Lucky 21

The gelato store should just leave it on this date.

Some say that sixteen is super sweet, but I’m going to put all the chips in for 21. Gambling may not be my thing, but I’m willing to bet that I had the best birthday weekend of my life, possibly in the history of the world. I hit the pack-your-bags-kids-we’re-moving-to-a-private-island jackpot. And that island was Capri.

To recap my 21^st birthday weekend, with much emphasis on trains, planes and automobiles (and boats): I flew into Naples on September 29 where I met McCallen, Annie and Kara, three friends from Vanderbilt who are studying in Florence. We took a rickety train from Naples to Sorrento, where our gorgeous, two story, glass floored hotel room had been waiting our arrival. That night, I started my love affair with Italian wine, food, limoncello, and gelato, in that order. (Pretty much every meal we ate consisted of those four elements, so I’ll save the details of each meal, all of which I remember every bite. If you are so inclined for a play-by-play of all the food we ate, I’d be happy to give it to you over the phone, but it might take two hours and I would probably cry at the end for how much I miss it.)

Gelato on our first night in Sorrento

The next morning, we woke up, pinched ourselves to be sure we were still vacationing on the Amalfi Coast and walked down the cliffs of Sorrento to a large dock, which is essentially Sorrento’s version of a beach. We swam in the Mediterranean, rented a paddleboat and talked for hours in the sunshine as cruise ships and fishing boats went past. That night, we had another delicious meal and went to a bar that apparently every American in Sorrento knew about, and thank goodness – I’ve discovered that going to a bar full of Italians wouldn’t be that fun. The men there don’t often understand (or choose to understand) the words “no”, “stop” or “I am not interested.”

Walking down the cliffs in Sorrento to the "beach"

The next day, October 1, rivaled all of the days in my 21 years as the best day of my life. We arrived in Capri by boat that morning, and after quite a long time waiting for a shuttle to take us to the hotel, checking in, and getting on a bus back down to the main area, we were a bit hungry and tired. Luckily, the house was in our favor because when we decided to rent a boat to take us around the island, we had no idea the amazing afternoon we were in for. I think the pictures speak for themselves. Capri is absolutely breathtaking. If there was ever a lull in the conversation as we relaxed on the boat while drinking our wine and eating grapes, crackers and cheese, inevitably one of the girls would say, “Wait. We are on a private boat off the coast of Italy.” Naturally, we would delightfully squeal in response and discuss how lucky we were. I would guess that this happened about 30 times, but that could be a gross underestimation.

Happy birthday to meeee

Leaving the dock

One of the many beautiful views from our boat tour

After the amazing boat ride, we went back to the hotel, still discussing our lucky lives. We went into town for dinner, but we stumbled upon a store where one Antonio Viva was making customized sandals. After a day in Italy on a boat drinking wine, what more could four college girls desire but a pair of shoes made especially for them? Naturally, we all invested in a pair.

Antonio crafting my new sandals! 

Caprese salad... in Capri. 

Off to Naples! 

After waking up the next day and pinching ourselves again, we took a commuter boat from Capri to Naples, where we stopped for pizza in what was probably a mafia headquarters. The excitement of all the organized crime made the outstanding pizza that much better.

The best pizza I've ever had... someone was probably killed upstairs while I ate it. 

Then we went back to Florence to be reunited with my other dear friend Hannah, who is living with McCallen, and Hannah’s boyfriend Drew, who is studying with me in Madrid. We walked up a hill to the Piazza de Michelangelo for a gorgeous view of Florence at night and went to La Beppa Fioraia for my Italian birthday dinner. We walked around Florence, drank wine in the Piazza Republica, and at midnight, McCallen bought me a celebratory shot at Shots Café. (As I’m writing this, I can’t believe all of this happened. It feels like a dream, but I have the pictures to prove it!)

The Duomo in Florence

Fried pizza rolls and prosciutto for a birthday appetizer. 

