Sevilla

We arrived in Sevilla mid-afternoon. From the bus station, we found our hostel, dropped our bags, and went to try to meet with with the other girls from Burgos to buy tickets for a Flamenco show. The city of Sevilla is full of windy roads.... so what could be a straight show requires the upmost navigation skills to get from one spot to another without venturing out to a main road. After winding our way through the city, we arrived at the 3rd largest cathedral in the world (for being so massive, you sure couldn't see it over all of the other buildings...). 

Hannah and I had only had a pastry and a Coke that morning, so we were beyond starving by this time, so after paying the girls, we found a nice cafe to dine at. We ended up splitting a bottle of wine, appetizers and hanging out for awhile... typical Spanish way of eating... rather than the "stuff your face and sight see" method that we're used to. From there, we moseyed around to all of the shops, before being rejoined by Liliana. She wanted to see the Alcazar, but it had already closed :( We were headed in the general direction of the Flamenco show when we came upon the Plaza de los Toros... so we ventured inside. I first took advantage of the free bathrooms, and when I was exiting, was informed that there was a "show" starting in 4 minutes and the girls had already purchased tickets. I was nervous about seeing a bullfight, but thought when in Spain and went along with it. Turns out, the "show" was really just a tour of the area, so nothing yucky, just a lot of old stuff and information about the history of bullfighting. In the end, we all decided that we'd prefer to never see an actual bullfight.

Afterwards, we stopped by our hostel to get a corkscrew, as nowhere on the Flamenco ticket did it say that it WASN'T a byob event. There was quite the ruckus in the neighborhood, so we decided to investigate. Just the Spanish Halloween celebration... drum line and parade of children, typical Halloween stuff.

We arrived at the show early, and waited outside as tour busses showed up full of people. Apparently, there are people who aren't cheap, and decided to enjoy a fancy dinner during the performance... I bet they did not byo-vino. The dancing was amazing! A full crew of 12 dancers rotated though as singers and band members in the back rocked out! 

After the show, we decided to walk to the Plaza de España, as we had seen amazing postcards of it at night. Apparently, those postcard photographers get special privileges, because after walking 30 minutes, we found ourselves locked OUT of the Plaza. We walked back to the city in search of rabas (calamari), but all of the bars were either closed, or closing... so we settled on the BK meal... again.... it sucks that it's so cheap and always open. It was interesting scoping out all of the costumes of the BK goers at 1:00 AM... A for effort on Halloween Spain!

The next morning, Hannah and I woke up, took our bags to a locker at the bus station and enjoyed the city. We walked back to the cathedral to pay it a proper visit. Being that the day after Halloween is a holy day, it was free to enter (yay!). We moseyed around, snapped some photos, and enjoyed the facades. 

Afterwards, we re-ventured to the Alcazar and had a look around. The gardens there were more impressive than Alhambra.... but the actual palace had nothing on it. For fear of getting lost, we did not venture into the shrub labyrinth, but continued our walk through the gardens until we found a exit. By this point we were starving, and sought a restaurant on the way to Plaza de España. We found a nice one with a great menu del día special and sat down... after twenty minutes of not being served... water... anything... we continued on our trek to the Plaza, hungrier than ever. A stand outside of the Plaza was selling potato chips... a perfectly reasonable meal for those dying of starvation (and anyone in my house knows that chips explode after 10 minutes if they're not eaten... soooo it was more of a civic duty). Bag in hand, we entered the Plaza de España, and took in all of it's glory. A giant fountain. Check. A fake river for row boats. Check. Cute four people bikes. Check. HEAVEN! However, the worst thing happened in this magical place... my camera died. So there are limited photos of the awesomeness. Bummer. 

On the trek back to the bus station, we finally found proper nourishment, a tapas special at an outside cafe that appeared to be owned by the Spanish mafia. It was great food to tide us over for our 6 hour bus ride to Madrid. 

