England and Ireland-final trip of the semester

For my last trip of the semester I went to England then to Ireland. This was the first trip I planned when I arrived in Sevilla because I knew I wanted to be in London for the Royal Wedding. It was an amazing trip...

Day 1
We arrived in London Thursday, April 28th-the day before the wedding. We first went to Buckingham Palace to see how crazy it was. There was media set up everywhere and people already had their tents set up. We then walked through James Park (one of the prettiest parks I've ever seen) and went to do the London Eye. The Eye was so neat we were able to see all of London and had a little map with us so we knew what we were looking at. We then had dinner at a pub and I had Englands staple-fish and chips. After dinner we went back to Buckingham Palace to "set up camp." All we had were our backpacks and we put on lots of layers. Our spot was amazing. We couldn't sleep because it was WAY too cold. There was a stand set up selling coffee, tea, and hot chocolate-I bought a tea and ended up just holding it instead of drinking it because I was warmer doing that. Luckily it didn't rain that night!!

Day 2
At about 5 a.m. they made people start putting up their tents and at 6 people had to put up their chairs. About that time we met 2 British guys about our age and made friends with them. At about 9:30 or 10 things really got started and we were able to see all the guests go to Westminster Abby for the wedding. It was so exciting to see the Queen of course, but even more exciting to see Kate and what her dress looked like. It was stunning!!!!! During the wedding we heard the ceremony over speakers that were set up. It was amazing to see them come back in the carriages. So beautiful!!! We then were able to move even closer to Buckingham Palace and had the perfect view of the balcony when they came out. While we were waiting the girl I was with and I were interviewed by Good Morning America mostly because we were American and had been awake for 28 hours by this point.The fly over was so incredible and of course we all cheered for the kiss. The wedding was everything I'd hoped it would be and more! After everything was over we went ahead and had lunch then made our way to Kings Cross station. For all the Harry Potter fans reading this that means something :) They just built Platform 9 and 3/4 so it was pretty neat seeing that. After that we made our way to where we were staying that night. My friend that went with me-her dads girlfriend has a friend who is friends with this lady we stayed with. Her name was Mary and her fiance is Dave. They were the nicest couple. They made us the BEST meal and we had such a great time with them. By the time I went to bed that night I had been awake for 40 hours- my longest day ever.

Day 3
Mary and Dave made us such an amazing breakfast- homemade buttermilk pancakes and American bacon and fresh fruit!! I was in heaven I hadn't had any of that in 4 months!! We saw the play Wicked that day. It was soooooo great I recommend it to everyone. We caught our flight to Dublin that night where we went directly to our hostal called The Four Courts.

Day 4
We took a bus about 2 hours to the city of Galway. Galway is AMAZING. Definately in my top 5 favorite cities I've ever been to. There I bought a Claddagh ring, which actually originated in Galway so that was kinda cool. From Galway we caught a tour bus to the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs were amazing and the tour bus was so nice. We were able to see so much of the Irelands country side. I LOVED it. Ireland is exactly what I pictured it to be. We drove through a lot of cute little towns including the match making town. It was so cute! Every September they hold a match making festival and it's a really big deal. We got back to Galway from the tour at about 6 and walked around exploring the town a bit more then got dinner at a pub where there was live music. After dinner we sat outside waiting for our bus back to Dublin where again, there was live music.

Day 5
We took a tour bus to Kilkenny and Glindalock. Glindalock was BEAUTIFUL. It is this lake between two mountains and the scenery was unreal- absolutely breath-taking. There were a lot of ruins there as well as a grave yard. I loved it there I could have stayed all day. We then travelled to Kilkenny where Kilkenny beer is made. There, we visited a castle and just walked around the town. We got back to Dublin around 6 and went to Trinity college. The campus was very very pretty. After, we went to Temple Bar which we found out is more of a street than just one place. The street is full of pubs. We found the famous Temple Bar (the acutal bar) that started the street and had a drink and listened to live music. Can you tell I was really into all the live music??

Day 6 (final day)
On our last day we visited the Christ Church, it was very pretty. Part of The Tudors (my favorite show ever) was filmed in this Church and they had a couple of the costumes from the show on display there. Next we went to the Chester Beatty Library Galleries where there were many books of different religions. There was a piece of a Bible dating back to 450 A.D. It was a pretty neat gallery. We then made our way to St. Patricks Cathedral. It was so different from all the other Cathedrals I've been to I loved it. Our last order of business that day was the Guinness Factory. It was incredible. I really enjoyed the factory itself and especially my pint of Guinness at the top of the factory. You could see all of Dublin.

This was probably my favorite trip of the semester. I say probably because I had so many incredible trips it's really hard to determine which was the best. I definitely want to go back to both places one day...

