Weird Week

Well it's been a pretty weird week to say the least. I don't know what to say about it really, it's just been..weird. Both personally and socially. But I'll get to that kind of stuff a bit later, the week did start off pretty interesting.

Tuesday night I had my first real burger since being in Europe, it was amazing. We went to this place called Dakota not too far from my school, I can't believe I've never been there before. It's owned by a British guy and an American guy, that night it was the British guy running the place. He was hilarious guy with a thick Manchester accent, he was having fun making fun of Hiccup and me, definitely a joker. We got chipotle burgers which were absolutely delicious, a bit on the spicy side too but soo good. The place is a little expensive (well my spain standards, the burger was like 7.50 euros) but it's a great little place, I really liked it, the atmosphere was pretty chill, the food was great, there was a very large selection of beer and wine, the music was pretty hilarious too -lots of random oldies from the 80's and 90's- there was a bunch of americans and brits there tho, we didn't really interact with them, but ended up making friends with a Belgium guy instead. He was a really nice guy, he's in his late 20's, from the french side of Belgium, etc. He's here in Granada for a couple weeks fixing up a house that him and his girlfriend own up in the Albyzín, we had some pretty interesting convos with him.

Wednesday was an odd day, there was a Europe wide strike called 14N, pretty much an anti-economy protest day. It started at 12am wednesday morning and was suppose to last until 12am thursday morning but I think it had mostly died down by 10pm or so, not too sure. I didn't see the beginning of it around midnight but apparently there was a massive crowd down at the city centre, a bunch of people with microphones and whatnot, and apparently there was even some mini flash 'bombs' and things being tossed around. During the day there it was a bit calmer though, pretty much everything was closed -classes were pretty much cancelled as well- except for a few of the convenience stores and some of the restaurants/cafés (essentially all the places that aren't run by spaniards), apparently at noon though the big group of protestors who were out at that time were marching around the city and yelling/irritating at all the store owners who were open and whatnot. We saw a bunch of them around 8pm when we were heading out to a bar, there was 2 large groups marching down Gran Via with signs, all chanting and whatnot, it was pretty interesting.

We watched a bit more of the protest march and then headed up into the backroads to a restaurant called Babel. It's a kool little international café, their tapas are all international themed so they have african tapas, asian tapas, mexican tapas, etc. A group of us were going there because there was an intercambio -language exchange- group even there that night -supposedly anyways-. It took us a little while to find the place, we actually ended up passing it like twice because it was still partially closed and had the big metal door cover 3/4 of the way down when we were looking for it. Eventually we found it and realized we were dumb for walking past it, although to be fair it has no signage or anything on the outside, so if you've never been there before you literally would have never found it. Eventually they did open up and we grabbed a corner table inside, there did appear to be a coordinator guy for the intercambio but within half an hour the place was buzzing with people -it is a pretty popular tapas place- and needless to say there was no organization of an intercambio of any sort. I was with a small group of canadians/americans and a Finish girl named Saara, we were hoping to find some native spanish speakers but instead we ended up meeting 2 guys, one from Germany and one from Belgium, they were both kool buys but both english speakers just like the rest of us, aha ohwell. A few more Finish/British people who were friends with Saara joined us but that was about all the international interaction we got that night. So much for practicing my spanish. We all ordered some drinks and got some delicious tapas, by round 3 of drinks none of us wanted more food except the one German guy so we told him if he wanted us to order tapas with our drinks then he had to eat all of them, his answer? Challenge Accepted. Only 5 or 6 of us ordered drinks but apparently they brought 12 little bowls of rice with (some) curry chicken, ahaha you should have seen the German guy's face when they put all that food down on the table, it was priceless. We told him he had to eat all 12 cuz he had said before that he would..aha just kidding, he did end up eating about 6 of them tho and the rest of us split the remaining ones. 

Challenge Accepted... maybe

Thursdays the weather was gorgeous and I only have my 2 hour Italian class which is from 12:30-2:30 so it's pretty much like the weekend starts wednesday nights for me. Although this week there was no class on wednesday either so it was pretty much like my weekend started on Tuesday, ridiculous right? Italian class did seem to stretch on forever, some days that class is so slow but ohwell, afterwards I met up with Hiccup and we went wandering around ze city, running errands and looking for some place to have lunch. We ended up having lunch at some random restaurant in one of the plazas near the centre of town, we ordered some tinto de veranos and waited to see what kind of tapas we would get, sometimes you can order them, sometimes you just have to wait and see what they bring, in this case we just had to wait. The tapa was pretty weird, it was two battered fish, like whole fish, well no head but tail and all, plus some cabbage with olive oil. It was definitely one of the weirdest tapas I've had so far, they were small/medium-ish sized fish, tasted pretty good cuz they were battered and deep fried...but still so weird. I dunno. After that tinto de verano I was starting to feel a little wine buzzed not going to lie, I only had some cereal for breakfast which was like 4 hours prior to that so it was almost like drinking on an empty stomach, after that we got some gelato and ran a couple more errands before ending up at Casa Lopez (CL), we literally live there, it's one of my fav places around here for sure and it's not too far from my house which is nice. We ordered a couple more drinks and tapas at CL, had a pretty good wine buzz going by then, yay for day drinking? Ahaa. 

