An Eventful Week Indeed

Another long week full of interesting experiences. My memory is getting so bad I swear, it's hard to remember what I did on which days, they all seem to blur together in my memory ohman. Where to begin...

Hmm, well Tuesday after my Italian class I headed over to Tonio's house to work on a presentation for our Flamenco History class, it was a presentation about the traditional music and dance in the region of Murcia, Spain. It was definitely an interesting presentation to say the least... It was Tonio, Bernardo, and I in the group and those two guys are a couple of gooners -there really is no other word to describe them.- Most of the other groups had the generic presentations with slides with all the info on them along with some pictures and then a video of the dance or music. Snore. We decided to make ours more entertaining by just putting hilarious images and jokes on our slides and then having all of our info written down in our own notes to read out to the class, originally we wanted to do an example of the dances ourselves until we discovered how complex the dances were and that we needed castanets for them, so we put videos into our presentation instead. Needless to say the presentation was hilarious, but we had a lot of good information too along with the ridiculous presentation slides, so it was a good mix of both. Our prof loved it but half our class seriously needs to get a sense of humor. Ridiculous people.

Randomly while doing research for our project we stumbled upon a festival in Northern Spain (it showed up because it takes place at the Castle of Murcia somewhere in a city in North Spain) that is called El Colacho aka The Baby-Jumping Festival ahaha I'm not even kidding you, it's a festival where a guy dresses up as a devil and then jumps over a bunch of babies that are lying on mattresses in the middle of the street and this is apparently to protect the children from evil spirits because when the devil jumps over the babies all the evil spirits or whatever latch on to the devil or something.. I don't know, I really wish it had been a tradition in our region because it's definitely one of the weirdest festivals I've ever heard of ahaha crazy spaniards.

 After we finished the presentation I headed down to CL for dinner with a couple friends because we were all feeling lazy and didn't want to cook. It was a really cold day and even being inside our apartments was cold. Cold weather had finally arrived in Granada and it's been pretty cold ever since. During the days it's still been okay, usually about 12-13 degrees and sunny but as soon as the sun goes down it's Freezing! I mean it's still usually between 2-5 degrees so it's not 'That cold' but the problem here is that there is no central heating, the insulation in the apartments is Terrible and the heaters here are all pretty mediocre so it's only like 5-10 degrees INSIDE your apartment. So. Cold.

Anyways, later that night after dinner I went with Taco to go check out an apartment, she had been looking at apartments for the past couple of weeks because she didn't like the location of her apartment and she was having some major issues with her current roommate. The apartment we went to check out was right near my place, like literally two minutes down the road, which was kind of kool, although to be honest Taco had been getting on my nerves pretty bad the week or two before but whatever. We go to check out the apartment and we discover a few interesting things, first of all that there's a dog there, it's a cute black and white dog that looks like it's a collie and something else. Then we meet the two roommates, one is a kool spanish chica named Kote (ko-tey) and then we meet the other roommate Micha, which was hilarious because I already knew Micha, she's really good friends with my roommate Patri. Small world eh. We go to check out Taco's potential room and to be honest it looks like a prison cell, it's tiny, 4 white walls, a desk and bed with white sheets and a blanket. Not what I would prefer but the room was cheap (150 euros a month) and Taco liked the roommates, plus the living room was a good size and there was a roof top terrace and the location was good. So, she was definitely considering it as a serious option.

Wednesday after my two morning classes I have an hour and a half break, Hiccup's friends who are studying in France were here visiting her for the week so we all went out for tapas together which was fun. We ended up at a little restaurant by the Cathedral which had some good food and also ordered a pitcher of sangria, which was delicious but also gave me a Bit of a wine buzz since I hadn't had anything to eat early in the day. oops aha. So I went to POE -conversational spanish class- kinda buzzed and that was interesting ahaha, plus I think it helped me speak better spanish :P.

