Madrid and (holy)Toledo!

Long time no post. Here we go.

Feb 27th: After the rather smooth experience of the night bus, Krista and I arrive in Madrid at 7:30 am. Far too early to go anywhere, we decide to have coffee and toast at the train station. Taking the subway to our hostel, I start to notice that people are wet...naturally I assume its raining outside. NO. It was snowing. Snowing in march in SPAIN! We were none too amused by this. Krista and I meet up with Will (who was joining us for this leg of the trip) and we check in to our hostel. For lunch we found place that served unlimited tapas with the purchase of one beer. Sold. The weather had picked up a bit after lunch, but still gray and kind of rainy. We walked around the downtown core, went to Buen Retiro park and ate chocolate and churros. Krista fed most of hers to the birds. We went to the Prado museum and I bought my dad a t-shirt. Not a bad first day in Madrid.

Buen Retiro Park 

Feb 28th: Free breakfast at the hostel. Much toast was eaten. We then met up with our friend Silas' cousin Dany (who is from Madrid). He was awesome and gave us a tour of the city. He was even knowledgeable of all the history etc... For lunch we went to the Museo de Jambon (not an actual museum). There we had a full 3 course meal for pretty cheap. I also tried this cinnamon rice dessert that was like a soggy rice pudding. I really enjoyed it! We walked down Rio street (a commercial shopping street) and played Dutch Blitz. I must also mention in was POURING rain this day. Of the apparent 37 days a year in rains in Madrid, we experienced 2 of them. After Dany left we went to the Reina Sofia museum. There, we saw paintings by Dali and Picasso. The most famous being Picasso's "Guernica". We caved and had the inexpensive Burger King for dinner (the first time I've eaten at Burger in at least 5 years).

Feb 29th: Toledo time! We woke up early and caught our bus to Toledo. Today was by far the warmest and sunniest of the entire trip. A perfect end, especially because Toledo is a beautiful town. Built on a hill and guarded by an enormous wall, it is very historic with winding little streets and many a church. There was even an old Jewish quarter and Synagogue (no longer in use bien sur). We spent most of the day walking around, checking out museums and enjoying the nice weather. The lunch was also the best by far (maybe tied with the paella). We had loads of bread and sangria and I ate pasta bolognese and a meat dish that reminded me a bit of brisket. Delish! We also had marzipan and gelato. You know, that famous Spanish gelato...cough cough. I also got a bit of a tan (if my face going red counts). That'll do Spain, that'll do.

Toledo!

Feb 30th: Having loads of time before our plane takes off, we decide to walk around and sit in a park near the palace for a bit. There I saw my 9th and final pug of the trip. 9 pugs in 7 days, life just isn't fair. Unfortunately, due to a mis-communication, Will hadn't yet printed out his boarding pass or even checked in online. It was a stressful 45 minute subway ride to the airport. After running and being forced to open up my suitcase going through security (I had a lot of plastic bags I was bringing back for garbage purposes, thinking back that is a tad suspicious), we all made it on to the plane. Even Will caught a break and got his boarding pass 20 min before we took off. Never a dull moment. Once we arrived in Geneva we took the train back to Grenoble. A rather stressful but good end to my Spanish adventures.

Fun facts:

-You must go to Toledo

-Apparently Spain has a deal thingy that if you can prove your family is of Spanish decent, and was kicked out/left because of the Spanish Inquisition or general anti-semitism you can re-gain Spanish citizenship. Why is my family not Sephardic??? dammit.

-I know a great deal more about the Spanish civil war than I did before. Knowledge is power!

-Bar and club promoters will chase and hunt you down to try to get you into their establishment.

Barcelona: land of imported palm trees and sand

Hey! So it's been awhile since I've made a blog post. While I have been up to things, nothing has really been super noteworthy. At least nothing that I think anyone else would want to read. Until now! I recently had another break from school, wanting to go somewhere warm and inexpensive, I chose Spain. So here is a summary of what I did in Spain.

Thursday February 21st: Krista, Camila and I were planning on taking the train to Geneva, through a connecting train in Chambery. As Murphy's law states (roughly): what can go wrong, will go wrong. Our train was late and we had to wait for an extra 2 hours in the Chambery train station. We were off to a good start. When we finally got to the airport, we met up with our other friend Pine and we prepared ourselves for our sleeping in the airport adventure. After watching Mulan in french, we all huddled together in or little corner and tried to sleep. It was freezing, the floor was cold and they kept playing terrible 90s soft rock through the pa system all night. Of all types of music?!