Mallorca

So it has taken me a while but I'm finally posting about my "spring break" in Mallorca. Mallorca is a small island off the east coast of Spain. It is famous for its pearls and crystal clear water. I went there with 5 other friends and we met up with some more friends when we got there. Mallorca was so pretty. We stayed in a part called Magaluf, which is more of the party area of Mallorca. Our first hotel was right next to the beach and was connected to a bar called Prince Williams Pub where we were able to get 25% off drinks :) It was a perfect location. We just hung out on the beach all day and went out at night. It was an extremely fun week with the best people. Our second hotel was sort of apartments with a kitchen in them. It was a great location and had an awesome pool. It was somehow only 8 euros a night. We got really lucky with prices this week. Even though Mallorca is a Spanish island there was mostly people from Great Britian there, I didn't speak Spanish once. We found a restaurant where everything was 1 euro. Seeing as we are college kids and on a really tight budget nearing the end of our study abroad experience, we ate there everyday for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. One day we went into Palma which is the main city and saw the Cathedral and the marina which had so many multi-million dollar boats. My dad would have been in heaven. But he spent about 6 months in Mallorca a long time ago and was able to see all the nice boats then.
Basically Mallorca was just a really nice week with great friends that I will never forget. The beach was great and the group was a great group to go out and have a great time with. It was a great spring break!!

PARIS

Ok, before I start about Paris, I went to Malaga, Spain last weekend. It's just a little beach town on the coast of Spain. It was so nice to be able to relax for the weekend and spend time soaking up the sun!While there I went to the Pablo Picasso Museam, he is from Malaga. I'm not a huge fan of Picasso but it was neat to see his gallerary. The hostel I stayed it was very nice. It was a great first hostel experience!

Now on to Paris!! Paris was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! I was able to stay with a friend of my boyfriends who is currently studying abroad there so that saved a lot of money and he took us around everywhere which was soo nice! The first day we saw the Arc de Triomphe, which is an Arc that celebrates battle victories. It was very beautiful. Then we went to a famous cementary and saw where Jim Morrison is buried. I love him so that was cool for me. Then we made our way to the Sacre-Coeur. It is a hike to see this white-domed basilica but so worth it. We came to a terrace which was such a great view of Paris. When we got there a break dancing group was just getting ready to perform. So we sat down and watch them, they were soo great!! And the view behind them was so spectacular. The Sacre-Coeur was pretty amazing! We had Vietnamese food for dinner which was SO good. We went out that night to a bar which was a bar you'd see right out of a movie sat in France, it was exactly how I'd imagined it would be. I also had a pastery that day which was the best pastery I think I've ever eaten. It was AMAZING. The next day we woke up a little later and went to get lunch at a French restaurant. I had the Croque Madame, which is a traditional French ham and cheese sandwhich with Bechemal sauce poured over it then baked in the oven and a fried egg on top. It was delicious. We then went to the Louvre where I was able to see the Mona Lisa. But with all the other detailed art all around it really made me wonder why that particular painting is so popular when there are paintings in there that were so much more detailed and probably took a lot longer to paint. That night for dinner we had Kabobs, then went out with a French friend the guy I was staying with knows. He knew of a spot where a bunch of the students from different Universitys from Paris where all celebrating for their "competitions week." This is where, I guess, all the the University's compete in various things all week. It was like a huge pep raley when we got there. It was right outside the Centre Georges Pompidou, the modern art museam, and was so neat to watch for a few minutes. We then went to a bar then got some of Frances famous Crepes. They were the best things!! Sunday we went to the Palace of Versailles. It was amazing! I could have spend the whole day just in the gardens on the outside of it. The inside was breath taking. It's amazing that people actually lived there. Each room was so detailed and the Palace had so much gold I was blown away. I easily could have spent the whole day at this place. We then went to Notre-Dame. WOW. We went in while a service was going on. We walked in while the choir was singing and it was just like walking into heaven I imagen would sound like. What an awesome time to walk in. Notre-Dame was so amazing and so unlike any Cathedral I've ever seen. It was probably my favorite attraction of the whole trip. Gosh I LOVED it!! We went to dinner after that in the Jewish corridor of Paris and ate at a famous falafel restaurant. I can understand why it was so crowded, it was absolutely amazing!! Such good good food!! After dinner it was nice and dark so we went to see the Eiffel Tower. It was so gorgeous lit up and while we were there they did a light show on it so that was pretty crazy to see. Again, we went at the perfect time!!
         Paris was an AMAZING (I know I've used that word a lot in this post, but I don't know how else to describe it) city. I loved everything there!! I'm glad I'm not studying abroad there though because I would probably gain a bunch of weight, all the food was sooooo good. Paris is definitely now in the top 5 cities I've ever visited. I would so love to go back one day! Preferably with someone I love! :)

