I realize I am embarrassingly late in updating this blog but I'm going to try to accomplish a massive blogging update for Easter Break and hopefully get one up about my English class trip to Berlin.
Mama and I flew out of Frankfurt-Hahn on Friday morning and arrived at our apartment in Torremolinos (in the Costa Del Sol) a little bit before noon. After going to the grocery store for some lunch food about everything you would expect to go wrong with the apartment did, the laundry machine locked with our clothes inside then proceeded to flood, the shower wouldn't turn on, the power went out, etc, etc...We did manage to get down to the beach for an hour and sit in some sun, for me for the first time in what felt like 1,000 years. We got dinner at an Indian restaurant that night and watched some classy MTV programing on tv. The next day we both managed to sleep past noon and then went shopping along the water before the boys arrived from Madrid.
We departed Torremolinos the following day and drove to Tarifa. On the way we stopped at the rock of GIbraltar. It wasn't like anything I had been expecting, people actually live out there on that rock which stunned me. It was also amusing seeing all the British signs and paying in sterling for the day. We hiked around in the hills and saw the ony wild primates in Europe. I swear we were surrounded by 20 monkeys, one of them really enjoyed climbing around on Dad's back. After sitting at a cafe in the town square we drove on to Tarifa where we would stay in order to go on our day trip to Morocco.
The next morning we took the boat over to Morocco. We spent the day with a tour group and had a bus take us up to ride on some camels (scarier than you would expect when they stand up), see a snake charmer, wander the streets of the medina, and learn about rugs and traditional medicines, and eat a traditional meal. The meal was so good, they gave us chicken with couscous, dessert, sweet tea, and kebabs. It wasn't a very large amount of time spent there but it was still worthwhile and enjoyable. I wish I could write more on this trip but I think you had to be there to understand just how cool walking around the Medina and Kasbah was. Six continents down, one to go!
Once we got back to Spain we travelled on to Sevilla. The Easter festivities that were occurring were crazy! I swear we nearly got trampled by the Easter processions. These people were borderline terrifying, they marched silently through the streets in hooded and masked cloaks that looked like the outfits the KKK wore. We climbed to the top of the Cathedral on our second day and on our fourth explored some alleyways trying to locate where the flamenco dance performance was. We also saw the most magnificent Spanish architecture. On our third day in Sevilla, we actually did another day trip, this time to Portugal. We saw a plethora of boats and Griffin ordered himself a Smirnoff Ice, because it was legal and because he's a wimp. We took a ferry out to a secluded beach and I lay in the sand for as long as my parents would let me. It was I think the nicest and cleanest beach I have ever been to, the sand squeaked when you walked on it! We had dinner at a restaurant along the water and ordered a pitcher of sangria, Mama almost fell asleep while sitting at the table.
After Sevilla we went to Cordoba for a pit stop on the way to Granada. We saw the Mesquita in Cordoba that was awesome, the striped bricks were really cool and it's a building my friends in architecture studied which made the trip feel more legit, even if it was pretty enough on its own. We saw a synagogue in Cordoba too and ate lunch at an interesting restaurant. We got to Granada around dinnertime and Griff, Dad and I headed out to find food, we ended up eating at the ex-pat bar and went back for every meal in Granada after that. For the day in Granada we went to Alhambra which was a palace designed with Moorish architectural style. It was really cool and overlooked a hill. There were also a lot of pretty flowers, which I am a little too fond of. We had an apartment in Granada and the only reason that I mention our housing accommodations is because Griffin and I had to sleep upstairs and to get there you had to climb a spindly spiral staircase which I fell down on the last day giving myself some of the nastiest bruises I have ever seen. We split off from the boys because they had a flight home to the states and Mama and I took the train to Madrid where we spent the day walking the streets and looking in the botanical gardens next to the Prado, we tried to go but it was closed on Mondays. On Tuesday I flew off to Berlin for my English class field trip and Mama was able to see the Prado and then jetted off to Stockholm to see Robin.
Morocco Pictures, Costa Del Sol and Sevilla Photos, Portugal and Gibraltar Pics, and Cordoba and Granada
Thursday, April 23, 2009
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