Weekend in Paris!

Twelve hours ago I was strolling through the streets of Paris eating a warm chocolate croissant (excusez-moi, pain au chocolat) and I still can't quite believe it. This weekend was a whirlwind adventure in Paris, and it was an absolute dream. To top it off, I got to spend it with the other two thirds of Nolemnah: Emilie Sabourin and Nolan Hudalla. NolEmNah... get it? It's cute. Or obnoxious. Either way, we don't care. We all had a super romantic weekend in Paris together... they tried to make it awkward for me, but that's just not possible anymore.

So here's how it went down...

Friday

First Parisian monument!

Nolan and I met Emilie in Paris on Friday...but we all arrived at different times. Nolan arrived early and met me at my bus station when I got in at 2ish. We were just a few blocks away from the Arc de Triomphe, so we decided to pop over there for a little sight-seeing. We looked it and walked around, but no way was I going to pay to walk up 200-some steps. Then we headed over to the hotel.

My hotel... but not my picture

Oh yeah, we stayed at a super sweet hotel. While Emilie was looking for hostels/apartments, she came across this deal where we could stay at a mystery 4-star hotel within a certain radius for a very reduced fee. We went for it, and ended up staying at a really nice Marriott that was just south of the St. Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. I'm surprised we ever got out of those beds...

My macaroon stash

Anyway... after I dropped my stuff off, we still had a few hours before we had to meet Emilie, so Nolan and I just wandered Northwards: we saw the Jardin du Luxembourg, a glimpse of the Panthéon, and decided to go in search of one of my chocolate stores. Gail Ambrosius, my "chocolate mentor" (from back in the day when I was in the chocolate business), gave me a few suggestions of chocolate stores in Paris, and we found one of them Friday night (we also passed a few others on the way with some crazy chocolate creations). Our destination, Ladurée, was a super classy little store, with a bunch of delicacies, chocolates, sweets, and the main attraction: the macaroons. I don't know exactly what I was expecting (probably something more like Gail's), but it was not quite this... they just looked like little cookies with cream in the middle. And there were only 2 or 3 chocolate flavors... how could they be that great? So I bought one (pure origin Columbian chocolate), and immediately changed my mind. It was one of the most surprising, decadent, amazing things I have ever tasted in my life... there were so many layers of chocolate! (Don't worry, I went back yesterday to get a box to take home!!)

The Louvre at night

After THAT wonderful experience, Nolan and I walked to the river and wandered into some plaza that turned out to be the Louvre. Paris at night: amazing. This turned into a common theme, every night we wandered around and every night we found beautiful amazing stuff.

Then we went to get Emilie at her train station, almost didn't find her, eventually found her, and went back to the hotel. We did more wandering around our neighborhood looking for something to eat, but everything was SUPER EXPENSIVE (as was all of Paris). We wanted to save our money for a nice dinner Saturday night, so we ended up having chinese food!

Saturday

We got ourselves up relatively early on Saturday and headed out on our northward route again, destination: the Musée du Louvre. On the way we stopped at Gail's other chocolate store suggestion, Pierre Hermé. In addition to beautiful sweets and chocolates, they had pastries, so I had to get myself a pain au chocolat for breakfast. I also got a chocolate-passionfruit macaroon to save for later...

1st chocolate croissant (aka: love of my lfie) in Paris

View of the Louvre across the river

Me and Venus

Next we went to the Louvre, and thanks to our "student/temporary European Union member status" we got in for free!!! Paris loves them students! The outside of the Louvre was literally awe-inspiring, it went on forever; the inside was equally as overwhelming. Of course we saw the big one, the Mona Lisa. We also saw Venus de Milo, Hammurabi's Code, and a ton of amazing works by italian, french and spanish painters, sculptures, egyptian works, etc! There was just so much art and so little time!!

Sacré-Coeur with Emilie!

