Segovia and Lisbon

The viaduct in Segovia

Snow-capped mountains on the way to Segovia from Madrid

My hostel room here in Lisbon

The view from my room

Sunset on the water

Party in Bairro Alto (up the hill from the hostel)

Tiled facades on houses

Me in Lisbon

Lisbon

View of the other side of the city

Full Moon over the castle - view from my room

Pena Palace in Sintra, just outside of Lisbon

At Pena Palace

Palace again

Moorish Castle in Sintra

Bacalao (codfish), a traditional Portuguese meal. Not impressed!

At the park in Sintra

Listening to fado music

Barcelona and Day 1 in Madrid

Late on Friday night, I felt a familiar and unwelcome tingling in my throat. I was getting sick! All Saturday, I was slowly getting sicker and sicker. After an hour-long flight from Paris, Olivia (another Canadian language assistant) and I arrived in Barcelona, the pickpocketing capital of the world. We had memorized our directions so as not to look at the map, and tucked our valuables away (I carry mine under my coat, which is pretty obvious, but hey, I haven't been pickpocketed so far!). Our hostel (St. Christopher's) was really nice and each bed had a curtain and a power outlet and a light, as well as a storage cage under the bed. Exhausted and sick, I hit the hay at a pretty reasonable hour, but our roommates had other plans. 2 girls left at 3 am, spent a half hour packing, turned on the big lights, and woke all of us up. At least breakfast was awesome! Ham, cheese, bread, peanut butter, cereal, orange juice, and tea! I can still barely smell or taste, but I was impressed! 

Outside a Dali museum

We began day 1 with a free walking tour, and learned much about the city's lengthy history. We had arrived on a  holiday in celebration of a 13-year old girl who couldn't be killed (they realized this after they put her in a barrel with a bunch of knives, rolled her down the hill, and she came out without a scratch), and there were parades in the streets with "the giants" or oversized characters, and marching bands. We also learned that during the Spanish Inquisition, they destroyed a Jewish cemetary on Montjuic, and used the headstone pieces to make buildings in the city centre. That's why some buildings have stones with Hebrew writing on them. 

To be honest, we barely heard any Catalan. Apparently 95% of the population speaks it, but we heard English and French everywhere. And if someone didn't speak English, we would break out our broken Spanish. Our favourite Catalan word that we saw everywhere was "benvinguts" (welcome), though. 

This was added in the street to make it look prettier!

So then Olivia and I took the funicular up Montjuic and strolled through gardens, saw the National Art Museum from the outside, walked to the Spanish Village, and walked down past the Magic Fountain on our way to where we were supposed to begin our paella cooking class with unlimited sangria. There weren't enough people, and it got cancelled, so Olivia and I headed down to the beach for some seafood paella. Neither of us are knowledgeable about these kinds of seafood, so it must have been very amusing for the waiters to watch us struggle. There was even a crawfish, which we couldn't figure out how to eat, and we left it out altogether. It was a lot of work and we even needed wet-naps! As far as I could tell (being sick and all), the rice base was delicious. I think we'll stick to a more plain kind next time, though! 

The next day had been declared Gaudi day by us, and we walked past his apartment designs, and onto the Sagarada Familia, which is, of course, still under construction. The lineups to get in were long, and the entrance was pricey, so we Googled photos of the interior and kept walking.....and walking, and walking.... We're still paying for all the walking we did that day. Our legs are in pain! 

Eventually, we reached Gaudi's Park Guell, and it had the world's longest bench, odd architecture, and mosaic tiles everywhere. And it was free! I'm glad we saw it. 

Square in Barcelona

View from the National Art Museum

From there, we walked to the Arc de Triomphe, and over to la boqueria market. There was fresh fruit juice and fruit everywhere! I guess only having apples, pears, bananas and oranges available in France gets a little tiring. We got empanadas, fruit juices, and found a delicious Mexican food counter open. Then we took our finds back to the hostel to eat. But we only sat for a short while before heading out to find the Torre Agbar (like the one in London). It was a great (but long) day! 

Monday, we did some shopping near the North end of La Rambla, hit the market again for lunch, and took our food to eat by the sea. We had just enough time to see the beach before heading back to the hostel to grab our stuff and move onto our next destination: Madrid! 

WE HAD THE BEST BURRITOS HERE FOR DINNER!! We were just too tired to do the tapas tour, and grabbed the local take-out instead. 

