Visitors!

And then last week finally came what I'd been counting down to since I arrived in Granada: Visitors! And I had ALOT!! My parents, my boyfriend, and four of his friends! Fiesta!

It was really great to have people from home, to see my parents, and finally get to hang out with Nick again! I thought it might be weird to see him again, but everything was just as we left it.

It was a great week! I wish they could have stayed for three more! Seeing everyone did kind of make me want to come home, but seeing Granada from their eyes in a way made me more excited about this city and realize how great it really is.

Sunday Nick and I took an EARLY (1 am) bus to Madrid (five hours!) to go to the Real Madrid soccer (fútbol) game. It was cool to see Madrid since the only time I´d ever seen it was from the airport windows back in January, but it probably would have been alot cooler if we´d slept at least a few hours! We did get to eat at Burger King though! The game was really fun, even for me, someone who doesn´t especially appreciate sports... The stadium was just HUGE and I was scared from our seats, which were three rows from the top. We finally got back to Granada after a long day in Madrid to find Nicks friends still awake after taking Stan out for a few (many) drinks!

Highlights of the week include visiting the Alhambra once again and visiting Nerja, a little town on Costa del Sol so everyone could experience the Mediterranean Sea, and of course many tapas. Everyone also got to meet up with my Spanish family where we drank muchas cervezas. Considering hardly anyone could understand each other, we had a pretty good time!

The week went by toooo fast! Speaking of fast... I have just over 1 month left in Spain! Crazy! And this weekend we are going to Portugal for half of our second break, and then back to Granada for the last half to experience SEMANA SANTA.

Weekend in Paris

One week after returning from Italy, we had a weekend in Paris. Haha feels weird saying that! Paris was great, but it was a little big for my taste (which I think is why I loved Florence so much). I think we did a fairly decent job sightseeing in Paris. We arrived around 2 pm so we had time to go see the Eiffel Tower, which we decided to save some euros and NOT go to the top...something I am regretting a little bit, but at the same time I think I would have pooped my pants at the top because I'm still scared of heights lol. We also went on a boat tour down the Seine which was beautiful but would have been better if we werent FREEZING!! We could tell we'd traveled north haha. The second day we started at the Arc de Triomphe and walked down Champs Elysees and got to see alot of things on the way, including Musee d'Orsay where we saw alot of the big impressionist works. We saw the home of Quasimodo (Notre dame) and climbed to the top... SCARY!! We ended the day at the Louvre...and we were exhausted so we basically saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Napoleon's Apartments and PEACED! We did get to meet up with Tood Peterson, who just happened to be in Paris at THE SAME EXACT TIME!! Crazy! It was nice to see a familiar face and get some news from home. I know Toddy's not family yet but it was close enough haha. The next day we all took the train to Versailles to see the palace. We had to walk a bit from the train station to the palace and we stopped to get some chocolate crepes. We asked the vendor directions to the Palace and he told us it burnt down. Hilarious...I loved him. That actually was one of my favorite parts of the trip. And Todd actually believed him! J/k. We returned to Paris mid afternoon and had time to take a little stroll through Montmarte, an old artist's quarter. This was another one of my favorite parts...we saw an old studio where picasso painted, garden's where renoir painted, and van goghs old home. It was cool to imagine that we were walking around where these artists worked and got their inspiration. Then we saw Moulin Rouge and all applied for jobs!

Oops...

I've realized, as I'm sure you have as well, that I REALLY am not good at this blogging thing!! As you can imagine, alot of things have happened since the last time I got on here and posted. We had our first week long break awhile ago which I spent in Italy, and it was wonderful!! I looooved Italy (especially the food... and gelato mmm lol). We stayed a night in Milan, four in Florence, and one in Venice. Nooo we didn't make it to Rome, but that just means I'll have to go back to Italy sometime...I can handle that. It was awesome to see so many OLD and famous pieces of art, and we saw at least one from each of the ninja turtles (donatello, michelangelo, leonardo, rafeal... :-P) aaand of course the David...very impressive. I thought florence was a beautiful city--one of my favorites for sure. I didn't realize it was so small and it was really pretty easy to get around, so we spent alot of time just walking around and enjoying the Italian atmosphere. Milan was so-so...we didn't get to see the Last Supper which is the only reason I would want to visit Milan! But our flight flew into Milan and I got to see a friend from school studying there AND i had the most delicious pizza there. Venice was also wonderful. We really spent the whole day just walking around...got a little lost a few times but it was fun. Also we somehow ordered ourselves an anchovie pizza which was really disgusting...but if that was the worst part of the trip, I think it went pretty well. I definitely would love to go back to Italy some day (soon!).

PS I forgot... we also went to Pisa and saw the Leaning Tower... I actually really enjoyed seeing it...kinda comical lol.