Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Sevilla pictures and life goals to be accomplished in the near future

So, after almost a 2 week delay, here are the long awaited (and I'm sure much anticipated) :) pictures from my trip to Sevilla 2 weekends ago...

So these pictures are in reverse order of how we saw everything...ie the bull ring was the last we did before we left for the bus station. But this is a picture of the chapel in the bull ring we toured. All matadors are required to pray before they begin their fight.

Me, in front of the ring. It was quite large.
This is where Spanish royalty sit when they come to Sevilla and watch a bull fight.
We also toured the Cathedral in Sevilla. This picture didn't turn out very well, but this tomb supposedly holds the remains of Christopher Columbus.
Outside of the Cathedral in Sevilla.
Just a typical park in Sevilla.
This is called the Torre de Oro, or Tower of Gold. I have no idea what it is or why it's important to Sevilla because we didn't get to tour it...we ran out of time.
These lilacs grow EVERYWHERE in Sevilla. They are pretty and make the town smell beautiful!
Typical street in Southern Spain...palm trees, lots of vegetation, beautiful.

So that was Sevilla in a nutshell, a beautiful place to visit for a weekend. As I mentioned in my last post, I stayed in Madrid this past weekend, and for this upcoming weekend I will be traveling to...drum roll please...PARIS! I am beyonnnddddd excited for this...my life goal of taking my picture in front of the Eiffel Tower will soon be complete! And I am even more excited because I am going with one of my friends who is studying abroad in Rome right now. I am so excited to see her! So I will think of you all this weekend, while I sit on the Champs-Elyssé, eating a crossaint, soaking up the (hopefully) warm sun... :)

all my love--

Thursday, March 26, 2009

My apologies!

First off, my sincere apologies (mostly to my mom) and to everyone else who reads this regularly. For whatever reason, I kept forgetting to update my blog this week. I would always remember just as I settled into bed, ready to fall asleep. But, just so you all aren't worried, I am alive and well and I guess I've just been enjoying the week :)

Last Thursday was a holiday in Madrid, their equivalent of Father's day. I didn't have school and used the day to rest and sleep in! Some friends and I had plans to go to Sevilla on Friday and Saturday, so I also went and bought tickets with them. We hung out for a little while and then I went back to my apartment and got ready for the weekend.

We left for Sevilla on Friday morning, taking a bus from Madrid that left at 8am. We arrived around 2pm, got to our hostel and walked around the city for the rest of the evening. Sevilla is a beautiful city, very much like Southern states in the US. As weird as it sounds, Sevilla also smells really good...the city is known for its oranges and lilacs, so everything has this citris-y lilac-y sent to it. Its awesome. We came back to our hostel, got a quick nap, and left for a couple of bars that night. We had fun hanging out together.

Saturday we checked out of our hostel (which was by FAR the best hostel I've stayed at since I've been in Europe...it had free internet, free towels, access to a kitchen AND each room had their own private bathroom! I thought I was in paradise) and set out to see all of the tourist-y things in Sevilla. We wanted to go to this convent where suppossedly you walk up to the door, knock on it, and nuns come and give you pastries. Well, it took us about an hour to even find this convent, and the weather in Southern Spain is HOT. It's gorgeous, but hot. We were all a little cranky when we got there. However, when we arrived, we discovered that they only sell marmalade and honey and none of us wanted marmalade or honey- what were we going to do with it? So we awkwardly left and continued down to the main part of the city.

We toured the Cathedral in Sevilla, which was beautiful as always. We also went to a bull ring and got a tour inside. I have some really neat pictures of it, but they haven't been uploaded to my computer yet so I will have to post them later. After dinner, we got our bags from our hostel and took the bus back to the bus station. We took a night bus back to Madrid so we had the hole day Sunday to recover, which was nice. Lately all of my travels have come in either really late on Sunday nights or really early on Monday mornings. It just makes it tricky to get back into the swing of school.