Cordoba

We bussed into Cordoba in the evening time. A two or three hour ride from Granada. Despite missing every sunset at the lookout over the Alhambra, I did get to see a beautiful sunset over a mountainside of olive trees during the trip. Hannah did not appreciate me waking her up to see it, but it inspired me to consider a retirement as an olive orchard owner someday.

We exited the bus, and consulted Hannah's trusty guidebook (We <3 Rick Steves!). Rick recommended two city bus numbers to take to get to the main part of the city. As we walked out of the bus station, #4 was waiting for us, so we eagerly jumped on. After boarding, we realized we weren't real sure what stop to get off at... and the longer the ride went on, the further off the map we ventured. We ended up in the suburbs/ghetto of Cordoba. We did manage to find the Hipercore and Carrefour... two huge markets... just in case we needed them for our less than 24 hour stay. Finally the bus returned us to pretty much where we got off and we hoofed it like we should have done in the first place.

Coming to Cordoba we had no plans... literally NO PLANS. No hostel. No set bus times. NOTHING! (This should be very shocking for those of you who know me... I DO NOT fly by the seat of my pants.) Thus, we were two girls and two backpacks marching through the streets of Cordoba at 9:00 PM hoping for a room anywhere. The first place we went wanted to charge us $100 (USD) to sleep in their room for the night, and the next only had the honeymoon suite available (despite considering this our "second honeymoon" [see Santander post for the 1st], we were not on a honeymooner's budget). Finally we found a place on a side street with a grouchy man running the desk who offered shelter for a reasonable price. SUCCESS!

Rachel H., Liliana, Lizette, and Fran were already in Cordoba, so we met up with them on the magical bridge for a mosey around town.

alter on the bridge 

They had already spent a full day there and were headed to Seville the next morning, so they gave us the rundown on what we should and shouldn't do. We sat on the steps of the mezquita chatting and joking... only typing this do I realize how cool that is! (Ohhh... no big deal, just hung out on the steps of one of the most FAMOUS places in Spain catching up with friends! GOD MY LIFE IS AWESOME!) We parted ways, and Hannah and I found a restaurant to get tapas and wine before turning in for the night.

The next morning we woke up early, ready to go see the mezquita.

It's free to visit on Mondays (and lo and behold Monday we were there), so we were expecting megalines. YEP... we walked up, asked a guard where the line for tickets was, he laughed and just pointed towards a door... we just waltzed on in... no line... no money. YAY! So Cordoba's mezquita is as iconic as the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It's something I've seen pictures and learned about a bajillion times, and was ELATED to finally see in person. IT'S FRICKIN AWESOME! The only disappointing part is that it was converted from a mosque to a Catholic church when the Reconquista occurred... so there's beautiful Moorish work, then a giant, out of place crucifix. I'm not anti-Catholics... just build your own darn church... stop stealing everyone else's!!!

After the mezquita, we walked around for a little while deciding what to do with our day. After pre-reading about Seville in the guidebook, we decided to grab an earlier bus so we could have more time to enjoy Seville.

Granada

Halloween weekend meant another puente (direct translation: bridge, literal translation: long weekend)... yay for two girls in need of a little traveling. Unfortunately, the trip started out a little rough... with me buying the wrong bus tickets for the day before... ouch! Good thing these pretty, sparkley euros grow on trees. After repurchasing tickets and sleeping like the homeless on a bus station bench in Madrid for a few hours, Hannah and I finally made it to Granada. After taking a city bus downtown from the bus station, we found a miracle with four walls, a palace of a Burger King with 3.30 euro meal deals! So tasty after a long day of traveling, and probably made with much higher quality meat. After our American meal, we hiked up a hill to the Albayzin neighborhood, a historic area of town with a killer view of the Alhambra. After setting down our bags and filling our BK cups with vino, we headed over to the lookout.

The next day, we woke up ready to explore the city. We perused through all of the touristy shops, then hiked over to the neighborhood of a famous graffiti artist. After becoming famous, he came back and decorated his childhood neighborhood. 