Friday 22nd: Considering none of us got a good nights sleep we were all up bright and early for our respective flights. Krista and I bid farewell to Camila and Pine and departed on our turbulence filled flight to Barcelona. We arrived at around 9 am. Once we figured out the metro system and had dropped off our bags at the hostel we were starving. Praise the cheap and plentiful chinese buffet we found. It was amazing, the amount of food we ate. We then made our way to a free walking tour around the gothic quarter. It was a nice little history lesson as I didn't really know anything about Barcelona or Catalan history in general. Krista and I each had a glass of sangria and shared a baguette for dinner (we were still full from our gluttonous lunch).

Saturday 23rd: Free breakfast ftw! Today we decided to purchase a bus tour deal as Barcelona is a big city and this way we could see it all in one day and then determine where to re-visit later. We started our rainy, cold morning a top the bus tour of West Barcelona (including Mont Juic, the Olympic Stadium and Diagonale street). Eventually the weather picked up and the sun began to shine. We decided to treat ourselves to a Paella lunch. It was delicious, and a huge portion, which we gladly ate. Not even the rude English people at the table next to us good put a damper on our meal (they were being embarrassingly fussy and rude to the server). It was time for the second bus tour. On this one we saw the Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi area, the beach, etc... Krista and I took advantage of the moderately warm weather and hung out on the beach for a bit. 4 words (5 words?). Crazy old men skinny-dipping. Of all the men in the world for me to see naked at that time, why them? We walked along the famous street "La Rambla" and made our first stop to the Bocaria market. As the sun set we walked along through the old town some more, ate candy, saw a strike and finally went home.

So cold!

Bocaria

Did you know he died for your sins...a lot?

Sunday 24th: We wake up a bit early, so to have a full day of sightseeing. We walk up Mont Juic so to have a nice view of the entire city. For once the weather was absolutely beautiful. We take a teleferic (chair lift) up to the castel at the very top (Castell de Montjuic). It was a really cool fortress but had some more negative times during the Franco era. Once down, we walk through the city a bit and find another buffet lunch (not chinese though). Lets just saw 2 whole bowls of ice cream were consumed. We then went to a free museum with a bunch of statues of Jesus on the cross. I honestly should have counted, there would have been well near two-hundred. There were also a lot of cool collectors items from the area. A room full of fans, receipts and cheques, glasses, canes, stamps....it was pretty cool. We entered the main cathedral in the gothic quarter and saw the tomb of Saint Eulalia (a young christian girl killed by romans). We then saw a little flamenco dancing show and ate more candy, as you do. All and all a full day once more.

Mont Juic Castle

Monday 25th: Or now to be known as the "boring day" of the trip. Basically we had seen a lot of stuff already and as we found out all museums are closed on mondays. Not wanting to spend a lot of money, we were left with not very much to do. We bought a bus tickets to Madrid, walked along the expensive Diagonale street, went and had empanadas at the Bocaria market (and more fresh pressed juice!), we walked for ages back to the beach and had durum for dinner. Thats honestly all. It was nice in the fact that is was a relaxing day, but still kind of on the boring side. One the plus side we discovered the joy of the "goats that sound like humans videos"

Tuesday 26th: We vowed this day would not be boring! We started off with a trip to the beautiful Parc Guell. We spent a few hours walking along, seeing the greenery and the pretty views of the city. We went to our cheapest buffet lunch to date! This was becoming a competition. We went to the Picasso museum and saw a lot of his sketches and ceramics. We then returned to the Bocaria market for more juice...it was just too good! Walking along La Rambla we needed to have some gelato, the day was just too nice not to. I especially liked my Turron flavoured scoop (Catalan/Spanish Nougat). We then returned to our hostel and waited for midnight (as that is when our night bus would take us to Madrid). We ate terrible lasagna and Krista spilled sangria on her new beige pants. It was a good end to a fun 5 days in Barcelona.

Other side of Sagrada Familia

Fun Facts:
-Catalan is way more similar to French than Spanish. Although not easily understood while spoken, it was a lot easier to pronounce and read.

-Go to the Bocaria market, it is awesome and delicious. I had 4 cups of fresh juice in 5 days. 

-There is a square called "George Orwell street", it is the most surveillance camera ridden square in all of Barcelona. Oh the irony!!!

-Mont Juic is named after a Jewish cemetery that used to be there. 

- I stood in a square where King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus stood.

-All of the palm trees in Barcelona were imported for the Olympics. The sandy beaches too! The sand apparently comes from Egypt.