Back in Spain!

I know that I am way behind in blogging but Portugal was fabulous and now we are back in Spain! I don't know if I will be able to do any real updates before I get back to the states but our trip had been dab so far!
Highlights of portugal were definitely viseu and lisbon!

Hope everyone is doing well!!
Xoxo
Hannah

Crazy Condensed Summary Post to Tide You Over!!

I am very behind in blogging. Stacey is updating her blog at a better pace then me, so if you want more details up to barcelona at this point check out http://stacey323.livejournal.com

But, heres a short short summary of everything so far.

Ibiza-went to another beach the second day. it was a farther bus ride but also a great beach in a really nice and calm cove. Ibiza was a great way to start the trip and we got really rested and kind of tan

Barcelona- The hop on hop off bus was a great was to see some of the city. Loved barcelona´s public art and both new and old architecture. Really loved Gaudi and his style. Our second to last day in Barcelona we did a walking tour through the Barrio Gothic and went to the neat Museu de la ciutat which had roman ruins, and also went to the Picasso museum. We also had delicious gelatto that day. Our last day in Barcelona we dropped our bags at the bus station and then wandered through a huge park in barcelona, took a gondola ride from the beach to the hills, went to the Poble espanyol which is a recreation of an old spanish village and had Paella on Las Ramblas before catching our bus to Pamplona. Also, shopping trip number 1 to H&M--oops!

Then we took a bus to Pamplona. We got in at 5 in the morning and arrived to a bus station where it was swamped with people in white and red sleeping everywhere they could. Pamplona doesnt have enough accomodations for everyone who goes to the San Fermin festival so people sleep in the bus stations and parks or dont sleep at all. Luckily Stacey and I booked our accomadations in May. They were a short bus ride from the city center which was perfect because the city center was nuts and packed and so loud I would not have wanted to have stayed there the whole time. We got very little sleep this whole time though. Also Pamplona in general was very very cold. When we first got there I was so cold that I changed clothes at a bus stop to put on jeans and a warmer top. (around 6am). We saw a huge "Big Heads" and San Fermin Parade, 2 bull runs (once on the street and once in the stadium) and one bullfight. They were all crazy experiences. (I hope to explain them in more detail at some point in my blogging future). It seems that after we left Pamplona, the bull runs turned violent, but we managed to escape those human tragedies. Also, everyone in Pamplona got the Memo that one needs to wear white shirt white pants red bandanada and red sash for the entire festival of san fermins. Stacey and i didnt get the memo, but we adapted and bought the right garb, except for the white pants, which are never flattering...ever.

After Pamplona we took a bus to Bilbao where we stayed for less than 24 hours but had many fabulous hours to check our the Guggeneheim Bilbao, which is a fabulous and beautifully designed museum inside and out. I really loved that museum and tons of the art in it. Also, the riverside in Bilbao was really nice and had some great bridges and walking paths.

Then we took a bus to Santiago de Compostela. 9 hours later we arrived, I was sick with quite the cold and lack of sleep but we arrived at our Parador whcih was luxurious and beautiful. The next day we explored the church which is a huge pilgrammage site, and the old town, and moved to our much cheaper hotel.

The next day we took a bus to Porto, Portugal where we are now. We walked around the city a bit yesterday but it was dead on Sunday. Today we did a hop on hop off tour and explored the old town which is a Unesco world heritage site. Tomorrow we are talking a boat ride on the river to explore and see some bridges and who knows what else will be in store for the day.

Then the following day we are off to Viseu for three days to visit Sofia (who is TC and Matt´s sister in law). It should be great to get a taste of the less-big-city-like portugal and to experience Portugal with some natives!

From Viseu we go: Lisbon-->Seville-->Granada-->Madrid!!

PHEW! Hows that for a summary?!?!

Hope you are all doing fabulously!! I am!

Xox
Hannah

PS: The food, ice cream, desserts, pastries etc are all still awesome. Also, I have wayyyy over 1000 photos already!! And people in Portugal dont eat as late as in Spain. And people more or less understand my Brazilian Portuguese which is good! Also three places so far in Spain have had their own language besides spanish, Catalan, Euskara (basque), and Gaelic--yikes...!