My week with Michael

Michael arrived last Sunday at around 10 a.m. I had of course been up since about 6:30 because I couldn't sleep anymore I was so excited. I also had to do my hair (something I rarely do now days) and try to get everything ready for seeing him. I made us bocadillos (sandwiches) for our lunch and had packed him a little welcome to Spain bag with candy that you don't find in the states. We took a taxi from the airport which took us straight to our hotel. It was such a cute little (quite literally little) hotel. We were on the 3rd floor and had to walk up stairs at about a 45 degree angle. There was a community bathroom on each floor which really wasn't so bad because there were people cleaning it all the time. The room we were in was teeeenny tiny with only about a foot between the bed and the wall just on one side. But it was very cheap and clean, I was impressed. It had a very "Spanish" feel to it. We went out for a couple hours when we first arrived because our room was still being cleaned. We got some gelato and just walked around and saw a bit of Sevilla. The next day was beautiful weather and we went to the Plaza de Espana. He loved it! We rented a row boat and rowed around the Plaza, it was perfect :) We had a nice lunch outside after that at a fish fry place. We just ordered the various fish basket and come to find out one of the things we ate was the egg sack of the fish. It wasn't too good and once we found out what it was it really wasn't good haha. Lets see after that we had chocolate churros and then I think we just walked around some more. We ate at an Italian restaurant that night which was the best Italian ever! Tuesday I had an exam at school so he came with me to school then after we walked to my host families house where my host mom had prepared lunch for us. She made Paella which was absolutely fabulous. We had mussels and a salad to start off with, and Champaign, and then strawberries and ice cream for dessert :) She was so sweet and keeps commenting to me about how handsome he was and how much she liked him. On Wednesday I had an exam again but got done pretty early. We decided we would go what we called "Tappa Hoppin." We went to several different tapa restaurants and would each get a glass of wine and a couple tapas. It ended up being so much fun and we got so much good food and were about to try a lot of unique spanish food. One exotic thing we tried was Ox tail, which ended up being pretty delicious. On Thursday we rented bicycles and went riding about Sevilla. We went down to the river and over to Triana and to the statue of Hercules (which was not as neat as we thought it would be) and through just a bunch of side roads in Spain. It was a lot of fun :) Friday, his last day :(, we went to the Cathedral and went inside and went up into the tower. The Cathedral is beautiful and going up in the tower was awesome. Once we were at the top we could see all of Sevilla, we could even see into the bull ring. It was pouring down rain, which is did all week except for Monday, so it was good we were inside. But then we went to the Real Alcazar gardens, which are pretty famous, and I prayed so hard that it would stop raining for that, and as soon as we paid and walked in it stopped raining. 10 minutes later the sun was out. It was amazing. The gardens were so beautiful and I'm so happy to have finally seen them, especially with him. That night we went to a very expensive restaurant, because we figured we would splurge on his last night. Long story short in his last bite of Paella he found a hair. We showed the waiter and he apologized a lot. He came back with two shots of some kind of liquor and ice cream and the bill for 3 euro!!!!! Basically our bill that would have been $67 ended up costing us $5! It was probably our cheapest meal of the week! Saturday was sad :( Of course I ended up crying at the airpot. I was really sad to see him leave. I had the best week and was so happy to have been able to share everything I'm experiencing here, with him. We ate awesome food through out the week and got to experience a whole different culture together. The trip really made me realize how blessed I am to have such a wonderful man in my life. I loved our week together and love him with all my heart :)

Gibraltar and Morocco

This past weekend I went on a trip to Gibraltar and northern Morocco with a tour group called "We Love Spain." There were about 120 people that went and we had the best time. We took a bus 2 and a half hours to Gibraltar. There we got to see really neat caves and the famous monekys of Gibraltar. One jumped on my shoulders and I was able to get a pic, it was a great moment haha! After leaving Gibraltar, where you can see the coast of Africa and the coast of Spain while technically being in Great Britian, we caught a ferry to Morocco. In Morocco we went to 4 different cities, Ceuta, Tetuan, Tangier, Chefchaouen. Chefchaouen was my favorite. The whole city is painted blue!! All different shades of blue. Ok, let me get back to the order of things. So we got to Morocco at night and arrived at our hotel, which was gorgeous. There they served us a traditional Moroccan soup and chicken and flan. All was very good. The next day we went to Chefchaouen, where I was able to test out my bargaining skills. Everything I bought I got for what I thought was a good price. We went to a yarn factory which was very neat and they actually still use the looms. For lunch we went to a restaurant that was very Moroccan looking, just very arabic and neat. We had a wide spread of vegitables on each table and they served us a lemon curry chicken dish that was just absolutely delicious. There was a band that played in the backgroud while we ate. We were served a traditional cookie and green tea for dessert, all the food was great. There was also a lady giving henna tatooes at the restaurant and me as well as most of all the other girls got one. After lunch we walked around for a while. It is soooo different in Morocco. Nothing is commercialized. All the food is out on the streets, there are places to get live chickens killed right there to take home to eat. There are clothes and nic nac markets that look like 90% of the stuff could have been stolen or used. It was just incredible. We then drove to the next town (the only town I remember by name was Chefchaouen) and got settled in the next hotel, which was nice but I liked the first one better. That night we had a dinner and a show. At first we watched 4 men do a traditional thing with horses. They rode across a field a few times, with fire or swords. It was interesting. Then we had dinner which was a fabulous soup, a differnt dish consisting of meat, tomato sauce, and eggs... and kuz kuz with a spicy sauce to go over it which I liked a lot. For dessert we had a different kind of traditional cookie and green tea. The show consisted of a magic man, kid gymnists, a band, a man who did an act with a tray of candels on his head, and a belly dancer. It was very enternaining!! That night we went to a club that was a part of our hotel. It was fun, it was only just the group there basically. One of the best songs was Shakira's "Africa," everybody went crazy when that came on since we were in Africa. The last day we went to a cave that looked out on the Ocean, very cool. We went to the point where the Atlantic and Meditteranian meet, and we got to ride camels. It was a fantastic trip!!!! Definitely the most culturally different place I've ever been. 


