we arrived to athens and immediately had plates piled with food sitting in front of us (compliments to lauren's godmother, Dolly) as we exchanged our traveling adventures with lauren, maddi, and brooke. we also discussed how wild it was to be in athens together, on top of having visited Edinburgh, Scotland and Oxford, England together. not many friends can say they've traveled to different countries together! we sure are special :) afterwards we headed to town and got to see the changing of the guards. their routine is pretty funny--a bunch of kicks and wiggling of the toes which have little pompoms on them. but the guys are super serious about the act! i could never do it, i think i would end up laughing hysterically. we found out that all boys must serve in the military at some point in their life, and if you're tall enough, you're considered for employment as a guard (they are really tall!). after being entertained by their routine, we climbed the top of one of athens' mountains where we had a spectacular night view of the cityscape. it was beautiful with all the lights glittering from every possible direction. we were even higher than the Acropolis! we then munched on some traditional greek cuisine (yes ate once again which was soon to become our hobby) at a lovely little restaurant on the mountaintop. we then headed to the apartment that lauren's cousin graciously offered us for the next several days. and would it surprise you to say that on our way back we stopped for delicious crepes? as for the apartment, it was awesome. we had the top floor of the complex with a huge balcony and yet another beautiful view of the city. (we would soon find out that the balcony was the perfect place for an afternoon nap).
the next day we went to the market and walked around the little streets of athens where we saw tons of clothes, jewelry, purses, and little greek trinkets waiting to be bartered for. while wandering about, we ran into 2 girls, Jobi & Murphy, who we've become really close friends with while at uni in Lancaster. you never know who you'll run into while traveling! that night we got all dolled up and headed to a club with lauren's cousins. it was a great time until i ended up having to leave due to all the cigarette smoke. even though there are 'no smoking' signs, the greeks don't abide by the rules! apparently, the entire ceiling opened up later in the night which would have been a great star gazing atmosphere. perhaps the next time i'm in athens i'll get to witness it ;)
our last full day in athens we visited the Parthenon along with the Acropolis Museum. it's amazing how evidence of history long, long ago still exists and is standing! that night was Greek Easter and we watched fireworks being set off nearby the church. A procession of people holding candles soon flowed out of the service. The flame is specially flown all the way from Jerusalem, from the Holy Fire, and is distributed to all of the people's candles. It is said that Christianity originated in Greece, which makes sense as to why the Holy Fire would be flown to all of its cities and Greek Orthodox churches. we ended the evening with a traditional greek easter game. everyone holds a hardboiled egg (fact: all of the easter eggs are dyed red in greece) and one person takes their egg and taps it on top of the egg to their left. whoever has the egg that doesn't crack is the 'winner' and goes on to the next person to battle out the eggs. in the end everyone just eats the eggs though.
the following morning, it was time to say our farewells and back to lancaster we went.
out of our entire trip, this is what i'd have to say:
1. the beatles story museum in liverpool, england was my favorite museum i've been to while over here in the UK.
2. paris was by far the most beautiful city. hopefully i can visit there again at some point in my life.
3. seville was my favorite spanish city that we went to--it definitely has the spanish charm to it.
3. athens has the best food, and i now crave it.
4. don't get excited to have your passport stamped... i ended up with only one stamp, and that was when i left Athens.
5. ryanair definitely has the worst landings..i prefer easyjet :)
over and out!
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Barcelona
we arrived into Barca and were soon on our way to Danielle's piso where we were to meet up with her flatmate (Danielle was visiting Rome at the time). we had amazing directions but to our dismay, no one answered the intercom "bell" when we rung her piso number. it was getting a bit late and we didn't know what to do, so our first instinct was to find WiFi so that Kristen's ipod would connect to the internet. around the corner we finally got service and immediately messaged Jayne, who had just gotten to Barcelona the day before. Thank goodness she responded in no time and gave us the hotel that she and her family were staying at so that we could have a place to stay while we figured things out. What a lifesaver! It took a bit to actually find the hotel..we even attempted to speak spanish to an elderly couple but it was no use since the people of Barcelona mainly speak Catalon. Since it was nearly 9pm or so once we arrived to the hotel, we ended up just sleeping on the floor so that we didn't have to travel off at nighttime.
the following morning we joined jayne and her family to the museu d'art contemporani de barcelona, which was a contemporary art museum. i love art, but i just don't get the contemporary part of it...not my style. we then admired beautiful buildings designed by architect, Gaudi, which were pretty neat to look at since we don't have anything like it back in the states! pretty soon, our tummies were rumbling and we ate lunch outside where we had a bit of trouble communicating with our multiple servers. i think the first problem was that we had 3 servers, and they all got confused! first we had asked for an ice coffee, but rather than getting what any american would expect, we got a teeny, tiny teacup with a shot of hot espresso. where was the ice?? one of our servers then brought out a glass of ice cubes which we thought was pretty funny. we ended up just pouring the warm espresso over the ice and it didn't taste that bad after adding a bit of sugar! and despite the mixup for my meal's side, the food was delicious nonetheless. i had a thin crust pizza with scalloped potatoes and onions overtop, rather than the traditional sauce and cheese. it was SO good! definitely asking my mom to make that this summer ;)
afterwards, we headed to Sagrada Familia, but just looked at the outside since the line was pretty long and it cost €12 per person, which is a bit expensive when you're on a tight student budget. by that time, it was siesta time! i guess when you've been living in Spain for 3 months, obviously you're going to get accustomed to their culture. While everyone snoozed, I found a hostel for me and Kristen to spend the night at since we hadn't heard from Danielle about whether her flatmate was at home or not. So off we trekked to the other side of the city to find our accommodations for the evening. after an intense staircase that offered a gorgeous view of the city, we made it at last to the hostel. we were greeted with the sweetest girl who told us everything we needed to know about Barca and she quickly pulled out a huge map to show us all of the hotspots and what metro to take to get here, what bus to take to get there, etc.