Barcelona: The city in Spain where Spanish isnt spoken...

just my luck!!! so my title is a bit of an exaggeration. obviously the speak spanish in barcelona. BUT it isnt their main language on any signs, menus, etc and therefore instead of feeling lucky in other places when english is the second language, here I´m lucky when spanish is the second language on something and it´s not just catalan. also, sorry for the no caps, but they´re a little too much effort to deal with on this crazy foreign (not that crazy im just lazy) keyboard.

So to recap the last few days! (Photo note: I´m at our hostel right now and we have computer access but no access to the hard drive, so I cant post photos now, so I´ll be back-posting photos from the last few days once we get to an internet cafe and can put photos up. But for now, be fulfilled with my lovely and enlightening adventures and stories.

Sooo where did I leave you?

Our second day in Ibiza we took two buses to a more remote/quiet beach called Cala llenya which was beautiful. The water was great and so was the beach. that night we had our final dinner in Ibitha and packed up our stuff because we had an early flight to Barthelona the next morning.

We got to Barthelona EARLY the next morning and couldnt check into our hostel yet so we schlepped our suitcases around (which i love doing...) and first looked for a non-existant internet cafe that both of our books had and then when we couldnt find it we went to a cafe and had some drinks until it was time to check into our hostel. Our hostel is GREATTTT! it´s filled completely with Ikea furniture (which is my dream!) and right on Las Ramblas and Placa Catalunya. Once we checked in we had lunch. I had a tipico dish (tipico nibbles mom!) that had spanish sausage, a fried egg and potatoes which was really good. Then we bought a 2 day ticket for a hop on hop off (also known as flop on flop off bus in my family due to the inevitabilty of napping on such a bus) and took all three routes in offered which was about 5 hours in total. Of course I fell asleep while on the top of the bus (hence flop on) and got a weird sunburn and now have an odd rash on my left cheek..awesome. I keep touching the odd bumpy rash and hope it goes away..fingers crossed y'all! We didnt hop on that day because we wanted to get a good layout of the city and see an overview of all the sights before deciding what we wanted to do. It was also amazing to see the incredible parks, great architecture and art all throughout the city. Barcelona seems like a really art and design focused city. which = super cool.

That night we went to a fabulous dinner at a restaurant called Organic off of las ramblas. it was great!! Then we prompty fell asleep once we got back due to our early morning that day.

Today we woke up, went to a fabulous place for breakfast where we has dark hot chocolate with cream (it was like drinking melted chocolate) and I of course had a proscuitto sandwich. IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: (it´s not actually proscuitto, its ham made in spain and there is a whole section in my lonely planet about it and is glorious and common and I try to eat it every day so as to appreciate spain as best as i possible can. so i called in proscuitto, but its actually spanish ham and delicious!)

Then we began our GAUDI Day!!!! We started with La Pedrera which was really amazing, beautiful and innovative and I´m convinced that Gaudi is the Dr. Seuss of architecture. It´s too bad they made that a public building and not apartments anymore because I would love to live there.

Then we stopped for lunch (didnt have a proscuitto sandwich) and made our way to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi´s huge church in Barcelona. It´s still not finished, is full of scaffolding, but you can still see Gaudi's design and vision. we decided not to wait in the two hour lines for the elevator up to the tower and strolled around the church, took pictures and looked at the different designs and details that Gaudi made sure to include in this work.

Once we got our religious fulfillment of the day, we made our way to Park Guell, the park Gaudi designed which was originally intentioned for private residences. We walked around there for a long time, looked at the mosaics, hansel and gretel like houses, listened to the musicians playing in the different areas, and ran into people from Stanford. <--- :-0 is that your face of surprise right now?!? Yeah stacey randomly ran into her big sib from stanford that she had her freshman year who was there with two friends. And not only did we randomly run into them in Park Guell in Barcelona, but we are also on the same bus with them to Pamplona and plan on having lunch with them there. Quick tangent: Vote/survey: Should we go to a bullfight in Pamplona? (answers could be stuff like, yes it is a cultural experience, no it is cruel, or yes it is a cultural experience but be aware it is cruel, or other and explain. grathias)

So, we walked around the park for a while, took a bunch of pictures and then took the bus back. we stopped at Casa Batllo which is another Gaudi building and while we didnt go in because the entrance fee was 16.5 euro which is literally the price of dinner, we did look at the outside which really exemplified Gaudi´s style and aesthetic (ie what houses would really look like in Seuss Land).