The giants

Today, in short, hurt like Hell. At this point, I am still sick, and our legs haven't had a chance to recover yet from Gaudi day. We didn't have the energy to do the things we normally would, and every step was demanding. That said, we did check out the market (of prepared food this time) for lunch, saw the Plaza Mayor, and checked out the city from one end to the other. We saw a temple (gift from Egypt), the Royal Palace, walked along a huge viaduct, and came home. Although I already took a nap, I'm going to head to bed now because tomorrow we visit the del Prado museum with some Americans we met in our room, and write postcards in the Parque del Retiro. 

Buenos noches!

Found this on Montjuic

Spanish Village created in the 1920s for a world exhibition. It was so popular that they didn't destroy it after the exhibition was over, as they had originally planned to do.

Seafood paella

National Art Museum and Magic Fountain

Strange, noisy birds

Gaudi's Casa Batlló. 20 Euros to get in!

Gaudi's Casa Mila (La Pedrera)

La Sagrada Familia

Entrance to Gaudi's Park Güell

Me beside Gaudi's beloved dragon

Me sitting on the world's longest bench with Barcelona in the background

Closeup of the bench

Climbed something in the park for the view of the Agbar Tower, Sagrada Familia, and the Mediterranean

Barcelona's Arc de Triomphe

La boqueria market

La boqueria market

Agbar Tower

Bullfighting Arena

Seaside view

Christopher Columbus statue

The beach in Barcelona

Plaza Mayor in Madrid

Tapas at the Mercado de San Miguel

Our lunches (mine was mozzarella-wrapped smoked salmon on one and red pepper jelly on mozzarella, iberian ham, and tomato on my second one)

Debod Temple (gift from Egypt)

Royal Palace Museum in Madrid (not currently used by the royal family) 

Netherlands!

EYE Film Institute Netherlands in Amsterdam

As my work schedule changed, I now get a 4-day weekend every two weeks (woohoo!). Since everything seems to happen at the last possible minute here, I was told about my schedule JUST with enough time to still get tickets to the Netherlands (although by that time, the tickets had become very pricey). But since Amsterdam is my favourite city, and I was staying with a friend I'd met in South Africa, I was still pretty excited. I was even packed and ready to leave early (but I didn't becaue there are always a million other things to do).

I took the usual train into Paris, took the RER (like a metro, but further undrground and heads further outside the city of Paris) to the Gare du Nord, and waited for my train to Rotterdam. By that hour, all of the decent-looking baguette sandwiches had gone, so I stepped outside and decided to try food from the Quick across the street. When I first tried Quick, I was 16, and I hated it. It was significantly worse than McDonald's. But I was hungry and people seem to like the chain, so I thought I would give it another shot.



Me and Mathilde outside the film museum



First, the salads here are a joke. You either get straight lettuce with a balsamic vinaigrette or fat on top of fat with a side of fat on lettuce. If you order a salad, you probably don't want breaded goat cheese with bacon and a cream dressing. At that point, you might as well have ordered the burger. So I did, and it was awful. I ordered a breaded chicken sandwich with fries and the barbecue sauce was terrible, the breading on the chicken was a joke, and the fries weren't salted and they actually advertised that fact. Who wants tasteless, fatty fries?



Anyway, so I got into Rotterdam on a nice train, and found out that my train to Leiden had been cancelled from a kind man on the train. My friend had warned me that there was still snow on the ground and that the train service was interrupted (as in some lines had service cut in half), so I just told her and took the next one. 





A canal in Amsterdam

 

Me in Amsterdam

  

Magna Plaza shopping centre in Amsterdam





Houseboats and canals in Amsterdam

 

 




Amsterdam

 

In Paris, I had stopped to buy some chocolate from a cute store (HEMA) in the train station to give as a hostess gift, and when I got off the train in Leiden, an open HEMA store was the first thing I saw. My friend told me that it was actually Dutch, so my brilliant "here are some chocolates from Paris" gift didn't work! :p



10 minutes later, we had already walked past a windmill and reached my friend's apartment. I conquered my fear of Dutch stairs and stairs where you can see in between the stairs all at once when we got in.




