parissssss

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM crepe

Arc de Triomphe! dumb cars in the way

STUPID TAXI I HATE YOU SO SO MUCH

Santa! This was on Champs Elysées above the little shops and such!

little trouble in paris?

Sacré Coeur - beautiful basillica on the top of a hill in Montmartre, the art district. It was a beautiful church - we went inside and sat down and listened to some nuns sing for a little bit

The view of all of Paris! See the skyscraper to the right - the only one in Paris?! That's where we were the day before!

Then we walked down to see Moulin Rouge! Not as cool as we thought it would be but oh well

The Opera House where the Phantom of the Opera was based on. It didn't actually say Opera house, it said 'Academy of Music" or something along those lines and we weren't even sure if it was the right place but it wassss!

Okay so Day Two (Saturday) Sarah and I woke up bright and early (kinda) and headed out to Montmartre, the art district. There we climbed to the top of the Sacré Coeur to see a beautiful view of Paris. Then we walked around for a while and then headed to Moulin Rouge. There were TONS of sex shops around everywhere, which was funny because there was a family with two small children walking in front of us. Oh well. Then we walked south to the Opera House but we didn't go inside. But it was perdyy. We were hungry (surprise) so we eventually found a very very yummy crepe place!! We both got food crepes, i forget what they are called, but the crep itself is darker b/c they use a different flour or something, and very thin and mine was crispy. It had eggs, potatoes, bacon and cheese inside. Can you say YUM? well if you can, in French they say "miam maim" is in yum yum. Sarah told me that. Ha. Anywho then we had a delicious dessert crepe with dark chocolate and bananas!! amazing. Then we headed toward the Champs Elysées, which leads to the Arc de Triomphe! We saw the famous plaza with the obelisk and some other famous statue stuff. Booths lined the street selling everything from candles to chocolate to crepes to decorative lamps all for Christmas! Sarah and I got some hot wine, which was interesting. Then we arrived to the Arc, yess! very pretty. But it was still light out and we wanted to see if the street would light up (it didn't :( ) so we went into a cafe to get some cafe (haa, cofffee). And they basically give you two sips of extremely strong coffee in a teeny tiny cup, but it was good. Then headed back to the Arc de triomphe, it was at least a little lit up, then we headed back to Sarah's gma's house for some dinner! Oh, and lots of wine. She is 94 years old and pretty much only drinks wine. Hey, she's doing something right eh?
Then we met up with some of my friends from Duke! First we saw one of my friends and grabbed some wine and drank it by the Seine right next to Notre Dame! Very cool. And boats would go by with people partying which was pretty funny. Then we met up with some of my other friends and went to this super packed bar with dancing deal. It was fun until...come 330 am and we want to go home. So we leave and of course it's pouring rain. No worries, we'll just grab a taxi and go home. Oh, there are ZERO OPEN TAXIS?? Great. Yes, every 3 seconds a taxi drives by but they are all full. Finally one empty one comes, but my friend had to get it b/c she was by herself and if Sarah and I took it she would have been alone. So we wait. And wait. Another one comes!! Oh, what, you WON'T TAKE US HOME?? because we are too far out and there are no clients where we live for you?? THANKS STUPID PARISIAN TAXI MAN, I HATE YOU. No worries, the metro opens at 5:30. UGHH. Then we decide to walk, at least somewhere, dunno where b/c we have no idea where we are. Find a bus stop and we sit on the bench to be out of the rain. Another taxi, another refusal to drive us home. This time we are just feeling SUPER lemme tell you. FINALLY aroudn 5 am a dumb taxi driver says he'll take us. So we get back, sleep for a very minimal amount of time before I need to get up and head to the airport to get back to Madrid. At least I got to sleep on the 2 hour plane ride....