Then we walked back to our hostel, looking at street performers on Las Ramblas on the way. One other observation. Barcelona recently added bike lanes to all of its major streets and on top of that also has began this public transportation effort called Bicing (bicing.com) where people can pay an annual fee and rent bikes for up to 24 hrs per time throughout the city at electronic bike stations (there are 100s of them throughout the city). I think it´s a really intriguing and great idea for people to pay a minimal amount and be able to use public transportation bikes whenever they need to.

Now, it´s 10 at night and dinner time!!! Overall, so far I love Barcelona. I love the art, design and parks throughout the city and also really appreciate their efforts to have alternative forms of public transportation. We have two more days here and I look forward to going to a crafts market tomorrow and also some other non Gaudi sights.

Adios all! (or whatever they say in Catalan)
Hannah

PS-please hope that my odd, one sided-not visible but tactily noticable facial rash goes away. grathias.

Ibitha and fruit thalad

Hello All,

I´m in Ibiza for our first real day and its fabulous and I´m much more rested and not about to keel over.

Last night we had a good dinner, walked back to our apartment and I promptly passed out. This morning we woke up and I had a fabulous breakfast of fruit salad which was in fresh orange juice, and prosciutto and cheese on toast.


Then we took a bus to these beaches called Ses Salines which was so nice. We got there early, before it was too crowded, and paid to rent two lounge chairs, an umbrella and table, which was great. It was hot but having the shade was perfect and the water was so nice nice and clear, but kind of shallow.



Also, it was a beach where many people were inhibitionless and went topless...ahhhh europe. After laying there for a few hours and reading my old people magazines about why Chase Crawford from Gossip Girl doesnt pluck his eyebrows, (something I had been dying to know), we left our towels on the chairs and had lunch at the restaurant right above us. We had the most massive fruit salad I have ever seen and shared a pizza. I think we counted and there were 14 types of fruit in our fruit salad.

Then we went back to our chairs and I fell asleep until Stacey woke me that it was time for us to catch our bus back to Ibitha.

Ibiza has a Unesco world heritage sight in it which is this old fortressed town which now has hotels, restaurants and shops in it. We climbed up to it and walked around there and took some pictures and read the signs and it was nice to see the more "cultural" and historic part of the city. The other more modern part of the city that we drove through to get to the beach was kind of dingy and not cute or charming, but the area that we are in now that is more touristy with shops and restaurants is pretty nice.


After we finish interneting I think we are going to go get a desserty waffel since we are still full from lunch and probably wont do dinner. Then we have to rest up for our last beach day tomorrow.

So far our itinerary has worked out really well because I´m still recovering from the long flights and it´s great to just be doing the beach now and not much else.

Other Ibiza observations:
When ham is on the menu, it actually means proscuitto. proscuitto = happy hannah (and its on the menu a lot!!)

Most of the tourists are European, we´ve seen a few americans, but not many.

On the beach big groups of people would come by and promote parties/things going on at clubs, but other than that, it´s pretty easy to avoid the clubing/partyness of Ibiza.

Also, to clarify, a question I got from my earlier blog post, (many) people in the airports pay 9 euro fore a man to shrink wrap their luggage in neon green plastic. If anyone knows how or why they do this..enlighten me!


Well, that´s all for now! this blogging experience was actually rather easy and painless because we found a much much better internet cafe then yesterday. so, as long as we can find good and fast internet cafes along the way, blogging shouldnt be too big of a hassle!

And here is some graffitti to make you think:

In Spain! First Blog (in list form)

1) so many babies on all my flights..doesnt make me like kids any more, at all.
2) people on my flight to madrid played musical chairs until like 3 hours into the flight
3) the madrid airport terminal 4 is verrrry large
4) our flight from madrid to ibiza was sponsored by mtv, literally
5) people really love paying 9 euro to shrink wrap their suitcase in neon green plastic
6) i dont get why number 5 exists at all--i saw it in latin america, but never to the extent i saw it here
7) we are in ibiza now
8) we had quite the schlep to get to our apartment and to our specific room, but sooo worth it--ocean view, bright sunny huge window etc
9) i dont even want to think about schelping my luggage out of there..at all
10) i barely slept on any of my flights so im exhausted, but not sleeping till tonight.
10b) i could keel over at any minute

ok thats all for now! but see?¿!! i blogged!

Testing blogging

From my iPod!!

After quite the Hiatus...

the lovely travel blog will return! First, for a month in July, and then from February onwards while I'm in Brazil.


Stay Tuned!