That night we -we being the group of us from Babel- were planning on going to Barrio Latino -a salsa bar at like the other end of the city- and maybe a club afterwards, however, like usual our plans ended up changing after talking with some other friends who were going to another salsa club called Salsero Mayor, luckily it was closer to Barrio Latino too. When we got to Salsero there was an intermediate salsa lesson going on so we decided to go to a bar for a bit and come back later once it was over. We ended up drinking at Pub Legend, it was pretty empty but whatever, there's a lot of uni parties there and whatever on weekends and there's also intercambios there too -apparently anyway- so we had about 3 or 4 rounds of drinks there then headed back to Salsero to meet up with our friends, Tonio was there with 2 other guys we had met last time we were at Barrio Latino and then 2 guys we had met from Babel also showed up so we had some guys to dance with which was nice. I ended up running into some American friends from my classes as well which was random but fun. There was some amazing dancers there, we probably spent about 1/3 of the time just standing around watching them, some of the couples really were impressive. We ended up dancing around there till 2am or so and then just ended up going home, clubbing could wait for another day. I was on a salsa-high after the club and was half-run/skipping home accompanied by loud singing/talking -as usual- my friends all looked pretty tired and were kinda just staring at me with the 'what the hell is wrong with you' looks aha :D

Friday was our italian friend Vincenzo's birthday, he had planned a house party that night and then wanted to go out clubbing after, of course. His house is pretty much on the other side of the city, so for the first time since I've been here, I actually took the bus in Granada. I was with a pretty big group of people, and we were more or less the first people to arrive so we got first dibs on the food and alcohol, we had brought wine and whatnot for him but apparently he didn't have a wine opener, how can an apartment with 2 italians and 2 other guys (americans maybe?) living in it not have a wine opener?! V ended up going over to the mercadona down the street and getting an opener later on that night anyway. In the mean time we drank lots of sparkling wine, vodka-mixed drinks, limoncello, and whatever else, then there was the cake, I dont think there was really any cake in it, it was basically a cake made of icing with oreos and whatnot stuck in it ahaha it was delicious all the same and of course an icing war broke out, there's probably some icing still in my hair :| aha. Eventually we headed out to Camborio, there was a 'glow' party there that night aha glow in the dark paint Everywhere. We definitely weren't dressed for the occasion so we only hit up the bar and danced around inside for a short period of time to avoid the massive paint war which took place later on in the night. There was girls going around with jars of paint so we all ended up having some streaks of glow in the dark paint on our faces and necks but later on in the night they literally used water guns and sprayed the entire club-area room with glow in the dark paints, if we had been dressed for the occasion it definitely could have been crazier/messier night.

Although to be honest I wasn't in the highest of spirits that night. I think it was from a combination of things, I was just in a really weird mood and feeling kind of...overwhelmed. The past few weeks I've been spending a Lot of time with big/small groups of people, and you all know how social I am, but sometimes I just need some alone time, that's definitely been something lacking in my life lately. The only time I'd really been alone in the past couple weeks was when I was at home sleeping, but even then there was nights when friends had crashed here or I had crashed at friends' houses. So standing there in the middle of overly-crowded Camborio was starting to feel a little suffocating, I was starting to feel almost claustrophobic but more in a mental than physical kind of way. I ended up walking out of Camborio around 3am, my friends tried convincing me to come back but that definitely wasn't happening, I felt a little bad just leaving like that but I just couldn't stand being there anymore. On my way home I passed by a little bar, I just happened to look into the window and see Hiccup in there which was super random, so I stopped in to say 'hey' and see what she was up to, she was in there with two friends, the bar was closed but they were just kinda hanging around with bartender, we talked for a few then I headed out. Kat had told me earlier in the day that she'd be hanging at Paddy's the Irish bar near-ish to my place, I passed it on the way home and decided to pop in to see if she was there, of course she was aha she wasn't looking too sober either ehehe I love her. I hung around with her and her friends till about 4 when the bar started closing down and then finally headed home. T'was an odd night. 

This will probably sound cheesy but it was a beautiful clear night and I was staring up at the stars as I walked home and realized that I could see Orion's belt, one of the few constellations I can always find in the sky back in Ptown and VanCity, and it felt like home. It was a bit of a bittersweet moment though because lately I've also been coming to terms with the fact that I won't be coming back to Ptown  for christmas. This will be the first time in 20 years That I haven't spend christmas in Ptown, it's just so weird thinking that this year I won't be there, I mean I'm going to be in Spain so what in the world do I have to complain about right? But still, holidays are family time you know? Most of the Americans I go to school with are only here for one semester so they're all going back to the States after exams in december and even those are going to be here 2nd term are all going back since we have all of january off which means it's still a worth while trip to go back for them. My 3 American UBC friends are all going home too. Everyone one but me and my 2 Canadian friends seem to be going back to North America, it's crazy. On the upside tho. I'm really happy though because 2 of my Ptown friends are coming here to chill with me over christmas which is going to be awesome! Plus since I'm not going home I'm going on a big trip in january, starting in Rome and traveling up through Italy, then going to either Germany or France before coming back to Spain, I haven't totally decided yet. I'm also going to be here for New Years so Me and Mads are trying to decide whether we want to go to Glasgow, Portugal or do a Madrid-Salamanca-Toledo trip for that. Decisions, decisions. 

Guess I'm just going through a weird, nostalgic-like phase, I've just been missing ptown people and ubc people lately, sometimes wishing I was back there to be honest, I mean being here in Spain is absolutely amazing and I don't regret it for a second but it's different, sometimes I just miss the familiarity and going to school events and hanging at Mahony's and having brunches at my apartment and all those kinds of things which my friends are doing without me this year. Sometimes I still miss the engineer too. But alas, this is my life, and I am going to enjoy this experience as much as I possibly can because who knows when I'll have another opportunity like this right? But I do miss you all and hope you're all doing well! 

