stare at it, we were going to the top!  Every customer has two options: ride the elevator all the way to the top, or pay 5 euro less and climb the first 700+ steps and take the elevator the rest of the way.  Well being the super young, fit, and broke ladies we are, we chose option B.  After already climbing up and down the 400-something steps in Notre Dame, 700 more was not very appealing, but we did it anyway.  Believe it or not, it actually wasn't that bad.  Don't get me wrong, I was panting pretty hard at the top, but we made it nonetheless.  Next you take an elevator the rest of the way and you're let off into the top.  The view was, as you can imagine, breathtaking.  Everywhere you looked, there were beautiful sights freckled with streetlamps.  It was difficult to take pictures in the dark, but I guarantee I won't forget that.  After making a few rounds around the deck, we made the trek back down to go see the light show that they do every hour.  We went out onto the lawn, and picked a spot to sit down.  No more than a minute passed before we were approached by a couple of young French guys.  Not surprised.  I think European guys have a special radar for American girls.  They were clearly drunk and equally hilarious so we humored them by chatting for a few minutes, but their English was almost unintelligible, so that made communicating a little difficult.  As soon as we noticed the light show starting, we shooed them away, and I'm assuming they went to find some more American girls.  It's not a bad gig if you ask me.  Hang out on the lawn of one of the more beautiful structures in the world with your beverage of choice just waiting for young tourists - just like shootin fish a barrel. The light show was really cool. It basically just looks like the tower is sparkling for a few minutes. I'm going to post the video, even though I was not tech-savvy enough to figure out how to rotate it.  You'll get the idea.  Also, if the volume is up you can hear the French guys flirting.

Shortly after the sparkling fizzled out, we walked to the closest metro stop to make our way back to the hostel.  Sometimes I think hostels should charge you less if literally all you do is sleep there.  We were out and about from 9am to about 11:30pm.  Ridiculous. So back to the squeaky beds we went to try and get enough rest to do the same thing all over again the next day.  The plan:  Louvre, Sacre Cour, Moulin Rouge, back to the hostel.  We got pretty much the same start with the wake up time and the scrumptious breakfast and out the door. We'd heard stories about the daunting lines than can accumulate outside of the Louvre, so we wanted to get there early.  It paid off because we hardly had to wait at all.  Also, we got in for free for being students in the European Union - which I forgot to mention we got into almost everything for free the day before as well.  Next we grabbed some maps and tried to plan out how navigate this massive place.  Begin rant:  The layout of the Louvre seems efficient at first glance.  It is organized into three branches, and then those branches have branches and so and and so forth.  The problem is, when you go up a branch, you have no choice but to come down the same way before you can go up another one.  Why is this such a problem you may ask?  Well, if you ask me whoever designed/built the Louvre is probably still laughing about it.  It is so big that it is literally impossible to see everything in one visit.  I don't see the point of that.  It as if they thought, let's make some place so enormous and so jam-packed with art that no one can see it all, but we'll watch them scramble to try.  This is why the lay out annoyed me so much.  Now, I'm going to attribute some of my rage to the fact that my feet started hurting within the first hour from being on our feet for about 11 hours the day before, but still.  It if were possible to go up one branch and come down another, you could see twice as much in half the time.  But nooooo, instead you are forced to go up one way, and walked past everything you just saw again, and then you do that over and over and over.  It's infuriating!  On top of that, I was so preoccupied with my annoyance and the constant wondering if we were missing something, that I barely enjoyed what we actually did see. I was pretty much just dragging my feet and pouting around like that 5-year-old girl who's never going to get that pony for Christmas.  After about 5 hours of desperate wandering, we finally threw in the towel. I couldn't wait to get our of there.  I just  felt so defeated.  Ok, end rant.  Now the stuff that we did see was really really great, and I will try not to let my frustrations and permanent grudge against the Louvre overshadow the amazing pieces we got to see. The highlights for me were the Mona Lisa, the Ancient Egyptian collection, the Venus de Milo, and the Michelangelo sculptures.  Also, the ceilings were so beautiful.  Here are a few shots:

 

 

Ok so enough with the Louvre.  Next we went to the famous church called Sacre Cour.  You can see if from afar when you're in the center of Paris, and it's really easy to get to by metro.  As you walk up to the to the steps in front of the church, you can't help but be impressed.  The style of it resembles the Taj Mahal which is a refreshing change from the Gothic style cathedrals. We trekked up the steps, yes more stairs, to see a really great view of Paris.  It was also perfect timing because it had been cloudy most of our weekend and as we approached the church, the sun finally broke through.  