Next stop: Montmartre. I didn't know a ton about Monmartre... but I knew the Sacré-Coeur and Moulin Rouge were there, and my parents loved it and Craig Ferguson loved it. (You don't know how many times Nolan and I wished we had Rick Steve's to tell us about what we were doing/seeing....). So we metro-ed ourselves up there (okay, the metro was nice, but it was confusing as hell compared to Madrid's), got some sandwiches and walked to the Sacré-Coeur Basilica. We stood at the bottom of that hill, and looked up at that building, and it was amazing. Common theme here. The inside was pretty neat too. The top of the hill provided one of the best views of Paris, and it was here I decided to eat that passionfruit macaroon. Great decision.

Moulin Rouge: at the end of Sex Shop Boulevard

Then we walked down the street to the Moulin Rouge. It was on a very interesting street... and in the end we just stopped and took a picture. But still... the Moulin Rouge!!

After Montmartre I wanted to go to the Musée d'Orsay, but unfortunately I had lost my "cheat sheet" of museum and chocolate store times/prices/info, so we got there at 6:15pm and the museum had closed at 6pm. Dang. So we just walked along the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower as it got dark, and by the time we could see it, the entire Eiffel Tower was lit up and absolutely gorgeous! It soon started drizzling, so we quickly found ourselves a nice/reasonable restaurant and had a nice French dinner, steak and frites for me! 

Eiffel Tower at night

Sunday

Hall of Mirrors

After all of the walking of Friday and Saturday, I had blisters on the bottoms of both my feet. So I switched to my trusty gold sandals for the trip to Versailles. We thought we got ourselves up and going pretty early, but by the time we walked to the station and took the train out to Versailles it was almost 11am already. And boy were there a lot of people... it was like a mass migration. We got into the Palace for free again, but we still had to wait in the line to get in. It took a while. The inside of the palace was pretty amazing, so ornate and ridiculous! Why on earth was a building every so fancy??? There was one hall that was just full of enormous paintings of battles... whoa.

View of the never-ending "backyard" at Versailles

Then we got to the grounds... um, huge. There were so many different little gardens, fountains, statues, forests, and a huge canal. It was absolutely gorgeous, especially with the fall colors! I took so many pictures of pretty trees. At the other end of the grounds were two more "little" estates... so the King and Queen could escape that hard life in their main palace.

Pretty tree

I probably could have spent all day walking around those gardens, but we still had so much to see in Paris! By the time we got back into the city it was about 4pm so we made it to the Musée d'Orsay. We got in for free again, but we still had to wait in line. Fortunately we had a nutella crepe to help us through the line. Now, how can another little museum in Paris possibly compare to the Louvre? Good question. However, the Orsay holds a beautiful collection of Van Gogh, which alone probably would have been worth it for me. It also had a nice collection of Impressionists, such as Monet, Manet, Renoir and Degas; as well as some Toulouse-Lautrec works.

We couldn't take pictures in the museum, but we snuck one from one of the balconies

 Then we walked around and found ourselves some nice French-Italian pizza. We may have jumped the gun and settled for the first pizza place we found, and the service was questionable... but I got a carbonara pizza and I loved it. We wandered some more, walked around Notre Dame Cathedral, found the Latin Quarter, got some nutella ice cream, and stopped by the Panthéon again.

Notre Dame

This morning I headed back to Toledo solo, while Emilie and Nolan had one more day in Paris. Now they're headed to Nice (France), Barcelona, Málaga, and Emilie's coming to visit Toledo next Sunday!! Can't wait! Becca and I had a nice afternoon alone in Toledo... doing what we do best: eating... since no one else was here. I'm still kind of in awe at how amazing this weekend was... I did not want to leave Paris this morning! Who knew I would love it so much! Epic weekend, epic blog post, wrap it up. Okay, au revoir!

What am I doing in Morocco??

Right now I am in the middle of what we might call my first "stressful" week here in Toledo. Midterms. Yes, even here in slacker-ville, Spain, we do have midterms. I'm not actually that stressed out though, I just know that I have a lot to get done before Friday (i.e. PARIS). Probably adding to my knowledge-of-things-needing-to-be-done (I will not call it stress) is the fact that while everyone else was here in Toledo, dutifully studying... I was off in Morocco for the weekend! I justified this decision because I do not have class on Mondays, and Tuesday (today) we did not have a test/class, instead we have to turn in a paper by Friday. So why the heck not go to Morocco?