The colors were so bright, and each of the of the pieces had thought provoking quotes. Sooo artsy. Afterwards, we found a bar with wifi, wine and free tapas and looked into visiting the Alhambra and emailed home to let loved ones know we weren't dead. Since our hostel had a kitchen, we brainstormed all day walking around about what American meal we could cook for ourselves that night. We settled on chicken, mashed potatoes and salad, inexpensive and easy. While shopping, we realized there are still things we haven't had to do for ourselves here... like purchase meaningful things the in market (i.e. not candy and wine). When we got to the meat counter, we ordered a quarter of a kilogram of chicken, not realizing that was 5 chicken breasts. Improvising, we bought tortillas so we could use the leftover veggies and excessive amounts of chicken to make wraps the next day. The goal was to make dinner and actually see the sun set over the Alhambra, unfortunately, cooking took longer than expected (cooking tools were limited, no veggie pealer, no baking devices) and we ended up hanging in the hostel with the owner for the evening. 

The next morning was our last planned day in Granada. We were told by the landlord to make it to the Alhambra by 8:00 and we'd have no problem getting in (they reserve 1000 tickets to sell each morning, in addition to the ones that were already sold out online). After hiking up a giant hill, we were making impeccable time. It was a little after 8:00 but there was already a mega line. After an hour of waiting, a small commotion erupted in another area, so like a good tourist, I ventured off to check it out. There was another line available to purchase tickets with a credit card, so Hannah stayed in the cash only line and I was the 30th person in the credit card line. Great plan, until we realize that she only has a card and I only had 2 euro left on my card. I reached the machine, used the card, praying for chap overdraft fees as they were announcing that there were only 160 tickets remaining for the entire day. I found Hannah in the other line and we hustled to an ATM to possibly deposit cash and beat the fee. The world's best mother had already transferred my funds the day before, so we did a lot of running and freaking out for nothing. We grabbed coffee and pastries to rest before re-venturing up the hill to explore. The Alhambra is comprised of gardens, palaces and an old castle, all built by the Moors before the Christians not so politely asked them to get the hell out (1300s). Rude, but a completely different story. We explored the gardens and a place built for King Carlos V (1500s) before entering the palace. The detail and immenseness of both the gardens and palace was amazing. I am truly amazed at what people were able to do without any modern technology. 

There's like a bajillion pieces of wood put up there by hand. 

Once we left the palace, we explored the castle before back to make snack wraps and catch the bus to Cordoba. 

Lisbon... that's in Portugal... Europe

A few weekends ago we took advantage of another long weekend, and jetted off to Lisbon. Our plane arrived slightly delayed Thursday night a little after midnight. As directed by the lovely Begoña, we found the city bus stop outside the airport and waited. After sitting at the stop for a few minutes, we realized that there was only one night bus running and that the whole process might be a little more difficult than we originally thought. Despite our doubts, we climbed on the shady looking bus a headed towards the center of the city. They dropped us off at a giant arc around 1:30 and we were left to find our hostel. We then decided it'd be a good idea to fetch a taxi, rather than moseying around in the dead of the night with all of our luggage. After a 90 second taxi ride, a distance of 8 city blocks at the price of 5 euro, we realized it wouldn't have been that bad of a walk after all.

The next morning Aaron, Monica, Sean, Molly and I got up bright and early for a tour given by We Hate Tourism tour group. IT WAS FANTASTIC! We piled into an old German police van and sped away from the city to explore the outskirts of the city. Our first stop was the city of Sintra for coffee and sweets. Afterwards we perused in all of the local shoppes, sampling their local liqueurs... almond flavored, and cherry served in a chocolate shot glass) all before 10:30. We were then carted off to an amazing palace... Palácio da Regaleira to explore for a few hours. This mansion and crazy array of gardens, paths, and underground tunnels was built on almost 10 acres by a family who had far too much money and no real need for it. Next we were carted off to a roadside farmer's market en route to the best surprise of the day. We bought strawberries (THE FRESHEST YUMMIEST ONES EVER) and browsed the rest of the stands before loading back into the van. The surprise was the tastiest sandwhich/calzones (fresh bread baked with chorizo and goat cheese in the center), <3 OLIVES <3 , copious amounts of wine, and the most majestic lunch location:

... oh no big deal... just the Atlantic Ocean!

