and now everyone speaks spanish

winter break in europe. do i need to elaborate any further?

first stop was lisbon which i will be returning to, especially since i now speak fluent portuguese. 

but i already talked about that so next stop barcelona, where i also happen to speak the native tongue, or both of them.  em and i got back around midnight and after saying hello to her host mom, we were back out on las ramblas looking to start our night. we met griffin, andrew, and ethan and did a lot of walking around. we were approached by drug dealers, prostitutes and samosa dealers many time that night and were almost attacked by catalonian rats. and there might or might not have been a guy trying to kill us. meh.

the next day i met up with sam and we went to the contemporary art museum. so freaking cool. we got to walk on glass, played with bocce balls and got to visit a real life boom boom room. there were some damn good skaters outside so we decided to go back the next day and have lunch there. unfortunately, skaters in barcelona aren't as hard core as we thought they would be. they go to school. so we only saw about 4 rather than the 50something that we saw the day before. eh. there at least were creepy man statues on las ramblas.

  

sam and i parted ways and i met em for an aperatif that just so happened to be followed by a second aperatif of sangria. oh the joys of sangria. everyone i know, get to perfecting it right now. i want copious amounts of it when i get back. hop to it.

while in barcelona i also managed to do sagrada familia. it's kind of surreal seeing something that you've wanted to your whole life. i remember way back during a summer course when i saw pictures of it thinking it was the most magnificent building on earth. seeing it in person only confirmed my 4th grade suspicions. i paid the extra fare to go up into one of the towers. just wow. i can now understand why they are trying to canonize gaudi.

lots of more things seen in barça, but it would just get exhausting to write and describe. suffice it to say that i'm going back no matter what.

the next stop on my trip was madrid. in short: madrid

i spent a lot of time sleeping in the hostel and in order not to be lame spontaneously asked a girl at the hostel to coffee and it turned out to be my best choice in madrid because it made madrid a lot more. lindsay (newfound canadian friend) and i went out for sangria later that night at a couple of bars. we talked endlessly, i got to make fun of her accent as it came out more and more with each glass of sangria, i arm-wrestled  a lithuanian guy with both hands (and obviously won), got kicked off a children's play structure by spanish police, and got asked to swing.  good way to say good bye to madrid no?

well. now i'm back. only six weeks until my next break. 

 

portugal, the country next to spain

it is sunday morning and i am quite sad that the weekend has passed by so quickly, because it means that i have to leave the best place on earth. lisbon, portugal for those of you that are not all that familiar kicks ass. emily and i just randomly decided to visit with no idea what there was to do or see. we only knew that they spoke a drunken form of spanish (confirmed).

i caught a 7 hour bus ride from aix to barcelona, met emily at 6am and made it straight to the airport to catch our 8am flight. i realized that this was going to be an amazing trip when trying to get through security, i saw the women in front of me crying to the security. upon closer inspection, i came to see that she was trying to get an 8 inch kitchen knife through security and onto the plane. she kept on begging to let her take it on board because it was a ceramic knife and could not really do anything with it. plus all of this was in spanish, which i so happen to speak fluently. suck it french.

as em and i are trying to find our hostel, we are approached twice, by creepy looking men looking to sell us weed and hash. this happened many more times throughout our weekend and the drugs offered ranged from weed to cocaine, all of which they can pronounce in perfect english.

the hostel that we're in right now is the best place i've ever been. there are bean bags, mancala, and macs. need i say more? the people who work here are too cool and i actually want to stay here and marry julie, a perky swiss flamengo dancer who works here and has a tongue ring that glows in black light. oh the conversations that you get in when you're hostel has a kegerator... the people that we've met here are all really chill and we've had a great time interacting with all

lisbon is a great old city with cobblestone streets, beautifully decaying buildings, and a great atmosphere. we went to a few churches, did a lot of walking around through side streets, and just roaming the city. yesterday, on our way back from a town called Belem, we decided to have lunch in a small local café. em got to sit next to an 83 year old portuguese man that was just finishing a bottle of wine as we arrived. he was cherry red, entranced by us, and kept on speaking in portuguese with us. he laughed out loud, made fun of emily and was too interesting. amazing time. he actually made em do math on the table. we are considering going back there right now and bringing him home.

there's been wine, free egg and toast breakfasts, getting to know people everywhere from australia to london to san francisco. we are about to check out though i really wish we could just stay here all week. off to barça in a few hours. in the meantime, we will be visiting a castle.