Los Conquistadores

I'm finally getting around to putting up pictures of our neighborhood, so while I'm at it, here's a little update too: I've been spending most of my time halfheartedly working on my thesis and hanging out around the apartment. We've given up on finding work, so we're trying to stretch our money as far as possible, but we still manage to find the money to go out on the town frequently enough. We've met a lot of cool people here through CouchSurfing or through mutual friends who've been a lot of fun and the Spaniards know all the best places to chill. We have seen a couple crazy things lately, though, like a fist-fight in the metro, and a dead body on the side of the street. It's not a dangerous neighborhood or anything though, don't ... read more

Hi, Sorry, it has been a while since we have written. We are both in Madrid now and we have an apartment in a suburb south of downtown. It is a neat place; it has murphy beds and a balcony, and we live across the street from a sort of indoors farmers market. We have two roommates, a guy from Bulgaria and a girl from Mexico. It is nice to finally have a place of our own, and we have been taking the opportunity to relax. We have both been able to get a lot of reading and writing done, and we are looking around for jobs teaching English. I thought that when I arrived in Spain from Paris I would find nice weather, and I was right. For one day. It has been cold and ... read more

So we arrived in Paris a few days ago. It is much warmer here than it was in Germany, and much, much more expensive. We took a couple of days to see a few of the standard sights, and we hung around an English-book store called Shakespeare and Company (it's a very old store where a lot of American and British writers have met in the past, and they have a very cool rare books section). We met a British guy working there and we explored the Latin Quarter with him and walked around the Seine. We also went and saw the Eiffel Tower (not so impressive for us Angelinos), the grave of Jim Morrison (not as exuberant as the man it contains), Notre Dame and its catacombs (which was cool) and the Museum D'Orsay, which ... read more

So we've been chilling (both literally in figuratively) in the Alps this past week. The actual place is St. Johann im Pongau, but they don't have the location on this blog, so I picked one close by. We've been staying in a nice hotel where, once again, we don't quite fit in, but everyone's been real nice and we've met a couple cool people (mostly much older than us). The view from our hotel room is incredible, with mist-shrouded mountains every morning that burn off by afternoon to show the snow-capped peaks beneath them. The other day we took a trip with this guy we met at the hotel (a bit of a Dead-head, but a real nice guy). He drove us out to the Liechtensteinklamm, which is a gorge cut straight through one of the ... read more

Just wanted to let you all know I added a lot more photos to the last one... read more

Okay, first off, I need to elaborate on Ibiza, cause 'fun' and 'a nice change lifestyle' just doesn't cut it. It was ridiculous. We went from pitching tents in abandoned loading docks to sunbathing on a yacht in the Mediterranean. The water was clear, the beaches were warm, and the people were beautiful. One of the meals we ate cost two-thousand dollars!!! ONE MEAL!!!! and the parties....I've never seen anything like them. I know some of you will be jealous to hear that I saw Tiesto play at Privilege, which is one of the biggest nightclubs in the world. Something like 8,000 people were packed in there. We were also supposed to see Paul Van Dyke at Amnesia, but he didn't show up. The music was still great though. The craziest part was that not only ... read more

Sorry it's been so long since our last update. We've been spending the last week or so at a couchsurfer's place in Granada. His place is really nice and has an amazing view of all Granada. Through him we met a lot of other couchsurfers too, from all over the world - Germany, France, England, Serbia, Italy, Canada... and for the most part they were all really cool. We went out for a few nights until the sun was coming up and ended up spending most of our days resting up from that. Unfortunately we missed our chance to actually see the inside of the Alhambra while we were there, but we might make our way back there at some point. We took a day trip yesterday to Malaga to go see the Picasso museum there ... read more