Me Encanta Venecia

Bonjourno,

That's about the only Italian I learned over the weekend. Bonjourno, prego (which seems like it pretty much means anything you want it to - thank you, excuse me, may I, etc.) and ciao...and that's the span of my Italian vocabulary. I do LOVE Venice though. I would say this was one of the best weekends we had, but, then again, I say that after every weekend?! It was so much fun though. Venice is such a cute, quaint, little town...I just couldn't get enough of it. We had so much fun just walking around, shopping, eating and people-watching. I think we ate more this weekend than we have our entire trip, but you just can't say no to some good Italian food. :)

During our flight in, we flew over the Alps - it was amazing and something I wasn't expecting. I have never seen mountains like this before (I have now one-upped Granada/Sierra Nevada), and it was so neat to see them from up above.

Here's our view coming into Venice - the Alps right next to the coast line.

These are a couple of the first canals I saw in Venice. They all look so much alike and so different at the same time. Each one was so charming and cute - I loved it. :)

This is our hotel room in our little Bed & Breakfast. It literally looked like it should have been a room at our grandma's house in Venice, Italy - HA. It was so cute though!

The view from our hotel room window. It was so weird to watch people float on by in their boats.

Kels and I standing on the Accademia bridge overlooking the Grand Canal.

Standing on one side of the Grand Canal - that's the tower from the Basilica behind us.

My first Gondola ride and with our precious Gondalier, Stefano. He was funny and entertaining and he spoke great English. We fell in love with him!

This is the Rialto Bridge that gives a great view of the Grand Canal. We got some gelato, stood on the bridge and people-watched...it was very entertaining and the gelato was amazing. It was actually pretty cool to eat REAL Italian Gelato considering my first job was at a gelato shop and I had no idea what gelato was before I started working there...ha. It definitely brought back some memories.

Venice - view of the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge.

There were tons of little streets like this among all of the canals and squares. I loved the little twinkle lights in the streets like this...it made for cute scenery. :) We walked around a ton and went into all of these different little shops with Venetian trinkets such as masks and Murano glass. I wish we had time to go to Murano and see the blown glass being made, but I guess I'll have to plan on that for next time.

Dinner our first night sitting out on the patio of a restaurant in one of the many squares. Our waiter was adorable and so sweet and patient with our delirious-selves. He was half Romanian and half Italian and we could pretty much tell you his life story now.

Sidenote regarding us being completely delirious - we had to wake up at 3:30 a.m. on Friday morning in order to catch a cab to take us to the airport at 4:30 a.m. to be on time for our 6:30 a.m. flight to Venice. Needless to say, by dinner time on Friday, we were all exhausted, haha.

This is St. Mark's Square and the Basilica. It was all so pretty and I am glad we went to see it although we did not go inside, but this area was PACKED with people and tourists. We didn't like it as much as the other areas, where we had been in previously, that were more quiet and charming.

That's pretty much it for Venice. I had a blast and would love to go back! I can't wait to see more of Italy with my parents once my semester in Spain is over. Also, speaking of my parents, they're coming to Spain in about 19 days and I am SO excited!! :)

This is the official end of our first mini-mester, so we have a TON of school work to do this week. I don't know if I'll get to blog again any time this week, but I'll do my best! This weekend we go to Lisbon, Portugal, and it is one of my friend's 21st birthdays, so it should be a fun weekend full of birthday celebrations! Our trip to Lisbon kind of acts as our break between our two mini-mesters of the semester. We'll be there from Saturday through Tuesday and I'm excited to see what it's like!

Work has continued to be good. I met my boss's wife one day last week. She likes to talk...she even told me that she likes to talk. It's nice though because he hardly ever talks, so it's entertaining to have her around every-so-often to talk my ear off. I don't understand everything she says, but she wants to help me learn and understand, and she's very interested in me and my life, family, etc. One day last week she decided she wanted me to go run errands with her, so, in the middle of me putting books in order on the shelves, she made me leave the store with her. It was raining that day, so the two of us were under her umbrella together just walking down the street - ha. I can only imagine what we looked like to other people. She is probably in her mid 60s and is shorter than I am - we bonded over the fact that we are both short. First, we went to a store so she could buy a lottery ticket. On Friday the lottery was supposed to be at 28 million euros (or something like that), so she was pretty excited about it. After that, we went down a couple more stores to a bakery where she said she wanted to buy a package of cinnamon-sugar donuts for her "amiga." I asked if that "amiga" was me and she said yes. I told her I didn't need them but she didn't care and insisted I take them so I could eat them for breakfast, or a snack or just whenever I wanted to eat them. I think really she just thought I didn't eat (little does she know) and wanted to fatten me up, ha. After purchasing the donuts we went back to the bookstore and I went back to work. Overall, I really like my boss's wife. I still don't know her name, but I like her...she's definitely entertaining.

I guess that's it for now...I'm going to go catch up on sleep tonight after my amazing weekend in Italy! Hugs and love to Texas!

Ciao :)

Paige



I'm Still Here!!

Hi,

I'm SO sorry it has taken me so long to update my blog again. I knew there would come a point in time when I lost track of my posts. Life has just picked up a bit around here lately, and it hasn't slowed down yet. I feel like my semester is already coming to an end - ha. We technically have two mini-mesters within the four months that we are here, and our first mini-mester is coming to an end next week, so we are overloaded with projects, presentations, quizzes and tests until then. I figured it would be a lot more fun to write what I want to write about than to work on any of my ACTUAL homework right now. :)

Okay, so two weekends ago (the weekend after Barcelona) we went to Granada with our program and stayed for one night. I have had so many people tell me how much they love Granada and how it is one of their favorite places, so I think I had my hopes a little too high for our trip to Granada. Our hotel was more on the outskirts of town, from what I could tell, so I don't think I got the full-on "Granada Experience." We still had a great time though! I'm definitely not complaining. :) The mountain scenery was gorgeous; some of the boys even stayed a day longer to ski.