We literally just flew to Tangier with no idea of what we were going to do there. I was pretty sure that this would not be like any of my previous trips, and I hit the bulls-eye with that one. This was not quite Granada or Lisbon, where we could grab a map and wander around the city, marveling at cathedrals and beautiful palaces, take a bus or metro from one location to another, or even communicate easily with the locals... this was more of a trip where I had to step back and open my eyes and my mind to a very different culture, I really had to go with the flow and be comfortable with being uncomfortable! Luckily I can keep a cool head in almost any situation and I can go-with-the-flow with the best of 'em ... but let me tell you from first-hand experience, not everyone has this ability!

The flight was very short, and with the two hour time difference (Really? Two hours? We could see Spain from Tangier...) we landed "earlier" than we left... weird. The airport was tiny and so close to the ocean that we were pretty much hovering just above water before landing! Also, this was my first flight since arriving here in Spain and not once did I feel sick! I got a little scared with the bumpy landings... but no dizziness! In the airport, we changed our Euro for Moroccan dirhams, which is almost 1:10, so we felt super rich running around with 200 dirham-bills. Then our group split up and went to our respective hotels/apartments. The only way to get around is by taxi, so we hopped in some guy's car (I thought for sure I was going to get Taken, and Becca wasn't there to save me!) and when we got to the hotel we ran into our first language-barrier incident. "¿Cuanto questa?" we ask... the cab driver responds "Parlez-vous français?" Crap. He kept saying numbers in french, which we did not understand at all... until we finally resorted to writing it out in the dust on the car. Phew. For some reason we had assumed that people here would speak Spanish... Nope. Mistake #1.

Then we got into the hotel, which was beautiful. It was no 4-star resort...but it was gorgeous, and it even had a pool. We got settled into our room, and then we realized we had no idea what to do. We had assumed that somewhere we would find some tourist information, perhaps at the airport, where we could pick up a map. Nope. Mistake #2. So we had no idea where we were, although it was quite apparent that we were not really IN Tangier, more like the outskirts, and we did not have a map to guide us. We wanted to wander around, but we were afraid of getting lost. What do scared, lost, confused Americans do in this type of situation? They find something comforting, something that they know and love. Good thing there was a McDonald's (or as they called it there, McDos) across the street! Now, I haven't eaten an actual meal at McDonald's in YEARS, and I felt dirty doing so, but it tasted so good! They also taunted us with giant Toblerone McFlurry signs. From there we wandered around the strange strip-mall area we found ourselves in, desperately searching for somewhere we could buy water. Finally we found the enormo-supermarket and stocked up on water, snacks and sandwich materials.

YUM!

By this time, our friends had decided to come join us at the hotel, we took them to the supermarket, and we found a place to eat dinner. We spent the majority of the time trying to pronounce french words on the menu, cracking up every time someone said "boeuf!" or "l'eau!" Being two hours earlier than Spain-time, but essentially in the same location, it got dark super early, so we retired to the hotel bar for a nice chill night.

Saturday, we got our act together and asked the front desk for a map. Of course they have a map! The receptionist showed us where the hotel was, and he advised us to go to The Old Medina in the city. Enlightened, we met up with the rest of the group again and crammed 6 people into a taxi, destination: Medina! We arrived in the main plaza (the Grand Socco) outside of Medina, and were greeted with a much different environment than the bleak suburbs of the hotel! We headed into the Medina and found ourselves in the traditional Moroccan marketplace. All around us were shops selling clothes, shoes, knick-knacks, food, spices, etc! And everywhere we went, someone would come up to us and practically shove their wares in our face trying to sell it! We just wandered around for a while, bartering, getting hassled, eventually buying a few things (I got a Barcelona soccer jersey for approximately €8! But I'm afraid to wear it here for fear of being exiled by my host family!!).

Grand Socco

More YUM!