We wandered around a bit and took some pictures and started to make our way down the stairs.  About a third of the way down we noticed a guy starting to set up a guitar and microphone and speakers.  A bunch of people started gathering and sitting on the steps, so we figured we might as well check it out.  I'm really glad we did because this turned out to be one of my favorite parts of our whole trip.  We ended up sitting at watching this guy's whole set.  He was really good and sang a lot of songs in English as well as Spanish, French, and Italian.  It was really entertaining and the crowd was really into it.  There was this drunk guy that occasionally came up behind the guy singing did some pretty sweet dancing.   

The funniest part was in the background, there was a street performer doing soccer tricks the whole time.  At one point, the singer was getting all emotional to John Lennon's Imagine while this guy was at the top of a light pole juggling a soccer ball with his feet.  We could not stop laughing.  After jamming to some Adele and Backstreet Boys, the set was over and we headed back down the stairs to find Moulin Rouge.  We had no intentions of going inside, but we just wanted to see the outside. We knew we were going in the right direction when we looked around us and I had thought we were back in the red light district of Amsterdam.  Live sex shows, sex toy shops, and red lights everywhere.  Finally, we came up to the infamous glowing windmill.  We took our obligatory tourist photos and took the metro back to the hostel.  Once again another day of spending about 14 hours walking around, but in the end it is worth it.  

 

 Moulin Rouge!
















Now in black and white! I did a lot of experimenting with black and white photos in Paris because it was so cloudy.





Another thing, which I can't believe I haven't mentioned before, is that my roommates and I eat kebab wherever we go, and we judge cities accordingly.  Now kebab is not shish kabob.  It is similar to a gyro but usually with different kinds of bread.  The best thing about it, is that it's totally different everywhere we go.  So on our way home, we had to try the kebab in Paris.  We stopped at a to-go place on our way back to the hostel.  This kebab was decent, but it didn't measure up to my two favorites - Bilbao and Santiponce (both in Spain).  The best part about this place was the menu posted outside.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and guess this was short for assorted, but at any rate, we did not order the ass kebab.

Shortly after we finished our dinner, we went to sleep to prepare for our early morning flight the next day.  Well, it wasn't that early, but we did have to make sure we found our way to the bus that we had to take to the airport.  Our travel back went off without a hitch, and I would say we had a really successful trip.  We were extremely exhausted as usual but I had a lot of fun. So many people asked if us if we spoke French before we left, and none of us do.  And people said things like, well good luck because French people hate Americans and if you don't speak French, they won't talk to you and all this other fun stuff.  Even my roommate Hayley, who had been there before said that people were in general really rude to her.  My experience, however, was the complete opposite.  We did not encounter any rude people during our entire trip.  Everyone we talked to was nothing but nice to us and more than willing to speak English.  So, I got a really great impression of the city and the people. In case you were wondering, no I did not forget to indulge in a delicious French pastry before I left.  On our way to the airport bus, we stopped at a quaint bakery and I bought this piece of heaven.  It was a triple chocolate mousse cake with little chocolate chips and a gold shaving on top. It was amaaaaaaazing.  

To finish things up, here are a few other pictures from the trip.  Au revoir! 

Saint Denis signs everywhere!

In front of Notre Dame

The altar inside Notre Dame

One of my favorite statues from the Louvre. I can't help but think they're all standing around, looking down, and arguing over who has the biggest....feet, of course!  Get your minds out of the gutter people!

One of my favorite pictures I've taken so far. This bridge had tons of locks on it.  People actually do that here in Sevilla too. I used the cool color isolation feature on my camera to only show the red. Pretty cool!