Later that night there was a free concert at my campus, it was 'musica antigua' which is basically spanish medieval music, it was really interesting, me and a couple friends went to check it out for a bit but had to leave around 9 to go to an intercambio -language exchange- at a bar down by the river called Totes y Amigos. It's a nice little place that's run by a british woman, very sweet old lady, and tuesday-friday she hosts intercambios, mostly for english-spanish. When we got there it wasn't too busy, it's a pretty casual type of intercambio, the woman asked what language we spoke/wanted to practice and then directed us to tables with spanish speakers. I ended up talking with two guys, they were really nice, both from spain, working in the area, late twenties/early thirties, their english wasn't great but I got to practice lots of spanish which was great. At one point though I had to try and explain the differences between 'break-up' 'break down' break out' and 'to break'..that was pretty interesting and complex to explain to non-native english speakers. I went to the intercambio with Mads and she got to talk to this really good looking guy named Alberto because he wanted to have a french-spanish intercambio and Mads speaks pretty fluent french..dammit. Anyways, over all it was definitely a good intercambio experience.

Thursday I had Italian as always, the class seemed to drag on forever that day, not really sure why. The only thing that kind of saved me was that at the end of class we watched a movie called Happy Family..vey strange movie about a complex Italian family, we only watched like the first 20 minutes of it but it seemed pretty interesting and just..odd. I suggest watching it with subtitles if you can find it and have the time. Italian movies are generally great. Watched a lot of them in my Italian Cinema class last year at UBC. After class I met up with Ash, we went for a walk around the area but eventually just ended up at a café near school and hung out there for awhile. Around 5pm once things had started opening up again we separated ways because I had to go get photos done and get my passport and whatnot photocopied for my stupid residency card application (still haven't gotten that btw, freaking pain in my ass.)

That night there was another intercambio at Dakota, the amazing burger bar near my school, so Mads, Taco, and I went over a bit early to get burgers before the chaos of the intercambio and whatnot started happening. As always the burgers were amazing, and then around 9:30/10 a bunch of people started showing up including our friend from Finland. It was definitely the best intercambio I've been to so far. We started out talking to a group of girls, 2 from Spain, 1 from France and then a couple of polish/american girls joined us and then a polish guy and a spanish guy joined us, our table was getting pretty crowded so I decided to go to the bar and get a couple more drinks, at the bar I started talking to another guy who was from Florence which was awesome because I got to practice my italian and spanish with him and when worse came to worse we defaulted to english because he spoke that too which was pretty kool. Later we ended up talking to another group of guys, a couple from Spain and one from France, so we definitely got a good mix of people that night to talk to and most of them were around 20-26 in age which was nice.

After the intercambio started to wind down a group of us went over to CL to get some late night cheesecake, delicious as always. And while we were hanging out there, our Finnish friend Saara mentioned that it's Finland's independence day the following Thursday so Blondie decided that they would have a Finnish themed dinner on that Thursday because Thursday's were always country themed dinner nights anyways. Then ensued the hilarious conversation about what people eat in Finland, Saara's favourite dish being Smoked Reindeer, which is apparently served with special Reindeer sauce...apparently some people also eat Beaver... yeah. But besides that they also eat a lot of fish and potatoes which is a little more 'normal' and easy to make aha. We were killing ourselves laughing though while we were discussing how this dinner would turn out. Blondie said he'd try and get some venison and whatnot for the dinner, guess we'll see how it goes.

And now the fun begins, Friday morning I finally went to the extranjero officina to apply for my residency card -about time eh- it's pretty much on the other side of Granada aka on the other side of the world. Needless to say I got lost trying to find my way there and ended up calling 2 friends who had both been there before to get directions. After like an hour or something I finally found my way there, thank god. Although I was kind of freaked out because I had no idea what I was doing and Kiki, who I had called for directions, had been freaking out because she had gone earlier in the morning and the woman she had was a major bitch and told her she wouldn't be able to get her residency card because she was missing some docs. and that she would be stuck in Spain for christmas. Ohman, what a mess. So I was kinda nervous going into the office to say the least. And like in all offices, I had to take a number and sit in a room with a bunch of people and wait for what seemed like forever. When the woman at the desk gave me my number it said Z 32, so then I go into the waiting room and see that the board had all A's and E's. OhDearGod. I thought I was going to be there all freaking day. Luckily though, the letters represented different areas of the office so the first Z # that popped up was Z 26 so my wait wasn't actually that long.

