Granada!

First I'd like to point out that while I know how to use paragraphs, blogger.com does not (thank you for pointing that out, Alex) Anywho, the epic of lost blog entries continues. February 10th to February 14th: After Leaving Málaga, I headed north to Granada! I wanted to stop back in Orgiva but had not heard back from Mathis about a visit, assuming that he had already taken his boxes to the frosty north. So I stopped through town anyway, donated some clothes to the women's group in town and said hi to Ananda's Mundo. Then continued on to Granada. I booked into Oasis hostel and was quickly enchanted by its people, activities, and services. I had hoped to find a slightly cheaper place or couch surf, but that didn't happen, which was really quite providential because I met some amazing people and had a wonderful time there. And it was in a beautiful area, the Albazin, surrounded by teterias and Moroccan-style shop-stands (only with less pushy sales people!). The receptionist, Eric, was very nice, and the crowd gathered in the common area were chatting away. I quickly started chatting with Diana, a Kiwi who works in London. She was very sweet and since the hostel was hosting dinner we ate together, along with Ricarda, a German girl who goes to uni in Scotland, studying abroad in Spain for the semester after studying in Brussels the semester before (whew, worldy, huh?). The dinner was delicious, the company pleasant and I turned in early. Free breakfast is the best thing ever. And I again shared it with my new friends. I had hoped to go on the free tour the hostel offered but was feeling lazy so I just hung out and sent Lauren (the girl I met in Málaga) a message about hanging out while I was in town. Dianna was playing a card game with some other guests and I asked if I could play. We moved the game to a close-by bar and got some beer and tapas and about seven us drank and played Presidente. After a while we got distracted from playing by various conversations. Three of the people were traveling together and were planning on going to the Alhambra that afternoon and invited me to come along. Ramon and Lucia were both Spanish but the other girl (whose name completely escapes me) was from Andorra! They all studied together in Barcelona and were taking a holiday together. The four of us walked up the hill to the castle, just a few blocks from the hostel (of course we had to walk pretty far around to get to the entrance). The outside was beautiful but once we got to the entrance they told us we couldn't go in because they would close soon and we wouldn't have enough time to see everything. Oh well, we walked around a bit more. It was funny listening to them speak to one another, switching between Spanish and Catalan and English. Once we got back down the hill they went off to a cafe but I wanted to head to the hostel for a rest. They were hosting another dinner and then a tour of the good tapas bars in the area and I was also supposed to meet Lauren that night. I hadn't had anything to eat that day except breakfast and tapas at lunch time and I was starving, along with a ton of other hostelers waiting in the common area. That's when I met Kelly, an Aussie, and Sophie, a Chilean-American, who were very amusing. We had an amazing dinner of Paella where I also met Ian and Sophie (another Sophie) who were Canadian. Then it was off to the tapas tour! The first place was delicious and had all sorts of organic wines, liquors, and cheeses! Kelly and Sophie were there and we had a lot of fun chatting along with Fallon, another Canadian. Kelly and Sophie had actually met in Seville at the same hostel and decided to come to Granada together. Fallon was just out of highschool and spending some time working as a nanny for some family friends in Paris but taking time off to travel around. By the second bar, Sophie and I discovered we both did belly dance! Then we met some other people from the hostel, Melanie, Mick, Wallie, and (shit! I don't remember his name either! damn my procrastination!). All except Melanie were also from Australia who was from New Zealand. We ended up going to one more bar but it was not a tapas bar and kind of lame, so we left. Of course by the time I remembered I was supposed to meet Lauren as well that evening it was far too late and I was already pretty tipsy. I made sure to message her the next day with my apologies and a new attempt to meet up. The next day I got up and ready in time for the free tour along with several friends from the previous night. The guide was a very theatrical Englishman who included several amusingly-told historical facts (my favorite kind). He talked a bit about the Alhambra, but mostly showed us around the Albazin, the Arab district of Granada, where there are beautiful gardens, bathhouses, fragments of the old city wall, and the caves where all the gypsies live! It was a lot of fun and lasted for about three hours! Afterwards several people from the group decided to go up to see the Alhambra and I was going to go with them until I realized I needed something from the hostel. Once I got there I decided I would just go another day and I would take a siesta instead. Considering it was raining and quite cold on the tour this ended up being a good idea because when people got back Kelly told me it had snowed! Dinner at the hostel again, this time homemade gnocchi and passatelli made by the local Italian! We had a drink with dinner and then gravitated to the hostel's bar for more drinks. There we met a Brit, Kerry, and another American, Brian, and we got three of the hostel workers to come out with us too! Some of the employees of the hostel were talking about a good club to go to but when we got there they had an entry fee so we found another bar to go to. We all chatted and danced the night away and didn't get back to