My best friends! (Oh, and Florence in the background)

Before Drew and I went back to Madrid on my actual birthday, we ate the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever had at Pino’s with McCallen and Hannah. Then it was on to Bologna where our flight was slightly delayed. Unfortunately, I missed the delicious birthday dinner my Spanish host family had prepared for me, but Mary Jordan told me they enjoyed it, so I felt like I had enjoyed it too.

That week, we celebrated two birthdays! Jennifer, running superstar, turned 21 on Wednesday, October 5, so we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Wednesday and went out to a discoteca on Thursday! We started Thursday night at El Tigre, a bar that houses the biggest mojitos and most delicious free tapas in all of Madrid. We’ve been back three times since then.

Birthday celebration #1 (in Madrid, that is)

Birthday celebration #2

That Saturday, we took a day trip to the lovely Toledo where we consulted our pal Rick Steve’s guide to Spain and learned everything we needed to know about the Catedral de Toledo and El Greco’s famous paintings there. (Amusing moment: we quickly abandoned our self-guided tour when we heard what we thought was a parade outside the church. Turns out it was a protest of the education system, and we couldn’t get back inside. Only in Spain would a protest sound as fun as a street festival.)

The family 

Gorgeous altar in El Catedral de Toledo

I've been known to take an artsy pic or two in my day.

Since then, we’ve been in Madrid! We’ve explored new neighborhoods, gone to a parade, went to an amusement park, made new friends and had an amazing time. I do miss the comforts of home (driving a car, Target, queso) but I know that I am so lucky to be here. I’ve played my cards right thus far – I can only hope that my luck here in Europe continues.  

New Places, Faces and Races

As promised, my blog post that should have gone up last week! So sorry for the delay! I'll be working on pictures and a post trying to describe my indescribable 21 birthday weekend in Italy. Un beso! 

Last weekend, last week and this weekend have been some of our best here. We’ve been making big strides on branching out and finding new locales to study, eat and drink (welcome to life abroad) and we’re also meeting lots of new people! Forgive me, but I’m going to pull a fast one and bullet point the highlights of the last ten days. Hopefully the pictures will speak louder than my limited word capacity.

Places:

1. Kapital (last weekend) and Moondance (last week) – The clubs know how to do it up style in Madrid, and know how to make you stay until 6 am.  Great for Saturday nights – not so great for meeting on a bus Friday morning for a Vandy-sponsored weekend trip to Salamanca.

Kapital

Moondance 

1.     2. Santander Park and a little dog park nearby – We played cards there last weekend, and Tyler and I were going to run on the park's track on Monday. We ate an omelet and a sandwich instead. Exercise continues to evade me....

Love these goons.

3. Chocolateria San Gines – AMAZING churros con chocolate. (Great transition from my lack of exercise.) Very reminiscent of Café Dumond in New Orleans. 

Yummy! 

1.     4. A movie theater near our house – we saw Un Cuento Chino and it was hilarious. It was the perfect movie for us because it’s about a Chinese man who doesn’t speak any Spanish and an Argentinean who begrudgingly agrees to help him. There was a lot of slow pronunciation and a great scene where a cow falls from the sky. I highly recommend this one. 

Check it out! 

1.    5. Salamanca – Apparently there are great bars in this university town with lots of students. We couldn’t find any of those.

Cathedral in Salamanca

Courtyard in Salamanca

2.     6. El Escondorial – where all the royals are buried. It was wildly boring, with the exception of a wedding that literally we walked in to.

booooooring

3.    7. Museo Sorolla y La Reina Sofia – I forgot my camera at my two favorite museums that we’ve visited. I suppose I’ll just say they were amazing and leave it at that.

Insert photo here! 

4.     8. Kebab restaurants - Sinfully delicious sandwich. I think the picture says it all.

Photo cred: Mary Jordan

5.     9. El Rastro – The most overwhelming outdoor market of all time. I managed to buy two scarves, but we’re planning on returning when it gets a bit colder so there will be less people.