Anyways, enough of the sentimental stuff.. Saturday it was pouring rain, YET AGAIN. It's like every weekend I swear it just rains, the week was gorgeous and sunny and warm, I was freaking wearing a skirt the day before, no joke! But Saturday it was raining so hard it literally woke me up because it was so loud hitting the concrete and furniture outside my window. So since it was raining, I decided to take advantage of it and just stay in bed as long as I wanted, which pretty much meant all day. I literally laid in bed and watched movies and whatever else until about 7pm, only getting up every once in awhile to get food or go to the bathroom. Eventually I did get my ass out of bed around 7 because I had dinner plans with some friends and it had pretty much stopped raining by then, thank zeus. We went to CL for dinner, where else, and I had their steak and ale pie, omg it was sooo good, haven't had a good meat pie like that in so long. I love good british food. Afterwards, Hiccup, Kiki, and I went and met up with Tonio and Izzy at a kool little bar called Sureña, was definitely a hot spot for the locals, on thursday nights apparently it's insanely busy because it's half price deals or something like that. The place was very white and had a kool, young vibe. I would definitely say that the majority of the people in their were spaniards which was very interesting for people-watching to say the least ehe. This place is well-known because they have good deals like a bucket of 5 beers for 3 euros and if you want a tapa as well it's only 1 euro more, the food there is also really good, we got a salmon-bagel like tapa which was so good, the salmon was so fresh. We talked about bar hopping but in the end we just stayed there until about 2:30am and then decided to all head home, I was still kind of in a weird mood so going was definitely the perfect choice for me. 

Today I've literally just stayed at home all day, the weather was alright, fairly overcast, I just lazed around and did homework mostly. Taco showed up in the middle of the afternoon and Mads popped by a couple hours ago to hang out which was nice and chill. It's been a pretty chill, unproductive day besides the couple hours of homework/studying. The only annoying thing I discovered today was that the gas tank has run out which means the stove doesn't work nor does the hot water for the shower. I'm hoping we still have another gas tank, we always get two at a time, but since Patri is gone for the weekend I have no idea. Guess I'll just have to wait till she gets home tmrw to figure those kind of fun things out. Well, I know this has been a bit of a weird blog, and that I've used the word weird about 100 times but really, it's the best word to describe this week. I'm doing alright now, just lying on my couch watching America's Next Top Model..yes I watch still watch it..reality tv junky right here. Anywho, that's all for now.

Nov. 12-18

A Quick Visit to Barcelona

Sunday morning we flew out of Milan and landed in Barcelona, instead of taking an immediate connecting flight back to Granada though, Taco and I decided to have a little day trip in Barcelona and take an evening flight back instead. A shuttle bus from airport dropped us somewhere around the centre of town, we wandered around the area for a few minutes and then headed into the nearest café to grab some much needed coffee. It was only about 8:30am by that point so needless to say we were tired as hell. I went to order two cafe con leche (coffee with steamed milk) and ended up ordering it in Italian, apparently my brain was having a problem converting back into Spanish after a weekend of speaking mostly in Italian, oops. The guy looked at my really weirdly for a moment then raised two fingers and repeated "due?" I then immediately corrected myself by saying, "dos! lo siento.." while mentally face-palming myself. stupid brain. I was looking at the menu to see what kinda food/pastry things they had there and at first I was so confused, I know I was tired but the menu didn't look like any language I recognized...and then 'click' my brain realized it was in Catalan, there was Spanish as well but it was the secondary language, so strange. Barcelona and the Catalan province are quite interesting, it's seriously like a whole different world/language, pretty much like Quebec, separation issues and all. Catalan is definitely an odd language, especially on paper, there's a lot of x's in it, like they spell chocolate 'xocolate'..so weird. 

Two coffees later I was starting to feel semi-alive again. It was kinda nice drinking actual coffee again because in Italy we only drank espressos, mind you they were amazing espressos but those were gone in two or tree sips and sometimes it's nice actually drinking an actual cup of coffee, ya know? CapeGirl came and met up with us in the café because she's studying there for the year and promised to be our tour guide for the day. We headed over to her apartment to drop off all our travel stuff before exploring the city, passing through some pretty parks and side streets on our way there. She lives in a nice, modern apartment in a really central location in Barcelona, it was pretty sweet not gunna lie. 

Let the exploring begin! I really did like Barcelona, it was a beautiful city, lots of nice park areas, and beautiful architecture, it reminded me a lot of Paris to be honest. Plus it's right on the ocean so the beaches and marinas there are pretty amazing. It's a very diverse city, there's parks and greenery but then there's also a lot of small side streets and old architecture which contrasts the really commercial and modernized areas near the beach and centre of town. It's quite an interesting place. Definitely more modern than Granada, more green too. CapeGirl took us around to a bunch of the kool parts of town; the boardwalk near the beach, one of the big streets with all the touristy markets and things like that, we walked past some of the famous Gaudi buildings, etc. 

This is going to sound lame and ridiculous and whatever but the best part of the Barcelona trip, besides getting to chill with CapeGirl, was lunch. I had been craving sushi for so long and let's face it, Granada and Milan aren't exactly the best places to find good, fresh sushi, at least Barcelona is on the ocean and has a pretty good asian population. Because it was Sunday, apparently all the sushi restaurants were only open from 1pm-4pm, which was fine although by noon we were already starving, so we just wandered through the city until 1pm and then headed over to a Japanese place we had looked up online that had gotten good reviews and seemed to have a good lunch deal. When we got there the place was just starting to be set up, we asked if we could sit but the frustrated-looking woman started saying to us ' abierto a la una..a la una' we looked at her confused, checked our phones which said 1:03pm and then told her it was already 1pm, she then proceeded to tell us that they were going to be open at 2pm, not 1pm, so we just gave up and left, typical Spain life. We went to another place that was only a few blocks away, it was a bit more expensive but it was an all you can eat deal and it was greattttt. There was a ton of freshly made maki rolls, sashimi, nigri, tempura, other fried foods, rice dishes, noodles, salad bar, build-you-own-wok-dish, etc. I only have one thing to say about it, Satisfaction. 

