Spring Break: Portugal and Spain!

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Sorry I've been so bad about updating, things here have been so crazy!!!

My spring break was in early March, and wow what a week that was! I traveled with Ali and Meredith, but we met up with other people along the way! It began with a 13 hour travel day to get to Lagos, Portugal. In one day we took trains, buses, planes, taxis, and even walked a lot. We thought that once we got to Lisbon we were going to miss our bus to Lagos, but in a moment of truth the stewardess announced that it was only 7:05 and we had not accounted for the hour time change! We made it to Lagos that night, and met up with Caitlin and Kat at our hostel, the Rising Cock. The hostel was opened by Slemo, who is in his 30's and grew up in the states but is from Lagos, and his parents Mama and Papa, help him run it. Mama makes endless crepes for breakfast, and they are so good! Lagos itself is a very cute laid-back beach town. Everyone was there to have a good time, and the town itself was really cool and different.


Saturday Ali, Meredith, and I spent the day on the main beach. The weather was only in the mid-70's but the sun was out and it was perfect, especially considering Florence was still much colder. We had lunch at Linda's Snack Bar, and had a great chicken club. It was very nice to have variety in the food. We laid back out for a little bit, then met Cait and Kat at another cafe on the beach called Bahai Cafe. We sat and had a couple drinks while the sun was setting, and it was so gorgeous and ideal. We got back to the hostel and Meredith and I looked like lobsters. After resting a little, we headed out for dinner. For dinner that night we went to a little restaurant we found, that had amazing seafood. I think it was the best salmon I've ever had! After dinner we went to a bar across the street from our hostel called the Nah Nah Bah. The Bar is owned by the same guy that owns our hostel, along with his brother. It was a very fun laid-back bar. It was salsa night, so there were a lot of locals salsa-ing and it was really cool to watch.

Sunday we woke up and headed to the beach again, after a large helping of Mama's crepes. We went to the beach that the people staying in our hostel go to. It was surrounded by rocks and you could climb through little nooks and find other even smaller beaches down the coast. We explored the coast a little, laid out some, then headed to the marina where we took an hour long boat tour of the grotto, the caves along the coast. It was the 5 of us and two random guys in a little motor boat. The caves were so gorgeous and so good to see! After the boat tour we headed back to the beach to lay out a little longer before the sun went down. I was extremely exhausted, and passed out for a little bit on the beach, which was so relaxing. When I woke up my roommates were talking to the group of British guys that were staying in our hostel for a stag party. They were all around 30 and the bachelor's dad was with them. They asked if we played "football," so we ended up playing about an hour long game of soccer with them on the beach. It was so much fun and definitely a workout! After the soccer game, we all ran into the ocean, which was freezing, but so much fun!! After getting out and drying off, we headed to a close-by bar, had a beer, then headed back to the hostel to shower and get ready for dinner. For dinner, us girls went to a new place around the corner from the hostel that had just opened. It was mainly a Tapas restaurant. I was very excited because I'd never had tapas before. We split so many tapas that I can't remember them all, but some included, calamari, chicken, mushrooms, spinach, salads, etc. It was another delicious meal. We went back to NahNahBah for a bit and then went to bed pretty early to get ready for another travel day.

3/3: Monday Ali, Meredith, and I left Cait and Kat and headed out of Lagos on the 7am bus. We got to Lisbon then took a flight to Madrid. We got to the Madrid airport, and for some reason just jumped into a cab instead of looking at the metro system. It was not one of our smarter moves, considering the cab turned out to be about 40 euro, and we later found out we could get to the airport for a 2 euro metro ticket. We got to our hostel, l'auberge juvenil, which was very nice and modern, and settled in as best as we could. Our hostel was in Northern Madrid, and was about a 15 minute walk from the center of downtown. It was so much colder than Lagos and we definitely weren't prepared. We walked around our area a bit then went to a local little restaurant our hostel told us about called Madrid Madriz. No one there spoke english and the menu was pretty foreign but somehow Meredith pulled out a little Spanish and we ordered normal meals. We were all pretty tired from travelling and went to bed early.

Tuesday we got up and saw the city allllll day. We walked down to the main areas, Gran Via was a big shopping street and we all ended up buying some clothes. We found the Chocolateria San Gines where we had chocolate con churros which were a great little snack. We looked around Plaza Mayor and then found a great place to eat lunch, Casa Camu. Our waitor luckily knew a little English and they had one menu translated in English. Meredith and I split yummy croquettes, which were like little fried balls of dough with spinach. We weren't full so we each got a salad, and it was SO nice to have a salad with real dressing! After lunch we walked around some more, enjoyed a Starbucks to keep warm, then made our way back to our hostel. For dinner we met up with Amanda and Jessie (her roommate from Penn State who is also part of our program), and Amanda's friend Dana, who goes to Wash U and is studying in Madrid. We ate at a little tapas restaurant right off Plaza Mayor which ended up being a long, fun dinner. Our waitor brought us free pitchers of sangria and we all stuffed our faces. We didn't end up doing too much touristy stuff in Madrid- just expored the city on our own with no map which was kind of fun.