Eventually my number came up and I ended up at a desk with this older guy, he seemed fairly nice. He went through all my documents and then eventually said I needed photocopies of a few things..uh-oh. He handed me the documents and told me go make a photocopy and then come back...rightttt. At first I was like shit, does he mean come back another day?? The officina was only open for like another hour and a half and I had no idea where the closest photocopying place was. Luckily the guy saw the mildly panicked look on my face and told me there was a photocopying place like 2 blocks away, phewww. So I went out and found the place, got everything photocopied, which was super cheap, huzzah, and then headed back to the extranjero officina. Luckily they let me go back in to see the same guy as soon as I got there and got everything done, yay! He just said I needed to pay a 15euro residency tax at any bank and gave me a slip of paper that said to come back at 11:45am the following Friday to pick up my residency card! YAY! Finally! Mads also had to do some stuff at the extranjero officina that day so I waited for her to get all her stuff done and then we went to go find some lunch.

We found this really nice little italian place called Pinocchio's. It looked sketchy at first because it was down a little side street but they had signs pointing to it from the main street so we figured we'd go check it out, it turned out to be a cute little restaurant and had Pinocchio themed décor all over. We both ended up getting delicious pizzas but definitely want to try the pasta next time I go back. After that we came back to our side of the world and went to CL, as usual, to meet up with Kiki for coffee. Poor girl was a bit of a mess, not that I blame her, the woman at the officina sounded like a major bitch, just saying. She's going back on Monday though to hopefully get it all dealt with. We somehow ended up all having cosmos at the suggestion of Oscar, and let me tell you, Oscar knows how to make Strong drinks, I left that place way more tipsy than I had planned. Ohman, went to super sol, the super cheap grocery store, afterwards to pick up some stuff and then went home and showered, which definitely didn't help the tipsiness.

Later that night a bunch of us all met up and went to check out the Granada Wine Festival that was in town for the weekend, all the wines were local Granada-made wines which was pretty kool and it wasn't too expensive either, 6 euros for 4 glass or 9 euros for 6 glasses. It was a massive big white tent with booths set up around 4 sides, the room was extremely packed by the time we got there so we ended up standing and drinking for the first half of our wine adventure. We tried a bunch of different wines, mostly at random, starting with 2 reds and then 2 whites..not too sure why we did it that way. Some of them were really good. We all seemed pretty okay while we were there but once we all started heading home that wine hit us so hard. I have no idea why, all of a sudden I was just drunk. Mads and I were walking/running back to her place because it was freezing out and we hadn't used to gross public washrooms at the wine fest.

We got back to Mads and a bunch of her roomies were hanging around in the kitchen/living room area. A couple of guys were playing beer pong on the kitchen table and of course I wanted to play as soon as I saw that. I was playing against TinTin and he beat me 2/3 games we played but I only lost the 2 games by 1 or 2 cups so it wasn't too bad I guess... Our group had all agreed to meet up at CL after the wine fest since we had all gone separate ways when we left the fest but a bunch of Mads roomies wanted to go to Camborio, I wasn't really feeling it so Mads and I decided we'd still go to CL and then TinTin ended up coming with us because he couldn't make up his mind and so the other guys left without him. On our way to CL we ran into my scottish cousin Kat, she was with 2 male co-workers, apparenly they were bar hopping and invited us to go with them so we were like 'sure why not' and ended up going with them instead of going to CL.