If the sushi lunch wasn't vancouver-esque enough, we went and got Starbucks afterwards and got a grande vanilla latte. Yep that's right, on my visit to Barcelona I had sushi and Starbucks... how North American of me..yada yada yada.. I was craving them both so much okay! The last good sushi I had was in Vancouver this past JUNE and the last time I saw a Starbucks was in London on my way here to Granada. The sushi and the Starbucks were like small pieces of home <3. 

Anyways, after being all North American, we continued our venturing through the city and went to go check out the new and older cathedrals and some of the older parts of town. A lot of the main city was very modern and Paris-esque but the older parts of the city were much more old-world Europe, I loved that area of town. Lots of buildings made of stone and metal work that was pretty and detailed. We spent the remainder of our timme wandering around in that area but eventually we had to head back to CapeGirl's apartment to grab our stuff and head for the airport. It was a really great day of exploring, and guilty pleasures aha plus spending time with CapeGirl was great as always. 

Finally we got back to Granada and of course it was raining hard core when we landed, what else is new. A shuttle bus dropped us off in my neighbourhood and then I had the lovely 20mins hike up to my house in the pouring rain. so fun. I pretty much passed out once I got home, surprise surprise. 

Was definitely a great weekend. A very long weekend, but a great one for sure.

Nov. 11

Caffés, Carboneras, and Craziness (Italy Part 2)

Friday was Tonio's birthday so Kiki and I got up early to get him a little breakfast surprise. We bought some fresh bread, some cheese, some apples, some little pastries which we stuck candles in since it was the closest thing to a cake-ish thing we could find at that hour and a bottle of prosecco, with some orange juice of course to make mimosas with ehe. It was a bit of a challenge finding all of it and then trying to get it all into the room without Tonio or anyone else anyone noticing -we weren't exactly allowed to have food and alcohol in the hostel room, ohwell. We woke up Taco and sang happy birthday to Tonio to wake him up and then ate a delicious breakfast and enjoyed the delicious mimosas. 

It was another gorgeous sunny day in Milan, the air had a crisp fall feeling to it, it was amazing. We wandered through the streets, passing by lots of old beautiful buildings, high fashion stores, modernized office buildings, caffés, fastfood restaurants and everything else in between. Eventually we ended up in the centre of Milan where the Duomo is. The Duomo is a beautiful old Gothic cathedral right in heart of Milan, it's the biggest tourist attraction of course and is surrounded by a big square and a bunch of nice shopping areas/markets. We wandered around the square for awhile, checking out some of the stores and restaurants, looking for a place to grab some food and some more prosecco, at one of the outdoor patios of one of the restaurants in the square there was a woman sitting at a table with some male friends, she was wearing a fur vest, som really nice jewelry, real leather boots, and a nice dress, she must have easily been wearing $15,000 worth of material on her body, if not more, it was insane, but that's Milan for you. we eventually found a little cafe on the opposite side of the Duomo facing the main facade which was beautiful. Of course being anywhere in the Duomo square is a bit more on the expensive side but you pay for the view right. Later on they opened up the Duomo so we got to go in and wander around for FREE which is always awesome. The interior of the Duomo was gorgeous, as all gothic cathedrals are, I love the stain glass windows, they're so beautifully crafted and detailed, I wish the world still looked more like that. 

After the little Duomo exploring we continued walking through the city heading deeper and deeper in the centre/souther part of Milan. We came across another big shopping area, in the one of the small piazzas in the area there was a man playing a guitar, plugged-in with a microphone and all. He was playing Fix You by Coldplay when we approached, one of my favourite songs, so we stopped to watch, he was amazing, his voice was so smooth and yet so powerful, he just moved with the music and played with so much soul, he was in barefeet the entire time as well. We stayed to watch him play awhile longer, taking a walking break, he played Falling Slowly, The Scientist, Words Just Get in the Way and Yellow, I teared up a little at that one not going to lie, not really sure why, just brought back a lot of memories I guess. Anyways, we continued our walk and stumbled upon another big piece of historic Milan, the Castello Sforzesco, a big castle/fortress from way back when. It was big and stone and beautiful, we wandered through there for a little while and then came out the other side where we discovered another beautiful little park and beyond that, an arco di triumfo. By that point we were very far south into the city and our hostel was just north of the city so we decided to turn back because we had quite the hike back up to our end of town. 

We wandered through different parts of town on our way back towards our hostel, we found our way into an area of town called Brera which was a kool little area with some nice little restaurants and bars and is known for it's leather working or something like that. We had been searching for a restaurant for Tonio's birthday dinner and found some good options around there. Then we randomly stumbled upon part of the Milan university which was a really beautiful building; courtyards, columns, statues, everything an art history nerd could fall in love with. Seriously, why doesn't Canada look more like that. We stopped for some gelato as we continued our trek back to the hostel, it was DELICIOUS ahhh. I had been craving that for so long. You can't go to Italy and not eat gelato, obviously. 

