I really can't bear to put all this in one post

The other weekend (so yes, it was almost 3 weeks ago at this point- shhh), we went on a 22km (about 14 mile) hike with a hiking club. Elizabeth's piano teacher had told her about it so we decided to sign up. We left at 7:30 in the morning with a huge group (about 60 people, some wearing tennis shoes, some with intense hiking gear) and drove to an area called the Valle Ambroz. It was absolutely gorgeous and we met some pretty cool people and saw a 700 year old chestnut tree. I couldn't move for about two days after, but it was definitely worth it. Can't explain how pretty it was so I'll just post some pictures. Click on any of them to make them bigger. In summary: cow up close; Elizabeth, Maggie and me on a bridge; really old tree; there's fall here (!); "wild" Spanish horses; beautiful; donkey up close; blah blah blah, pretty pictures; chestnuts are REALLY ugly; jamón in the wild; more pretty landscape. Enjoy!

Warning: Novel

Yes, yes, yes. I'm 2 weeks behind. I realize. Let's play catch up. Although I'm warning you now there will be no pictures in this post and I won't be very witty. Wow that makes me not even want to keep writing, let alone read this. Shoot. Ok, maybe I'll make an effort.

Two weekends ago I made a very spontaneous decision to change my long weekend plans from going to Zaragoza (an uninformed vacation choice made in the first few weeks and planned by other people) to go to Portugal. I refunded most of my bus ticket (the TEN HOUR bus ride) to Zaragoza for the next day and bought a train ticket to Lisboa with a different group of K students leaving that night. Very spontaneous, but one of the best decisions I've ever made.

We took the train over night and got in to Lisbon the next morning, checked into our hostel, and napped for a couple of hours. It was raining a lot, but we ended up walking around town for a bit anyway before stopping at a restaurant for lunch.

Sweet plaza by our hostel despite the construction

Portugal is famous for their cod (bacalhau: pronounced vaca-joww in portuguese) and we had a huge and delicious 2 hour meal.

 

 

 

 

Delicious. And floating in Oil.

Portugal is also known for its coffee (according to my host family, it's the best coffee in the world, and I must say I have to agree. It comes in espresso form in a tiny little cup but takes forever to drink because you have to take tiny sips. It's so strong it's almost thick, but it's so so delicious.

By this time it had stopped raining, so we walked around some more, exploring the neighborhoods. Lisbon is an absolutely gorgeous city. Most of the buildings are tiled on the outside, which I was obsessed with.

The city is on a hill, so at the top, we found a beautiful church that looked over the whole city. (click if you want to see it bigger: I told you it was beautiful)

That night, we walked around some more and found a really neat lookout onto the mouth of the river (that becomes the ocean). We were standing there looking out at the water, wondering why it looked super foamy when we realized it was because we were surrounded by thousands of fish! It was so disgusting, they were packed together so tightly they would occasionally jump out of the water. I literally took about 25 pictures of them, but I'll spare you.

The next day, it was raining pretty hard again so we decided to take the train to Sintra, a small town about 45 minutes away from Lisbon. Buying train tickets in Portuguese was an interesting experience. It was nice to get out of the rain for a while on the train, but it was raining even harder whn we got there, which was a shame because most of the things to see there are outdoor castles etc. Nevertheless, it was amazingly beautiful. When I buy my European summer home it's going to be in Sintra.

Stupid picture, but did you know umbrellas will actually do this if it's windy enough??

To get out of the rain, we ate lunch for a couple hours again (accompanied by wine and coffee of course), then walked around one of the palaces. The rooms inside were really cool. There were these two strange conical towers which we realized were actually huge chimneys from the kitchen. They just had huge roasting racks over a fire right on the floor. Pretty intense.

Sunday, we went to Belém, which is sort of like a suburb of Lisbon. There's a pretty cool tower there right on the water and a giant cathedral.

My camera battery died right after I took this picture and I was super sad, but Elizabeth let me use hers so it ended up alright. (Although I've yet to get any of the pictures from her). We then went in search of the pasteis do Belém (famous pastries originating from a factory there). We eventually found the factory, which turned out to have a million tables inside and got some of the pastries (and café com leitche) which were delicious.

After that, we went to the Castelo do São Jorge which is located looking over the city. It was really pretty, and there were actual peacocks running around! Pretty sweet. There was also a moat, which I was really excited about. After eating (more bacalhau) we wandered around the city some more. Our train didn't leave until 11:30 so we had lots of time to kill. It started raining again so we stopped in a café and got some port wine (which is from Porto, a city just north of Lisbon). I had a sweet picture of the plaza we were sitting outside of, but it's not letting me upload it right now.




My host sister used to live in Portugal so she had given me a list of things to do while we were there. So far everything she'd recommended had been amazing, so we decided to give the last attraction a shot: the Santa Justa elevator. It's a strange looking elevator located in the middle of the city. There was a super long line, so we figured it must be great. 3 euros and a 30 second elevator ride later, we were about 4 floors up looking at the city through a chain link fence. The elevator is attached to a building behind it by a walkway which goes next to an old cathedral which we'd actually been wondering how to see it up close. However, the exit to this so called "Eiffel Tower equivalent in Portugal" was a back entrance into a courtyard on a hill we'd been standing in 30 minutes earlier. The gate was open. So essentially we paid $5 to ride up 3 floors on an old elevator. It was so ridiculous it was hilarious, and we couldn't stop laughing the whole way back to the hostel.