We ended up at some random bar, the entrance was pretty sketchy but the bar itself was kinda kool, very red on the inside, kinda skinny hallway bar area where we were but it was cozy and warm so I wasn't really complaining. TinTin and Mads weren't really digging the bar and the weirdness of the situation so they took off and went to Camborio but I stayed with Kat and her friends. At the bar one of the two guys just disappeared, he went into the back of the bar for awhile where there was sitting area or something and then just left sometime after that. So then it was just Kat, E, and I. To be honest, I don't exactly remember what E's full name is, but he seemed like an interesting guy; he was Brazilian ethnically but grew up in Toronto/North York until his family moved to Spain when he was a teenager. He seemed like a pretty chill guy, making lots of jokes and whatnot. As it turned out, it was also his birthday.

Kat seemed kind of upset and angry which made me curious, although I didn't have to wait too long to find out why, once we were in the red bar she started ranting to me.. apparently there was some drama at Paddy's bar between her and an ex-bf and her 2 guy friends had stood up for her and that somehow in turn got them all kicked out of the bar. She was very drunk and angry while telling me the story so I got the just of it but not too sure on the details, anyways, that's why they had left Paddy's and ended up running into me on the street. Sounds like quite a mess, right. Well, to make things even more..odd.. E was drunk and Kat was drunk, and I was still kinda drunk, and E was flirting pretty hard with Kat which was a bit odd because they're co-workers and Kat just figured he was joking. A couple beers later, the flirting became more serious and some drunken kissing ensued, and I got to witness it all, oh lucky me. It was fine though, I was mostly just looking out for Kat and enjoying the bar scene, Kat was Quite drunk by this point in the night.

Eventually we left the red bar (I seriously have no idea what the name of it was) and then wandered our way up to another bar called El Son, it was a pretty kool bar, the music was a random mix of mostly 80's/90's with some spanish music thrown in, the crowd was mostly mid-late twenties just like the red bar, which makes sense since Kat and E are both around late twenties or so. We stayed and drank there for awhile, more flirting and whatnot ensued, by then I was starting to sober up even though we were still drinking beer and whatnot. Around 3am we all decided it was about time to go home, Kat and E walked me about half way home, Kat wanted to walk me all the way home but she was still pretty drunk and I was pretty sober by then, plus my house is far as heck, so I told her to just go home and that I'd be fine one my own, she reluctantly agreed and E said he'd make sure she got home alright, and that was that. What an odd night. Kat was hungover for like 2 days after that, aha poor chica.

Saturday morning we all came to CL for hangover breakfast, on the first saturday of every month CL has a English Breakfast special and it just happened to be the first saturday of december which was perfect. We all got an english breakfast which consisted of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, toast, hash-browns  and mushrooms, plus black pudding but well ordered ours without that. So much food but it was the perfect hangover breakfast ever. After that we ran some errands and then I told Taco I'd help her pack up and move into her new apartment, she ened up choosing that apartment near my place that we checked out a couple days before. On the way there we walked through a few of the kool shopping areas, her apartment was pretty central in the centre of town, good and bad I guess eh. And of course, couldn't resist but do some shopping, it happens :P had to buy some warmer stuff for the winter you know?...Anyways, eventually we got her place and got all her stuff together and ended up getting a taxi to transfer all her stuff to the new place.. originally we were just gunna walk it all over but that would have been SO much work. Eventually we get all her stuff into the apartment and talk with her roomies a bit, then we headed out to go shopping with Kiki, yea yea, more shopping, I know. They were shopping for boots and winter coats and things. After spending more money we all headed back to Kiki's and had some Turkey soup which was left over from Thanksgiving, Delicious. Then we decided to just have a girls night and curled up in her room with tea and watched The Holiday ehe. So great.