Entrance of Milan Uni 

For dinner we went back to Brera and went to a nice little restaurant called New Art, we sat outside on the patio so we could people watch of course. It was a pretty busy little area, we had the perfect waiter, an older, white haired italian man, pretty much everything you image a perfect italian waiter to be. The food was absolutely amazing, we had risotto with mushrooms, real italian carbonera, a mixed salad, a pizza with spinach and prosciutto, another pizza with mushrooms, olives, artichokes, and a ham, and of course some delicious fresh bread with olive oil. And of course a bottle of prosecco to top it all off. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera on me because we were going out partying after dinner but it was one of the best dinners I've ever had. After dinner we went to a street called Curso Como/Via Garibaldi where all the clubs and bars seem to be located and ended up going to a club called Club 11. Was a little expensive to get in but you got a free drink as part of the entrance price at least. It was a pretty nice club, not overly big, dark, sleek interior, the bartenders were good looking as always. The first thing I noticed was how freaking tall the people were there, I'm not kidding. I mean, I know I'm short, obviously, but I have never felt so short in my entire life, probably 70% of the people in that club were 6ft or taller. I guess that's normal when you go to the fashion capital of Italy, everyone is an aspiring model or whatnot. A lot of the people in there definitely came from money too, the girls all looked fabulous and many of the guys were dressed in semi-formal/formal attire. One group must have been there celebrating or something because they kept ordering these buckets which came with full bottles of prosecco and other sorts of alcohol sitting in ice with sparklers attached to them, that one group alone must have ordered about 7 or 8 of them, I don't even want to know how much that cost. 

The music wasn't that great, Every single song was a mash-up of two songs, and the music ranged from techno to pop to rap to old school rock'n'roll, at one point there was a mash-up of Wonderwall and Back in Black, it was pretty of odd. Over all definitely an interesting experience. 

Me and Tonio with some of the delicious food

 Curso Como

Saturday it inevitably rained. We were really lucky to get two days of nice weather before the rain hit I suppose since it was november in Italy. We had a pretty lazy day, rain will do that to you, we just went from caffé to bakery to restaurant, wandering our way through town enjoying espressos and yummy carbs, we got back near the main part of town near the Duomo where there's a bunch of shopping mall type things and decided to see if we could find a movie theatre. After asking about 4 different people in italian where the movie theatre was and getting all kinds of unhelpful directions we finally found it! it was a nice movie theatre, very italian and red velvety, we had to buy our tickets together because it was assigned seating which I found kind of odd, I mean you can freely choose your airplane seats but you have assigned seating for a movie? Okay then. The show didn't start for about another hour so we went wandering around the mall/area for awhile. We stopped for gelato, of course you can eat gelato even when it's raining, it was one of those places where you could look at a bunch of the flavours through the window outside the store but had to go inside to order. Kiki didn't seem to notice that there was a glass window protecting the gelato from the outside world and banged her head one it, it was hilarious, and the funniest part was that there was a few italians standing behind her that witnessed the whole thing and were pretty much pointing and laughing at her for a good 10 minutes. That made the rest of us laugh even harder ehehe. 

So we saw the new 007 movie Skyfall, the only minor problem with seeing it in Italy was that it was dubbed in Italian without any subtitles. I mean it wasn't too bad since about 60% of Bond movies are just running, shooting, and explosions but I only caught maybe half the dialogue and my friends even less since they speak even less italian that I do. Although I feel like most the movie was visually explanatory anyways so it was fine. I probably will go back and watch it in english eventually because M's sarcasm just didn't translate as well in italian. Also the ending is unbelievable! I won't spoil it for all of you who haven't seen it yet but I was shocked by the ending. 

For our last night in Milan we went to this kool restaurant just up the road from our hostel called Capoverde -essentially translates to green cap or green cover, which was fitting since it was attached to a garden/green house kind of thing, it was very earthly and pretty. The restaurant was lovely and the food was delicious, we had a tomato sauce pasta, a couple different kinds of pizza, a red salad, and fresh bread with olive oil and this delicious apply balsamic vinegar, the only problem was that our waiter was horrible. After he took our order he never came back to the table no matter how many times we tried waving him down, he pretty much just avoided our table all together, it wasn't even him who brought our food, it was someone else who worked there, and when we wanted to order bread, forget about it, we actually didn't get the bread until we were almost done our meal and that's because we asked the really nice host guy and he brought it to us within 2 minutes, the only other time we saw our waiter was when he came to clean up our plates, at which point we tried to order more food but he walked away before we could do so, we managed to wave him down once to ask him to bring us 4 shots of limoncello -which was delicious- and that was it, he never even showed up again to give us our check or anything so we ended up just going to the host's desk and paying there. What shitty service, just because we're 20 year olds who aren't native italians doesn't mean you can be such an asshole, he was literally avoiding us. 

We had an early flight out the next morning so after dinner just headed back to the hostel and packed up, over all it was a great a trip though :). Italia, ti amo.

Nov. 9-10

Elections, Espressos, and Italians (Italy Part 1)

Hello all, it's been one hell of a long week to say the least but a great week all the same. It was definitely an exciting week for everyone in North American and a bunch of us here since Tuesday was the USA presidential election. Because of the time difference it was a pretty late night for those of us out here in Spain who stayed up to watch the election coverage, the results were announced around 5:30am our time, needless to say I was not awake to see the final results be announced.

Pre-election coverage, my friends and I were all studying for midterms at one of our fav restaurants, it was fish & chips night there which was delicious, haven't had real fish & chips in so long. After the excellent dinner and some tasty strawberry trifle, blondie set us up in the back room which was really kool of him. We had a bunch of tables all put together with a couple laptops streaming the election coverage and a dozen bag of chips along with lots of school work all over the them. I left around 2am though, needed to sleep more than I wanted to study/watch election coverage.

