Sol y Sombra/ Sun and Shade

Part of the corrida de toro tradition is the "sol" and "sombra", or the sections in which you can sit to watch the bull fight. In the "sol", people tend to show up in their shorts and sombreros; in the "sombra", you see the well-dressed people, and the tickets for the latter section cost more (for the higher comfort level temperature-wise, one would infer).

Today, I noticed a habit of the Salmantinos (people of Salamanca) regarding this same theme, sun and shade. Megan and I were fighting to navigate our way through the crowds of Sunday's walkers, when I went off to the side and realized that there was NOBODY walking there. It took me a moment to realize what was going on: 

In the summertime (o sea, at the beginning of my semester here), everybody crowded into the shade to cool off; with the winter (or Fall, I guess...since technically it is Fall) coolness, the crowd of holiday season shoppers stays in the sun while the wide strip of shade becomes a deserted express lane - for those who dare walk in the coldest of the cold. 

A little to appreciate....

As death week (and a half) is approaching with its dreaded and mythical (the whole "I'm in Spain for studies" concept hadn't kicked in until now) finals and presentation (one. that one for my third year literature class that my brave, confident self who likes challenges signed up for without consulting the nervous half that would much rather fail an exam than "fail" a presentation in front of a classroom of 60 native Spanish speakers...Tell me again who signed "us" up for this?), there are a lot of reasons for me to be ready to be home. Why? Because December 22nd I'll be finished with classes, three days away from Christmas, five days away from seeing the bf in California, and who knows how many until Disneyland. And bacon. So much bacon. Garlic bread too. Food tangents aside (potential list of cravings to come?) , I have so many things to be starting down the countdown for. However, days like today remind me to stay here in the present, in my incredible experience in Spain, and make the most of these last two and a half weeks here in Salamanca. 

Why, you may ask?

1) I've finally become comfortable with my little babies (aka my students) in my English classes, to the point where when I ask them to listen, they actually do. The whole (clap clap clap clap clap. clap clap) method might be a keeper. 

2) My little babies found out that I leave in two weeks, and were really bummed about it. It's nice to feel that something is going right here in Salamanca in spite of my sporadic academics. 

3) THIS. (see pictures below)

3) (continued, the story behind the pictures). Leaving class today, one of my students said "Profe, mira el cielo" (profe, look at the sky). I looked up and saw this. Today is also the first day in forever that I've brought my camera to class (since we were taking pictures with the older kids). Walking across the bridge that I cross twice every Tuesday, I stopped and took a few pictures (ok, a lot of pictures) of this beautiful blessing, by the side of a friendly elderly man. He came up and started a conversation with me about how beautiful the sky is. After our brief conversation, he said that beautiful, Spanish "Hasta luego" even though we'll probably never see each other again. It's the small things in life that make it worth while. 

How lucky am I?

Besos,

Katie

P.s. I was listening to Itunes as I wrote this, and on my shuffle came many songs with sentimental melodies. One of the song's lyrics caught my attention (just ignore the fact that it's a love song, it has some pertinent phrases to the end of this study abroad adventure hehe). Titled "if you leave", Ashton Allen sings "Looking back on yesterday, I swear it was a dream..." and "It's almost time to say goodbye". Looking back on August, at the beginning of my time here in Spain, is almost surreal. It's so hard to believe that four months have flown by so quickly, but here I am, t minus three weeks from saying goodbye to Salamanca, maybe permanently, maybe just for a really long time. But, wohh, has it been a journey. 

Boa Lisboa e Mais de Portugal (Good Lisbon and More of Portugal)

This weekend, ISA took us on our last excursion with the destination of Lisbon, Portugal. We left Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., gained an hour of time, and arrived in at our hotel, AC Lisboa Marriot around 3 p.m. 

Stories from the bus: Camila, Brenda and I were very productive on the bus, if you count being productive as taking out your readings and a) falling asleep, article in hand or b) looking out the window, daydreaming while holding an economics book. 