Sunday I spent most of the day being lazy in bed, Patri texted me saying she needed to talk to me about something to with the apartment when she got home from work which kinda freaked me out, so I just chilled around at home most of the day wondering what the heck it could be. So, here's where things get kind of odd, her friend Micha who was now roommates with Taco and been texting Patri and wondered if I wanted to switch rooms with her... at first I was kind of like what? But I mean, it does kind of make sense, Micha and Patri are friends and Taco and I are friends so that way we'd all be living with our friends. I said I'd think about and Patri said Micha was coming over later so we could talk about it if I wanted to. So we talked about and decided it was a good idea, to be honest I think I'm getting a better end of the deal for the most part. Micha's room is bigger than mine, it's cheaper than mine, it has a radiator in it which is Amazing, there's a dog at the house which I'm not sure if I'm happy about yet or not, and it has a decent sized living room. Only minor downsides, the bathroom isn't that great, the kitchen is kinda small, there is a roof top terrace which is pretty nice but not quite as good as mine, and there's now 3 roommates instead of just 2 of us, plus a couple others in the basement but they have a separate entrance. Ahwell, the deal was done, we agreed we'd move on the following Thursday and that was that.

After that I had dinner plans with a bunch of the girls to go try out the new Mexican restaurant that had just re-opened really close to our school, it had been under construction since we had arrived but it had apparently been quite good before it had closed down for renovations so we decided to try it out. The food was quite good, not that spicy though, plus they had placemats that you could colour! Ahaha gotta love crayons, we were such children, it was great. After that we of course went to CL to get some dessert, as always. Perfect way to end the week I'd say.

Definitely a week of strange events, the following week has more strangeness to come. C'est la vie!

Nov. 26-Dec. 2

Madrid Tripping

Another week of adventures! This past Monday night I finally went to the pub quiz night at Hannigan's. They have it every monday there and I keep meaning to go but just never got around to it. A few of my friends started going so that finally motivated me to go. It was fun for sure, ran into a couple of friends from the CLM and made a group with them, teams are usually 3-4 people. It's 6 rounds of trivia questions, always different categories although the first one is always news and gossip from the past week or so and the last one is always music. I didn't exactly rock at the categories this week but ohwell aha. One of them was the Kennedy's...like I know anything about them, besides that JFK was assassinated of course. It was good times though, the music round was pretty hilarious, they definitely played a very wide variety of music.

Tuesdays have been declared Tapa Touring Tuesdays by me and Hiccup. We both finish class at 2:30pm and nothing to do for the rest of day so what better thing to do with a free day than go tapa bar hopping and be buzzed in the middle of the afternoon ejeje. We always try new tapas places and this week we found some pretty good ones, we went to one that was pretty far away down by the river, the service there wasn't great but I got a delicious bailey's coffee with a tostada and Hiccup got some really good white wine so no complaints there. Then went to another bar up by the Catedral and both got delicious sangria and a free tapa of mushrooms with garlic and olive oil, it was pretty good and the guy who worked there was hilarious and super nice..kinda creepy too though. That night Claudia the crazy italian who works at CL came into work and saw us in the red room, she didn't look very good at all. She told us in the morning she had some kind of anxiety attack and asked if she could stay at Hiccup's that night because she didn't want to be alone. So we decided to have a girls night sleepover, made some delicious pasta for dinner, had a girly night talking about everything and anything and then we ended up watching Inglorious Basterds at like 2am because Hiccup had never seen it.  Was definitely an interesting night aha. Claudia is crazyy.

The next morning Claudia went out and bought coffee and muffins for all of us which was really nice of her. That was the discovery of the delicious red velvet cupcake from a bakery right near my school, dammit. They were so delicious but I've resisted from buying them, well I've boughten 1 since. After that had a full day of classes as usual. Later that night I popped by Hiccup's afterwards to grab my stuff, when I got there her roommate had already started drinking because she was going out later that night, she had discovered this almond flavoured liquor and had mixed with some vodka, it actually tasted really good, then I mentioned that it would probably taste good on ice cream. Dead silence and awe in the room ahaha a minute later there was a bowl of ice cream with almond liquor on it, must say it was freaking delicious. After that I headed over to Mads' to watch Moulin Rouge, we decided to have a movie night with some of her roommates and a couple Italian friends, Vinci and Fabio.