the hostel until around 4:30am, after a drunken stop for kebabs and falafel of course. I hadn't quite gotten over the farm schedule and still woke up fairly early. Wally, Melanie, Mick and the other guy were all hoping to take a day trip to Cadiz on Saturday for Carnival but after our very late night they did not catch the 9am bus, and I think they mostly missed breakfast too, heh. I just barely made it but was feeling surprisingly chipper and enjoyed a morning chat with Ricarda. We decided to go to the Alhambra together that day, along with Sophie and Ian. Apparently they only let a certain number of people in the inner palace at certain times and Ian and Sophie had tickets for one time while Ricarda and I had tickets for another. Once we went inside Ricarda and I got separated as well, which I didn't mind since I was immersed in the beauty of the place, even if it was cold, windy, and raining a lot. In fact the poor weather I felt made it even more enchanting. I had no idea what time it was when I finally found the exit and figured that Ricarda was either still inside or back at the hostel but I found her waiting at the bus stop and we headed back together and stopped at a cafe for something to nosh. There was a free "Spanish lesson" early that evening at the hostel so I joined in. It was really casual and pretty much just playing games in Spanish. People of all different proficiencies joined in, we learned basic phrases and then played Spanish trivial pursuit with teams. Fallon and I were on a team with Kelly sitting off to the side trying to blend into the wall (she didn't know any Spanish at all and didn't want to participate but still wanted to be social). It was fun, Fallon kept trying to read Spanish with French pronunciation and there was a Slovakian guy who was practically fluent in Spanish that won, but Fallon and I were a close second. Then later that night I was supposed to meet Nicos! We'd been keeping in contact about his visit to Spain and meeting in Granada. He was supposed to be staying in town but ended up staying with some friends a ways outside of town, but we met up anyway briefly for a glass of wine. It was so great to see someone from Iowa City! And I think he felt the same. He asked me about everyone from Anomy house and how they were and I told him what I'd heard last from everyone and got him up to date and Alex's life and mine. We took a picture outside and then had to go our separate ways, me to dinner and he back to his friend's place. Back at Oasis everyone was already drinking and I joined in. Many people had gone to an Irish pub to watch a football game that afternoon (Ireland vs. France or something like that) and had already been drinking for quite some time. We stayed at the hostel for quite some time before going out. When we finally did I was actually quite tired and didn't stay long. I intended to leave on Sunday for Cordoba but when I got up for breakfast Kelly and Fallon said they were headed to Madrid and invited me along. I figured I didn't have any specific plans and thought, what the hell! So I packed my things and found Melanie was joining us as well! So we all hopped the city bus to the station and got on the next bus for Madrid, only a five hour ride.

After party in Dortmund

March 8th to March 20th: Kim and I had hoped to do a little couchsurfing in Belgium, since we were passing through the country anyway to go back to Germany from France. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any hosts on such short notice and took the train right through back to Cologne and then back to Dortmund. We arrived quite late and Kim was relieved to be back in her own bed (or at least as close as she could get in Europe, considering she’d spent the last month Kaiserslautern and then Paris). We crashed right away. I stayed at Kim’s place for about two weeks making arrangement to go to Scotland and just relaxing. We kept saying we would go out and do things, but we were both pretty beat, so after restocking her fridge we mostly ate at her place and went out a few times with some friends of hers. I finally met her friend Nina, who I had heard so much about, as well as a couple of Nina’s friends who I didn’t know. Unfortunately, there was some tension because Kim and Mitch (the friend of hers I had met last time I was there) had a falling out but came out with Nina when we met her for lunch. Kim was kind of upset but we resolved that by buying some tea and visiting the yarn shop, I got myself a matté straw! Later in that first week Tammy came by and we caught up on her adventures, shared recipes, and made an amazing dinner of gnocchi and cheese sauce. Sebastian came that night as well to share the meal and chat a bit. Tammy had actually studied in Dortmund through the same abroad program that Kim was in so she also took the opportunity to rest and run some errands in a place she was already familiar with. She only stayed two nights and then was off to Turkey. There was one evening we planned to go out. I made banana bread and dinner in the evening and afterwards Kim and I got fancied up, had some drinks and smoked some shisha. Her friend Christina came over and had some drinks and banana bread with us. She was a lot of fun to chat with and we all sat and chatted for a long while. Christina didn’t want to go out because she had an early morning but by the time she left Kim and I were too tired to go anywhere either so we also went to bed. Another day Christian came by and we showed him Dr. Horrible. On St. Patty’s day we headed to an Irish Pub in downtown Dortmund and had a few drinks. It was nice to have some time to relax and even better that I had someone to enjoy it with. I got some things I needed to do done and was ready to go have another adventure by the time I went to catch an early train to London on the 20th.