All in all Paris was so much fun though! And I have to say, Sarah and I are AMAZING tourists, and basically saw everything there is to see. and of course it was so good to see friends!! It was a good weekend :)

Eiffel tower

mas paris

Notre Dame

Inside

Pretty fall gardens!

unintentional skyscraper that we found

Sarah and Laura do Paris!

Monet waterlillies in the Musee D'Orsay!! The museum used to be a train station, so it was very cool, super open with statues and a very high ceiling and a beautiful clock.

Van Gogh famous self portrait

Sarah and I in front of the Seine River! We had SUCH great weather while we were there! It was pretty sunny and only rained at night! Apparently that is super lucky b/c November means yucky weather for Paris usually.

The Louvre! Although we didn't go inside, we made our way past here to get a picture of course :)

We arrived Thursday with a stressful start - my phone wouldn't call Sarah's for some unknown reason, and she had one number wrong to my phone number, so we had no way of getting in touch with eachother. We had planned out a place to meet but it was a very large area and we didn't specify where. Just as I was beginning to think that I would be stuck in Paris all alone by myself and never ever find Sarah, I was looking outside (I was waiting in a railway stop thing, it was confusing) do I see none other than Sarah!! I screamed her name and it was all good. She had been looking for me for a while, and her phone was almost out of battery and she was just wandering around the area trying to find me...ahh it was stressful but it all worked out! Then we headed over to the apartment of her 94-year-old step-grandmother, who was very nice and spoke perfect English (as well as French, Russian and i think Italian too). She took us out to a very tasty dinner and by then it was kind of late so we decided to sleep and start our touring early the next morning.

So our Real Day One (Friday) consisted of: waking up early, eating tasty croissants, going to Musee d'Orsay, walking along the Seine up to the Louvre, then walking to Marais, the old Jewish district, to eat falafel! Then we walked down back across the river to Notre Dame. Then we headed to the Jardin de Luxomberg, some pretty gardens! Then we accidentally wandered to St. Germain D'Pres or whatever and then we accidentally went to the skyscraper. Our goal was to walk to the Eiffel Tower but it proved to be very far and that we can't read maps that well...So we just took the metro there. Then we finally arrived at the tower and it was so pretty!! We walked around for a while, then grabbed a bottle of champagne (hey, why not?! and also we wanted wine but we didn't have a cork screw so champagne was the only option) and sat and it got dark and we saw the tower light up and sparkle! We then got some dinner (yumm) and headed home (aka her 94 year old step gma's house) after a long day of touring!

trip to toledo

The beautiful city of Toledo! We just went there for one day, but it was beautiful.

Very earthy and scrubby and such

This man handmaking the jewelry that Toledo is known for. I bought a bracelet!! Very pretty.

Church I think. I'm not going to lie, I don't remember that much. I was really tired this trip and I didn't pay attention that much...We saw a very famous el Greco painting, and we saw a couple other things but I can't even remember! I know that's so bad, sorry. I should have posted this stuff right when we did it so that I could remember, but I didn't. oops.

This is the Palacio Real, the Royal Palace. It's awesome. SOO pretty. The rooms are so well decorated and everything is just so lush and luxurious. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside though so google it if you're interested. There was even a room with at lesat 4 Stratavarius instruments, which was super awesome, Jess you would have thought it was really cool. dad too. well i guess all of you. There were like 2 violins and maybe 2 basses or a cello or something? they were decorated and beautiful. Anywho, this was a while back when fiona visited me from london!