Thursday was American Thanksgiving so all the Americans were all excited and a bunch of them had big thanksgiving lunches/dinners planned with their programs and whatnot. This in a weird way worked out for my because my Italian class of 6 people is 3 Americans, 2 girls from Granada, and me. So, since the 3 Americans had thanksgiving lunches to go to at 2pm, we only had class for the first hour (12:30-1:30) I definitely wasn't complaining. Aha. Also, because it was American Thanksgiving and the majority of the people at my campus are American, the school decided to be nice and make the coffee machines free for the day, woot woot! Definitely had 3 coffees that day. After getting my free-coffee fill I went out for lunch with a friend and ran some errands before heading home to pack for Madrid. When I was home packing up I decided to check out tickets to Glasgow for new years, ended up finding really cheap round trip tickets (58 euros in total + taxes) and booked them right then and there. Then I got all my stuff together and headed out to go meet my friends and begin our trip to Madrid!

There was 6 of us going to Madrid although 2 of the guys weren't coming up until Saturday morning because they had class on Friday. So it was Mads, TinTin, BBD, and me leaving on thursday. We caught a 5pm bus from Granada to Madrid, the bus is about 5 hours, the only stop was about 1.5 hours in, it was nice to have a small stop and that there was only 1 of them, but at the same time, 3 more hours of straight driving after the stop made us all a little restless. Ohwell, we made it, once we got there, we had the fun of navigating our way through the Madrid metro system, eventually we ended up at our stop though, but was the easy part, finding our hostel was a whole different story. Of course the first thing we saw when we came out of the metro was a huge McDonald's for some reason that made BBD rather happy, maybe because the only McDonald's in Granada is down by the bus station which is pretty much the other side of the world in Granada. So our hostel turned out to be on this somewhat sketchy street not too far from one of the main roads, it was..interesting area. Lots of umm 'adult stores' 'burlesque shops' and things like that ahaha. Anyways, we got to the hostel and dealt with all the room stuff and finally got to our room, it was a pretty decent room, 6 beds, weird victorian-like architecture, 2 small balcony's, nothing too fancy. It was only like 11pm by the time we got there but we were all pretty tired and decided to just have a chill night in playing cards and watching movies.

Friday the 4 of us had a pretty chill day, we wandered around the city for awhile and then went to check the Prado Museum, I love museums, we probably spent a good 2 hours in there or so, saw lots of amazing paintings, etc. My favourite was definitely seeing 'Las Meninas' by Velázquez. After that we wandered over to the Puerta del Sol which was a big shopping area, super crowded but really kool area. We explored around there for awhile and then wandered the downtown awhile longer but eventually we were tired from walking all day and just headed back to hostel to chill and whatever. Mads and I ended up playing cards for awhile in the hostel while we were all taking turns showering and whatever else. Haven't played cards that much in a long time, t'was fun. Eventually we started pre-drinking and then one of TinTin's friends who is studying in Madrid (Steve) came to join us and show us around the city. We stayed in the hostel drinking and playing random drinking games until about 11pm (I was killing them all at poker), when we heard a knock at the door, oh shit. It was the dude from the front desk but he didn't come in to tell us to be quiet or anything, he just came to tell us that a 40 yr old Argentinian guy would be staying in the room with us that night, great. The guy seemed nice enough and whatever but still, weird. Plus we felt kinda bad for him, having to stay in a hostel room with 4 drunken/'rowdy' university students. And of course he decided to sleep on the side the room that Mads and I were sleeping on.