Wednesday morning my newsfeed was of course covered in Obama statuses and I was definitely filled with relief and happiness! Obamallamarama! Went to my morning classes but ended up leaving half way through my grammar class, it was painfully slow that day and had lots to do before our trip to Milan. Did a bunch of running around and packing and then met up with the gang at 5pm to head for ze bus station to start our journey to Milan for Tonio's bday!

We caught the 6pm bus from Granada to Malaga and then from Malaga we caught a 10pm flight to Barcelona. In the Malaga airport we were heading through security and Tonio realized that he had left his swiss army knife in his bag, we didn't check any luggage so the woman said he either had to throw it out or check it or mail it back to Granada, Tonio decided to hide it in the airport in a plant instead ahaha. Problem solved.

Our flight from Barcelona to Milan wasn't until 6:30am so we had lots of time to chill in the Barcelona airport that night. Both flights were Ryanair, awful disorganized airline I have to say, the landing on the first flight was rough too, almost thought we had crashed or something it was such a jolt. We tried sleeping near our gate area for awhile but it was honestly so cold I had to get up and walk around and do jumping jacks just to stay warm, I wandered over to the area where all the cafés and restaurants are, they were all closed but it was a lot warmer over there for some reason, eventually I found a couch type thing over there and crashed there for awhile. At 6am we started getting ready to board, when we got to the front of the line they told us that we needed our tickets to be stamped by Ryanair before we could get on the plane..are you serious? I guess it was kind of our fault because on our first Ryanair flight we had to get our tickets stamped too but since this was our connecting flight we never even thought about it because we never left the gate area once we had arrived in Barcelona airport. So we literally had to run out of the gate area into the main terminal, find the bloody Ryanair desk, get them to stamp our tickets and then run back through security and to our gate, luckily we had talked to the Ryanair people so they waited for us to show up but it was really tight, by some miracle we actually made it onto that flight and it still left more or less on time. I just about had a heart/asthma attack by the time I made it there though, we pretty much ran the entire length of the airport. Stupid Ryanair.

Thursday Morning we Finally got into Milan, of course the first thing we did was go find a caffé. We came across some fancy looking art caffé and went inside, turns out it was more a restaurant that was just opening, it was only like 10am after all, the owners didn't exactly thrilled when we walked in but whatever. The owners and all the workers were asian which was a little weird, I'm still not quite used to spanish and italian-speaking asians, asians really do run things everywhere in world. We all got our first espresso shots of the trip -there was many more to come- and then went out in search of some breaky. We found this amazing little bread shop and bought some focaccia bread, this spinach bread, an apple strudel and this apple blossom thing, all so delicious! I think the focaccia bread from there was the best we had all trip. Then we went in search of our hostel, Hostel California (welcome to the ho(s)tel california...) it was on this street called via Lambrate, you wouldn't think it would be that hard to find, well apparently there's also a whole little area of town called Lambrate, needless to say we were lost as hell for awhile, we had looked it up on google maps before leaving Spain but we didn't have any real directions or even a map of milan upon arrival. Eventually we used one of our phones to googlemap it, there's definitely no way in hell we would have found it on our own, it was tucked away on this small little side street.

When we finally found the hostel and went up hoping we could check in right away although our check-in time was 11am and it was just past 11am by the time we got there, knowing how europe works we weren't that hopeful that our room would be ready. The guy at the front desk was a little sketchy, he told us they needed 10 more minutes to clean the room and that we could go chill upstairs, there was a little kitchen area on the 3rd floor, so we went and sat there for a bit. After going back about 15 minutes later he told us they needed another 20 minutes or so, of course, so we just went café down the street and got another espresso. Eventually our room was ready, the guy wanted a copy of all our passports and a room deposit and all this stuff before giving us the key, which was this old school, harry potter looking thing, it was quite the process. The dude gave off such a weird vibe, I don't know. To get to our room we had to go up this spiral staircase which was kind of kool and it was like a little attic room with 6 beds in it, not gunna lie it was a pretty sweet room, especially for a hostel, we even had our own private bathroom. We dropped all our stuff off there and headed for the city.

We did acquire a map so we had some idea of where we were going, we were all exhausted so we just took it slow and wandered through the city most of the afternoon. We spent most of our time on this main street that leads down into the centre of the city called Buenas Aires, a lot of the shopping and commercial kind of places are there like H&M, Pull and Bear, Zara, etc. plus lots of restaurants and fastfood places like BK and McD's (eww.)  Wandering through the streets we stumbled upon this fancy looking theatre and there happened to be a Dance Fusion Show on that night, we wandered in to check it out and ended up buying tickets.. Front row tickets, for like 27 euros. On our wander we found some really sweet bread and meat shops and got some real prosciutto which was absolutely delicious, along with more focaccia bread and some yummy olive bread too. We wandered through one of the big public gardens too which were beautiful, it wasn't really a garden but more of a park, the leaves were turning red and yellow, there was a duck pond and old statues on mossy rock faces, it was beautiful. Definitely one thing I miss while being in Granada, there isn't much greener here and therefore the seasonal colour changing is fairly absent.