“A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.” Stephen Wright

Ok, I’ve ignored blogging long enough, and now I don’t have any excuse.  My parents brought back my own computer good as new.  So here goes:  Rewind to the end of February, 2012 .  Due to various national holidays in southern Spain, we had a long weekend.  After obsessing over where to go and biting our fingernails at the ever-changing flight prices, my roommate Hayley and I decided to go to Geneva, Switzerland.  It was completely random and wasn’t even on my radar, but we found a super cheap flight out of Madrid so we jumped on it.  After we had everything booked, I went into my crazy travel zone that I go to before all of our trips and start planning out every second of our time there - from how to get to and from the airport to where we are going to eat. There are few things more terrifying to me than showing up in a foreign country with no clue where to go or how to get there.  So, I take the initiative to find out all of those things ahead of time.  

The first leg of my journey was to get from school to the bus station, then from the bus station to the train station to meet Hayley and go to Madrid.  I spent a good portion of the train ride eavesdropping on a brother and sister, about 8 and 5 years old, who were switching back and forth from English to Spanish with incredible ease while they talked to each other.  It was the cutest thing!  I later found out by talking to the mom, that she was American and she met a Spanish guy and married him.  So now they have these adorable bilingual children living in Spain.  Awesome.  Ok so after a typical deer in headlights moment upon arriving in the train station.  We figured out how to take the metro (subway) to the airport.  Before we knew it we were flying our way to Geneva.  I had found out ahead of time that Geneva has free public transportation from the airport to the center of the city, so we found a ticket station, hopped on the train and made our way to the center.  Luckily, our hostel was only about a 10 minute walk from the main train station.  We checked in around 11:30pm, and the guy working the desk was really nice and helpful.  Since it was already really late, Hayley and I headed upstairs to our room to plan out the next three days.  After some back and forth and a lot of changes we decided to explore Geneva Saturday, take a day trip to Annecy, France on Sunday, and another day trip to Chamonix, France on Monday.  It sounds silly to spend two days in France during a trip to Switzerland, but it turned out to be a great choice.  Geneva was a cool city, but aside from a few cool sights, to me, it was just another big European city (that doesn’t sound snobby at all, right?)  One thing I like though, is that Geneva was the first and only place I’ve seen snow/ice since I’ve been abroad.  We were actually lucky and had nice weather while we were there, but there were some leftovers from previous storms.  Here’s some cool stuff I saw:

 

1. Me sitting on a railing that's covered in really think ice.  Cold butt!

2. In front of the United Nations.  We couldn't actually go inside because it was closed to the public for a convention.

3. Russian church

4. Me taking a super cool pic in front of the famous fountain called Jet d'Eau.

5. Awesome giant-sized chess park

6. Famous flower clock - it's a real functioning clock!

Keepin the pizza cold outside the window, haha

Later that night, instead of going out to eat we decided to head real quick to a convenience store and get a few things.  We bought two frozen pizzas and brought them back to the hostel.  Much to our dismay, we found the hostel kitchen to be locked for the night.  Whoops.  So no freezer.  Solution:  stick the pizza out on our window sill to keep it cold for the night.  We woke up the next morning thinking we could just pop the pizza in the oven and pack a lunch for our day trip.  Wrong again – no oven. Solution:  microwave the pizza until it seems somewhat cooked and then finish it off in a frying pan.  Believe it or not, it didn’t turn out so bad.  

During my many searches of things to do while you’re in Geneva, I came across the small, Medieval town Annecy, France many times.  I figured if that many people recommended it, it must be worth seeing.   So, Sunday morning we packed up our soggy pizza and hopped on a bus to check it out.  Various websites dubbed Annecy “the Venice of the Alps.”  So imagine our surprise when we got off the bus and saw no water. Not one measly canal.  Not even a puddle.  More than a little skeptical, we began walking in the direction of what we thought could be the right way. – we didn’t have a clue of course.  But a short ten minute walk later, we found ourselves in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.  Besides the facts that the small, medieval town is etched by a small series of canals, it’s also right on a lake surrounded by impressive mountains.  Don’t ask me which mountains though… I’m pretty sure they weren’t the alps, but a smaller range nearby.  Honestly though, there is not much I can say in words that my pictures won’t show…so here ya go:

Try this:  google image search "Annecy, France"  and see if my pictures look familiar...