A sad sad story in the life of Katie O: Brenda got hungry on the bus, and asked me to grab her lunch. I reached above, not paying attention to the grab I got, and handed her "her lunch" (Brenda's bag had a hole in it from the walk to Fonseca (ISA's meeting point) that morning). She thought that her water bottle as well as a sandwich had fallen out of her bag and was upset, but proceeded to eat the delicious, cheese and ham stuffed sandwich. Later, when we arrived to our lunch stop, I grabbed my lunch from above and set it on the seat, realizing that my host mom had for the first time given me water! I was really excited, until Brenda said that that was her lunch. She had eaten my favorite sandwich and none of the two boludas had even noticed!!! So, I ate the other sandwich that was in my lunch (this time a double decker with hamburger meat) and Brenda gave me her other bocadillo (which had turkey and cheese) in return for having eaten mine. 

Lisboa, the Portuguese version of San Fran

lots of tile work on the walls in Lisbon

Cute store with fish in entryway

Day one in Lisbon: Today, we went to el Castelo de São Jorge. We only had an hour to explore, so we didn't get to see the whole thing, but it was still really impressive! We thought it was a little bit like Hogwarts would be and had some scenes that could be straight out of a horror movie!

Outside of O Castelo de São Jorge

That night, we (Salvador, Brenda, Camila, Sofia, Mercedes,  and I) dined in a cute Italian restaurant. We tried the "vinho verde", typical to Portugal, which tasted (and looked) just like white wine to my amateur palate. As an entree, we had tortellini with pesto and for dessert, the most AMAZING chocolate cannelloni with rich strawberry ice cream. The workers were all VERY friendly and taught us some words in Italian and Portuguese. It was "molto buone". 

A taxi adventure: After dinner, Camila and I explored the "Bairro Alto", a neighborhood with a lot of bars, fado and one discoteca, which apparently is for the older crowd. So, we didn't stay too long and headed back to the hotel. When we got into the cab, I told the taxi driver "ao hotel AC Marriot", and asked if he wanted the address. He said no to the address, he knew hotel "Marriot". When we got to "our hotel" Camila and I realized we were at the wrong Marriot, and showed the taxi driver our address and the name of the hotel. He did not know the hotel, so went inside to ask where the other one was. He didn't charge us for the rest of the trip, and dropped us off at our true hotel! 

Day 2: Monasterio de los Jerónimos, Torre de Belém, "free time"

Convento de los Jerónimos: On Saturday, we had a tour guide that took us to the convent and the tower, and I can say that this was the first time that I was really intrigued by what she had to say (I might also have been a little biased because I was hooked on listening to the Portuguese influence on her Spanish...as an example her saying "simples" for a singular noun since the word is invariable despite plurality in Portuguese). 

History: The king Manuel the I ordered the building of the monastery to celebrate the return of the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama from his expedition to India. In the church, you can see the importance of the influence of exploring. The first example is the rope from sailboats engraved into the walls, followed by engraved globes and an Indian engraved in the ceiling as a reminder to search for the new, as a symbol of the innate human curiosity for novel discoveries. 

Above is Vasco de Goma's tomb, where you can see the sphere (on the right) along with the sailing ropes. Above his tomb on the ceiling is where you can find the Indian. I didn't get a picture of that though. 

Torre de Belem: The construction of the tower also began under the rule of Manuel the I and was used as a control of the port! 

During free time, Brenda, Sal, Camila and I went to Hard Rock Cafe, where we had some delicious strawberry daiquiris and bbq hamburgers after a 45 minute wait. We sent the bill to the table with the ISA directors, just like in the movie Dumb and Dumber. (except not really, we paid ourselves). 

Fado and bacalhau: Saturday night, Camila and I went to Casa de Linhares, old residence of a Spanish royal family (that's connected underground by tunnels to the Cathedral and the Castle) for an overpriced dinner and Fado show. We ordered cod, which was 25 dollars, and considered splitting it (fortunately we didn't, because it was the size of a pea). It was really delicious though. Fado is a genre of Portuguese music characterized by it's sad tone. I immediately caught on as one of the songs began with the lyrics "cheio de pena", which means "full of pain".

Cod dinner

Camila and the restaurant

Day 3: Óbidos and Batalha

On Sunday, we left at 9:30 a.m. and our first stop was the picturesque village, Óbidos. At first, everyone was grumpy to be kicked off the bus for an hour, but then we realized just why the stop was worthwhile. 