This week has been busy for me, but not overwhelming- just enough to keep me on my toes every day. I had a midterm in my oceanography class on Wednesday, which I think went really well. I just got back tonight from a Madrid Young Life bible study...ironically enough, my former area director in St. Louis knows the area director in Madrid, so we exchanged emails and I've hung out with them a couple times since I 've been here. It's been really neat to see how YL works on an international level.

I think that brings you all up to speed-- I am staying in Madrid this weekend, which I am SO excited about :) One of my friends who is studying abroad in France this semester is in Madrid for the weekend, and she wants to see everything so I will probably accompany her around town, and most likely to the Prado (ahem Dad) since I still haven't been there yet.

all my love--

Thursday, March 19, 2009

I can't not post these pictures.

OK, So somewhere in the last two posts I mentioned that I went to Madame Toussand's Wax Museum while I was in London with my friend Sylvia. Here are all the pictures we took while we were there...as you can see, we had a good time :)

So these aren't exactly in correct order, but I would like to dedicate this first picture to Carrie Jussely. You would have loved it...they had a whole section dedicated ONLY to HSM3.

Such a typical Will Smith pose.

Me and Tom...not quite sure what to think about him.

This really looks like I'm sitting in front of Steven Spieldberg, accompanied by a dinosaur hand from his movie Jurassic Park.

When I was taking this picture, I literally thought that Robin Williams would move in about 2 seconds, he looked that real. It was almost a little creepy.

Not paying attention to me...jerkface. Thanks, Orlando.

My new BFF, Nicole Kidman.

Surrounded by so much talent, what do I do?

Me and the Princess. So beautiful.

Classy.

Posing with the King.

My hanging out with the new Commander in Chief. No big deal.

It's Liza and Liza! Woo-hoo!

Me and Leo.

I don't think Justin Timberlake thinks I'm that funny.

Pretty women!

My friend Sylvia and I posing with Johnny Depp...if only he was real.

Love him.

Clearly, George Clooney does not understand what I'm trying to tell him.


'Arry Potter!

Dame Judy Dench!

Me and Brangelina. All in a day's work.

Posh and Becks, London's favorite couple.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Spring Break '09: A week in pictures...continued

I'm back! Here are the remainder of the pictures from my time in London during my Spring break :)
My view from the London Eye!!!! Like I said, this is a MUST SEE for anyone visiting London. You see a totally different side of the city. It is so beautiful.

The infamous Eye! A huge farris wheel that takes about 3o minutes to ride. So, so fun :)

Another tourist attraction that is necessary in a trip to London, especially for Harry Potter fans. Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station.

As I said in my last post, those of you who have known me for more than a few years know that I visited London 6 years ago with People to People. Some of you may not know that I was thoroughly disappointed when I couldn't ride on a double decker bus, and I was determined to fix that when I visited this time. So, here is a what riding on the top deck of a double decker bus looks like. Life goal accomplished :)

Sunday brought us to St. Paul's Cathedral. Because it was Sunday, tours weren't available because services were going on, but it was a beautiful day to walk around.

Right across from St. Paul's is the Millennium Bridge which is right next to the Globe. We didn't tour it, but I still got my picture. This isn't the original theater that Shakespeare used back in the 17th century...that burned down. But this is an exact replica.
Me on the Millenium Bridge, you can barely see the tower bridge in the background.

The exact opposite picture from the one above: standing on the tower bridge looking towards the Millenium bridge! You can also see the actual Tower of London on the right hand side of the picture.


Me with the towers :)


So all in all, it was a very successful Spring Break. I was exhausted when I finally returned to Madrid but I'm feeling a lot better now. This weekend I'll be heading down to the South of Spain in Granada and Sevilla for a nice relaxing weekend with friends, and then the following weekend will be my last weekend in Madrid until at least May! I'm VERY excited about my travel plans for the rest of my time here...I'll be sure to keep you all updated :)

all my love--

Monday, March 16, 2009

Finally...home? Spring Break '09: A week in pictures

Alright, everyone...as promised, pictures from my 10-day stint around Athens, Prague, and London.

We started off our week by flying into Athens on Friday afternoon, eating lunch, and settling into our hostel. Saturday we woke up eaarrlyyyy (like 5am) to catch a ferry to Mykonos, one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited.

