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Hi guys! Just a heads up...I have a TON of things to get done this week so I can't promise an update for a little while. Having Lauren here this weekend was a blast but transportation has been a serious issue. British Airways is in a strike now that it effecting when she gets home, if she has to buy hotels, etc. etc. and its a bit stressful. Hope things are going well back home, Love Love

Seville

Wednesday we left the hostel around 7:30 to make it to the train station in time. The ride was a little over 2 hours so we got to Seville around 11am and it was beautiful out! We found the hostel and dropped our things off before exploring. Since we had a bike tour planed for the next day, we took this day to relax, have a few beers and explore with no plans. We stopped first to grab some lunch then a few for the road. We wondered down by the water on our way to yet another famous park and found a place to rent paddle boats! We split boys and girls and paddled/floated around the river for about an hour. We then café hopped our way to the park where we took a very impromptu horse-drawn carriage ride around the park and found our way to the Plaza de Espana (pictured above). After dinner and heading back home to change, we went to a small area near our hostel that was described to us by many as “alternative.” I am still unsure as to what that ment, but it was fun and cheep (Seville was SO cheap, tapas, beers, shots, water/soda bottles were all about 3 dollars less than we have paid elsewhere). Only 4 of us made it to the suggested nightclub near our hotel and we were literally the ONLY people in there. At 1:30 they were still stocking the bar, getting music prepared and telling us that it didn’t get going until around 3am…we left and went to sleep.

Thursday we got up at 9:30 to go to a bike tour around Seville! Like usual, only 5 out of the 8 made it to the actual tour due to stomach flu and tiredness from the day before. We met Carlos at a central location and he took us back to the shop to get our bikes. We then road around all of Seville! It was so much fun and I saw places I would have never known to go to without a tour. We stopped for drinks and tapas halfway through and then biked to the other side of the city. I was definitely not as impressed with Seville before the bike tour but afterwards it definitely moved up my list! We biked for around 3 hours and then visited the interior of some of the places we rode past earlier. My favorite was the bull-fighting rink we went to, Real Maestranza. There was a guide for it so I learned a lot about the sport...it is such a big deal in Spain! The season doesn’t start until April but I bet seeing a fight is pretty amazing. I left after the bull ring tour for a nap in prepartation for our last night. We all ended up napping and waking up around 7:30. We got ready and left for dinner in a local area Carlos pointed out. I finally had Paella - a signature dish of Spain- and it was soo good! Our waiter was quite a character and made the dinner a ton of fun. After dinner we went to a local bar called Big Ben. It was there we realized that Seville is FILLED with American study abroad students. We paced our night so we were ready to go to the club around 2am (when it would be crowded) – these times are crazy. We went to Buddha, a three story club with different music on each level. We set up shop on the third where American music was playing - meaning the others up there were mostly American too haha It was another late night and none of us got more than a 2 hour nap before we woke up for our 8am flight. Friday was pretty terrible with constant waiting in the airport and then long bus and train rides home making for about 12 hours of traveling. Needless to say I slept pretty late today. I will be around Riva this weekend getting myself organized for this upcoming week since Lauren is coming to visit on Tuesday!!!!

Madrid

Madrid was really cool. It is the capital of Spain so it was very urban. It reminded me of New York City but MUCH cleaner. We found our hostel and got ready for the Tapas Tour that I organized last week. A nice man named Pablo picked all 8 of us up at our hostel around 7:30 and took us to 3 different restaurants around the city of Madrid. At each place, we had glasses of wine that he personally paired with the tapas dish he chose. At the first place we had a really great white wine with shrimp in garlic butter. At the second we had a very exclusive unfiltered wine not even available in Spain that was paired with scallops and shrimp. Lastly, our drink was a really dark, 12-year-old red wine with beef and ham dishes, followed by a little-too-sweet-for-me desert wine. It was such a great experience and we tried things we never would have known about had Pablo not shown us. It was well worth the money. After we were done with the planned stops, Pablo took us to a local piano bar and dropped us off. We were definitely the only tourists and the music was great. We went to a few other places before calling it a night fairly late.