Ginja: a delicious alcohol made with cherries, very yummy combined with chocolate

Pretty Fall colors

Views

Chocolate: Pleasure and vice

Batalha is known for it's monastery, O Monasterio da Santa Maria da Vitoria, which was erected after the Battle of Aljubarrota between the Portuguese and the Spanish, under the rule of Juan I. It celebrated the Portuguese victory, which brought upon the end of the Portuguese crisis between 1383 and 1385. It is also known for it's unfinished chapels, or "as capilas imperfeitas".

For lunch, we ate at a restaurant near the monastery (I had pizza with a novel combination of chicken, "bacon" (canadian bacon), corn and mushroom. Then, to the bus to get back to Salamanca at 10 p.m. 

Getting back from Portugal marks the end of my travels and the "beginning" of my studies. These next few weeks with be marked by resting, reading, reading, studying, reviewing, more reading, meetings with groups, more studying, and more reading. As the Spanish say, it's time to "ponerme las pilas". Changuitos (crossed fingers) for the results of my exams!

Besitos,

Katie

Thanksgiving Dinner a la Española

A little description of our Spanish Thanksgiving dinner:

Dinner: turkey with gravy, a weird meat stuffing, medley of corn, carrots and peas, "mashed potatoes" (basically a puree), puree of squash, apple sauce (which Brenda and I though was gravy and subsequently put on our turkey instead of gravy)
Dessert: Almost apple pie. It was maybe like a cheesecake with apples on top?
Drinks: water and wine

Basically, a valiant effort, but not the same as being home with family, playing some football in the park and enjoying delicious, REAL pies and mashed potatoes.

A thankful note: This Thanksgiving (the first one away from home) has made me appreciate how lucky I am to have a family that I actually miss while abroad, that makes my heart ache to be back in the states. At the same time, I am so grateful for my experience here in Spain, for the opportunity to travel, to meet new friends, to improve my Spanish, and to grow tremendously.

As my mom would say, "Ahhh, this is the life!"

Cheers,
Katie

In the land of the Crepes.....

I'd like to begin this blog by commenting how incredible it is that I am actually writing my blog the day after arriving from my trip to Paris. Anyways, that "parenthesis" (as the Spaniards would say) aside, here are some stories from my trip to Paris.

Before the trip: After two weeks of traveling and two sleepovers in the airport for our trip to London, I was a little tired. Blame the lack of sleep, the website (for sending me back to the first page every time I tried to change the page from French to Spanish), or my sheer stupidity, but Brenda and I ended up buying nine tickets to go up the Eiffel Tower at 1 p.m.....for three people. Despite the website's strict reminders that all purchases are final and refunds will not be granted, the customer service decided as a "goodwill gesture" to return the 6 extra tickets to the "sir" that could not navigate their website properly.

Thursday: Nothing out of the usual on Thursday (Nov. 15th). We just went to the airport and had another sleepover in the cafe by the check-in counter. We did have a rude awakening a little before 4 a.m. though by the cleaning crew. I woke up to a hoarse, deep, loud and slightly irritated voice saying "mujeres. MUJERES". When I stood up the man proceed to very rudely steal the two extra chairs I was using as a make shift bed without my permission. (hehe).

Friday: Well, since we booked our flights through two different airlines, we didn't realize that our Ryan Air flight to Paris left us in the booneys at Bouvais airport. When we arrived around 8 a.m., the machine to buy bus tickets to the city center wasn't working, so we ended up taking a shared shuttle that dropped us off at our hotel, so that wasn't so bad.

Tourism on Friday: Sacre Coeur and the picturesque neighborhood around it (there w
as a woman playing accordion and lots of people going around trying to paint pictures of us....and I had my first crepe with nutella. HEAVEN IN MY MOUTH.), UNESCO, The Louvre (which is SUPER confusing to navigate, by the way. Another fun fact: Hot chocolate from Starbucks costs almost 5 euros there), met with Paige for a bit, back to the hotel! When we asked the receptionist for somewhere good to eat near the hotel, he responded "May I recommend the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe"....neither of which is near the hotel. OOOOPS. So, we went to a supermarket and got some snacks to eat in the hotel and cashed in early.