Let's start with Paris

Considering it's been over a month since I've written anything I am going to go in kind of a funny order. I'll be sure to put in dates. Paris was between March 1st and 8th. Here we go: Kim and I arrived to Paris Monday evening after taking the train from Kaiserslautern, Germany. The train ride went quite quickly and when we got to the train station in Paris we decided we didn’t want to worry about figuring out the metro to get to our hostel so we grabbed a cab. Kim had the address on her iPod and she just showed it to the driver and started through the streets of Paris. We were both quite amused that we couldn’t really understand any of the signs or communicate with the driver, but he brought us safely to our hostel, Paris Clichy, of course in the Clichy district in the northwest of the city. We checked into the rather grungy looking hostel and took our things up to our smelly room. Luckily the bathrooms and the sheets were clean and we had a four-bed room to ourselves. Stella was not due to arrive until later and Kim and I were starving so we decided to wander around after making our beds and find a place to eat. Clichy was a rather quiet area with two grocery stores across the street and a few small bars but not too many restaurants. But we managed to find a place that looked ok, although empty, and sat down. The only server there spoke a little English, asked us where we were from, and was excited when we ordered something he described as “typical Parisian” from his menu. After our tasty meal we asked if he knew where any shisha bars were and he directed us to a metro stop and told us they were everywhere around it. When we got there all we found was a lot of regular bars and Japanese restaurants. So we decided to just stop into a regular bar for some wine and happened to meet a man who spoke German. George was an artist from Monmatre, looked like he was in his 40s, and he and Kim spent most of the evening chatting in German while I listened and sipped my wine. Stella finally texted us and we left to meet her in the metro station at the stop nearest to our hostel, which George made sure to help us find (which we really didn’t need). I think both Kim and I were a little concerned about George’s intentions, but he was really nice and not terribly creepy or invasive and left once we got to the station. Once Stella arrived we all settled in, chatted a bit about plans and the shadiness of the hostel, then went to sleep so we could get up for breakfast the next day. The breakfast at the hostel was actually quite decent and afterwards we decided to find a place to purchase metro and museum passes since we’d heard we could get a good deal on these particular tourist passes and not have to pay for every metro ride and every museum or sight we wanted to go to. This took a good chunk of the day. When we were hungry Kim said a friend of hers had a favorite street in Paris, Rue du Ravoli, and we found it off the metro right next to the Seine: gorgeous. We found a little Bistro that had a nice daily menu and free wifi and had lunch: beef burgenyon(sp) and steak with some lovely wine. Kim had her iPod and Stella her iPhone and we hopped on the interwebs to check email and such, since our hostel charged for internet. Once we were finished we walked around a little more and then headed back to our hostel where we knew there were two supermarkets nearby and could buy things to cook for dinner. We also bought wine and spent the evening making baguette pizza, with the worst knives ever, and drinking wine which we widdled open with the worst knives ever. When we couldn’t finish our pizzas we took them and offered them to the hostel employees who were very grateful and went up to our room where we finished two more bottles of wine and got ready to hit the town… on a Tuesday night. Everything was pretty quiet but we stopped outside a bar near our hostel where we chatted with Jasyn, the Canadian hockey player, and Isabelle, a very sweet Frenchwoman, who both told us that Thursday was the night to go out and that everything would be closing early tonight. Then we took the metro to a random location looking for another bar, had a couple more drinks while Kim chatted with a bartender in German, and then took a taxi back to the hostel, since by then it was one a.m. and the metro stopped running at midnight. We got up the next morning and talked about what to do over breakfast. We decided it would be a good day to take the free tour around the city, which started at either 11 or 1, so we arrived at the meeting point a little before one after showering and getting ready, had a little something to eat and then found the girls with the sign for the free tour! Gabi, a Kiwi, was our guide around central Paris! She was very amusing and took us from St. Michael’s cathedral across the Seine to Notre Dame to the Invalides to the Louvre to L’Orangerie and most of the way down the Axis of Paris toward the Arc de Triomphe! It was a great tour, lasted the better part of three hours, and we chatted with the others on the tour from another, better hostel. We didn’t go inside any of these lovely places of course, but it was a good way to be introduced to the city and the sites that we would want to explore further. The same company also offered a tour of Montmartre, Versailles, and a Paris pub-crawl, all of which we intended to go on as well over the next few days. After the long tour we were spent but hoped find