We settled in for a little while munching, chatting and enjoying the view before hiking a little ways up the road to join the throngs of tourists at the Western Most Point in Continental Europe marker. The last stop was another city with their claim to fame being the world's best ice cream. As a professional ice cream taster, I have to agree that it was great, but no gelato. We took a stroll on the beach and collected raw materials before being returned to the Lisbon proper area. There we saw a ginormous monastery and 

a monument honoring the explorers of Lisbon (where thanks to the wine I was much more interested in the fish in the water nearby than the actual monument).

 

For dinner that night, we joined up with Liliana, Roxana, Amanda, and Lizette for dinner at a restaurant that the tour guide had suggested. Each of us ordered chicken, and were served a CHICKEN... a whole entire chicken, along with french fries and some weird rice. After adventuring all day, we all turned into bed, ready to explore the city the next day.

Sunday morning, we found the local, and FREE art museum. The highlight of the trip was Molly complimenting my on my art critiques. Next we found another restaurant with massive portions and amazing flavors and had a feast for lunch. While we were feasting, a storm rolled in, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in the downtown area shopping and snacking on the famous pastries de nata. Later, we met up with Aaron's host brother Sergio (he's studying abroad for the year in Lisbon) and went to a dive diner for dinner then a bar to hear fado music. The fado music never materialized, but a creepy magician did. After calling him on every magic trick, and him calling Sean Sharon the whole night, we politely left him before he got the idea that we were bff. We all went back to Sergio's apartment, and met the rest of his roomies, from France, Spain and Lithuania and hung out for a little while before another stormy walk home.

Monday morning, we got up, packed up, and explored the historic parts of the city. We caught a cable car to take us up the mountain to the castle region. They're fun to look at, but very uncomfortable to ride in. We took in the views from the top, and enjoyed some local wine, vinho verde, before entering the castle. There were amazing views of the giant bridge (a San Fran knockoff) and the Christ tower (a Rio de Janeiro knock off) as well as the entire city. Before leaving, we found a small restaurant to enjoy one more cheap meal at before heading to the airport. 

Milan

What an amazing city to conclude our Italian tour! We were able to meet some wonderful people, reconnect with the amazing Jacopo Crippa, spend some serious time shopping and actually sleep past 5 AM.

We got to Milan on Friday afternoon, after a FULL night of sleep in Venice. Our bodies were confused as to what we were doing in bed so late. We got kicked out of 1st class (oops) and moved to the commoners area on the train, where it was packed the entire time. We're used to traveling like vampires, so it was strange seeing people awake on a train car. To get to our hostel, we had to take two metros. The first metro was so-so, but the second metro was AMAZING! I would have willingly ate a meal off of the floors of this train. It was so clean, and modern and not disgusting! I'd prefer to sleep there than in some of the hostels we stayed in :) We arrived at our hostel, only to be informed that there was a "small problem" and that our room was given away because it was fashion week.... GREAT! When I asked the clerk why he didn't contact me about the "small problem" he said I "wouldn't understand". In turn, he sent us to a hotel a 15 minute walk away where he reserved us a room that's much nicer than his... It seemed like trouble. Milan is confusing, because unlike the other cities we've been in, there are a LOT of small roads. We were wandering around with luggage and a map speaking English and looking confused when a young guy approached us and ask "Are you speaking English?!?".... why yes sir... we are. Turns out this lad was from Cali and teaching English in the schools there, he said never in his whole year there had he heard someone speaking English in that area of Milan. He nicely walked us to our hotel, because let's be real, it would have taken us another hour to find, and let me use his phone to call Jacopo. Again, GREAT PEOPLE ARE OUT THERE!