. 

Later that night, we returned to Geneva and for some reason I started to feel really sick.  We were going to go out to eat, but as soon as I sat on the sofa in the hostel common room, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.  See what happens is, when we take this weekend trips, we try and pack as much into the days as we can, as my Uncle Dan calls them, Ferris Bueller days.  This usually results in us spending anywhere from 9-12 hours on foot without eating or drinking very much.  Mostly because we just forget about it.  So I think I was really exhausted and on top of that caught some kind of flu bug.   I was really worried about this because we had our biggest day trip planned for the next day. We were going to the top of the highest mountain in all of the Alps. Ok, so we weren’t climbing it, but still. Big day.  I tried to take a shower and get a good night’s sleep thinking that would help.  But I tossed and turned all night so that was to no avail.  We woke up early the next morning to catch our bus, and I felt like death.  However, I put on my happy face because there was no way I was missing out on this once in a lifetime trip.  I tried to get some rest on the bus, but our cynical British tour guide talked the entire way.  In between giving us actual information about what we doing that day, he went off on tangents about how the whole world has gone to shit and that no one really has a job because it could be taken from you any day and blah blah blah universities are robbing students blah blah blah…Seriously, man, it’s ok if you believe all that, but don’t bring my tour down!  Anyways we finally arrive at our destination: Chamonix, France.  Picture Dumb and Dumber or that goofy Mary Kate and Ashley movie or pretty much any movie that takes place (at least partially) in a ski resort town.  Since I had never been skiing nor visited a ski town, this was uncharted territory for me.  It almost didn’t seem real.  We got off the bus right at the base of the cable car that we were going to ride to the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps.  Now, I’m not particularly afraid of heights, but I do get pretty awful motion sickness.  So we get on this cable car packed like sardines with skiers and other tourists.  It was pretty smooth on the way up until we reached the couple dips that were in cables and the car swayed back and forth. Now combine that with the fact that I was already fighting back the urge to vomit all morning.  Somehow, though, I made it all the way up with the contents of my stomach (which really wasn’t much at that point) intact.  So here are some fun facts about the cable car.  It takes you up to almost the summit, and then you take an elevator the rest of the way.  The elevator is cool because it shows you the altitude as you ascend to the top.  When you step out of the elevator you step out onto a viewing deck that is just about as close to the peak as you could possible get at a stagger 15, 782ft, or just over 10 ½ Sears Towers –oh I’m sorry, Willis Towers.  Anyways, despite the cold and battling nausea and body aches, I wouldn’t have traded that view for anything in the world.  It took my breath away.  In every direction were jagged, snow-capped mountains as far as the eye could see.  From what we were told, you can see the French, Swiss, and Italian Alps from the top of Mont Blanc. Now, I didn’t actually know which ones I was seeing at any given moment, but it was still really cool.  Here are some pictures of the view and then walking around the town once we got back down to earth:

As amazing as this trip was, my body was really relieved to be back on the bus on the way back to Geneva.  So we got back to our hostel pretty late, and it felt so good to plop down on the couch.  I had no appetite despite not actually eating anything that day, so we just hung out on the couch and watch a movie in the common room.  Technically we were already checked out because our original plan was to go to the airport really late at night to catch our 6:30am flight.  However, we did not know that the train to the airport stops running at 11pm. Whoops.  But, we lucked out because the guy at the hostel was really cool about it and just let us stay on the couched until we caught the first train that left at 5.  To sum up our journey home:  train from train station to airport, plane from Geneva to Madrid, 6 hour bus from Madrid to Sevilla, bus from airport to bus station, walk home from bus station, sleep the rest of the day and try and recover.  Overall, it was an absolutely amazing trip. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to enjoy it to the full extent, but I’m glad we saw everything that we did. 

The view from the plane on our way back to Madrid - amazing right??