Sunday, April 18, 2010

Spring BREAK!!!!


"SPAIN"

So we woke up early from sleeping in the airport after Barcelona to head to the Canary Islands!!! These are islands right off Spain. It took around three hours to get from Madrid to the Islands and they couldn’t have lasted any longer! We were so anxious to get on the beach and get a little color for once! We arrived and went straight to the bathroom to change into our swimsuits right away before we got on the bus! Don’t worry mom we wore cover-ups over our swimsuits haha (my family could totally see me just going in my suit) I love being in my swimsuit! So we hopped on a bus that went to the south side of the island we were on, where our hostel and other friends were awaiting our arrival! We had quite the experience getting to where we were staying. We followed the directions and got to be where we were supposed to be, then we went into the bar area where we were first to check in, (first red flag, checking in at an outdoor bar). Then we went in and they had papers, food and other trash all over this tiny bar area/ workers lounge. So anyway we were to get a taxi to this one address and then we had to pay in cash on arrival. We did as we were instructed and found Shayna and Robert waiting for us at the address we were given! It turned out that we were staying in apartments, the boys had one and the girls had one. We had our own kitchen, living room and bedrooms. The only downfall was that we had to walk about 10 minutes to the pool and 20 to the beach and only the boy’s apartment had internet, but other than that it worked out great! And for only 14 Euro a night! So after we got all settled in we went to the pool to get our sun on! We laid out for a couple of hours and then wrapped it up and decided to get some groceries on the way back to the apartment. The guys went back early so it was just us girls to go get groceries. So we all stalked up on groceries for the week which were super cheap on the island! We all had lots of bags so we decided, oh, we’ll just take a taxi back. First obstacle: getting a taxi to take 5 girls when they were only allowed to have 4 in their taxi. We probably stopped 6 taxis before we found a taxi driver that would take us as long as we paid him 2 euro extra. Second obstacle that we didn’t think about until we all got situated inside the taxi with steph laying over our legs hiding… “does anyone know the address to our apartments?” So not only was the taxi driver so annoyed with us for having one extra person but we had no idea what the address was haha. So we try and just point to things and describe to him where we are staying. Then I pulled out a map from my baggie, Shayna grabs it and says “Maggie! You had a map this whole time!?” She looks at it, “This is of Barcelona!” throws it back at me and we all bursted out laughing. Then we continue to call the boys to ask them for the address as they are at the apartments while we called them. One of them answers, we ask “Hey what’s our address?” They reply, “Oh we don’t know!” “Well… could you take 4 steps outside and look?” They were too lazy to so we were once again on our own. Even though all three boys were there we decided we would only blame Robert for all of our struggles because he’s always just trying to get under everyone’s skin and loves doing it. So since we had no idea where we were going we just told the driver to pull over and we would walk back. He dropped us off at a place that we recognized but were sick of trying to explain where we needed to go so we got out and were once again on foot. We were getting close to the apartments so we thought we would take a shortcut through the back of this hotel. It turns out there was no way of getting to the other side except for going through the hotel. We started down the steps toward the pool area and did not realize until we had gone too far that there were shows going on and a supper where everyone was watching a tv that was directly next to us, so as we descended from the stairs about 80 pairs of eyes were on us as we carried 4 grocery bags each through their evening entertainment. As we walked though everyone we just kept saying how we were going to kill Robert and then kept laughing. We got lost inside the hotel and couldn’t find our way out so finally Shayna went up to one of the ladies working and goes “um we accidently walked into the hotel, this one isn’t ours, how do we get out of here? The lady laughed at us and told us how to get out. So finally we got out, went the right way and got back to our apartments in time to start supper before going out.
The next day we got up bright and early to try and go to the beach. We got there and it was literally a sand storm. We couldn’t walk four steps without getting sand in our eyes and our mouth. So we decided that we would hit up the pool again and try the beach again the next day. We went to the pool and just relaxed all day. Then we took sweet pictures of us forming “SPAIN” with our bodies. But basically lying out was basically the only thing we did that day. Later that night we went back, showered made really good pizzas, and then just played cards and hung out. Thursday was our last full day and was just as windy as the other days so instead of even trying the beach again we just went straight to the pool. This day Robert went missing, we didn’t know where he went. And then Chris was at the pool with us and then left for a second and didn’t come back when he had left his shoes and bad with us at the pool. Steph started freaking out like it was out of a movie and we were being taken one by one. Ben volunteered to go look around for chris and steph was like “NO BEN!” We can’t afford to lose you too! Haha it was really funny. –well not really at the time because both boys had been gone for a while. But now it is because Ben found Chris on some random couch in the lobby of the hotel of the pool we were using, sleeping. And then Robert showed up later, he had just left and decided he was going to rent a bike and take a ride around the island for the day. That night we decided to go out to eat for our last night, so we classed it up and went to good ol hooters to eat. On our way back we found a huge palm and Caitlin and Chris carried it for a while saying it was their cross to bear. (it was funny at the time.) Our last day, we got up early and hit the pool again. After the pool we went to the beach and I got to swim in the ocean! From there we went and walked through the sand dunes which literally looked like we were in a desert- it was really cool t-minus the fact that sand was flying EVERYWHERE and it hurt our eyes a lot. That evening we got on our bus to go to the airport and flew to Madrid! What we didn’t account for was the hour difference from the Canaries to Madrid. When we got to Madrid it was too late to get a bus back to Granada, so one again we SLEPT IN THE AIRPORT haha.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Barcelona











