Piel de Ciudad

Ronda

Lisbon

Córdoba

O man I fail at blogging, first because I just wrote this entry and I somehow lost it and second because I haven’t updated in forever! I like to tell myself that I’m out experiencing things instead of writing about it, but it’s officially been too long. There’s been so much going on that I don’t really know where to start. I think my travels are probably most noteworthy, for me at least. I’m becoming quite the travel fanatic. I’ve always wanted to travel, but now that Europe is at my fingertips and it’s possible, we’re talking about a whole new level. I spend a lot of my time planning travel, talking about traveling to my equally-obsessed apartment mate Holly, or actually traveling. I’ve had trips every one to two weeks since my language intensive ended in mid September- all made possible by a beautiful Spanish invention called a “Puente”.

I’ve definitely caught Spain’s allergies to real work. They’re all about enjoying the moment and having fun. Some may call it slacking, but I like to think of it as cultural immersion. So the “puente”, here’s how it goes: there’s a national holiday on a Tuesday, and I, being a fully culturally immersed Spaniard, skip my Monday class and go to (insert awesome European city) instead. While a select few people do go to class on that day, we fully immersed Spaniards look down on that kind of behavior. Beautiful thing, right? Well thanks to Spain’s greatest invention EVER, I’ve enjoyed (and plan on enjoying) quite a few excursions.  

Sevilla and Cádiz!! 

Our first Puente was on the 2^nd real week of class (I <3 Spain), so the roomies and I decided to take advantage and hit up two great Andalucian cities, Sevilla and Cádiz. Sevilla was literally a breath of fresh air from Granada. There were beautiful, spacious parks and gardens strewn throughout the city, something my ciudad lacks.

Sevilla is the “capital” of Andalucia. Back in the day when Spain still had control over their colonies in the Americas, Sevilla’s port had a monopoly on trade with the Americas making it quite the cultural/economic center of the south and making the Guadalquivir River that runs through it super importante. Even before that, Sevilla was a “reino” of the Muslumanes, which gives the city quite a few layers of history, and some awesome sights!  

Even though I see this everyday in Granada, it was just mind blowing all over again how the suppperrr old is just so casually mixed with the modern. You look down the cobblestone street and see the largest cathedral in the WORLD!, a new sheek metro line, a horse drawn carriage pulling some tourists, and a McDonald’s (pronounced Mahck Do-nahl) of course. We saw the massive cathedral of course along with the converted Alcázar (Muslim palace), the Plaza de España, and the parks and jardines (gardens). 

Now, Cádiz is famous for its beaches and infamous for it’s dwellers’ thick Andalucian accent. If you can understand someone from Cádiz, you have dominated all Spanish accents- seriously. They had shirts that read “Soy de Ca’i Que? Ca’i, hombre”, or something like that. There wasn’t as much to do here, since it was October and the city is principally a beach-town/destination for the sun-deprived northern Europeans. However, Cádiz has quite a bit of history as well. It was founded by the Phoenicians a lonnggg time ago, and was also the official port to the Americas after the Guadalquivir River in Sevilla became unnavigable for the new merchant fleets. So between rain showers we visited the cathedral, a museum, and few picturesque plazas and topped it off with a beautiful sunset on the beach. It was an overall great trip and bonding experience for the Alhamar chicas.

23 Calle Alhamar :)
Piso life has been a lot of fun in Granada. It’s great to finally be out of the dorms, and have my own place. I didn’t realize how liberating it is to have your own kitchen and living room, and doubly awesome since it’s in SPAIN! I’ve been here one month now, and I’m fairly used to the area, and even recognize some faces from the building. I got super lucky with the area, its really safe and well lit for the late nights out. My roomies and I have also discovered that our street is great for people watching (which we have no problem doing from our living room window).
Like all apartments in Spain, ours came fully furnished. This is really nice for study abroad students, but also comes with the risk that it looks like it came from the 70’s, haha. Our couches are orange along with our walls, and the kitchen and bathrooms are super old. Our refrigerator likes to freeze everything (minus one shelf), we have cockroaches, and we have a washer where the oven is supposed to be. Apparently Spain doesn’t believe in ovens, which is super annoying when it comes to cooking. I prefer to bake over stove top any day but I’m dealing. On top of that we have an electric stove, and if you’ve ever cooked with one, you’d understand my frustration.  
Another thing about Spain is nothing is done easily, much less quickly. No one in my piso is a native Spaniard, so that made things fun when it came to figuring out how to get internet. By the time we figured out which company would be the best to contract, we learned that you had to have a Spanish bank account in order to even get a contract. Once that madness was over with, we finally went to order internet, when they told us it would be another 30 days until we would get it! Throughout this whole process, we all had to go to this hot, dingy cyber-cafe where we paid by the hour to use internet, sad times. I figured it wasn’t worth my money to update my bolg, so that fell by the wayside for the past month. SORRY!
On a brighter note, the roomies are awesome. I live with Holly, an American from SD, Emma from England, and Stefania from Italy. Holly, Emma, and I try not to slip into English too much, but its definitely a challenge to speak spanish 24/7. Stefania isn’t too fluent in English or Spanish, so communication is limited, but she’s definitely improving fast. I originally wanted to live with Spaniards, but I think God had other plans for me, and I’ve been super blessed here :).   
 

Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to update, but that’s another story.

Milano

After the ancient cities of Venice and Verona, Milan was a complete 180. Before we even got there, we had all heard that you should skip Milan on an Italy trip, but hey we found a cheap flight on ryanair that flew from Milan to Granada! Annndd NOTHING flies into Granada, so it was a must. I knew the city was pretty big and metropolitan (its the financial capital of Italia), but as soon as we got off the train and walked into what looked like a huge airport with huge crowds of people we knew we weren’t in little Verona anymore! We walked out of the train station into a huge plaza and there was a stage set up and fast beat techno music coming out of the speakers. 

It definitely felt like a big city, but there was also a lot of beautiful greenery, and  open plazas. The best part was that we had finally gotten away from the huge tourist crowds. Yes, I know I’m a total tourist, but let’s face it even tourists don’t like to be around tourists. Milano’s cultural pride and joy is the Duomo, and rightly so. It was beautiful in a dark, gloomy type way. It is the largest Gothic cathedral, and the second largest Catholic cathedral in the world. You just kind of look at it in awe, and then attempt to fit it into your hand size digital camera (not easy). The inside was equally terrifying and beautiful at the same time. We also took these never-ending stairs to the roof of the cathedral, and man that was incredible. You could see close up the amount of detail on every column and how each point had a distinct saint carved into it. Throughout my whole time in Italy I wished I knew more about art history! 

After coming out of the cathedral we were thrown back into the 21st century with posters and fliers, and stages being set up for Milan Fashion Week. It’s probably one of a billion fashion weeks in THE fashion capital, but it was awesome to experience something so essentially Milan while we were there. Now I can say I saw my first fashion show in Milan!  

Verona!

This place was so perfectly Italian. Definitely had all the trademarks- picturesque landscape, old Roman ruins, ornate churches, castles, piazzas with frescoes, and of course Juliet’s house, hahaha!