Dam Square in Amsterdam

 



The next day, we toured around Amsterdam (yikes these Dutch trains are expensive!), and took a free ferry, checked out the film museum, attempted a terrible lunch in the Chinatown area, had tea on Dam Square, had a great Tex-Mex dinner of fajitas in Leidseplein, walked through the Red light District, and looked at a billion tourist shops (that last one was all me...I can't get enough of them!). And we ate stroopwafels in between. It was a perfect day. (Except for the freezing cold nights and the Arctic-like winds as we trudged back to her apartment)








Leiden under the snow



The next day, we checked out Leiden, bought the most delicious old gouda, and took a tram through Rotterdam to get to my friend's grandfather's birthday party. What I should explain (or rather, maybe what should have been explained to me!) is that my friend's family is very religious and that they have no TV, there are 7 children in her family, 7 aunts and uncles on one side, and that the women were probably mostly going to be wearing dresses. With a family that big, the gathering was in a church. I had had a nice quiet afternoon party at someone's house in mind, and I had certainly not brought a dress. When a man (whom I later found out was my friend's father) stood up to speak after sandwiches had been passed out, my friend told me that it was the prayer, and I quickly tried to put my sandwich down, hiding the bite I'd already taken out of it. Luckily, my friend's un-religious boyfriend had to do the same. As her father spoke, I figured it was the prayer (since I don't understand a word of Dutch), but when my friend said "Now the prayer starts", I realized that it was just the intro. Everyone's heads went down, and only the table full of kids and I seemed to get tired and start looking around (at least I had the excuse that I had no clue what he was saying). ;)



 

When I first opened up my sandwich, I noticed that the meat was really red. I asked if it was cooked (no) or if it had been dried (no). It was just sliced raw red meat. As much I was turned off, I tried it, and it was... edible. I did have to make a joke that if we collected all of those sandwiches, we could make Lady Gaga's meat dress, though. It seems that the Dutch force you to choose between meat or cheese sandwiches, and that they can't coexist. Well, luckily, I found a pack of cheese slices, and slipped one into my butter and raw meat sandwich. When dipped into the Italian wedding-type soup, it was pretty good.







Cheese shop in Leiden



Anyway, then we went out in The Hague, first to an overcrowded lounge/bar. Great way to meet Dutch people, right? Wrong. It turned out to be ex-pat night. Haha. Then we ended up in a club with 80s music and people who had just become legal. So we left and went across the square to a pub which was more my scene, but some of the group wanted to go clubbing, so me and my friend left to grab Turkish pizzas on the way home. What we ended up getting was what neither of us remembered as Turkish pizza, and we missed the train and had to wait an hour in the restaurant until the next one. Though I hadn't had enough alcohol to have any impact on my body, I was dead tired and napped on my purse...on the table. (I was never going to see any of these people again, right?) At 2 am on a Saturday night, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I am clearly a party animal.



Utrecht



Sunday, we slept in and then went to Utrecht to do a walking tour. While the walking tour was of alleyways and some uninteresting sights ("This is where something uninteresting used to be and is now a normal house"), we got to see the city on-foot, which was nice. Then we saw Life of Pi at their theatre (I smuggled in a McFlurry under my arm), and as we were waiting for it to start, my friend suddenly realized "since the character is Indian and coming from India, what if there are parts which aren't in English, and the subtitles are in Dutch?". I hadn't ever thought of that. My friend was nice enough to jump up and ask the staff, who said that while they hadn't seen it, it should be fine. And it was. There was only one scene like that, and I could guess what happened. And then, in the middle of the movie, it paused and the lights turned on. My first thought was "oh crap, technical difficulties", but it turns out that they have an intermission for movies. When I was in the bathroom, they even announced that "Life of Pi" would now resume, like at a play. Anyway, it was a beautiful movie, although I didn't feel that it needed to be in 3D.



Then we went for tapas! Garlic butter shrimp, bread with dips, chicken wings (her fave!), and ribs. It was exactly what we needed before heading home for the night.



Leiden on the day I left (when it warmed up a bit)



Sadly, I had to leave on Monday morning after we went to our beloved HEMA (like IKEA, but smaller and found in the cities) for a 1 Euro breakfast (ham and egg-stuffed croissant, a bacon and egg bun, and a tea), before parting ways at the train station. I finished off Amsterdam all by myself, which was perfect, because I could stop at all of the tourist shops and shops in general without guilt. Then I embarked on my 7-hour journey home.

Next week, I'm headed to Caen with some other assistants and then apparently I have the next week off because all of the English teachers are on training the week before our holidays when I go to Spain and Portugal! I really am working to live here, not living to work :)