SO many deals, so little time

6

Faces:

1.     1. Luis and Alberto – our brothers have finally come back from summer vacation! Luis, 17, is pretty talkative and a big Atletica Madrid fan. We played a game last week with him and Ana to practice our Spanish. Alberto, 19, is the quietest of all the Llorente-Oliver kids but incredibly sweet.

2.     2. Friends from Northwestern – while wandering around our neighborhood last week, we ran into Danielle and Zach from Northwestern. We’ve been out with them a couple times, and despite a language barrier (thick Midwestern accents), we’ve become fast friends.  

3.     3. Mary Jordan’s friend Marchie – She goes to Furman; we walked around with her to some Irish pubs around Puerta de Sol the other afternoon.

4.     4. New teachers – We’ve now had two days of class and we’ve met all of our teachers for Phonology, Literature and Film, 16^th Century Spanish plays and Grammar. I think Professor Díez is my favorite thus far – we’ll be watching four movies in class over the course of the semester, so he already has an A in my book. 

Races

I’ve had countless new experiences and new people to share them with over the past two weeks, but one in particular takes the postre. Two of our group-mates, Jennifer and Drew, ran in the Madrid Por Madrid 10K race through the streets of downtown last Sunday. We went to support them with a homemade sign and when they told us that they thought we weren’t going to wake up so early to cheer them on, my little corazón was filled with delight. I knew it meant a lot to them to see us cheering them on, but I think it meant more to me that I couldn’t imagine not doing that for them. We’ve all become really close over the past month, and forming these seven relationships with my fellow Vanderbilt students has been one of, if not the most, impactful part of my trip. Even though I love meeting new people and speaking Spanish, having this Vandy family away from home has been a true comfort and I am blessed to have them here! 

Our view of the race

Our sign

The champs themselves

Lo siento!

A quick note - I have a post written and ready to go but I also want to add the pictures to make everyone's (whoever you are out there) reading experience more enlightening. It takes awhile to load the pictures and this week was a bit hectic. I'm off to Italy tomorrow to ring in my 21st birthday with some girlfriends but I PROMISE I will post my adventures from last week on Monday and get to work on writing about the Amalfi coast (where I just heard it is in the low 80s and sunny all weekend...)

Adios - or should I say ciao!

To Be Or Not To Be... A Tourist

With the exception of a Monday night that was better suited to be a Saturday night, and a rough Tuesday morning to follow, Madrid has treated me well! This week has been an excellent balance of feeling like a tourist and a budding madrileña. 

Ah, tourism. A delight because I never feel awkward snapping photos of the big sights, but a bummer because I want to be able to feel at home here. But I guess there's nothing wrong with feeling amazed by beautiful paintings and architecture when it's in your own city! (Obviously those who have ever been to the Varsity in Atlanta know what I'm talking about.)  

We went to the Prado on Tuesday and, unfortunately, we all had eyes more glazed than a baker's dozen of Krispy Kremes. Our tour guide spoke really quickly (in Spanish) and while we only looked at about 15 paintings, we stood at each one for what felt like a week. But we did get to see a lot of Goya's work, including El Dos de Mayo and El Tres de Mayo, both of which I was scared to take a picture of. I attempted to take some photos in the Prado, but by the time we went to the Thyssen Museum on Thursday, I was so sick of being yelled at by guards that I just decided to enjoy the art. The Thyssen and I got along much better because I could actually understand our tour guide. (Hola... clase...Me... llamo... Laura...¿Me...entiendes?) 

El Palacio de Comunicaciones

El Prado Museo from the side

Entrance to the Royal Botanical Gardens next to the Prado.
(We're planning on checking it out when it cools off a bit.)