Then we trekked up the hill to find the Kasbah, an old building situated on the highest point in Tangier, that served as living quarters for the ruler, as well as a means of defense if the city was attacked. Now it's a museum, and while it was definitely no Alhambra, it was pretty cool. After, we had lunch on the roof of a restaurant with the most amazing view! We almost didn't make it to this restaurant because one of our market friends (who had sold some of us soccer jerseys), came up to us and told us that this restaurant was for private guests only, we should go to his friend's restaurant. BS. Eventually we got rid of him and went to the very-open-to-the-public restaurant where we tried a variety of delicious Moroccan appetizers!! We spent most of the afternoon there, and although we wanted to make it to the beach, we were just too tired! So we headed back to the hotel (where the rest of our group stayed the second night), and relaxed a little more before getting dinner (it may have been McDos again...) and heading to the bar to watch some fútbol! Andrew and I even got to represent our teams, both Real Madrid and Barcelona played!

Represent!

The next morning we took advantage of the free breakfast and made our way back to the airport for the flight home! Overall, a great weekend! Definitely a different experience, but worth it. I was uncomfortable at times and I felt overwhelmed in such a different culture, but I think it is important to do things like this that are way out of your comfort zone!

Now I have to get back to studying/writing papers so I can finish up this week and jet off to Paris on Friday and see Emilie!!!! 

Slumber parties and general musings

Hello readers, this one's a long and random post about many things... get ready. It probably won't make any sense.

This weekend we were supposed to go to a Real Madrid fútbol game with a big group of people from the fundación. I was pumped: what could be better than fútbol in Spain??? However, when we went to get the tickets, all the cheap seats were sold out, so we just scrapped the whole plan and were really sad. Since most of us were planning on going, we were left with a (pretty much) wide open weekend.

We started it out on Friday with our second group excursion to Alcalá de Henares, a smaller city near Madrid. The main attractions were the city's very old university and an old theater. The theater was pretty cool, but overall these weren't the most exciting tours. We did have an excellent lunch (so much better than el Museo de Jamón in Madrid), and we had some free time to wander, explore and visit the home of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote... oh wait, I didn't make it there because we got distracted by a cheap shoe store!

The rest of the weekend was going to be very productive: go to Madrid on Saturday, visit a museum for class, maybe do a little shopping; come back, get a lot of homework/studying done. But that plan went to hell, and the entire weekend just turned into one big slumber party. Friday night while we sat around for a few hours debating whether or not we should go out, we decided to be lazy and push the beds together in Lauren's room and watch Sherlock Holmes (the Robert Downy Jr one). And this slumber party turned into a whole-weekend thing (Madrid was pushed back from Saturday to Sunday to next weekend). Basically I just lived at the fund (remember, it's "foond") all weekend with my lovely friends. But don't worry, we actually got some homework done, went shopping, went dancing, I went home for meals, and I even went for a run! Go me!

So ready to get cozy and watch a movie - we even have snacks!

I've already been here for over a month, and Toledo is starting to feel like another home! I've fallen into a rhythm, and I actually feel very comfortable (and LOVE IT) here. I thought the transition would be hard for me, since I'm not very outgoing, I've never been out of the U.S., I'm not very good at making friends, I would be living in a house with a complete stranger, etc. But it was only weird for about a week or so, and even then it has been fun from the start! I've figured out how to fake a conversation with my host mom and not sound like an idiot... most of the time. I've gotten lost enough times in Toledo that I know the city and have been known to help many-a lost asian tourist find their way around. I love living in a small, cozy little town like Toledo, as opposed to Madrid or some of the other big cities that we have visited. And I have made some wonderful friends here. It was nice to know some of the students pre-Toledo, but believe it or not, I've actually made my own friends as well! It makes such a difference living in a new and strange place when you have good friends to lean on!