Later that night we got our first taste of real Italian pizza and then headed for the show. It was in this beautiful theatre covered in red velvet and mahogany, highlighted with gold. We were literally sitting in the centre of the front row, it was amazing. It was quite an artistic, interesting dance show. There was 8/10 dancers that performed a serious of dances of all varieties, some were quite contemporary and abstract, then there was one that was a tango fusion, another very ballet-based one, etc. It was pretty incredible, one of the dancers were absolutely amazing. The one male dancer though was so ripped you could see almost every vein in his entire body..I'm not even kidding, it was kind of gross, I've never seen anyone that ripped in my entire life. After the dance performance we ended up at this bar called Swiss Corner, it was a trendy little place, glass windows all around the outside, very pink lighting with artistic images of famous peoples faces on the walls. Not the most italian place, but a very kool place all the same. We got mojitos and crepes (both sweet and savoury), all of which were delicious. We had fun conversing with our waiter Roberto, at first we tried speaking italian with him but eventually we flipped into spanish and as it turned out he also spoke spanish, he was a kool italian guy and am attractive one at that  ehe.

Nov. 5-8

Halloween, Visitors, and Cheesecake

Happy Guy Fawkes Day! (I'm not really sure if 'Happy' is the correct word there, hmm) It's the first week of November, how INSANE! Where did October go, like seriously?? Well with the end of October does come Halloween, woo! Most people have probably seen the picture by now of my costume (spanish word for halloween costume: disfraza) but incase you haven't, I dressed up as a Botella de Vino Tinto aka a Bottle of Red Wine. Hilarious, I know. REDREDRED. Ps. Get ready for another LONG post.

My friends and I started off our Halloween celebrations on Tuesday night (Oct 30th) though with some tradition pumpkin carving (con vino, queso, y pan, como siempre) at Kiki's (K now = Kiki)  house which was a fun and ridiculous, as most things are with us. Our pumpkins definitely all turned out quite different, pictures are the only way I can really show you what I mean. Once we had finished carving the pumpkins we took the seeds and fried them up in some butter, and brown sugar, omg Delicious! 

 On actual Halloween I still had my 6 hours of class, but can't complain too much, in my Flamenco History class our prof gave us gummies and talked about Spanish traditions while playing 'This is Halloween' in the background aha was quite entertaining. I don't know if it is a coincidence or if it's always like this but this weekend was also called Puente which is holiday in Spain -yes another holiday- and therefore a long weekend so Wednesday was my last day of class for the week, whatwhat!  

So, having no class on Thursday and big hopes for the evening,  the Halloween celebrations commenced. After ditching out half way through my 4pm-6pm class (because there was literally 6 people there and we were watching a movie and our prof had left the room) I met up with two friends to find Halloween costume bits, mostly checking out the Bazars for ideas. We all eventually found all the bits for costumes, Taco (A now = Taco) was a Flamenco dancer and Mads (M now = Mads) was the universe, and of course I, the vino tinto bahaha brilliant. 

However, the night didn't really turn out as planned (although it almost never does). A few of us went and a three course dinner at one of our fav restaurants which was delicious! Free first cocktail, starters of pumpkin soup, then chicken, mash potatoes, and some delicious spicy ribs for themain course, and then some heavenly, mouth-gasm cheesecake for dessert. After that dinner we split up and I headed over to Mads' to start the drinking, mostly wine of course aha, and then eventually began to figure out our plans. We met up with another group of friends down in the city and headed down to a club called Mae West. Mae West is a 'fancy-schmancy' club that normally has a dress code to get into and is one of the more expensive clubs which is why we hadn't gone before, but on Halloween the dress code was costume and the entrance was free -with costume of course- so we decided it would be the best time to go. However, the line-up was a mile long, and it wasn't moving particularly fast either. We did have some friends further up in the line that we were gunna meet up with but 10 people butting into a crowded club line-up probably wouldn't have worked too well.

After about 25 minutes of waiting most of us gave up, the few that decided to stay went and joined our other friends up a head in the line, and they eventually did get in and I'm sure had a great ol' time. We however wandered over to another club called Campus, some of the people I was with are roommates with the guy who apparently designed the signs and things for Campus so we were hoping some name dropping might get us in faster because there was also a massive line-up there too. But no such luck, so after waiting for a little while in the slow moving line we decided yet again to give up and went to go meet up with my cousin Kat in Hannigan's Pub which is more or less in my neighbourhood. We hung out there, got some shots, did some dancing, and whatnot at Hanni's for awhile but by 4am we were feeling like it was time to just give up and head home. 

As per usual Taco and I were going to crash at Mads' so we all headed in that direction, stopping to shwarma on the way there, omnomnom. While we were there we ran into a few other friends of ours, they'd also tried to get into Mae West but hadn't been successful either. Then as we were standing there waiting for our food, the owner of Paddy's Pub -which is Irish pub (yes another one) right across from the shwarma place- walked across the street, handed our friend TinTin (C now = TinTin, nicknames are more fun than initials) a full bottle of Heineken, said "Here's one for the road", kissed his cheek, and then turned around and headed back to Paddy's. It was definitely a strange moment, we all stood there in weird awe for a moment and then TinTin had his little moment of happy-spasm = :O ! Clearly TinTin spends a lot of time over there. 

Then there was a bit of oddness because a friend of a friend had ended up staying with my group when her friends had decided to go home, and she was still with us when we decided it was time to go home. I mean, I kind of knew her because she's in one of my classes, but I don't know her that well and it was the first time she'd met Taco and Mads, so her kind of attaching herself to us was a little odd. I almost didn't even realize she was there until we had gotten back to Mads and realized she was still there.. so as any good hostess would do, Mads asked her if she wanted to crash there too. She left pretty early the next morning, taking Mads pj shirt with her and leaving behind a strange feeling. There was a couple other things that seemed to have gone missing that night but I won't say anymore about that.. but it was a really strange situation. 