Anyways, we went out shortly after that, Steve took us out to see the city, warning us before hand to be prepared. One of the streets we took down to the main city centre was a very popular area for prostitues apparently, since we were in a pretty big group none of them bothered us but um, we definitely saw a few things going down around there, TinTin got hissed at a couple times ahaha. We went over to one of the streets where a lot of bars were, some of them were extremely full so we ended up just going into one that was half-empty, we were looking for food and drinks but apparently they had stopped serving food, so we just ended up ordering drinks and they have us these weird hickory-stick-like things to eat. I'm sure we looked like that obnoxious group of university kids at the bar since most of the other cliental was older but ohwell, it was fun, for some reason BBD and me got into a slap fight, not too sure how that happened but it was entertaining, I'd like to think that I won. For some reason after that the bartender gave us a round of free shots, they tasted something like sex on the beach, so I definitely wasn't complaining. Eventually we paid our bill and then were trying to decide what to do, we were still hungry and Steve told us about this awesome 24h pizza place by the main square, needless to say, that's where we headed next. The pizza was really good so we stayed there for awhile aha and then we were gunna go out but couldn't decide where so after wandering around the city for awhile we decided to just stumble back the hostel instead since we all wanted to get up early in the morning.

When we got back to the room the old Argentinian guy was there, it was like 3am and he was just about to go to bed so we had awesome awkward times talking to him and getting ready for bed in our drunken states. The morning just brought with it more awkwardness as TinTin and BBD got up early and left and so it was just Mads and I in the room with the Argentinian guy, and of course as soon as Mads and I get up and start getting ready the Argentinian guy wakes up too. Awkwardnessssss.

Anyways, Mads and I were gunna have a nice chill morning to ourselves since the other two went off to see the soccer stadium or whatever. We wandered down into the main area of town and stopped at a Starbucks to get some coffee, it was all cute and christmas themed and had awesome christmas drinks so obviously we had to try them. They're different than the ones in Canada, kinda odd but whatever, they had Toffee Nut latte, Apple Crumble latte, and Cranberry White Chocolate Mocha. I tried the apple crumble latte, it was so good. I love seasonal Starbucks drinks, sue me. Then we found this awesome little restaurant where we got a pretty legit english breakfast, so great. First time I'd had bacon and fried eggs in a long time. Eventually the other two finished up at the stadium and Vinci and Fabio had finally arrived so we all met up in the beautiful park since it was a pretty central location and whatnot. It was a beautiful park, kind of reminded me of alice in wonderland, there was a nice little lake in the middle of it where you could rent little rowboats for an hour, so of course we did. Walking around the boardwalk area around the little lake towards the boat rentals there was a ton of entertainers, mostly aimed towards children, like the guys making the massive bubbles and the magicians -who were making really inappropriate jokes btw- it was entertaining to watch. We rented 2 boats, Mads, TinTin and I were in one and the 3 italians were in the other. It was a gorgeous sunny day so being on the lake was perfect, Mads was rowing the whole time which was pretty hilarious as me and TinTin just lazed about on the boat, it was great. Definitely glad the italians were in their own boat, they were spinning around in circles and splashing and rocking the boats and doing all kinds of ridiculous things aha. Fun to watch but not as fun to part-take in. After we returned the boats we explored the park awhile longer and then wandered back into the city, we stumbled upon a wedding at a church near the Prado and decided it would be fun to walk by 'accidentally' be in photos and things like that aha, it was a beautiful wedding and a lot of the women were wearing hilariously fancy hats just like at the Royal Wedding.

We continued wandering through the city and found our way to Plaza Mayor where the Christmas Markets were starting to be set up, it was so christmas-y ahh it was awesome! Fabio was shopping around for who-knows-what and all of a sudden he was following some guy who worked in one of the stores in the plaza out onto the street so we all had to follow him of course. We were just like where the hell are we going?! As it turns out, he was looking at clothing or whatever in the store and the owner of that store also owned a 4 story floor just outside of the plaza so he was going there to check out more stuff. It was a pretty kool store actually, pretty small and very vertical and very hippy. After that weird excursion we went to go check Palacio Real which is a big palace type thing in Madrid. It was a really beautiful building, I'm sure the inside is stunning but we were too late to do tours that day plus it costed money, maybe next time.