On a sad note, my computer crashed. I've been trying for a week to get it fixed. My housemate is nice enough to let me borrow hers for the time being. 


On a happy note, Michael comes tomorrow!!!! I can not wait! :)

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain...

My past two weeks have not been very eventful and pretty rainy. I thought it wasn't supposed to rain much in Spain?!?!?!?! I finally got a gym membership which turned out to be free because it's included in what students from App pay. I got sick this past week which was no fun at all. It was a rough couple of days and made me miss home and the convenience of the doctors office at school. OO I figured out, with the help of Karina, how to watch TV shows online here. I've caught up on all my favorite shows (which is a lot) so I'm very happy about that! This weekend we went out to the clubs which always equals a good time. Today we went to mass at the Cathedral, which is breathtaking every time I see it. Afterwards we went to this place that was advertising an American style breakfast. It was delicious. They are not very into breakfast here so I haven't had pancakes since I left. It was fantastic and included a latte, mimosa, pancakes, bacon, eggs, toast, and home fries. SO SO good. After a few of us met up and hung out by the river because it was finally sunny and nice out today. Next week will be good we only have 3 days of classes then I go to Morocco and Gibraltar for the weekend. I can't wait to see monkeys and ride camels. The next week we only have 3 days of classes again and then that weekend Michael comes!!!! Can't wait!! I miss everyone!!

And the travelling begins...

This has been a great week! I had classes Monday- Thursday, which are turning out to be a bit more work than I expected but I just have to keep reminding myself I'm here for school not just for fun. On Thursday, Erica and I decided to get out of the house and go explore more of Sevilla. We ended up in the shopping district which was amazing :) Of course we had a lot of fun going through all the stores and seeing all the European styles. There is a store here called Corte Ingles. It is like Belks on steroids. There were 7 floors all devoted to a different thing. The store was kind of overwhelming, but it's a store so of course I liked it! We then got tapas and a glass of wine for dinner at a restaurant with the most amazing surroundings. We sat outside, with a heat lamp overhead of us, looking at the Cathedral. We got dessert there which was absolutely delicious. On Friday, we went on a school organized trip to Italica. Italica was founded in 206 B.C and was originally a fortress for the Italian soldiers. They then built a coliseum and houses and turned into a little Italian town in Spain. The ruins and landscaping were breathtaking, I can't wait to take my mom and Michael there. On Saturday a few of us made a trip to Cordoba, a city about 2 hours away from Sevilla. They built a very famous Mosque-Cathedral. The building started in around 600 A.D. and was originally being built for the Christians. Then there was an Islamic conquest and the church became divided. Today, it serves as a Cathedral. The different types of architectural influences by both religions is amazing. The worshiping center where the services are held is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I have posted pictures in my Study Abroad Spring 2011 album on Facebook. The city of Cordoba was beautiful and we did a lot of walking around and seeing all the sites. We got chocolate churros, which are very popular here in Spain.  They were absolutely delicious and probably more calories than I want to know haha. I have officially booked a trip to England and Ireland with one of my friends for the end of April. I will be in England during the Royal Wedding and can hardly wait. I'm way too obsessed with Kate and William. I have also planned a trip to Morocco and Gibraltar with Erica for next weekend. I will get to see monkeys in Gibraltar and ride a camel in Morocco!! The trip to Morocco is organized by a group called "We Love Spain" so they have planned everything out and you pay one price that includes everything. So it's nice not to have to plan out everything. I'm having the time of my life here. Oo and 4 weeks exactly from today until Michael gets here and is able to experience wonderful Spain with me!!!