Fiona and me in my casa

Then that Sunday I went to a bull fight. it was horrible. They kill the bulls at the end. And 2 of the tororos were horrible, the guys swinging the red cape things. Ok what happens is the bull comes out into the arena, and these guys are HUGE just MASSIVE. Then the torororos kinda tease it for a little bit, but when he charges they run behind the walls so that they don't get hit. Then they bring out these guys on horses with huge rods and stab the bull. The horses are protected (apparently) as you see here, and they have on blinders and such so they don't spook when the bull CHARGES at them. One horse got completely knocked down though and bled, it was sad. Ok so they guys on the horses then stab the bull a bunch of times. Then they go away, and a tororo comes out and stabs it more and leaves the little half rods sticking out of the back of the bull. Then at the end he does the cape thing and then at the very end he has a sword and is supposed to stab the bull in the heart and it's supposed to go down quickly, etc. well our tororos were HORRIBLE and kept missing with the sword, so one bull they just had to stab it over and over with a dagger thing in the head until it died. it was so sad i hated it, i didn't watch and then I left for the next one and just hated the whole thing. It was horrible.

LOOK HOW HUGE THEY ARE!!! and we were soooooooo close to the arena. not something I want to see again.

HALLOWEEN

So to follow with the Spanish version of Halloween, Beth and I decided to dress up "scary" this year. Note the blood coming from our mouths. Super cool.

Us in character?

In a bar that we went to, I saw these AWESOME costumes and so I had to ask them to get a picture. I'm pretty sure that the one on the left was a girl. So, case in point, even the girls dress up scary and don't try to use Halloween as an excuse to dress up like a police officer with a tiny skirt.

My blood is almost all gone :( but this is with my friend Brent and his creepy/weird mask thing that his Senora gave him. It is the strangest thing ever. but at least he kind of had a costume? (ps most aka everyone except me and beth didn't dress up for halloween! and we're supposed to be the Americans!)
overall it was really fun!!

Oh and then on Sundays it's All Saint's Day and they go to the cemetaries and put flowers on the graves of their dead family members, apparently the cemetaries are supposed to be beautiful but I didn't end up going to see them. I had a paper due on Monday that was just horrible and I won't complain any more about it here, but I had to finish that, because of course, procrastinator that I am, it wasn't done. But it's over now yay!

Anyway, hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Madrid in the fall

So last Thursday, me and 4 other friends went to Salamanca for the night - literally. We arrived at 6 pm and left at 5:45 am the next day. It was a looooooong night. We first walked around the city, it's beautiful. This, I think, is a picture of a cathedral. We kinda just walked around buildings that we didn't know what they were. Then we went out to eat tapas, at a specific street that I read about, and it was tasty! Then we went to a couple bars, including a bar featuring the "spanish hippie crowd" which was pretty cool. Around 3:30 we were starting to get tired, found a food place that was atually open (it was soo strange, you order food through an ATM-type thing, you click what you want and put in money) and made our way to a club. We were all exhausted though and went back to the train station around 4:45 to find that it was still CLOSED. So we sat outside of it like hobos until we were actually frozen, then found some ATM machines that were inside buildings (kind of hard to explain) and slept there until 5:15 just ot make it to our train (to sleep more)! It was a really fun time. ALSO, yes it was Thursday, but everyone aws dressed up in Halloween costumes!! Scary ones too. People don't just dress up cute or funny, they dress up like dead things walking the earth, straight from the Thriller video. It was actually frightening. But awesome. When we were leaving there was some sort of mob at it was scary to be sure, but awesome b/c everyone was all dressed up! anyways, LONG NIGHT.

Saturday I was lucky enough to go to a Real Madrid game with my friend Beth! She ended up with an extra ticket which was awesome so I got to go!! We were playing Getafe (I think?) some small Spanish town place. However, my boyfriend, Cristiano Ronaldo, isn't playing right now due to an injury so I was sad I didn't get to see him. Even though I literally knownothing about soccer it was so freakin cool to go and watch the game, but the CROWD was the best part. Every word that anyone uttered was a curse to someone's mom or telling them to put something someplace. It was awesome. Beth and I booed when they booed, we cheered when they cheered. To be honest we were probably really obnoxious but we had a good time.

In the stands!

Antry crowd. We found out why they were angry later (and this is a testament to how well we paid attention/know about soccer) - one of our players got a red card and we only played with 10 for over one half. so THAT's why they boo-ed the refs so much....