3/5: Wednesday was another travel day, we were off to Barcelona! This time we took the metro to the airport and saved a lot of money, although dragging our bags around the metro was not too fun. We had a quick flight to Barcelona, well actually to Girona, and then had to take an hour long bus ride into Barcelona. We bought 3 day metro passes in Barcelona which we couldn't have put to better use. The city is huge and we took the metro everywhere. We stayed at a really cute little hostel North of the city a little bit called FeetUp- The Garden House Hostel. The only thing that really sucked was that we had 2 random french guys staying in our room who smelled horrible. We didn't realize how lucky we had been in our past two hostels to only share the rooms with girls, but luckily they weren't shady and we didn't spend much time in the hostel, so it worked out. I have some friends from school, so I knew they would take us under their wing! We met up with Sara Lerner (goes to Arizona) for dinner, and she took us to an amazing restaurant called Princess 23. We had amazing nachos and I had a great chicken quesadilla wrap. It was a great change from Italian food and I loved the mexican flair. t had a really cool spanish atmosphere and was relaxing and fun. After dinner we met up with some of Sara's friends at a little hole in the wall bar called The Black Sheep which ended up being a blast. It was down a random quiet side street but once you got inside the place was huge! While we were at the bar Eric Davidoff and Evan Herring came to meet us. They're two of my good friends from school and it was SO good to see them! The boys took us to a really cool bar called ShoKo in the Port Olympico area. It was right on the beach, so we could dance inside if we wanted, but ended up sitting for a while outside on the beach and just catching up and talking to their roommates. We stayed for a while, then headed back to our hostel to call it a night. The culture in Spain is to not go to dinner until 10 or 11, then go to a bar until 2, and a club until 4 or so. It's a crazy lifestyle and I'm not sure if I could do it for a whole semester!

Thursday we slept in a little, and left the hostel around noon, then explored the city all day. We walked around Las Ramblas, the main big touristy street, and around the El Raval and El Borne area which is really cute and definitely has more of a smaller town feel with narrow streets and cute little shops. We ate at a falafel place for lunch called Maoz Vegetarian which was so good, but so messy! The pita had everything in it and was HUGE and so hard to eat, but sooo good! After lunch we tried to walk around El Borne some more, but didn't realize how much more serious the Spanish siesta is than the Italian siesta. There was NOTHING open! We ended up going to Starbucks and sat for a little, then my friend from school Kathleen came by to say a quick hi before heading to class. She was going out of town for the weekend, so unfortunately this was all I got to see her, but it was still very exciting to see another Arizona friend in Spain. After that we walked along Passeig de Gracia which is a big shopping street and then made our way to see La Sagrada Familia, the famous unfinished church by Gaudi. It was huge and very cool to see. After that we went up to Park Guell which is a big famous park up overlooking the city that has the longest bench by Gaudi, as well as some of his famous sculptures. It was gorgeous and there was a great view of the city! We were there just in time for sunset, so the timing could not have been any better. We headed back to the hostel to rest and clean up before dinner then meeting Eric and Evan for another night out. We ended up going to an amazing little restaurant called Les Quinze Nits, in Placa Reial. It was such a nice restaurant and so inexpensive! It had been suggested to us, but when we saw the place thought it was going to be way too expensive...luckily we were pleasantly surprised! Ali and I split the spanish dish- paella- a rice dish with veggies, seafood, and meat which was pretty good. We had their specialty dessert which was a creme brulee type thing which was also really good. After dinner we went to Eric and Evan's apartment to meet up with them and their friends. We headed to a Cervezeria close to their place, which was really cool. Each table had it's own keg tap and there was a TV screen saying how much each table had drinken and who was in "first place." It was definitely a great marketing idea! From there we went to another club called Opium out by the beach again for a couple hours before going to bed. It was so nice to hang out with my friends from school!

Friday we slept in again, then headed up to MontJuic, which is where the Barcelona Olympics were held. We saw the grounds, and it was really cool to see them! After spending some time at the olympic grounds, we headed back down to the Port Olympico area by the beach. We ate lunch at a really cool place that Kathleen had told me about, called Carpe Diem. It was very trendy and bohemian with huge couches along one wall, and it was really nice to sit in the warm for a while.We walked around a bit more after lunch (which we ate at about 4) and bought some souvenirs before going back to rest before dinner. We ended the day by eating a very late dinner at Hard Rock Cafe... it's just too hard to resist the chance to eat a little American food whenever we get the chance. The wait was ridiculous and we ended up being seated at midnight and not leaving until 1:15... we were almost worried we were going to miss the last metro back to our hostel which closes at 2. It was a fun last dinner though and a good relaxing night to end our trip.

Saturday we ate at a cute little cafe close to our hostel. It was in a nice neighborhood that was very family oriented with schools, and basketball courts, and soccer fields. Then we lugged our bags through the subway again, got on an hour bus to the Girona airport, where we had the worst travel experience yet! Our check in lady from Ryanair was extremely rude and wound up yelling at us because apparently we had misunderstood what she told us in poor english- and we basically had to get back in line 3 different times... pretty much a nightmare but we made it on our plane and safely back to Italy, and it was so good to be back!

I got up early Sunday morning and headed to Venice, where Mom and Ed were! I got there around 11 and it was SO good to see them! We dropped my backpack off at the hotel, then headed to Murano, the glass blowing island. The hotel had a deal with included transportation, so we got on our private water taxi, and headed over. We saw a demonstration then walked around a HUGE gallery for a while. We found a Bar for lunch, then went into another large gallery. I LOVE the glass work and it was all so amazing! We headed back to Venice, and stopped at the hotel for a little, where I completely passed out until the phone rang about 20 minutes later. Ed stayed at the hotel to rest, and Mom and I went off to explore the Island! I'd been there for Carneval, but it was great to be back! Mom and I wandered the streets going into every glass store we saw! I loved it all! We went to San Marco Piazza with the church and pigeons, then eventually got gelato (not as good as what we have in Florence!) and headed back to the hotel. We ate at a small nearby trattoria for dinner, and it was really good! We got back to the hotel and I went to sleep about 10, and had the best night's sleep that I've had in Europe! I woke up about 4 (6 hours of sleep, the usual) and moved to the middle of the bed and fell back asleep for 4 more hours with a huge grin on my face that I could sleep for 4 more hours!

Monday we woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel. Then I headed back to Florence and the crazy month of March visitors began!

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