This is what all of the streets and buildings looked like...stone roads and white buildings with blue shutters and roofs. Straight out of a movie.

I included this picture because you can kind of see the town from this point. The whole thing is built on a mountain, making it even more gorgeous in person. This picture includes my friends Heather (right) and Emily (left) as they gaze at the pelican that happened to cross our path :)

So we left Mykonos on Sunday, and Monday morning woke up and did everything that makes Athens Athens. Our first stop was to the Acropolis, which included visiting the Parthenon and numerous temples in the surrounding area.

This was the theater that Greeks used to start oral tradition...think...all of those stories and myths that everyone knows about today STARTED here. It gives me chills to think how old this thing is.

By FAR one of the highlights of my Spring break was visiting the Parthenon. Walking around the area and being able to see the entire city from its location was a breath taking experience.

It looks a little strange with all of the scaffolding up, but it was still beautiful. And old.

The Parthenon was built in tribute to the Greek Gods, and was made to overlook the entire city, and the builders successfully completed their task! Standing next to the Parthenon and looking down into the city gave me this view:

The patch of light green grass to the right is what holds the remainders of Zeus' Temple. To its left is the first modern Olympic Stadium used in 1896. You can sort of see the top portion of the bleachers through the dark green trees.

All in all, Athens was a very successful destination! But there was one thing each of us had to do before we left...
Eat a traditional Greek salad! In Greece, their salads don't really include lettuce, but rather all of the vegetables normally used in a salad, put in a bowl, covered in olive oil, and then loaded with feta cheese. And might I add: this was the BEST feta cheese I have EVER HAD in my life. In the words of my friend Sylvia, "heaven will have feta cheese."

We left Athens on Tuesday night and slept in the London Luton airport until our flight for Prague left on Wednesday morning. Like I said in my last post, Prague is a beautiful city and has a lot of "old world charm." Being surrounded by such beautiful and old buildings made me appreciate the architecture of the city.
This is the main street in the city. You can tell that it definitely looks different from almost any downtown city in the states.


One of the thousands of side streets in Prague. This gives you a better view of what the buildings look like.
A plaza in the center of Prague. Beautiful buildings with a beautiful sunset to match :)

Thursday we spent the day touring the castle of Prague, home to the President of the country and saw various artifacts about the history of the Czech Republic. We spent a lot of time walking, so by the time we got back to our hostel, we were pretty beat. We went to bed early so we could get up in time for our flight to London on Friday.

Like I said in my last post, London is one of my favorite cities in the world. Those of you who have known me for more than a couple of years know that I travled to England, Ireland, and Wales six years ago with People to People. While I had already seen most of what London had to offer then, I now feel like I really know the ins and outs of the city and what makes it "tick."

We got to our hostel around 3pm, and I have to say it was a little overwhelming. I stayed in a 15 person room, while my other friends were in a 24 person room! There were constanly people everywhere and my room was never quiet. It was the first time I really felt like I was in a true hostel. After we got settled, we left for what I called the "London at warp speed" tour, seeing Big Ben, Parliament buildings, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye all in the course of about 2 hours! While it may sound like a lot, all of those things are located relatively close together, within 2 underground stops of each other. But the best part was being able to see everything at night: the city looks so different then when compared to the day.

Buckingham Palace! Say hi to Queenie- she's home! The British flag is flying atop her house.

We went from the Queen's house to the Prime Minister's home, 10 Downing Street.

Being tourists, we couldn't not take a picture of a red telephone booth. Its almost impossible not to.

I have a picture that is identical to this one from six years ago...same corner, with the same landmarks in the background.Westminster Abbey. If you can't tell by the photo, this place is huge.

Our night concluded with a trip on the London Eye, at night, a MUST SEE for everyone going to London! Unfortunately I cannot put anymore pictures on this post, so I will finish updating everyone about my trip to London tomorrow...stay tuned for cool shots of the city by night, a trip to a wax museum, and an escapade around platform 9 3/4! It only gets better from here! :)