*Warning: Post is longer than usual. Perhaps grab a coffee before sitting down to read.*
Where to begin? It's been a few weeks since I last posted in this blog and my eyes have seen quite a bit. After my weekend of relaxation in Madrid, we headed to Granada for a quick one night trip. We woke up before the sun to hop on a bus that left Madrid at 8 a.m.. After a 5 hour drive south, we finally reached the city of Granada.
If you recall from my last post, this is where my sister studied abroad for a semester so it was fun for me to go back to this city and envision my sister there doing the same things I am just six years before.
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| Lovely artwork on the outskirts of Granada |
We had some time to kill before checking in to our Airbnb so we just bought some wine and chocolate for lunch and found a nice park to sit down in. We lost track of time after exchanging stories and laughing until our abs hurt. When we finally got settled into the Airbnb, we decided to go up to watch the sun set over La Alhambra, the beautiful fortress in the city, before dinner. We experienced some difficulty with the electricity in the apartment and decided to stay bundled in the apartment for the night after our gelato.
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| Sunset over La Alhambra |
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| La Alhambra beer |
In the morning we went to a corner restaurant in a main plaza called El Cafe Lisboa, which had an incredible English breakfast that we all divulged in (I know, we suck for getting this in Spain). The cute waiter teased Abby quite a bit and said "Thank you, Eleni" to me as he handed me back my credit card. *Swoon*
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| Cutie in the cafe |
After breakfast we hauled ass uphill to the Alhambra to ensure we made it to our guided tour in time. Unfortunately, we had to carry our bags for the first half of the tour (about an hour and a half), which became quite difficult at times.
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| Sallie's bag was bigger than her |
The Alhambra tour was especially cool because the tour guide was bilingual and spoke everything in Spanish before repeating it in English. This was fun for me as I tried to decipher it in Spanish first. Pretty sure this counts as studying for my oral Spanish class midterm, right?
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| Six years later and I'm still wearing jeans with gym shoes |
We strolled through the city after the tour, slowly making our way back to the bus station. There were some pit stops along the way that included gelato and soaking in the sun.
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| Beautiful cathedral we strolled upon |
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| How we reacted to it (SUN!!!) |
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| Nutritious dinner from the bus station |
After our quick trip to Granada came the dreaded week of midterms. For some reason at SLU Madrid the midterms come before Winter Break instead of Spring Break. Yet we're given only one extra day off from school - what's up with that??
MK and I were headed to Germany and Austria for the break and we left a tad late from our apartment. Once we made it to the third leg of our metro trip to the airport, we were caught off guard by the color and direction of the typical airport train. It came from the left which is the direction we needed to go (usually it comes from the right and proceeds out left) and it was green instead of pink (which is the line to the airport). So we stepped on the train then quickly second guessed ourselves and hopped off. After a minute of looking around wildly, some woman asked if we're going to the airport then said this was the train to the airport. As we stepped toward the train, the doors immediately shut. NoOoOoOo! Both parties gave a look of panic and then a shrug. The train then REVERSED direction (we did not know this was a possibility) and we were stuck on the platform waiting another 7 minutes due to our own idiocy. Time until takeoff? 45 minutes and counting.
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| No time to repack gear after security! |
Alas, we caught up to the gang at the airport and made it Munich safely. Our Airbnb was a bit further outside of the city so we experienced the lovely tram (which apparently no one pays for?) with the locals as we rode our way to what we thought was downtown Munich. As it turns out, the street we chose for dinner was actually the red light district area of Munich full of business men and shady people staring at the students strolling through.
Despite this, we still had some great food. We asked for eight beers (just generic beers as we didn't know names of any) and they were fantastic! I don't think I can go back to the cheap wells back home after the drinks from this trip.
We woke up to the next morning to a lovely surprise: snow! I remembered to bring a hat and gloves, but had somehow forgotten my winter coat. Oops! Froze my butt off this morning.
Once we piled on our layers, we all made our way over to Dachau to tour one of the concentration camps in Germany. This was a sobering experience that truly goes beyond words as to how horrific were the things that happened here. The number of casualties alone was enough to make my jaw drop.
We grabbed a quick lunch when we got back and found some clutch 3 Euro turtlenecks that added to the marshmallow look we were already rocking.
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| How many layers is MK wearing? The world may never know. |
At night we did a beer crawl that went from one beer garden to the next, including my favourites Hofbraühaus and Ausgustiner. The steins were big, but my love for them was bigger.
On Friday morning, I met up with a family friend of ours who lives in Munich. Her name is Hildegard and her daughter Lucie came to live with my family for a few weeks when I was in second grade. Since then the communication between our family has been exchanging letters and Christmas cookie care packages (which I adore by the way - keep 'em coming, Hildegard). So it was wonderful that I had the opportunity to go out to breakfast with Hildegard and catch up on our families. She was so lovely and kissed me goodbye with a squeeze as she said in her broken English, "We will meet again."
That afternoon we caught a two hour train to Salzburg where once again no one checked our passports! I'm beginning to think I don't need one here...