Tuesday morning only half of us made it out to look around. Me, Kate, Lindsay, Corey and Mike left the hostel, got a Starbucks (I have missed it so much!) and headed to the Royal Palace of Madrid, the official palace of the King of Spain. We toured around the inside and then went close by to the Santa María la Real de La Almudena Cathedral. This was by far my favorite church I have seen in Europe. It was covered in stained glass windows and the ceiling was covered in colorful mosaic. It had a really modern feel and a really interesting interior. After the church we went to the opposite side of the city to explore the Parque del Retiro. It was a huge park with runners and bikers everywhere and really beautiful scenery. Thank goodness the day was as gorgeous as it was! We made our way to the Monument to Alfonso XII and found that you could rent rowboats for the lake in front of the monument for only 5 Euro!!! So of course, we did it. We went to the downtown area after boating in search of the Reina Sofia Museum, which has a huge collection of Picasso and Salvador Dali. But just our luck, it was closed on a Tuesday…I was super bummed. We went to the Botanical Gardens which we quickly dubbed the “garden of death” since nothing was bloomed and almost everything was dead. We met up with the ones that stayed behind in the morning around dinner time and then got back to the hostel around 7. We didn’t have plans for the night and earlier in the day I saw a sign for the musical Chicago playing in a theater near our hostel. Of course, that being one of my more favorite musicals, I decided I was going. The show started at 8:30 and I went by myself to see it :-) The language barrier was a bit unnerving (since I speak zero Spanish) but I found some people who spoke English to tell me how to get to my seat. Since I knew all the songs and the storyline, it was sooo cool to see and I am happy I did it even though no one else wanted to. When I was done I came back to everyone waiting for me to go out. We wandered into random places such as a Hawaii bar that made us order 7 Euro drinks just to sit down. There are also a ton of promoters on the streets offering your free drinks/shots/pizzas if you went to their bar. We took advantage of a few of those offers during the night. We didn’t stay out too late since we had a train ride to Seville at 8:30 the next morning.

Barcelona: Part II

We met at the sports shop at 5pm and were surprised to find that our tour guide was unable to make it to our tour. SO, we got a discount on the blades and were pointed in the direction of the ocean front. NOW…I am sure most of you know that I am far from coordinated on land (with some even comparing me to a baby giraffe), this was further reinforced by my terrible experience rollerblading the streets of Barcelona. Getting to the beach was pretty difficult but I kept thinking I would get better as the day went on...in reality, I just got worse, thank god we were padded up. I only had 3 major falls, with the last one in a crosswalk where I took down Kate and received multiple yells and honks as we crawled to the other side of the street. Pretty embarrassing but still a complete blast. That night the last two of our trip met up with us, Leigh Anne and her brother. We ate dinner at the hostel (it was provided) and hung out at the hostel bar until we ventured out to a few places nearby. We all reconvened at 1:45 at the hostel to go to Razzmatazz, a HUGE nightclub in Barcelona. We were there pretty late, headed to the hostel and fell asleep when the sun was coming up.

Sunday, as you can imagine, was a bit of a slow start. We got up, showered and had a much needed breakfast and left the hostel around 1:30. The boys wanted to go to Park Guell so me and Kate split up to check out other sites around the city. We visited the Picasso Museum, which was really neat but a bit crowded since we hit it on the one day a month with free admission. We shopped a bit and met up with everyone else around 7 to get ready for dinner. But, dinner continued to get pushed back until it was 9 and we hadn’t eaten. We had planned to see a 9:30 Flamenco show so we decided dinner would wait until after. Flamenco is wild! It was so worth seeing but still, very strange. The music is really great, with a guitarist and drummer but the singing it a bit odd and the women who dance stare daggers into the audience as they stomp around the stage. We got a late dinner (late for us, not for Spain) and then went to some places nearby for a not-so-crazy of a night. Monday morning we went to the train station to get a train to Madrid. Our train left around 2:00 putting us into Madrid around 5pm.

Barcelona: Part I

Friday morning we left the Villa at 8 for a train to Milan. Once in Milan we took a bus to the Bergamo Airport and waited for our flight to Barcelona. We flew RyanAir, which is one of the cheap airlines that flies throughout Europe. This was my first experience flying with it and I soon realized that all amenities are cut in order to lower the prices of tickets. But if you can get past the crowded free-for-all seating arrangement, the extra fees that are charged and the constant advertisements over the intercom for things like smokeless tobacco and lottery tickets, the 37 Euro I paid to get to Barcelona in only a few hours was definitely worth it. We got into our actual hostel around 4pm (still a long day of traveling with many modes of transportation) and dropped our things off to look around. Our hostel was right off of Las Ramblas, a main street in Barcelona, with vendors and weird moving statues down the entire thing…so definitely interesting to walk on. We headed back to our hostel after grabbing a quick dinner and got ready for the night. We stayed in Kabul Hostel, who has the tagline “If you want to sleep, don’t stay here,” which was a total blast. They had a downstairs bar where a ton of kids were constantly hanging out and every night they organized transportation to a different club around Barcelona that was free of a cover charge for anyone staying there. So on Friday night, we hung out at the hostel bar for a while until we headed to Chipitos, a very popular bar in Barcelona that has upwards of 200 shots to choose from. (Chipitos means shots in Spanish) We were told to get one where they placed an orange slice and whipped cream on top of the shot and lit them on fire…pretty neat. BUT, the night took a downturn when one of the guys in our group, Corey, got pick pocketed on the way to the bar. He didn’t even realize it had happened until he met us at Chipitos. Luckily it was only the cash he had put in his pants and not his wallet or Blackberry, so it could have been worse. Ever since we made these plans to go to Spain everyone told us that getting robbed in Spain was pretty commonplace. Out of all of us, Corey was the one making the most jokes of our inevitable robbery so when it happend to him it was extremely ironic and quite hilarious. We went back to the hostel around 1:30 for the group that left at 1:45 – yep, 1:45 was the meeting time to go out to the clubs, things don’t get going around Europe until about 2:30. But, only half of us decided to go out and I stayed in due to a tummy ache and an exhausting day of traveling.