After showering and settling into our hotel, which turned out not to be half bad, we realized that we hadn't eating since 10 that morning and it was now 4 o'clock. Jac came and collected us from our hotel and took us to get toast (a glorified grilled cheese and ham) and Coke before taking us back to his apartment so he could get ready for the evening. Jacopo is a friend of mine that came to Plainwell during my junior year of high school. He's a pretty alright guy ... okay, he's amazing... and is the best tour guide we could ever ask for! He's studying medicine at the university in Milan, so after changing, he took us to get aperitivos with his fellow med students. Now this aperitivo thing is the BEST THING IN THE WORLD! You buy a drink, and you get a whole buffet of foods for FREE! This was WELL worth the wait. We also got in over our heads, telling Jacopo's friends to order us something really good, then whining when it was too strong. After gorging on sushi, pizza, dips, crackers, and breads, we left the bar. We snuck into an EMT building to use the restroom (as the bar had a Turkish toilet ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet ... said to be hygienic, I find it g-ross) before heading to their version of a plaza mayor. This plaza has walk up bars, where you order, then meander through the streets sipping on your drink. We found a nice spot to sit on the stairs and people watch. We talked to Jacopo's friends about everything from fashion to politics. They kept apologizing for their English, which was fantastic, so I'm even more jealous of their early language learning! Next, we stopped for crepes. YUMMM!

After that sweet treat, we walked to the main church, and saw some tents set up for fashion week before catching a bus back to our hotel for the night.


The next morning, we checked out of our hotel, and lugged our bags down the street with Jac as our guide until we found breakfast. Chocolate croissants and cappuccino ... I love Italy! We dropped our bags off at Jacopo's apartment for the day, collected his roommate Francesco and headed to lunch. We had wine and pasta (all chosen for us by Jacopo the Decider) and coffee after desert before meeting up with his friends again to visit the church. We didn't think about visiting the church hours earlier when we were dressing ourselves, and thus were denied entry for our spaghetti straps and exposed upper leg area. We were still allowed to climb to the top of the church and see all of Milan. Marta, the girl next to Monica, took some amazing photos on top of the church that she nicely shared with all of us later via facebook! <3 her!

The city is more industrial than any of the other cities we had been in, and thus there's much more smog. They're also preparing for the World Fair in 2015, so lots of new buildings are being built to accommodate that. After the exhausting climb, we stopped for gelato (any excuse to eat it) and Coke. Hannah and I opted to split cannoli filling flavored gelato mixed with berry flavored and a Coke and a fizzy water... the best of all worlds. Nora, another friend, also met up with us for the tasty goodness, then took Monica, Hannah and I shopping while everyone else went home to watch the football (soccer) games. We shopped for hours, buying makeup, accessories, unmentionables, and clothes! The stores were closing, so we finally got kicked out!

We went back to Jac's apartment, watched TV, football, and YouTube videos, ate pizza and got ready to go out to a disco. Our flight wasn't til 7:30 AM and we didn't have a hotel, so we had some time to kill. We made it to a disco, and got to pass right by the line, thanks to the well connected boys we were with. Inside we also got free drink tickets (the drinks were 10 euro ... $13... so they were very appreciated). The music was all American pop, and all of the people we were with we amazed that we knew all of the words to all of the songs... we're pretty darn impressive! The DJ kept trying to sing along, but with her accent it was more humorous than effective. We left the disco at 3:00, and went back to the boys apartment to get out bags. At some point they had decided that they were going to drive us to the airport, so we sat around for a few hours before heading out. They bought us waters, and made sure everything was good with the ticket counter before leaving us to find our terminal.

 Jac and Fran were such great hosts and let us mentally coast on the last leg of our adventure!