Because we were all tired from the day and knew we had an early morning, we decided to not venture out at night and save some money by making dinner at the Airbnb apartment. (Note: When I say we made dinner at the apartment, I mean Lauren made it. All of it.)
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| Salzburg Stiegl was too dang good |
One thing I've noticed to my chagrin is the stores in Europe are often closed when I need them most. We walked to two different grocery stores that I google mapped before arriving to find both of them closed. We settled on a gas station minimart that had a surprisingly decent collection to choose from. Lauren worked some magic with the boxed pasta, canned sauce, and random assortment of spices she found in the apartment. This was for sure better than any pasta I had ever made, let alone from gas station ingredients.
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| Humina humina |
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| Lauren and I are actually a couple now |
The following morning we woke up for - I kid you not - the best day of my life. We split up according to where we wanted to go that day. Two went to the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, Lauren wandered the city on her own, and the rest of us headed out to Hallstatt, Austria.
This town was three hours outside of Salzburg and not easily accessible. It was a bit of a commitment getting there. Some of us *cough MK cough* were not feeling great after the wine from the night before and found this trip to be a bit tougher than expected. There were several moments when "It's just too much." escaped her lips.
Here's how I thought the travel would go:
- Take Bus 1 for an hour then switch to Bus 2 for an hour
- Take the ferry to Hallstatt
Here's how it actually went:
- Take Bus 1 to then be dropped in random town in Austria with no Bus 2
- Wait over an hour for Bus 2 to finally show up
- Ride Bus 2 for another hour
- Hear from bus driver that the ferry is not the next step, but rather two more buses then a train
- Say f*@$ that and pay for the cab the rest of the way
As soon as we stepped out of the cab, we breathed a sigh of relief because we knew that it was all worth it. And so began the best 5 hours of my life!
We soaked in the sun as we meandered down the small streets. We found their local Hallstatt brew called Das Bier which translates to "The Beer." Fitting as it is a small enough town that they would only need to refer to one beer.
We sat on a dock drinking Das Bier and soaked in the view without a care in the world.
We opted to buy food from a stand to save on cash after spending so much on travel. What a great decision it was. We had these incredible brats with an unknown red sauce and bit of curry, which is traditional in Germany/Austria. We continued the pattern of sitting down by the water to eat/drink and just do absolutely nothing.
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| Jonny likes to kill the shot last second |
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| High on life (and those bratwursts) |
With our mouths full of warm apple strudel, we piled back into a cab to make our way back to Salzburg for our train to Munich.
On our final day of the trip we went to Neuschwanstein Castle. We may or may not have missed our connecting train and rode the wrong one to end. The constructor approached us saying, "This is the last stop." to which Isabelle responded "But where's the castle?" Can you tell we're young Americans?
Once we finally made it there with an extra train ride and two buses later, it was crunch time. Naturally the buses up the mountain don't run on Sundays so we hiked it up the hill with our massive travel bags on our backs. We quickly took some pictures then turned around to head down the mountain again.
We had heard some horror stories about bus/ferry delays during this tour from SLU students who had gone on it the few weekends before. We were prepared for the worst and met with absolute smooth sailing. We even arrived to places ahead of schedule at times.
After numerous methods of transportation, we arrived to our hotel in Morocco. Saturday was spent at Chefchaouen a.k.a. The Blue City. We practiced our bargaining skills with the local vendors and wandered the narrow streets, acting as if it were a Vogue photoshoot by taking pictures every two steps.
The weirdest part of the trip had to be the young children in the street that decided it would be fun to take the dead rat they were playing with and kick it at us. No really, they ran after us for about 2-3 minutes kicking this massive dead rat at us while we booked it down the streets squealing like chickens with our heads cut off.
Once everyone was spent, the tour guides brought us back to the hotel for some down time before the dinner that evening. Later that night we were told to head up to the sixth floor of the hotel for some "fresh and sexy sangria." Mind you, these tour guides were young, attractive men that could have been on a Hallmark rom-com.
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| Chocolate craving turned into crepe buying #noragrets |
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| Snuggles in our down time sans wifi |
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| Sangria was sexy indeed |
On Sunday we went to another beautiful coastal city before hiking up our skirts to ride a camel along the beach. The ride was short, but the memory will last a life time.
The return back to our apartment in Madrid was unlike any other travel I've experienced. We left the site of the camels at 3 p.m. in Morocco. We then took a bus to the port, a ferry to Spain, a bus to Sevilla, a night bus back to Madrid, and finally the metro home where we arrived at 8 a.m. the next morning. Needless to say we were wiped when we got back and all skipped our first class to sleep through the day.
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| Brushing her teeth in the station. There was no shortage of stares |
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| Acting like it's any other day |
Alas, you've reached the end of this blog post and I congratulate you on your persistence. I shall reward you with this clue. The next trip I venture on involves black sand beaches and towering volcanoes. I'll leave you here to guess where in the world is Elaine Foley.
