The Last City-Madrid

Today was the last city exploration of our entire trip. Tomorrow we will leave for the airport and embark on our long, bittersweet journey back to the states. 

We began our day with a very delicious dunk n doughnuts breakfast and then joined a free walking tour at 11:00. Being in a city with this rich of a history, we felt the need to learn more about it. Our guide told us about two monarchies, two republics, a dictatorship and the democratic system that exists today.

We also learned a lot of interesting facts about the city. Like how the royal palace has 2,800 rooms and is the largest in all of Europe.

 Or that on the Madrid crest there is an image of bear eating from a berry tree. 

There is a tree here that produces a berry that contains alcohol and many years ago, bears would roam the city streets at night and eat all of these berries! It become such a popular phenomenon that this image can be seen almost everywhere. 

After our free walking your we decided to do a tapas tour through the same company where we went to 3 bars, got 4 tapas total, and a drink at each for only 12 euro! It was a nice lunch and a cool way to meet some friends and try more Spanish food. 

After a good nap, we went to a very central food market in the Plaza de San Miguel and had more paella than we could finish for only 4 euro each, it was incredible. This market had full pig legs, raw fish, and almost any food or drink you could want in Spain. 

Going along with the plan, were turning in early tonight so that we can have an early start to our travel day home tomorrow. We're homeward bound!

Toledo

If anyone is confused by the title, yes, we took a spur of the moment day trip to Toledo, Spain because it was only a 33 minute train ride, and we get it for free!

Once in Toledo, we bought a map and started to see the main sights. We quickly figured out that it does not take long to walk around the city. According to Austin the city was built like a maze so all the small streets are very complicated. Some of the things we saw were the Alcazar, and old fortress, and bull fighting arena, and a famous Catedral.

 Once we ate and saw all of the main sights we decided it would be fun to get lost so we chose a couple random turns and just walked around streets we thought were cool. In the blazing Spain heat, we were tired and boiling so we took an earlier than planned train back to Madrid. Once back, we rested a while, then had a nice dinner of more kebab then people watched a little in a square. Tomorrow is our last full day which makes us so sad!

Yes Everyone, We Are Still Alive

After a very long and very fun evening experiencing the night life of Pamplona, we found that construction workers began their toils even before 5:00 am constructing fences in the streets so that the bull run is controlled. 

Without having been to this event it would be hard to imagine how big it really is so ill put it into words through something Ben said: Imagine time square, on New Year's Eve, with everyone in the city wearing the same thing, and bulls running through the middle. It was absolutely insane. 

This is a picture of the small street, packed with people running. It was so packed up against these fences with people trying to get a good view that we had to stand for over two hours in order to secure our spot. Two hours of standing, inches from a boat load of strangers all pushing and shoving to get to the front...we made friends pretty easily. After only a 15 minute cat nap instead of a full nights sleep, we were exhausted. So after the bulls ran, we made our way to the train station and boarded a train to Madrid and slept the whole ride. After arriving, we went to our hostel and slept some more. 

After our nap we decided we needed some dinner and went to a place recommended to us for paella and it was quite delicious!

Tonight will be one good nights sleep but tomorrow brings a new adventure!

We Made It To Pamplona

Since all the trains were booked, we took a coach bus from Barcelona to Pamplona. We arrived to find out we had no idea what was in store for us. We got off the bus to see EVERYONE dressed in all white and red belts and bandanas. Naturally, we found a great deal on the whole wardrobe and changed right away. We checked our bags and made our way to a field that everyone seemed to be flocking to. After sitting down and making some friends. We watched an incredible fireworks show to start off the festival. 

After the show was over, us and our new friends started to experience the festival, and we ended up having an amazing time. Seeing as we didn't book a hostel, we now have to wait a couple hours for the bulls to run before leaving for Madrid. Pamplona is crazy, we love it!

Thank You

Nearing the end of our trip, we are done meeting people we know and so we can't help but look back and once again thank everyone who took us in or just met with us. 

Thank you to my grandparents in Chester, England, for showing us an awesome time and taking us to all those meals! 

Thank you to Richard in London who was very helpful in our exploration of the city and who was an awesome host. 

Thank you to my Aunt Caroline and my cousins who took us to a great meal in London and showed us around for the afternoon. 

Merci to Jochen in Paris who was awesome enough to drive us to all the sights late at night, and then show us a little French cheese, bread and wine, along with letting us stay a night. 

Dank u to Graham and Liz who taught us about Belgium, let us stay with them, and Liz showed us a little of Brussels and showed us the famous Belgian chocolate!

Dank u to Wijnand in Amsterdam who took us out for a great dinner and to the oldest and coolest pub in the city!

Danke to Wouter in Berlin who showed us an awesome music festival location,  let us stay in his home, and was helpful with what to do in Berlin. 

Danke to Tyler in Vienna who let us stay in his apartment, and took us out to a restaurant with famous Wiener schnitzel and drinks too. 

Muchas gracias to Pedro and the family of Laia for having us over for an amazing dinner and Pedro showing us the best time ever during our stay at his house in Barcelona. 

And again to all, THANK YOU!

Classic Barcelona

After another day of sleeping in, we felt so well rested and ready for the last five days of the trip. After waking up we went to the train station and realized a train to Pamplona was hopeless. Therefore we consulted the bus company and realized a bus ticket cost only a few euro more than train reservation! So tomorrow at 3 we leave for Pamplona to see the bulls!