Sacre Coeur

Cute little neighborhood by Sacre Coeur

Tourists at the Mona Lisa

Saturday: Saturday we got a start around 12 to go to our Eiffel Tower visit at 1 p.m. It was a little foggy but still absolutely worth it! Outside of the Eiffel Tower was an exhibition of Buddy Bears, which are statues of bears with designs from 140 countries that have the goal of promoting tolerance and peace. Here is a link to the website if you're interested! (Also had crepes here...)

http://www.buddy-baer.com/united-buddy-bears/world-tour/paris-2012.html

After the Eiffel Tower, we were really hungry and ate at a cute restaurant on the other side of the theatre. I had a "caesar" salad, which was delicious, but tasted nothing like caesar (not to mention had eggs and chunks of corn...something that probably should've made me a little suspicious upon reading the menu)

Saturday we also went to see Notre Dame (where we stopped for Crepes and to visit some souvenir shops. I splurged and got a Crepe with ice cream! SO WORTH IT) and went out for a nice dinner to celebrate Brenda's birthday. I had gnochi and a glass of merlot. So much class! We walked around for a bit and Brenda went shopping at H&M because we realized she didn't even have a change of close for her BIRTHDAY!

Kind of a given, but Eiffel Tower :)

My crepe with ice cream :D

The arm of one of the bears

Eiffel Tower by Night

Sunday: Sunday we were lazy bums again and left the hotel a little before 12 (big mistake, given our tourist activity of the day - go to Versailles). We went to the ticket office at the metro station to buy the one day pass that lets you go to the suburbs of Paris (Versailles, basically) and the airport. I first went up and in my broken French (more like Spanish with a French twist) to ask for the ticket, and the man didn't understand me. So, I asked if he spoke English and he said a little. When we explained the ticket we wanted in English he kept asking us "Are you sure? Are you sure?". We weren't really sure what our other options were or why he repeatedly asked that, but we just said "yes". We got to Versailles a while later (I want to say a little before 2 p.m....1:30 maybe?) after transferring trains at the Eiffel tower (and stopping for Crepes...again. This time it had strawberries!). Versailles is the MOST BEAUTIFUL place. Ever. Unfortunately, it is gigantic and given our short amount of time we weren't able to fully appreciate it's beauty, but we did get to see a fair chunk! Now to learn more about French history.....

We left Versailles around 3:30 p.m., took trains and metros to our hotel, grabbed our backpacks (which were hanging out in Timhotel's luggage storage all day) and then took the metro and train to the airport. We were confused when we got to Gare du Nord, because we didn't know which stop to get off at (Charles De Gaulle terminal 1 or Terminal 2) for terminal 3. Much to our relief, there was a map of the stops on the train that included terminal 3, counterintuitively on the stop with terminal 1. Then the jerks at security made us go get a "real boarding pass" even though our paper ones that we printed from our online check-in said "if you don't have checked bags go straight through security to your gate". Upon arrival in Madrid, we took metro to the Estación Sur de Autobuses to catch our 10:30 p.m. bus to Salamanca. PHEW. Lots of traveling for just a 2 hour flight. But every last bit was worth it. Including the whole getting into Salamanca at 1:30 a.m. thing.

Versailles

Versailles

Queen's bedroom

Until next week!
Besos

Potpourri of Events

WOOPS. After being busy with travels, school and family visits, I realized that I haven't written in my blog since SWITZERLAND. WHHHHAATT?! 

I don't have the time to write a narrative about every detail from the past few weeks so I will stick to a few highlights:

1) Highlight one: Mom and Jeff visit from the states!  (November 2nd -8th)
Well, they tried to surprise me with mom coming to visit, but given that Jeff sent me a confirmation email for a hotel room for three people, I knew something was up - the question was only who would be coming.

We seemed to be really good at passing the time wondering and eating, because the main (and really the only touristy thing) we accomplished in Madrid was seeing the Real Madrid vs. Real Zaragoza match on the 3rd. Madrid dominated, winning 4-0 and we got to see Benzema (soccer player we clubbed with and played tug-of-war with at Club Med in Mexico) assist a goal, which was really sweet!

