So, if you're here, that means you probably saw
my final post on my other blog, Aprovecha El Día (this is Aprovecha El Día OTRA VEZ, see the
difference??). If you didn't, check it out, it explains everything. Here's what
I said, in case you didn't see it and are on the point of tears due to the
confusion:
A new blog post?! What?? A little crazy I
know, since I basically fell of the face of the earth, blog-wise, for the past
couple of weeks. But I’m back, try to contain your excitement. I am now located
in sunny southern Portugal – the seaside city of Faro, to be exact. I have just
a few more days here before I fly back to Spain for my month-long summer
program in Salamanca. I couldn’t be happier that I get to go back to Spain.
Just being away from the morning hola,
buenas-es and the vale’s tossed
out every other word for a few weeks has already taken its toll, so I’m glad
that I still have a month before I have to say…well, you know. Adios. I dread
the day when I have to leave behind the beautiful country that has been my home
since January and return to the United States – I’m alreadyhomesick for Spain, if that’s possible. But enough of the
depression- I really have no business complaining at the moment as I slather
aloe on the backs of my knees (burned there EVERY TIME DANGIT), recuperating in
my adorable little hostel room after relaxing all day at the pristine beaches
of Faro. Tough life, I know. As I find myself with some free time, I have
decided to sum up my post-Valencia, pre-Portugal travels in a new blog post,
aka the summary of the weeks when I was MIA from the blogging world.
HOWEVER, there is a slight hiccup in these
plans of mine. As it turns out, I've uploaded so many pictures to this blog in
the past several months that I've 'reached my limit' (who know there was
one??), so Google wants me to pay a montly fee to keep uploading pictures to
this blog. Since that is ridiculous, I've created another blog called
'Aprovecha El Dia (Otra Vez)', which is the same but under another account so I
can upload pictures until my heart's content. So here's the link, just start
checking the following link instead of the one you're currently on if you want
to keep reading my blog. Sorry for the annoying transition, but it had to
happen. Here's the link!
And then I gave the link to where you are now! See, that wasn't as bad as you thought, eh? So anyways, enough housekeeping, on to the blog!! It all started one rainy day, in a far away island called Palma de Mallorca.........
After we all left
Valencia (I won’t even get in to how depressing that was. Let’s just say that
Spain is no longer in a drought thanks to all the tears I shed…), my friends
Carly, Julie and I took an 8 euro (yes, 8 euro!) flight to the Spanish island
of Palma de Mallorca. Side note – I say 8 euro, but it was actually more
because I had to check a bag. A piece of advice: be careful when checking a bag
with RyanAir. They are sneaky, sneaky, sneaky dudes and will do anything to
make a buck. I got slapped with fines because my suitcase was supposedly
overweight, even though I had weighed it the night before with my friend’s
luggage scale and it was just under the limit. I left behind so many things
too, this is only a laughably small portion of it.
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I'm going to miss those
brown heels so dearly. And I never even wore them because they would've made me
four inches taller than 90% of the Spanish population. :/ Let this be a lesson
in packing to you, my dear children. If you're not going to
use it every week, DON'T BRING IT FOR A 6-MONTH STUDY ABROAD PERIOD.
It's just not worth it. |
At the counter,
it was apparently 3 kilos over. 3 KILOS, which is quite significant. I had no
choice but to pay the extra fee, but I have since developed a conspiracy theory
about the RyanAir scales in the Valencia airport being faulty…anyways, I got to
Mallorca and after a few more troubles (my flight was delayed, so by the time
we landed all the buses had stopped running and the hostel was on the other
side of the island, so I had to get a surprise hostel for one night), I finally
made it to the hostel and met up with my friends. The first afternoon we were
all there together was a cloudy one. We went to the beach, but it looked like
this. Still beautiful, but quite overcast. When it started to rain, we decided
maybe beach day wasn’t in the cards.
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We tried jumping around
in an attempt at an anti-rain dance, but no dice.
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Somewhat
defeated, we went back to our hostel and started to watch Wall-e in the room.