Saturday morning we got up early and walked to a famous market off Las Ramblas. As you can see from the pictures above, it was pretty sweet! There were rows and rows of fruit, vegetable, meat, fish and candy stands. We ate there for breakfast and then started to walk to the La Sagrada Famiglia cathedral. Halfway there the boys parted ways to get a beer and the three girls, Kate, Lindsay and myself, went onwards without them. The cathedral was huge and structurally really impressive but there was so much construction both inside and out that I could barely see the architecture. After the cathedral we went to Park Guell, a famous park overlooking the city of Barcelona. It was such a nice day that it was packed with people eating lunches, hiking and just lounging in the sun. A bit of trivia for those of you who watch America’s Next Top Model, it was in this park that Melrose and Caridee did their last runway show of those wedding dresses! We spent a good amount of time walking around the park and then headed the opposite direction towards the beach. We are so lucky we were there on such a beautiful day because it was so much nicer walking the boardwalk. We ate outside at a really nice restaurant and ordered tapas and Sangria (a must when you are in Spain). Afterwards we headed back to the hostel to meet up with the guys and get ready for our rollerblade tour!

Leaving for Spring Break

First mid-term down and I can now finally enjoy the fact that I am leaving for Spain tomorrow! I have been pretty caught up in studying for the exam and I haven't even gotten excited until now :-) Tomorrow morning 6 of us leave for Barcelona. We are there until Monday afternoon when we leave for Madrid. Two nights in Madrid and then we head to Seville for another two. We are flying out of Seville on Friday afternoon and headed back to Riva. I really hope the weather will be nice and maybe, just maybe we could venture to a beach?! I will make sure to update as soon as I get back. Love Love

Dogsled/Locarno

Well, as some of you may know, my weekend did not turn out as planned. My roommate Kate and I spent all last week planning all sorts of things to do in Paris (Moulin Rouge show, booked our hostel, had our days planned) all that was left to do was book our train tickets, which have not been a problem in the past. Unfortunately, this time, they were. We went to buy reservations on Monday (since we have EuroRail passes, all you have to do is pay for a seat, usually around $5-10) and the trains we wanted were all booked. So we headed back home, spent the rest of the night creating a new travel game plan and went back on Wednesday only to find that every train leaving from Paris on Sat/Sun coming near Riva was booked. So, defeated, we came home Tuesday night and just said forget it. We talked a bit about different places but just didn’t feel comfortable throwing together a last minute trip just to go. SO, we decided on a relaxing weekend in Riva :-)

Since this was our long weekend, we didn’t have classes on Thursday. Of course, I woke up around 9 since I am so used to getting up early. I got a lot of work done before lunch (we have mid-terms this upcoming week) and afterwards we went on a hike. Friday I actually slept in until 11am! It was quite exciting and sooo nice not having to get up. I did some work again, went on a long run since it was around 50 and beautiful here and then went into Lugano with Kate for a delicious dinner out. We decided we could treat ourselves with all of the money we are saving from staying here this weekend. While we were in Lugano we booked our train reservations for a trip to Paris the last weekend in March, so I will definitely be going then!

Saturday was awesome. I woke up early and headed to San Bernardino -the same place I went snowboarding a couple of weeks ago- to see a dogsled race! I was the only one who went but it was actually pretty nice to have some time by myself. It was such a neat thing to see! Apparently a section of the races is one person on skis tied to a dog who pulls them? When I got there that was what was happening and I was going to be really mad if that what I had come all the way to see haha but soon enough the actual sleds came out :-) Luckily, it was a shorter event so each sled would go off in intervals of 5 minutes and would race against the clock. The event was only about 20 minutes so I go to see a couple teams start and finish. It was definitely something I will probably never get another chance to see, so I am super happy with my decision to go. (check out the video up top!)

I left the dog races around 12 and met up with Kate in Locarno, a pretty big city in the canton of Ticino, and about an hour away from Riva. After some research on Friday, we found a way to get to Cardada, a city 1360 ft high on a mountain with incredible views. Luckily, we stumbled upon the rail lift somehow and got to the city of Orsilena about 10 min after getting off the train. From there we paid to go on a gondola ride up to Cardada. The ride itself was like a rollercoaster, with my stomach dropping more than a few times...the crowded glass space didn’t help either. But, once we got off it was more than worth it. The views were absolutely breathtaking. There was a bridge that jutted out over one of the most scenic settings I have seen since I have been in Europe. We spent a while taking it in and wondering around the little ski town up there, had a cappuccino overlooking the mountains then headed back down. After that we shopped around the boutiques for a bit until it was time to leave in order to get back in time for dinner at the villa. All in all, I wish Paris had worked out, but this weekend ended up being quite productive and surprisingly enjoyable!