Ben, Katie, and I decided to spend some more time at these amazing beaches and it was well worth it, Ben is even getting noticeably tan! We then went back to our gracious host's house (Pedro) and left from there for dinner at his girlfriends parents house. (To explain our loving situation here, we had a very nice student teacher for Spanish this year named Laia and she is from Barcelona. She and I became friends and said that we could stay with Pedro, her boyfriend, for a few days and it has worked out so amazingly!). At her parents house we had a very delicious and traditional Spanish meal where there were many small snack sized dishes on the table and we picked at and chose through these dishes with a main plate of homemade pizza! Laia's family was so sweet and our host Pedro is honestly the best. We are so great full for all that they did for us. 

After dinner we went out for anther night on the town and are very excited to leave for Pamplona tomorrow even though we had such an amazing time here in Barcelona. 

Barcelona Day 3

Yet another great day in Barcelona and on our trip! We slept in, then Austin and I, now joined with Katie, met our Venice friends, Dmitri and Michael, at the Sangrada Familia. It is this church that was started about 150 years ago and is still in progress and is incredible. The outside is not done but still looks amazing, and the inside might be more impressive. We bought our tickets online and skipped the line and spent a good amount of time exploring the church. 

Then we spent the rest of the day at the beach again, but unfortunately the weather was not as great and we were a bit chilly, but had fun just the same. After that we all had dinner with Pedro and his friend from Russia who is staying with him now, Victor. We all ate a great tapas dinner then we hit the Barcelona night life attempting to celebrate the 4th of July, and we were successful! One more day in Barcelona and we don't ever want to leave!

Reunion in Barcelona!

What an incredible city this is. We were quite exhausted from yesterday and the trip in general so we decided to take it easy today. We slept in pretty late and had our breakfast/lunch at a panadería (bread shop) that Pedro recommended to us! One thing that we have noticed is that Europeans make some amazing bakery food:) 

After that we took the metro to the beach and let me tell you, Barcelona beaches live up to the hype. The sand was soft, the beaches huge, and the water beautiful. We laid out and swam and such for over four hours and just relaxed and reflected on the trip. Partway into our beach day, our friends from Venice sent us a text that they were in Barcelona and came to the beach with us! 

We hung out with them for the rest of the night and had dinner at a tapas bar! What a great way to eat, tapas are small appetizers that you order for the whole table and share everything with everyone! 

After dinner Pedro our host called us and met up with us and brought our friend Katie who is nannying over here for the summer! All six of us then went to the beach and enjoyed the beautiful night just listening to the waves crashing and telling stories of our travels. 

Barcelona has not disappointed so far and tomorrow will bring a great day no doubt (4th of July!!!) 

Barcelona Day One

The day started off early... Too early. We woke up at 5:15 and left quickly to make a journey to the airport in Rome because we were flying to Barcelona. We landed in Spain, our last country, at about 10:30 AM, but not before meeting Kevin, a friend on the plane. He was also traveling and he showed us this awesome thing called a Barcelona Card, which basically gets us unlimited public transport, and access to museums or attractions for free or at a discount. So we bought a four day pass, because that's how long we have, and it is already worth the money. Once we made our way to the center of the city, we at lunch with Kevin before parting ways. We then took a walk down to the water, and sat to think about what to do next. As we are sitting there, we made some friends with a group of 4 British girls. We all then decided to walk to the beach to see what it was all about. After a longer than anticipated walk, we made it but had no intention of actually swimming, so we just walked around for a while. 

Once we parted ways with them, we decided to use our discount at the nearby aquarium. It was really cool and we saw tons of awesome fish and sharks! 

Then we saw we had a free pass to a chocolate museum, so of course we headed over there to see what it was about. We get in and our tickets were a piece of dark chocolate! 

There were tons of sculptures made of chocolate and we learned about the history of it too! Still with time on our hands, we found an awesome park with people doing all sorts of things, like sports or yoga or just sitting around. So we took a nap! It was much needed. Finally it was time to meet up with our host, Pedro, who is the boyfriend of Austin's Spanish teacher who came from Spain for the year. He brought us to his home then we had an amazing dinner of seafood tapas, that stuffed us all. 

It was a gorgeous first day in Barcelona and we are excited to see what it brings next!

Vini Vidi Vici

This city is absolutely amazing. We took the metro to the coliseum this morning and decided that since we saw the Vatican for free, we would take a guided tour of the coliseum, roman forum, and the palatine hill. This allowed us to skip the lines and walk right in. 

The coliseum was spectacular, I have never seen anything like it before. It was built in the first century and is still standing, the architecture is phenomenal. The tour guide didn't really matter until the palatine hill and roman forum where without our friend David, we would only be seeing very old piles of bricks. We saw what was once the market center of Rome where millions would buy, sell, and trade. An interesting fact is that the Romans built much differently than we do today. We build with materials that can rot and demolish the building forty years later but the Romans built for their structures to last forever. Thanks to this, we have what is left of their society (after former popes stripped the buildings of their marble to build churches of course). 

I can't describe well enough how grand these structures were, photos can't even do them justice though we did try. 

After about four hours of Ancient Rome, we found some pizza and relaxed a bit. Knowing that Italians are incredibly proud of their coffee, Ben tried a cafe latte and I had a caffe espresso, both of these were amazing. 

While we didn't stumble onto another music festival or see the Pope, we found a restaurant with a 4 course roman meal for quite cheap, seemed fitting for our last night in Rome though. With an early flight to Barcelona tomorrow, we are going to get to bed early. We came, we saw, and we conquered Rome but tomorrow we will be in a new city, a new country, and continue the adventure.