Mom and I in Parque de Retiro in Madrid

Mom got conned into a 30 euro 10 minute massage near El Palacio Royal by Asians who didn't seem to really understand her Spanish or her English. But, she claims, it was well worth it! (Only mom, lover of massages...)



Activities in Salamanca: Walking to the Plaza, seeing the cathedrals and the frog on the facade of the university....and well, yeah. That's about all that a tourist (who isn't interested in actually going to the museums or getting the tours) can do in Salamanca - a task that can be easily covered in an afternoon. Out of fear of driving mom and Jeff to boredom in Salamanca, we booked a day trip to Puerto de Béjar, a cute town with lots of hiking trails. We were dropped off in the middle of nowhere basically, in a small village with a lot of friendly elderly people. Jeff navigated us to the start of a hiking trail. The trail was pretty flat, full of colorful leave and prickly chestnut shells. We lost our trail and stumbled through some very painful branches! After trying various directions to continue with our trail, we decided to turn back.

After our hike, we found a cute little bar and went inside, asking what they had to eat. The man responded "Platos Combinados", which are basically dished with eggs, potatoes and some meat (lots of different combinations, some with just eggs and potatoes, etc.). I was translating, asking what mom wanted to do, so the man switched to English. He says, "For when do you need the food", to which we replied that we had to catch a bus in 40 minutes. His co-worker comes into the restaurant and is headed to the back of the restaurant and he asks her in Spanish if she can make 3 plates of eggs and potatoes, to which she replies "right now?" he says, "No, for 30 or 40 minutes". I corrected him in Spanish, saying that we needed the dishes as soon as possible as we had to leave the restaurant within 30 or 40 minutes (#bilingualbenefits). The dishes still took a while to be prepared, and we ended up gobbling them down in 5 minutes and booking it to the bus, arriving just when the bus arrived.

2) Trip to LONDON!

Ok, I cannot believe that I never had the desire to go to London before I came to Europe. It is ABSOLUTELY gorgeous. We did another one of those sleepovers in the airport on Thursday the 8th (happy birthday to Sal!). We were sitting in a cafe, and a homeless man came asking for what we thought was money, but when we saw him looking at left trays for food, we decided to make him a little care package (since our host moms always back us enough for more than one person in our picnic meals). He had already started walking away, so I ran after him to give him the food, and said "Perdón, ¿quieres esta comida?" (excuse me, do you want this food?), to which he replied, "Sí, me convendría. " (it would be convenient for me slash it would help me). I gave him the food, and as I turned to walk away, he said "gracias, guapa".

Megan and I lived the cush life during our first sleepover. This time, I didn't even bother getting ready for bed, just passed out face first on the table, woke up a little later, and then moved a few chairs together as a make-shift bed. In spite of my lack of a good night's sleep, I ran on full battery all day in London.

On Friday, we went to buy tickets for wicked, wandered in attempts to find Oxford(which isn't on Oxford Street, as one would intuitively think, if you were wondering)  and the London Bridge (which, contrarily to what I assumed from Fergie´s song, is not the picturesque bridge, AKA Tower Bridge), went to the London eye, saw Wicked, and celebrated Sal´s 21st birthday with margaritas and burritos at a restaurant called "Chiquitos". Regarding Wicked, I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT THE WICKED WITCH WASN'T EVEN BAD. My whole life just crumbled, just like when I found out Santa Claus isn't real (please tell me I don't have an audience of young children on this blog) and when I realized that Christopher Columbus was a jerk.

On Saturday, we went to the Madame Toussaud's House of Wax (which was ABSOLUTELY PACKED even though we are the so-called "off-season"...don't want to image that during Summer), to CHIPOTLE (for lunch yayyyy), shopping on Oxford street for souvenirs, and to the Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge.

Annnnd of course we got lost in the tube, getting on two wrong trains before we got on our real one. On the second train, we got on, realized our stop was in the opposite direction of the way we were going, cracked up, got made fun of/imitated by drunk men, stood up when the train stopped in the middle of the dark tunnel (then realized it wasn't a stop, laughed and sat back down), and then when we finally go to a stop where we could switch trains, Brenda tried to go out the door that's against the wall of the underground. All in all, an experience with lots of subway faux pas.