In another big time tourist move (without any prompting from our school, mind you), our group decided to ride the Teleferico this week, an aerial cable car ride that takes you away from Madrid so you can see the whole city. There's not as much of a skyline as I thought there would be, but there was a gorgeous view of the royal palace and cathedral so it was well worth the trip. Not to mention the stylish free hats Tyler and I received with the beer we purchased at the halfway point.

These cable cars have been in use since 1969.
The words "Well, it's been a good life" went through my head when I learned this fact. 

The view from the top

El Palacio Real y El Catedral 

View from the halfway point

Find me an Atlanta girl and a Houston boy that can resist a free cowboy hat when they purchase beer and I'll... well, I don't know, but I don't think you could find them.

So while we've been Touristy McTouristers this week, we've also had some moments to integrate fully into Madrid culture! Mary Jordan and I went to El Parque de Buen Retiro last week to write some postcards and sip some sangria, and after the Prado on Tuesday, the whole gang joined us! The park is 350 acres and has a plethora of attractions, including the lake I posted pictures of in my second post. This week we found the Palacio Cristal! I'm not sure what the function this crystal palace has in a park, but apparently there is also an art gallery and a fake mountain which we have yet to see, so you never know what you'll stumble upon.

We watched some sweet little boys feed the ducks in this lake! 

El Palacio Cristal

In addition to frequenting Parque de Retiro, we also went to el mercado. It's not a "market" that we normally think of, like a farmer's market, but more like a bunch of different deli stations at a normal grocery store, but more specified and varied. For protein, there's fish counters, chicken counters, meat counters and, of course, ham counters. Notably, the Spanish eat ALL of pigs, and we had the delight of seeing pig kidneys, pig brains, pig ears and a grand finale of a gutted suckling piglet that was about the size of my dog Chester. It was freakish. I decided not to take a picture. However, we also saw fruit counters, cheese counters, drink counters and a delicious pastry and bread counter that Mary Jordan and I had jamon y queso croissants. In addition to typical foods, there is also a section for clothes, shoe repairs, alterations, a florist, and school supplies. Each little counter/shop is rented out by a different owner or family, and they all have their names above their products. After walking around for a bit with our teachers Rosana and Alicia, they left us and we had to complete a worksheet with questions like "What is the difference between jamon iberico and jamon serrano?" and "What are the advantages and disadvantages of shopping in a mercado as opposed to a typical grocery store?" We had to approach the owners of the shops as well as shoppers and chat with them in Spanish in order to get the answers we needed. (Maybe that's a little touristy, but we were speaking completely in Spanish so I felt quite immersed.)

One of the meat counters

The delicious pandería!

So I didn't take a picture of the suckling pig or the brains,
but here is some delicious conejo.

Everyone was incredibly friendly and one owner let us sample some amazing sheep's cheese from Salamanca. Another man let me try a tiny Spanish plum, and when I said, "Es más dulce que en los Estados Unidos," ("It's sweeter than in the US") he responded, "Si, son más pequeños en Espana pero mucho más dulces." ("Yes, they are smaller in Spain, but they are sweeter") and winked at me. At first, I didn't quite understand what he was implying but my friend Drew quickly explained. I guess innuendos are harder to pick up in a different language!

The fruit counter with the infamous winking.

In addition to our touristy/non-touristy activities, our group has been hanging out at Pool and Beer and we're definitely speaking Spanish more with Pedro and Mario!

Sarah, Mary Jordan, Me and Jennifer

Finally, Mary Jordan and I helped our host sister, Ana, with her English homework this week! Hey, if I can teach English as a second language and then speak to her in Spanish, I might actually be getting somewhere after taking Spanish since I was 8. Here's hoping that Ana will like English as much as I love Spanish and she'll have the opportunity to travel somewhere as beautiful as Madrid! 

Mary Jordan and our sweet student!

Off to a tapas bar tonight, then we're checking out the Madrid discoteca scene for the first time! Hasta lunes! 

Un beso! 