But when I stop and think about it, it's still pretty weird that I'm here. I'm living in Spain! I remember earlier this summer when I was at Itasca for 5 weeks and I thought that was strange and new! Actually, I was more uncomfortable that first night at Itasca than I was my first night here! (That may have been due to sheer exhaustion, but still.) And here I am, living the Spanish life, planning trips around Europe left and right! (This past week I think I planned about 4 upcoming trips, among them Munich and Switzerland in November, Morocco next weekend, and finalizing Paris plans!*) It's like when everyone says "study abroad is a life-changing experience," and here I am right now experiencing my life-changing experience. Part of me never wants to leave, but another part of me knows that when I do go home I will still have whatever I learn or gain here, and I will have changed and grown as a person (yada yada yada), and I will have my Toledo friends because, as luck will have it, most of us go to the UofM! If that makes any sense... I feel like I have a very firm grasp of this concept in my mind, but it does not translate very well when I try to explain it.

*A side note on my Paris plans: I am going to Paris over my "fall break" (essentially an extended weekend) with Nolan and Emilie, Oct. 29-31. The other day it hit me how hilarious it is that Emilie and Nolan are spending their weekend in the most romantic city in the world... WITH ME! Nolemnah for life. 

Back to my random musings... I found out my mom is coming to visit! I was getting kind of worried because my parents weren't sure if they would be able to make it, and everyone talks about when their parents are coming to visit, and what they are going to show them in Toledo, and where they are going to travel... and I was getting kind of sad. :(  But just the other day my mom told me she's coming! And she's coming after the semester, which works out because now I have another travel buddy: I can go to Italy with Paige, meet my mom in Italy, perhaps venture up to Slovenia (land of 1/4 my ethnicity) and then head back to visit a few choice locations in Spain. Sounds good to me!

Tonight I start my weekly "tutoring" sessions. I'm teaching a spanish kid English, and I think the kid is like 2-3 years old... so I can probably just talk to them and play with them in English? Maybe we'll go over basics like colors, do some fun flashcards (I've discovered that my animal drawings amaze spanish children...), sing a little Head Shoulders Knees and Toes and other such fun learning songs. Man, if I had a guitar I'd go Sound of Music all over this kid. It will either be super fun or really awkward if I don't know what to do... let's hope for super fun. Wish me luck!

I could probably ramble on and on about random stuff forever...but this is getting a bit lengthy. Most of my posts so far have just about weekends when I travel, so I figure I should work in a little more of the day-to-day stuff. Emilie told me to do this like... a few weeks ago and I'm just getting to it. Here ya go, kiddo!

One more thought before we go... I wish I were as good at blogging as my friend Becca (http://bexshrake.blogspot.com/). I started reading her entire life/spanish blog, and she's hilarious and makes me feel inferior. However, she is a Journalism major, and I am a Zoology/Ecology/Conservation/something-or-other Biology major. So I'll give myself a little credit.

Portugal: Lisbon and Sintra

Although I have very little to use as a comparison right now, Portugal will probably rank as one of my best weekends here in Europe. It was amazing. I took an overnight train to Lisbon on thursday night, had two solid days of exploring, and took the overnight back on saturday night. A perfect whirlwind tour of Lisbon and nearby Sintra. For this trip I feel like we just said, "Portugal, here we come!" and didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into. Everywhere we've been so far in Spain, someone has a Rick Steves guide, and we know all about the history and have tips about where to go and what to do. I looked up a few things here and there on the internet, but other than that, nothing. I think I just expected Portugal to be a lot like Spain, but it certainly had it's own unique flavor, and while the Portuguese language is similar to Spanish, it's still very different. But surprisingly, almost everyone spoke english, so it wasn't even an issue.

The train ride was not the greatest 9 hours of my life (18 hours round trip...), but Nolan had to use his last days on his Eurail pass, so I thought I'd go with him, and I don't particularly love flying. The rest of our group (who did fly) slept at the airport the night before each early-morning flight, so I figure either way would have been two nights of uncomfortable sleeping.

We got into Lisbon around 8am on friday morning, and the first thing we saw as we stepped out of the train station was a grand view of the Tajo River (the very same one we have here in Toledo!) before it empties out into the ocean! We walked along the river until we came upon the main plaza, the Praça do Comercio, then turned up the street and walked a few blocks to our hostel. Luckily we met Andrew at the hostel, who had just arrived from his flight, and who had made the reservation for the three of us. Then we ran into the girls who had arrived the day before, ate some breakfast at the hostel, and made our plans for the day! Since the girls had done a tour of Lisbon on thursday, we decided to go on a little day trip on friday. Destination: Sintra.