The Eiffel Tower if there was a back entrance out the top.

Overall very successful trip.

Weekend in Madrid (ie. not enough time to see anything)

Hello all! Sorry it's been a while, I've been incredibly busy. Actually, I feel like I say that all the time, but it's true. I actually just got back from a trip to Portugal this morning, but that's for another post. Anyway, let me catch up. Last weekend my program went on an excursion to Madrid! (Prepare yourselves for an enormous post)

We got there early Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel. It was a really nice hotel and the rooms were really big with only two people per room. It was really funny, because no one could figure out how to turn the lights on. It turns out you have to leave your room key in a slot by the door in order to work any of the electricity. Energy efficient I suppose, but I was pretty concerned for a while that we had no power. We had some free time after that, so we walked along the Gran Via which is the main commercial street in Madrid and shopped a little (huge H&M? Yesssss). There were so many people speaking English it was really weird. At one point, we passed a souvenir shop and the ladies walked by and one of them goes "Ohhhh! Remember where this is because I want to come back and get stuff for my son!!" (in a strong southern accent). We all looked at each other and immediately switched to speaking Spanish.

The whole group met up a little later to do a scavenger hunt (or in spanish a gymkana) where we had to wander around Madrid and answer questions about certain buildings and ask strangers questions about Spanish culture. Not really my ideal way of getting to know the city, and my group couldn't find a lot of the locations. After that we were all super hungry and tired so we headed back to the hotel. Everyone was so tired from traveling/walking all day that no one ended up going out (which was sort of crazy considering it was a Friday night and we were in Madrid, the city that literally never sleeps).

The next morning, I woke up with horrible heartburn and ended up walking with my friend up the Gran Via looking for Aquarius (a drink similar to Gatorade) in my sweatpants. Pretty ridiculous. After I was feeling better some of my friends wanted to head out and go shopping. I went with them for a little while, and then me and Colleen decided to go check out the Parque de Retiros which is a huge park in Madrid that's super beautiful. We were super tired, so we took a quick nap in the sun (sounds weird, but there were people, well mostly cute couples, laying around everywhere).

FALL COLORS!!!

We then met up with the group at the Prado, which is one of (if not the) best art museums in the world (even better than the Lourve for its paintings apparently). It was really amazing, and I got to see a ton of famous art in person (Goya, el Greco etc). It would've been really nice to have more time though, because it's a huge museum and therefore we only saw about a tenth of it.

Las Meninas. I was told immediately after I took this that you weren't allowed to take pictures.

 After looking around for a few hours, we went to the Reina Sofía, which is a museum of contemporary art. I loved this museum. Probably its most famous work of art is La Guernica by Picasso (if you don't know, it depicts the Spanish civil war). The museum also contained all of Picasso's studies of the painting which were really interesting to see how the idea developed. The museum had a ton of Dalí and Magritte and so many other great painters.

You were allowed to take photos in the whole museum except the room with the Guernica

At this point, we were all exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was go to Kapital, the 7 story club Madrid is famous for. Colleen and I decided we'd walk back to the hotel, change clothes, and have a super leisurely dinner. After walking back for about half an hour, consulting the map every few blocks, we realized we were farther from the hotel than when we started. If you've never looked at a map of Madrid please do now. If you zoom in, you'll notice there's absolutely no order to any of the streets.

We called the girls we were going to meet for dinner and asked them to come meet us because if we walked all the way back to the hotel we'd never leave. We sat in a Plaza waiting for them and people watching (and freezing...). There were these really cool flower stands that looked like boxes around us that closed up into cubes at night.

We finally met up with the other girls and walked to a plaza we'd accidentally stumbled on that looked like it had good restaurants. We ended up having an amazing meal at a very authentic restaurant which was really nice. The place was packed, and we were squeezed up between another table and the corner where they served the jamón. It was pretty cool.

Ironically, our meal was all the same color but it was sooooo delicious. We had manchego cheese (super famous cheese from Spain), tortilla española (like an omlette with potatoes), and the best calamari I've ever eaten in my entire life.

After eating, we wandered back to the hotel through the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol (another very famous plaza). In the Puerta del Sol is the "kilómetro cero" (kilometer 0) where all distances in Spain are measured from. There's a plaque in the ground, and I made the whole group go sarch for  it with me, only to find a Spaniard standing half on it, intensely absorbed in a conversation. (I took a picture of it anyway, random man's leg and all). Here's me, Colleen, and Elizabeth by one of the fountains in the plaza:

Sunday morning, we checked out of the hotel and walked to the Palacio Real. The inside of the palace was incredible. Elizabeth and I fell so behind the group because we had to stop and gasp at every room. It was a good thing you weren't allowed to take pictures inside because I would've been there for days. We also visited the armory which contains the biggest collection of armor in Europe (or maybe Spain, I can't remember, but it was impressive either way) and the cathedral.

Palacio Real

More Palacio (inside the main courtyard)

We looked pretty funny standing around with our audio guides.

After that we all split up and found another awesome restaurant to eat lunch before catching the bus home. It was a really great trip in spite of getting sick, but I'm definitely going to have to go back to see more of it. There were a ton of places I didn't get to. I was glad to get back to Cáceres after being in such a big city with so many people and so much to do. I missed my siestas!