Sounds lame when you’re on a Mediterranean island, but we didn’t have many more
options. We stayed in Cala Milor, which is a part of the island that (little
did we know) is a hotspot for elderly German tourists. SO, aside from taking
part in some very poor karaoke renditions of Frank Sinatra songs in German with
some senior citizens, there weren’t a lot of other activities to do on a rainy day. But about 40
minutes into the movie, Carly happened to peek out the blinds and the sun was
out and shining strong, as if nothing had ever happened. So we got to have our
beach day after all, and we had a really nice, karaoke-free time in Palma de
Mallorca.
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| Starting out our tour of Europe on a budget: leftover crackers and pretzel M&M's for breakfast. |
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| The
sky the morning we left Mallorca. We took solace in the fact that it wasn't
like it was suddenly a gorgeous, sunny beach day the day we had to leave,
because that cloud over there is CLEARLY menacing and promises a huge
rainstorm. |
After Palma, we
caught a flight to Brussels, Belgium where we stayed with a family friend of my
friend Julie. She was the absolute sweetest woman the world has ever known,
just an angel, and she opened up her home (and her kitchen, yum) to us for four
wonderful days.
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| View of her adorable little Belgian town and the countryside from the living room window. |
She
also gave us great recommendations of what to do with our time – we didn’t want
to spend all four days in Brussels, so she gave us ideas on day-trips. The
first day, we went to Leuven, which is a college town not far from Brussels. We
just wandered around looking at everything. We popped into a couple of
super-old churches (no trip to a European city would be complete without
visiting some super-old churches, it’s an unwritten rule) and some cool plazas
and shops. There were students everywhere, obviously – the map we had said
there are over 40,000 in the little town. It was cool to see how they live, and
how it compares to our own college campuses. Turns out, college students are
college students wherever they are.
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| Typical college student antics...bikes in the river. Oh Leuven. |
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| Leuven is green. |
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| A university building
in Leuven. It's not actually tilted, I apparently was standing on one leg and tilting my head sideways when I took
it. Whoops. |
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| Oh yes. |
We
devoted the next day to tackling Brussels itself. The place we were staying was
actually a smaller town a bit outside the city, so we first took a bus into
Brussels. Then we took a mess of trams to the city center, but their public
transportation is NOT very well organized in our opinion, so it took us forever
to actually get there. When we finally made it, we were so exhausted that we
had just enough life left in us to drag ourselves to a waffle stand for
sustenance. Just kidding, we hopped off the last tram and made a beeline for
the first waffle place we saw. When in Belgium, right? So after eating some
amazing waffles and breaking some rules in the process, we wandered around the
city a bit. The first thing we looked for was the Mannekin Pis, as it’s actually
called. It’s plastered all over every souvenier item in every tourist shop, so
we figured it’s something we needed to see. HOWEVER, despite all that buildup,
we walked right by it the first time because it’s so tiny. We were expecting a huge grand statue, but it’s about 2
feet tall in reality – the only reason we noticed it at all was because there
was a substantial group of tourists standing in front of it taking photos. What
a let-down. Truth be told, Brussels isn't exactly a happening city. So, we consoled ourselves with some Belgian chocolate and some
fries (Belgium, not France, is apparently the birthplace of the modern fry).
All in a day’s work.
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The longest word ever, in Dutch in the metro station. Veilgheidsvoorschriften. Whew.
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| Strawberries, Nutella, whipped cream and chocolate sauce...quality, authentic Belgian waffles at their finest. |
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| Rule-breakin' in Brussels. |
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My first taste of authentic Belgian chocolate.
It was a cinnamon truffle.
We're now happily married. |
The third and
final full day we had in Belgium was spent on a day trip to the perfectly
picturesque Belgian town of Brugge. The weather was actually really nice for
once, so we had a lovely day walking along the river and exploring. And eating
waffles of course.
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| Picturesque. |
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| Just perfect, isn't it? |
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| Basilica of the Holy Blood, where they have a vial of Christ's blood. |
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| Found Rapunzel's tower in Brugge. |
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| Take it in, take in this waffle and all its glory. If I could make this picture any bigger, I would. Soak it up. |
So I always say
I’m going to summarize large chunks of my life in ‘one post,’ but it never
seems to work out because I ramble too much and spend too much time and too
many lines on elaborate sarcastic jokes that likely fall flat anyways. The
point is, I owe you all one or two more posts to wrap up my most recent
travels. Next: Amsterdam, with Berlin and Munich on its heels!
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