Sintra

Kelsey described Sintra pretty well when she pitched the idea: a fairy tale town. About 35 minutes into the 40-minute train ride, I spotted a castle atop a "hill" (a huge hill) and thought to myself, "Holy crap, that must be where we're going!" Once we got off the train, we found ourselves in a beautiful, colorful little town... and noticed that there was not just one castle atop the hill, but also a huge palace on the other peak! We still didn't know exactly what to do... so we grabbed some maps and followed the signs. First we hiked up a little hill to the historical center, with even more cute buildings, and the Palácio Nacional de Sintra, which we decided skip in favor of the castles on top of a hill... obviously. 

Castle on the left, Palace on the right

Then we hiked up a little more and found the Quinta da Regaleira, a palace and chapel set among a gorgeous park/garden/thing. This wasn't even one of the castles on the hill, and it was amazing. I didn't spend too much time in the palace, but we wandered around the grounds, climbed some towers, discovered secret gardens, admired many fine statues, and even explored some caves! It just had all these great little hidden nooks and crannies, and we had to tear ourselves away to get to the main attractions!

Quinta da Regaleira

We had to walk back into town to catch the bus up the hill (5€...bogus), although a few people from our group actually did walk all the way up... it was kind of incredible. Once we got to the Palacio da Pena, we took a long time figuring out if we wanted to spend 12€ on the Palace + the park, or just go for 6€ for the park. We went for the cheaper route, and it was definitely worth it. We walked right up to the palace and got our pictures, but then we spent more time hiking the trails (straight out of LOTR) and seeing the sites. Our first stop was the Warrior Statue, this giant statue on top of a pile of boulders. We just assumed you could go right up to the statue and check it out...turns out it was literally set on top of a huge pile of impassable huge boulders. Did that stop us from going up? Nope, the boys and I climbed up there anyway (sorry Mom), and while I didn't go quite as high as the boys, I found myself up above the trees, with an amazing view of the Palace!

Palácio da Pena (ground-view, not boulder-view)

Beautiful (LOTR) forest

After that we hiked up to the main peak, the Cruz Alta, a gorgeous viewpoint marked with a cross. Back at the Palace, Cruz Alta had looked super far away, and we weren't sure if we would make it! But it turned out to be a lovely hike through the woods (fun fact: most of us girls were wearing our cute sandals for all of this hiking, because we thought "fairy tale town = tons of hiking," obviously). This forest was gorgeous too (I forgot how much I missed a good forest!), and it is actually Fall in Portugal and the leaves were falling! Also, pretty much every step of this hike looked like something out of Lord of the Rings. We were constantly shouting, "This looks like the spot where the Fellowship breaks up!" or "Hey, this is where Boromir dies!" or "This little door could lead to the Mines of Moria!" Then we made it to Cruz Alta, and the view was absolutely breathtaking: we could see the Palace from where we had just walked, Lisbon to the Southeast, Mountains to the South, the Tajo River to the South leading out into the Atlantic Ocean to the West, and Portugal for as far as the eye could see to the North and East.

Vale Dos Lagos

After Cruz Alta, we worked our way around the rest of the park, visiting some more little buildings, statues, a lot of cool imported trees, and two lovely little ponds to finish it off (and I found some wood ducks!). By this time it was already 6-6:30ish, and we decided we should head back to Lisbon, which unfortunately meant skipping the Castelo dos Mouros. 

Back in Lisbon, we wanted to find a place to listen to some fado, a traditional Portuguese type of music. We found a place that had dinner and fado, but it was not the experience that we expected... first off, we were misled from the get-go. We looked at the menu outside, and thought it was a little pricey, but reasonable. So we are led down to the fado room, and when we look at the menu, it is completely different: a very limited selection, and no entrée was less than 20€. Then we are given some appetizers, and after we start to eat one, we realize they're on the menu, and would cost more then 20€ together. Then I felt like an idiot because I had read that this was common in Portugal, and I had completely forgotten... The music started, and it was pretty cool, but we felt super uncomfortable, and we didn't want to buy expensive meals, so we ordered a bottle of wine to split between the six of us, and then during intermission/before everyone else in the room got their meals, we decided to split! Awkward... and we found ourselves at a nice little buffet for dinner instead! 