After that we just headed back to hostel to shower, play cards, and pre-drink as usual. The Argentinian guy was gone by the time we got back, he was only staying the one night, but shortly after we got back we found out that we had a 30-ish yr old russian/italian woman and a 20-something french girl staying with us that night. Fun times. It was fine though, they were going out that night so we wouldn't be annoying them with our drinking and whatnot, we would just had to be really quiet later when we came in from partying. So we headed out trying to figure out what to do with our night, or original plan was to go to Kapital which is a 5 story club in Madrid, but ended up just wandering around the city for quite awhile until we found an 'italian' restaurant, we hadn't really had dinner so we stopped in there. The waiter looked thoroughly annoyed that he had another table to serve since it was kinda late, but whatever, it's business, some of the guys ordered drinks but most of us just had water and then we all ordered pizzas. Fabio had a minor hissy fit because the waiter hadn't given him a coltello (knife) when he brought us cutlery. After quite a wait we eventually got our pizza and surprise, surprise the Italians weren't overly impressed. Fabio was upset that his pizza seemed to be lacking tomatoes/tomato sauce and again went to our waiter to complain and have it taken back to the kitchen. It came back a few minutes later with some tomato sauce and whatnot on top of it, probably some spanish spit too.

Eventually we got out of their and continued wandering the city, we're such indecisive people. We couldn't decide what we wanted to do so we just wandered aimlessly for a long time until that clubbing was too expensive and that we were just going to into the next bar we came across. We found a kool little bar called 1978 it had a deal on for 2 mojitos for 6 euros so we're like, why not?! Mads and I got some mojitos and some the guys got beer, we ended up chilling in there for awhile, it was a kool little spot, kinda modern interior decor. Slowly the place started to empty out and shut down, TinTin was still drinking his beer so we decided to leave and to just sneak his beer out, it was in a nice glass too. We stumbled back to the hostel and crashed for the night, being super quiet of course so we didn't wake up the two people in our room.

Sunday morning we all got up together and went out for breakfast, originally we were considering going to do the tour of Palacio Real or going shopping at Puerta del Sol before catching the bus back to Granada but instead we went to check out these crazy outdoor markets that are one or two streets and just go on for miles, they're also on a huge hill -lucky for us we started at the top- it was quite a challenge trying to get through those markets in a group of 6. Needless to say we got separated about every 5 minutes and would have to stop about every 100 metres or so to re-group. Most of the time we were waiting on Fabio since he seemed to stop and check out half the booths in the market. It was really kool tho, lots of interesting things to buy, it was major chaos though. After like an hour or something we eventually made it to the bottom of the hill, we wandered around the area a bit more, got some food, and wandered over to one of the big plazas in that area and came across the Madrid University. Looked like a pretty nice campus but I still love Granada the best. Then we just headed for the bus station because we were watching a 4pm bus back to Granada, we still had homework and things to do after all.

OMG the bus home was brutal. It was suffocatingly hot in there and the first leg of the trip was 2.5 hours long. I just about ran out of the bus when it stopped at the rest station and wanted to jump for joy.  The rest of the ride wasn't too bad, but was definitely happy to get home, we ended up takin a cab back to Mads instead of taking the bus or walking, too much of a hassle. Finally walked home around 10:30 and finished up my homework, was planning on watching a movie and then going to bed at a decent hour but of course that didn't happen...

I guess it's about time I mention J. J is a local and we've been 'seeing' each other for about a month and a half now, I use the word 'seeing' pretty loosely. Anyways, I got a message from him sunday night and he ended up showing up around 3am so needless to say I didn't go to bed at a decent hour like I had planned. Ahwell. Monday morning was pretty burtal though, had class at 10:30am. Blargh.

What a week, was pretty interesting to say the least. Most of the weekend I ended up speaking more Italian and English than Spanish but ohwell, still good practice!

Nov. 19-25

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