something to eat and then get to the Eiffel Tower by dark to appreciate its lights. However, after heading back to the hostel for some things and finding food we decided we were too tired to do anything else that day and turned in early. Thursday Kim had arranged to meet a friend of hers for lunch. Marie had studied at Iowa through study abroad but was now graduated and working just off the Champs Elysees. So after breakfast we went to see the Arc de Triomphe. The inside was not terribly impressive but the view from the top and the monument to the nameless soldier and the eternal flame were enchanting. Then we went to meet Marie, walked up and down the street looking for somewhere interesting to get food, found a bakery where we tried a chocolate éclair and macaroons. Marie got a sandwich but her break wasn’t very long so we chatted for a bit but didn’t actually have lunch and then she disappeared again. Kim, Stella, and I wanted to sit down for lunch and were famished. We walked up and down the side-streets hoping to find something reasonably priced. We sat down at a little bar-café but when we saw the prices along with the lack of a real kitchen we thought better. Deciding that eating at a fancy bistro on the Champs Elysees was not a frequent option, we sat down at a bistro called Monte Cristo. It was very crowded and took a while for us to get a seat. The menu of the day was actually fairly priced but our food was only so-so and the service was terrible. We had wanted to see the Eiffel Tower before heading to Montmartre for the tour, but it was fairly late by the time we finished our food and we wanted to get back to the hostel to rest for a bit. The tour started at 6pm and we arrived early. We recognized several people from the other tour from the day before and chatted with them. Most were American but there was also a girl from India and an Aussie. Colin, a Brit, was our guide. Gabi had actually told us he would be doing this tour and told us he was really into history, which made Kim and I happy to hear a passionate historical description of the area. We actually met in front of the Moulin Rouge (a place we considered actually going to if the seats weren’t over 100€ a show, not including dinner). We then went around to Moulin de Galette, the home of Theo VanGogh where Vincent stayed when he was in Paris, the Clever Rabbit where Picasso began his career, and the Sacre Couer. The Sacre Couer was beautiful and when I walked inside they were having a service and the choir was singing and outside you could look down on the whole city! At the end of the tour Colin realized he had skipped one of the sites, Les Deux Moulines where Amelie worked! So as we made our way to a bar for a free glass of wine to finish our tour, he stopped to point it out. I was apparently the only one who cared… what kind of people were on this tour that they hadn’t seen Amelie?! The pub-crawl was due to start about thirty minutes after the Montmartre tour ended so we all just sat and sipped our free wine and got to know each other before going back to the meeting point. Most everyone was female, American, and taking a break from studying to visit Paris, Carolyn had just graduated and was taking a break before grad school and Rachelle and Katelyn were studying in Italy, and then there was Andy the Aussie. Colin was also our guide for the pub-crawl and most of the people on the Montmartre tour stuck around for the festivities. We went to four different bars where we got drink deals at each one and a free shot with our drinks… needless to say I was pretty far gone by the time we made it to a lame club at around 1am. We were also joined on the tour by a few new people, José, the Portuguese-Frenchman, and Leonardo the Mexican, as well as some creepy old Frenchmen who were very drunk and quite at of place. It was a lot of fun until we got to the club. Stella and I were both really tired and we made sure to take Kim and her new friend José with us so we caught a cab back to our hostel. We were really tired the next morning, Kim hadn’t really slept at all, but we still got up for breakfast. This was the day we were determined to go to the Eiffel Tower and we did! It really wasn’t much to look at up close, the crowds were long and there were men everywhere who walked up trying to sell you stupid key chains and I got really annoyed with them. The lines to go up were long too and we didn’t really want to bother too much, not to mention Kim had an ear infection and wasn’t about to go up several meters just for her ears to pop, leaving her in agony. But Stella wanted to at least check out the first floor so we waited in line and went up. The view was really nice though. To think I almost didn’t go just out of defiance of the typical tourism of Paris! Afterwards we went back to the nice café with internet and good food from the first day and putsed around on the internet for a while. Again, the food and service was marvelous. Then we went back to the hostel to nap. Kim’s friend Tammy was due to arrive at the hostel that evening and we figured we’d just chill until she got there. Incidentally we ended up napping for about three hours and were woken up by Kim’s phone ringing. It was Tammy, a friend Kim had made back at Iowa who had gone to Urbandale and was living in Bloom County Co-op before she left to travel Europe! She said that when she came in the hostel she said she was joining some friends and they said “Oh! You’re Kim’s friend! The