This picture doesn't show a lot of the mountains, but I figured it showed some good scenery with it too. This was my first time to actually see ski-able mountains!

We also saw La Alhambra, which is a palace, and it is one of the most popular sites to see in all of Spain. We walked through the gardens (which is where I took the above picture from) and through the palace itself. I loved all of the windows with their gorgeous views.

This is just a pretty view of the scenery - the mountains, the town and part of the palace.

I love this picture. I don't know why though? I just like how it shows some of the architecture with the windows and you can see the beautiful view that we had!

The Taj Mahal was actually modeled after this particular courtyard area.

Some of the girls in the pretty city of Granada. :)

We also visited the cathedral in Granada, we were not allowed to take pictures throughout much of it, but here is one that I really like...

This is part of the spice market we went too...it smelled amazing!

That night we went to a Flamenco dance show. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen - by far my favorite part of Granada! It was actually in a cave, in the side of a mountain, that has been turned into a room where they host these shows. I am amazed at the talent these dancers had. I just wish I could have gotten better pictures!

After the flamenco show, they took us to the side of a cliff that had this gorgeous night-time view of La Alhambra.

It also overlooked the entire city of Granada - so pretty!

That's about it for Granada. Sevilla has had such nice weather lately while it's been snowing/icing over in Texas. I think I picked a pretty good winter to skip in Texas because I'm loving this constant 50 to 60 degree weather!

So, during all of these pretty days - we go to parks like this - or hang out in a grassy area along the river that runs through the city. I have yet to get a good picture of the river, but I will soon!

This was the sunset one night at the river. :)

Also, one day during the week. Two of my friends and I tried to complete some extra credit for one of our classes. We were supposed to go to an outlet mall that is on the outskirts of town and take a picture of ourselves in front of it. We found out all of this information about where to take the bus from, etc. When we got to the bus stop we asked around and everyone said we were in the right place, so we got on the bus and headed to the outlet mall, or so we thought, but the bus passed the outlet mall right up.

We ended up in Carmona, a town outside of Sevilla.

We made a good day out of it though - even though we were unsure as to how we were going to get home - ha. We looked around a while, ate lunch and then took a bus back to Sevilla. 

We entertain ourselves pretty well during the week, and when it's pretty weather we always want to be outside. We've decided lunch is very inconvenient here. We get out of class at 12 p.m., but we usually don't leave the school until around 12:30 or so because we all stand around and talk, and some days I have work from 12 to 1:30. Anyways, lunch is between 2:30 and 3 for most everyone, so by the time we get to the river (which is a good 20-30 minutes away, depending on whether we walk or take the bus), it's kind of ridiculous for us to go all the way home for lunch. We've been going to the supermarkets and buying bread/deli meat/cheese and making our own "bocadillos" by the river. It makes for a fun little picnic on pretty days!

This past Friday, we went on an excursion to La Rábida with the program. La Rábida was where Christopher Columbus set sail from, so that made for something interesting to see. I've been hearing about Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492 since I was 5 years old, and now I have seen the exact spot where he left from!

This is it. This grassy area with weeds, shrubs and trees is where Chris set sail from in 1492...not quite what you were expecting? Yeah, me either. Apparently the bay is on the other side of all of this shrubbery and it used to be a lot higher up - obviously.

We also went and saw the monastery where Chris came up with his whole plan. Then we went and saw the replicas of his three ships - The Niña, The Pinta and The Santa María.

Here are two of the ships, and that's the "New World" set up behind the ships; it's as if the ships have just landed on the coast of America. 

After seeing all of the historical stuff, we went to the beach for a little while! It was on the Atlantic Ocean and was really pretty! We were basically the only people on the beach, so that made it fun too. :)

After spending just an hour and a half at the beach on Friday, we kind of had beach fever, so we ended up waking up on Saturday and going to Cádiz to stay at a friend's family's beach house/condo. We were actually in Rota, a small town that has an American Naval base near it. It was GORGEOUS and such a cute little town. It was even warm enough that we had shorts on and some of us even put our swim suits on. It was so nice just to spend the day lounging on the beach with not a worry in the world. :)

This was our view while we ate lunch.

Our sunset on Saturday night!

This was on Sunday, spending our last few ours bundled up on the beach because it was windy and chilly!

That's pretty much it for my beach visits so far...althought I did just book a trip to the Canary Islands at the end of March. This Friday I leave for Venice with a couple of my friends. I am SO excited to go to Italy! :)

Here's a picture of my entire upper-level Spanish class for this first mini-mester. We technically have two classes with the same professor. This is everyone in my class and my professor (bottom right). This was when we went to an art museum here in Sevilla and had to give presentations over particular paintings (in Spanish of course).

 Work is still the same ol' thing...not much is new there. I received a package yesterday from my mom's cousin and his wife - it's always so exciting to receive something in the mail. :) It was filled with Texas treats - including Girl Scout cookies which I couldn't be more excited about!!

I'll try and update again some time this week. I'm sure there are some things I forgot to tell in this post, but it has taken me two days to finish this, so I think I'll leave it at this for now and update more later - ha. Hope everything is going well in Texas!

Hugs from Spain,

Paige