We started off our spring break by heading to Barcelona. Ben, Chris, Shayna and Robert all left for the Canary’s early while we went to Barcelona and Steph went to Madrid to stay with some foreign exchange students she use to host. We were all to meet up in the Canary Islands that following Tuesday. Paige, Caitlin and I left for Barcelona on the Saturday after midterms. We flew straight from Granada to Barcelona. Once we got to Barcelona we had to buy a 22 euro round trip bus ticket to even get into the city. Once we got into the city we had to figure out the metro system on our own this time!!! We got to the ticket machine to purchase a ticket and we read the screen, it wasn’t in English or Spanish… it was in Catalan. This is a mixture of Spanish and some other village language together…very hard to understand. But we made some guestemations and got tickets. We somehow got on this train thing instead of the metro because its what the directions from the hostel said to do but we got all mumble jumbled and we were going the wrong way not to mention-we figured this out because some guy reading a book looked up at us and asked what we were looking for “in English not to mention” and we told him and he’s like…you need to be going the opposite direction. So we hopped off and got on a new one and somehow with a little bit of luck we finally reached our hostel. We got settled in and then went to go tour the city. We started off our adventure by going to the market, which is an outdoor market for fresh fruit, meats, candy, all sorts of good stuff! We continued down las ramblas and got to a plaza and decided to go to the grocery store, get some food for lunch, and then sit in the sun and have a picnic. While we were sitting in the plaza relaxing with the sun beating harshly through our jeans, we got lost in the moment and we were not aware of what was going on around us. Paige had bought a pack of diet Pepsis at the grocery store and they were sitting next to her- while there are beggers all around in Spain, one in particular caught our eye. Out of nowhere Paige looks up and there is an older lady reaching down, picks up one of Paige’s diet Pepsis, takes the cap off and starts to drink it. We are all in such shock we couldn’t say anything, then the begger proceeds to try and give the pop back to Paige thinking she would still want it. Paige was still speechless so I just told her “tomalo” which means take it. When she left all we could do was laugh! After basking in the sun for a very long time, we decided to go back and take naps so that we were well rested to see the light show that night. Later that night we went to go find the light show- we owned the metro station and got there without any problems! The light show was sweet, it was a huge water fountain that had water moving in different directions and designs and changed different colors! There was also music that it went along with it. We sat around once it was over hoping for another show later but there wasn’t one. But we did meet a nice man from Miami, Ohio who was there on business so we chatted it up with him for a while. He was talking about how he had wished he studied abroad when he was in college, and Paige turned to him and goes, “Well I wouldn’t study abroad either if I lived in Miami!” Caitlin turned to her and whispered Miami, Ohio not Florida. The man just smiled and let out a giggle because knew that she had clearly missed that memo. On our way back to the metro we were in between crosswalks and Paige felt something tug on her purse so she whipped it around and looked- someone had unzipped her purse pocket with her ipod and passport. She turned around to see who it was and the guy had taken off the other way. Paige had a rough day. To finish off our first day in Barcelona we had an interesting incident on the metro as well-nothing like finishing up the day with a little action. We had just gotten on the metro when we saw a group of like 6 guys get into a tussle with a couple people on the metro, we didn’t realize right away what was going on but what had happened was a couple of the guys grabbed a womans purse and were yanking it from her- her husband was trying to fight them off but more gang members joined in and successfully they stole her purse and jumped off the metro right as the doors were closing. The woman’s little girl next to her was bawling and everyone was sort of just in shock. Not to mention there was another gang member right behind us that making sure everything went well and then he jumped off when they did, we didn’t realize this until later. From then on we did not carry purses anymore and we also did not go out once it got dark out. We didn’t have boys with us so we just felt safer going out in the day and then going back and reading or going on the computers once it got dark. Day 2 in Barcelona was much more successful. Palm Sunday! No one is going to rob us on Palm Sunday right??? That’s like asking for an invitation straight to hell. Just kidding… But really. We went to see the Sagrada familia on Palm Sunday and got to sit in on an outdoor service. The Sagrada familia is a huge church designed by Gaudi as well and is very famous in Spain. Everyone was waving different types of palms and singing songs in Catalan. After the church service we just walked around the city some more and then ate a delicious lunch at Hard Rock CafĂ©- Paige didn’t get to eat it in Madrid. So we all took one for the team and “forced” ourselves to eat the food and even went as far as getting ranch with it. We are such team players. (Jk) It was delicious, we also saw the tallest men ever at Hard Rock and Paige was convinced they were famous so as they were leaving I asked if they were basketball players… and they were! They played for a team in Spain or they were playing Spain, we weren’t quite sure but they were from America. That night we went to go see Gaudi’s work. He has like crazy abstract buildings and different art works around Barcelona. So we went and saw some of it lit in the street, took pics, got ice cream and then went back to the hostel. That Monday was our last day so we went up to Park Guell which is all uphill to get to and all designed by Gaudi once again. We walked around took pics and then got these 10 min massages that were free and then you put a tip in at the end. I don’t know who enjoyed it more, us getting the massages or the guys that got to give us the massage- o well it was free haha. And there was a long line so that meant they were legit…? The last thing we did was go through a chocolate factory which was really cool, they had tons of different art made out of chocolate! Then we went back packed up all of our stuff and headed to the bus station to take us to the airport. We flew into the Madrid airport that night and prepared our beds because we once again got to spend the night at the airport! We made beds and then had heart to hearts before we fell asleep. At one point Caitlin got laughing so hard that a lady like 40 feet away from us shushed her haha. The next morning we were on our way to the Canaries! Canaries are to be continued...