room is already paid for, this is their room number, head on up!” This meant that she did not pay for her two nights at the hostel. We weren’t very hungry so we stayed in, chatted and made sure to get up early. We had originally planned to go on the Versailles tour but I mentioned that there were a lot of things inside the city I wanted to see and I wanted to use my museum pass, so Saturday we all split up to do our own things. Kim and I happened to both go to Notre Dame first thing. The inside was crowded and people had no respect for the worshippers. The line to get to the bell tower took forever so it was nice to have Kim’s company. After the tower Kim moved on and I went down to the crypts where the archaeological museum was and read all about the history and development of the city. Then I went to the Middle Ages History Museum! I intended to go to at least one other museum but before I knew it was six o’clock, all the museums were closing and I was due to meet everyone back at the hostel. By the time I got back it was nearly seven and everyone was hungry. We decided to cook at the hostel again, this time with the help of, and we made some amazing pasta and shared another two bottles of wine and a bottle a rum. Then we headed out for the evening, first stopping at Le Colbert, a bar we passed by every time we took the metro. We were the only women there besides the bartenders and seemed to attract a lot of attention from the maybe ten local guys there. We each ordered some wine and sat down. Tammy decided she really liked the glasses and decided, as she had been doing throughout her trip, to take one. She deftly slipped it in her pocket and as a distraction the four of us did a conga line out of the bar with great applause from the locals. It was epic. Then we took the metro to Montmartre where we thought we would check out some of the bars we’d gone to on the pub crawl. But first we wanted to check out he Museum of Erotica just down the block from Moulin Rouge! It was really fascinating. Unfortunately, going to Montmartre on a Saturday night at around midnight is guaranteed to get four young ladies a lot of unwanted attention. But we still had a lot of fun going to a few different bars. Kim and Tammy also concocted the most brilliant plan to get rid of unwanted attention: they only spoke in German! Guys kept coming up to us and trying to speak English and the two of them would just look at them confused and keep speaking to each other in German. It was great! Sunday we had set aside to visit the Louvre… for the whole day. It was free entry (first Sunday of the month I believe was the reason) so we all got up, ate breakfast together, said goodbye to Tammy, who was off to visit Léon, and Stella, Kim, and I left for the museum at our leisure. I almost couldn’t believe how crowded it was. I didn’t have any particular plan for what exactly I wanted to see but I went to the areas I thought sounded interesting – the greek and roman sculptures, medieval art, French and Italian paintings – and basically lost myself wandering through the exhibits. I stumbled upon the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, and made sure I saw Cupid and Psyche. After several hours my feet were sore and I was hungry and tired, and it still wasn’t time for me to meet Kim and Stella! I actually was planning on heading out but the exits eluded me, but that only meant I got to see even more amazing artwork. The whole experience was quite overwhelming, especially when I just wanted to admire the artwork but had to continually watch out for other people and worry about getting in their photo shots. And when people are all crowded in FRONT of a statue, taking pictures and such, they give you mean looks when you want to walk around the work… which, really, if you’re going to come see three dimensional sculptures that have literally millions of two dimensional images of only their front view, don’t you kind of want to see the other sides? Anyway, when I finally escaped I went to find a place to eat and then meet with the girls. We went back to the hostel and had another low-key evening. We were all so tired from wandering the museum so we went back to the hostel to relax. Then, for our last night in Paris, we went to a restaurant across the street from the hostel with bad food, and then went back and went to sleep. Monday, our last day, we had planned to have a shopping day. Stella’s flight didn’t leave until late that evening and Kim and I didn’t have anything reserved. But that morning we got up and just after breakfast Stella got a distressing phone call... her grandfather had died. Poor Stella was so upset and spent a long time talking to her mom on the phone and trying to get a hold of her brother who she had to break the news to. That took most of the morning, poor Stella. But eventually we went to the train station where Kim and I got tickets for a train at 6pm and locked up our luggage at the station. Then we went to the airport to leave Stella’s luggage there, unfortunately we got on the wrong metro to the wrong airport. We were so distracted by Stella’s news that we didn’t realize it until we’d been on the metro for probably half an hour. Then we had to take it back and by that time we were all hungry. We found a sweet little place by the Seine and ate, but by the time we finished it was close enough to 6 that we rushed to the station and gave Stella big hugs goodbye and wished her the best and were on our way.