Anyways, thursday was a study day because I have midterms this week so nothing too exciting happened. Thursday night though I had planned a (very last minute) dinner and invited anyone and everyone who wanted to come, I figured that at best half them would show up. It turned out to be quite the party though, all my UBC/Canadian friend's showed up and brought other people with them, as well as some of my American friends and their other friends, definitely way more than I was expecting. Everyone was great though and brought stuff to contribute! It was a crazy feast, we had bread and cheese and wine coming out of our ears -as usual- and then there was some pumpkin soup, two salads, a ton of pasta, brownies, and crepes! I'm so happy with the way it turned out, was definitely a full house! My friend CapeGirl also came from Barcelona to visit me for the long weekend and she showed up just in time for dinner too which was great! 

(my poor, crazy kitchen)

Friday was food and partying day, CapeGirl was in town so I got to be tour guide for the weekend, which was so fun! We took her to some of our favourite food spots so she could experience the amazing tastes of Granada, then began the drinks. We wanted to show her more of the city but unfortunately it rained on and off all weekend so touring around wasn't the most appealing option. We bar hopped around for a bit and then ended up at one of new fav restaurants and one of the waiter's -Blondie- who we've now made friends with offered to get us into the club Camborio for free because he literally knows half the staff there. How could we say no to that? The group of us first went up to Blondie's apartment so he could get ready and whatnot and we cracked (another) open a bottle of wine to share, then began the hike up to Camborio.

Camborio is way up on the hill in the Albycín area and has a nice terrace which has a spectacular of the Alhambra, especially at night when it's all lit up. It was CapeGirl's and Taco's first time being there, it was a good night, we ran into a ton of people we knew, got lots of free shots thanks to Blondie, and danced the night away until about 7am. Stumbled home about 7:30am, watched the sky get lighter as we made our way home, and eventually passed out around 8:30am, was definitely a good night. 

The next morning, well afternoon, we took CapeGirl to our hangover-cheesecake-spot and shared some delicious coffee and cheesecake, that really is one of the best hangover breakfasts ever. Then it was exploring time, again the weather wasn't exactly great so, exploring time turned more into shopping time, which is also a great pass time here, it's generally really cheap to shop. I Finally found some red jeans! Been trying to find some for weeks now, I know that might sound kinda weird but they are Awesome! CapeGirl bought lots of shoes, some accessories, and a cape -hence the name- so was definitely a successful shopping trip! That night we decided to just stay in for dinner and had our own little Italian night, blasting opera as we cooked some delicious penne pasta, and adding bread with olive oil and some wine as our sides. 

We then went out to an awesome little bar called La Antigualla, it's very Medieval themed and the tapas there are Huge, we ordered a bunch of mojitos -which were So good- and then got a plate of grilled ham & cheese sandwiches with fries as our FREE tapa. I Love that place. Then we headed over to Mads house party, the first house party they had there a couple weeks ago was a TON of fun, so much food and drinks, it was ridiculous! This one was just as fun, met lots of interesting people as usual, had some interesting discussions over many glasses of wine, but then came the best part. A group of us girls snuck into Mads room to indulge in some bread with MAPLE SYRUP. OMG. Mads mom is visiting from Canada and brought some with her, best party snack ever. Maple Syrup + girl time = excellent party :P. Bahaha, anyways, decided to call it a night around 3:30am and headed back to my place since we had been up so late the night before.

Sunday morning I met up with my cousin Kat and we took CapeGirl for churros con chocolate, another thing you definitely must eat at least once while in Granada. Then we went to a kool little restaurant called Patio de Toros that had a big bronze statue of a bull in the middle of it and got a pitcher of Sangria and some foods. It was seriously a food-weekend, but then it was study time. Taco and I headed to a cafe to study and CapeGirl met up with some of our other friends to go explore and shop some more. We all met up that night for a big dinner because it was CapeGirl's last night and one of our fav restaurants was having a traditional English Sunday Roast, ohmyfreakinggod I can't even tell you how amazing it was. Roast beef, boiled potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding, all in yummy gravy sauce with broccoli, cauliflower w/ cheese, carrots, and bread as sides. And then for dessert we shared apple crumbles and slices of cheesecake (the best cheesecake Ever), Heaven. 

It was pouring rain outside most of Sunday night, of course, so we ended up sitting and talking for a long time at the restaurant, eventually all the other groups in the back room cleared out and it was just us, we didn't really want to go out in the rain so we ended up grabbing a deck of cards and playing President for awhile, man I haven't played that game since like high school. It was definitely a fun evening, we were going to call it a night but then decided watching movies would be more fun. We ended up at my friend Hiccup's place and watched Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because none of them but me had seen it before -crazy right?!- they all enjoyed it though, of course! By the time it ended it was already like 3:30am so it was definitely time to head home. 

When we got home CapeGirl had to pack up all her stuff because her flight was at 9am which meant she had to be heading to the airport around 7/7:30am so I mostly just napped on and off as she packed up her stuff and whatnot. We ended up passing out around 5am and sleeping until about 7am and then we said our goodbyes and she headed off into the receding darkness. It was pretty much sunrise by the time I actually got to bed around 7:30am, the sunrises sure are beautiful here, I'm sure I'll see at least a few more before I leave. 

My alarm went off at 9:30am but I just could not get myself out of bed, I ended up having a slow morning, getting up around 11am which meant skipping my 10:30am class, having a shower, studying for my midterm at 12:30, finishing an assignment for my 4pm class, etc. It was definitely a coffee kind of day.

Oct 29-Nov 4