Venice

Like crazies, or super stingy students (our train costs 1/3 what the “good time” trains did), we piled on the 4:30 am train to Venice after getting a whopping two hours of sleep the night before. The train ride there was pretty rough, and impossible to sleep. We got into Venice at 10:00 and found a place to eat breakfast and have coffee. I enjoyed so cheese and fruit pastries (mini pies/fruit pizzas),

 while Monica and Hannah ate crepes covered in Nutella. We hopped a bus to our hostel (not on the island), checked in and took a two-hour nap before we regrouped and explored the city. With less than 24 hours to spend in Venice, we made the most of the day. We explored all of the winding streets from one end of the island to the other, stopping for pizza and shopping along the way. In had never realized that Veince was more than just one river winding through the city. It has little waterways that feed into the bigger one, creating entire city reliant on the waterways.  Even UPS has a boat the get their packages around Venice. 

We made it to St. Mark’s Square a.k.a. pigeon central, and soaked up its greatness. 

We tried eating at a few places suggested by the travel guide, but a lot of kitchens in Italy close at 4 pm, so we were told we were welcome to drink, but couldn’t eat. We tried finding a place on our own, before approaching to moms standing outside watching their kids play and asked them a good place to eat. One of the moms walked us to their suggested restaurant on her walk home, and they were quite right, it was a tasty dinner. We enjoyed our pasta dishes (Monica claims God made the meatballs for her spaghetti in the kitchen) with a few glasses of white wine mixed with champagne. We attempted to retrace our steps and get back to the bus stop, but instead found a new way. On our walk, we met two boys from California, on a two-week Eurotrip headed to Rome. As usual, we gave them plenty of advice on the city before parting ways at the bus station. Our train to Milan didn’t leave until 11:00 the next morning, so we were able to get NINE WHOLE HOURS of sleep before having a relaxing breakfast and climbing aboard our next train. 

Cinque Terre

We woke up early the next morning to prepare a pre-hike breakfest: eggs, toast and marmalade, then walked to the train station for our 7:00 train. On the train, we met two girls from Massachusetts that took a semester off to travel Europe before graduation. We swapped bad hostel and creepy Italian stories and gave advice on traveling in other cities (they were headed to Rome next and had just been in Venice). The Cinque Terre is a path on cliffs and mountains between 5 small cities (each with populations less than 2,000 people) that goes along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. We decided to do hike opposite of the norm, and start at the northern most city and work our way south. While normal people hike then end their day by swimming at the beach at the northern-most city. We decided to layout and play on the sand before beginning the trek. 

view from our wine tasting

We’re determined to soak up as much sun as we can before fall comes. In each city, we stopped for pizza, wine, gelato, and more wine before making our way back to the path to continue our trek. We made it to the last city just around sunset, and were able to enjoy an amazing seafood pasta dinner overlooking the sea. So beautiful!

On the train heading back to Florence, we had an hour layover in Pisa. Monica, Hannah and I flagged down a ticket-checker (I’m suure that’s the official title) and asked the logistics of visiting the Leaning Tower of Pisa during that hour. He said it’d be a close call to walk there and back, so we decided to give up on the dream, as we had a 4:30 am train to catch to Venice the next morning, and wouldn’t be getting back to Florence until midnight. While chatting and stretching our sore legs, we began chatting with a man on the train. He had visited the cities of the Cinque Terre with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren and was headed back to Florence also. He gave us amazing advice on where to eat and shop in Venice, and the ins and outs of traveling through the city. We mentioned that we had considered making the jaunt over to the Leaning Tower, and he lit up with excitement. When we got off the train, he flagged down two taxis for his WONDERFUL family and us. It was like something out of a movie, piling into Italian taxis with complete strangers, laughing at the randomness the entire time. We had 10 or 20 minutes to snap photos before hustling back to the train station for the last leg of the journey. The last train was spent chatting with them, exchanging stories of adventures (the son and daughter met backpacking in Italy years ago), their life (a family of lawyers from Alabama) and our trip thus far. We are so lucky to have met so many amazing people on all of our adventures!