On Saturday we thought we'd go on a walking tour of another area of Lisbon, but we all were a little late in getting ready, so that plan was abandoned (although I really wish I could have gone on some sort of tour and gotten more of the history of Lisbon). Instead we took our time at breakfast, making friends with our fellow hostellers, and set out to explore Belém, a civil parish of Lisbon. It was just far enough away that we had to take a horrible little tram ride there, but it was worth it. We were dropped off right in front of the Monasterio dos Jeronimos. We were able to enter the church for free, but it cost 7€ to go into the rest of the monastery. We decided to pass on the monstery, but it was a hard choice for me because I believe Rick Steves said it was his favorite cloister in all of Europe, and the thing was absolutely enormous, it had to have been cool on the inside... 

Fountain, with the Monastery behind it 

So we headed across the street to a nice garden with a sweet fountain, took some great pics, and crossed the next street to head down to the water to see (and go up to the top of) the Monument to the Discoveries, a huge statue commemorating Henry the Navigator. We really wanted to try some seafood on the sea (practically), so we found a little place right next to the monument that had some decent prices. Everyone ended up getting the same thing: Bacalhau à Brás, a portuguese specialty in which small pieces of cod, onions, and fried matchstick potatoes are cooked up in scrambled eggs. It was the cheapest fish dish, and it was fantastic.

Bacalhau à Brás

Tower of Belém

Then we walked over to the Tower of Belém, looked at it, decided not to pay money to go up, and headed back to central Lisbon. Here we split up: a few people went shopping, and Becca and Lauren took the rest of us to try a special drink that they had had on their tour the first day. It's called Ginjinha and it is made by infusing ginja berries (sour cherries) in brandy and adding sugar (and probably a few other things). It was really strong, but not actually that bad. The cherries on the other hand... not so much. We met up for dinner and decided to go for the cheap route once again: buy cheap food at the supermarket and have a picnic in the plaza! It was perfect, and a lovely way to finish off the weekend before Nolan and I headed back to the train station, and the others went off to the airport a little later. A perfect weekend!

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In other news, this weekend my sexy Ninjas back in Minnesota had their first Ultimate Frisbee tournament of the season!! I heard they won all their games on Saturday, and I'm anxiously awaiting today's results! I miss you ladies so much and hearing about the tournament really makes me want to play!!!! There are basically no fields in Toledo... we have a little gym where I can play fútbol, and I did bring a disc, but it just doesn't compare! Until spring season!

Opera night in Toledo

This weekend a lot of people stayed here in Toledo, and I had a very nice, chill... and super classy weekend! Before I even came to Spain, I was researching big cities all over Europe where I could go see an opera (Milan, Florence, Paris, London, Madrid, Barcelona) ...but who knew there were operas right here in Toledo!! The local Teatro de Rojas is putting on two operas this fall, and one of them (Don Pasquale) was this past weekend. This isn't an opera that I knew very much or had been dying to see, but if I was around this weekend, and the tickets were cheap, why not?? Another opera to cross off my list!

The only problem: who would I go with?? I have a few awesome friends back in the states who I've gone to operas with before... but I felt a little awkward asking a bunch of people who I barely know if they want to go to an opera. Nerd alert, am I right? Most of the young kids these days are not into opera. But it would have been pretty lame to go by myself, so I enquired with a few of my friends, and they said yes! So we got dressed up, had an extremely fancy dinner, and went to our local opera! (We even saw our program director there... can you say brownie points??)

I must admit that it wasn't the most amazing opera I've been to (and I wish I could have taken my opera newbs to more "classic" production), but the singers were still very good, and overall it was really fun! So I have to thank Lauren, Kelsey, and Becca for being classy and making my weekend!