the one good thing about staying somewhere in spain is that checkout isn't until noon, since they stay up so late. so we took advantage of not having to lug around our big ol' backpacks and got up early to go to Parc Guell before checkout. We saw beautiful views of the city and you can even see out onto the Mediterranean Sea. It was a bit cloudy but you could still tell that Barca is a huge city with so much to offer. Before it was too late, we made it back to our hostel to collect our things and then off we went to the Olympic Stadium where the Olympics were held in 1992. In order to get to the stadium you have to walk through the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña which is probably the most beautiful building that I saw in Barcelona--it looked like a giant castle. After roaming around this part of town for a bit, we then headed to the beach! We saw Port Olimpia which is filled to the max with sailboats. I don't think i've ever seen so many in my life! We saw people kite-surfing as well which reminded us of Alden and Richard out to sea traveling the caribbean on a boat...lucky guys. we watched people play beach volleyball for a while and then headed to a Spanish buffet where we literally stuffed our faces. we got to try paella which is a traditional spanish dish that has rice and typically seafood in it (ours had mussels). after eating more than we could handle, we decided to walk to Danielle's piso to see if her roommate happened to be in. It was getting to be almost 8:30pm so we decided that if we didn't get a response we would just go back to the hostel that we had stayed in the night before. Miraculously, her roommate answered and we were so so grateful. the girl's mom had flown over from the states so they had been out in the evenings which is why we had missed them previously. and to our delight, danielle came back from Italy about an hour after we had gotten to her piso. It was great to see Danielle and catch up on things over a bottle of wine (in Spain, wine is only €2 a bottle, which is insanely cheap compared to England's prices..and the wine is good too!) We were lucky to have a huge comfortable bed that night, giving us an ideal rest before we departed Spain the next morning. We definitely slept sweet! :)
the following morning we joined jayne and her family to the museu d'art contemporani de barcelona, which was a contemporary art museum. i love art, but i just don't get the contemporary part of it...not my style. we then admired beautiful buildings designed by architect, Gaudi, which were pretty neat to look at since we don't have anything like it back in the states! pretty soon, our tummies were rumbling and we ate lunch outside where we had a bit of trouble communicating with our multiple servers. i think the first problem was that we had 3 servers, and they all got confused! first we had asked for an ice coffee, but rather than getting what any american would expect, we got a teeny, tiny teacup with a shot of hot espresso. where was the ice?? one of our servers then brought out a glass of ice cubes which we thought was pretty funny. we ended up just pouring the warm espresso over the ice and it didn't taste that bad after adding a bit of sugar! and despite the mixup for my meal's side, the food was delicious nonetheless. i had a thin crust pizza with scalloped potatoes and onions overtop, rather than the traditional sauce and cheese. it was SO good! definitely asking my mom to make that this summer ;)
afterwards, we headed to Sagrada Familia, but just looked at the outside since the line was pretty long and it cost €12 per person, which is a bit expensive when you're on a tight student budget. by that time, it was siesta time! i guess when you've been living in Spain for 3 months, obviously you're going to get accustomed to their culture. While everyone snoozed, I found a hostel for me and Kristen to spend the night at since we hadn't heard from Danielle about whether her flatmate was at home or not. So off we trekked to the other side of the city to find our accommodations for the evening. after an intense staircase that offered a gorgeous view of the city, we made it at last to the hostel. we were greeted with the sweetest girl who told us everything we needed to know about Barca and she quickly pulled out a huge map to show us all of the hotspots and what metro to take to get here, what bus to take to get there, etc.
the one good thing about staying somewhere in spain is that checkout isn't until noon, since they stay up so late. so we took advantage of not having to lug around our big ol' backpacks and got up early to go to Parc Guell before checkout. We saw beautiful views of the city and you can even see out onto the Mediterranean Sea. It was a bit cloudy but you could still tell that Barca is a huge city with so much to offer. Before it was too late, we made it back to our hostel to collect our things and then off we went to the Olympic Stadium where the Olympics were held in 1992. In order to get to the stadium you have to walk through the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña which is probably the most beautiful building that I saw in Barcelona--it looked like a giant castle. After roaming around this part of town for a bit, we then headed to the beach! We saw Port Olimpia which is filled to the max with sailboats. I don't think i've ever seen so many in my life! We saw people kite-surfing as well which reminded us of Alden and Richard out to sea traveling the caribbean on a boat...lucky guys. we watched people play beach volleyball for a while and then headed to a Spanish buffet where we literally stuffed our faces. we got to try paella which is a traditional spanish dish that has rice and typically seafood in it (ours had mussels). after eating more than we could handle, we decided to walk to Danielle's piso to see if her roommate happened to be in. It was getting to be almost 8:30pm so we decided that if we didn't get a response we would just go back to the hostel that we had stayed in the night before. Miraculously, her roommate answered and we were so so grateful. the girl's mom had flown over from the states so they had been out in the evenings which is why we had missed them previously. and to our delight, danielle came back from Italy about an hour after we had gotten to her piso. It was great to see Danielle and catch up on things over a bottle of wine (in Spain, wine is only €2 a bottle, which is insanely cheap compared to England's prices..and the wine is good too!) We were lucky to have a huge comfortable bed that night, giving us an ideal rest before we departed Spain the next morning. We definitely slept sweet! :)
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