Possible Slogans

Hola de Parque de Buen Retiro en Madrid! The adventures have continued and I now have two trips outside of Madrid checked off the ever-growing travel list. I don’t know if y’all have heard, but there are some pretty breathtaking places to check out when one is in Europe (who knew??) and I intend to get my cowboy boots in as many cities as I can! Right now, we’re taking an intensive level Spanish course to review grammar and practice speaking in order to prepare us for regular classes that start on September 22. In addition to our academic lessons, Alicia and Rosana have taught us some important Spanish norms, like not to tip more than 5% and to just pass on running with the bulls at the Festival de San Fermin if you haven’t been in training with the NFL. 

However, Rosana randomly said something last week that could permanently define my trip: “Para los jovenes, el viajar es crecer.” (“For young people, to travel is to grow.”) I wrote it in all caps and spaced out for a few minutes to reflect on this serendipitous moment. How delightful that Rosana just gave me a tangible way to epitomize what I want out of this trip – but it sounds so much better in Spanish. (I’m beginning to think everything sounds better in Spanish: chupito, guay and tiquismiquis are some of my favorite words at the moment.)

Needless to say, hearing this phrase pleased me immensely, and I thought about it several times as I surveyed the sights of Segovia last Tuesday, including el Acueducto, el Catedral de Segovia y el Alcazar. I sampled some pastries and we had our lunch in the plaza in the shade of the enormous cathedral. I had only arrived in Spain four days before, and already we were taking two-hour breaks to drink sangria on our school trip. So where do I apply for the lifelong scholarship??

The Aqueduct - I'm loving the panoramic function on my camera!

La Catedral de Segovia

Un grupo fabuloso!

El Alcanzar

I almost passed out climbing the stairs to the top.

My love for Spain grew as we checked out the sights of Madrid in the afternoons after class last week. The big highlights were the Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol y el Palacio Real, but as Rosana said, el viajar is where the growing comes in, and while we haven’t been getting out too far into Madrid, we’ve definitely improved our navigation skills in our neighborhood. (Case in point: Although MJ and I can now get to our bus stop in under 10 minutes, we randomly wandered into the strongly gay neighborhood this afternoon, la Cheuca. It looks like they have some raging bars and they had great gelato, if you’re interested.) Pool and Beer is our favorite local spot in our neighborhood, where we speak Spanish to Pedro and Mario, the bartenders, and they speak English and give us a good price. (We’re working on upping the ante to fully Spanish. Patience is a virtue.) 

Plaza Mayor

  

El Palacio Real

Only picture in the entrance of the Palacio Real before a guard screamed at us.

Pool and Beer - neither are featured in this picture, but I promise they have both. 

So not only have I adopted Rosana’s excellent expression, I’ve picked up two others: “¿Porqué no?” and “No pasa nada.” Porqué no means “Why not?” and relates immensely to us jetting off to San Sebastian last Thursday, while no pasa nada means “no big deal” and I use it in every context I can. Should we go to the beach this weekend? Why not? It will take seven hours on a bus and we’d leave tomorrow. No big deal!

In San Sebastian, I responded “¿Porqué no?” to climbing up a mountain with a gorgeous view of the city and the ocean, going to a club right on the beach and tasting mini appetizers called pintxas. And when I realized I forgot my camera battery pack and enough clothes for the weekend, I said no pasa nada! San Sebastian was the perfect way to take a vacation from my vacation.

I stole these pictures from Mary Jordan's facebook. 

Playa de San Sebastian - one of the best city beaches in Europe!

Amigos!

Back in the “real” world, our intensive class continues to be supplemented with trips to the museums, el mercado and the movies! This week will be the only 5-day week I have all semester; I’ve arranged my schedule so I only have class Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Looks like I’ll be saying porqué no to a lot of places where I can continue to viajar y crecer. Will it be hard to keep my head from exploding as I keep taking in as much of Europe as I can? Posiblemente, cariños, pero no pasa nada!

Un beso!