Saturday night, we were off to the airport for round two of "sleep"overs for the weekend!

AN INCREDIBLE TRIP.



Ta ta for now,
Katie

A weekend in Switzerland/France

Weeeelp, I'm guilty again of not writing in forever (this time I think it's more than past due). My friend Megan and I spent the weekend in Geneva, Switzerland and Chamonix, France, where the views are surreal and delicious chocolates and cheeses are abundant. Here are some anecdotes from the trip!

Viaje de Ida (Trip there): Departure from Salamanca's bus station at 8:30 p.m. Megan and I met earlier and walked to the station in a downpour, under the shelter of our umbrellas. It was dark and the first time that I decided to take that route to arrive to the bus station, and needless to say, I couldn't find the street I wanted. So, (as is a typical "Katie O" moment), I decided to turn down a street in the general direction of the station. Megan was a little worried about making it on time, so I crazily said "Aren't you glad I'm your tour guide?" and turned around, offering her a look of sheer hysteria in a valiant effort to comfort her. Needless to say, the whole tour guide thing kind of stuck and became a theme to our trip.

My First Sleepover in an Airport: 

Well, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but there is a little more to this story. I dozed on and off throughout the night on the cold, linoleum floor, switching from backpack to jacket as a pillow. At around 5:30 in the morning, I woke up, and as if I were dreaming, my vision slowly came into focus and I became aware of my surroundings. What I found was a line of passengers waiting to board a plane staring at me, the girl in pajamas and a frog eye mask groggily rolling over in a post wake-up daze and.......lying on the Spanish flag. Awkward.

Megan and I lucked out (that or we're just secretly psychics) and we slept one gate over from our gate for the flight to Geneva. In the morning, we had coffee and donuts (2.50 euros for a donut....that's a little steep...) and then hopped on our 9:50 a.m. flight to Geneva! 

Day One in Geneva: 

Despite the fact that Switzerland will rape your bank account, they do have some cool deals! One of those is a free train to downtown if you fly into the Geneva airport. Megan and I went back and forth and back and forth in the train station trying to figure out which platform to get onto, and finally a worker who didn't speak English but spoke a little Spanish and insisted that we should choose Barca over Real Madrid told us the right train. 

Our first stop was the tourism office to purchase tickets for the next day's excursion to Chamonix, France, home of Mont Blanc. Afterwords, we wandered around for a bit and then checked into our hostel (which was surprisingly nice as far as hostels go). 

The outside of our hostel

Hostel room

After checking in, we were hungry. We decided to start walking to the Palace of the Nations and look for food on the way, but tour guide Katie got so focused in getting to the Palace that she almost forgot to feed herself and Megan. We went into this cute little cafe, said "Bonjour" and sat down. A waiter came over and without us saying a word more than "Bonjour", he said "hola" and proceeded to explain to us in Spanish that we had arrived to late to eat (it was around 3:15 p.m...we clearly weren't in Spain anymore...also, I'm still not sure why he thought we were Spanish and not Americans...) and recommended a market down the street to eat (called Coop). We had chicken sandwiches and water (mine was chicken curry!). 

The Palace of the Nations and the Incomplete Chair

After the palace, we came across a beautiful garden.

Megan in a tree!

After the garden, we walked along the lake for a bit, and a French family asked us to take a picture of them. After Megan took the picture, I used some of my newly acquired French (which is the bare minimum) to ask them to take a picture. I said, "Vous pouvez, S'il vous plait?" and pointed to the the button to take a picture on my camera. Not exactly the most eloquent of sentences that I've said, but it works! Below is the picture that the man took. 

We went downtown next, looking for the historic district, but of course got distracted by the shopping. I was naughty and bought some winter boots and a jacket, thinking of the cold to come for Saturday's excursion to Mont Blanc. We ate dinner at a cute Italian restaurant called "Molino", splitting a cheese pizza and a bottle of water. 

Excursion to Mont Blanc: 

Wow. I can honestly say that the views that I saw on Saturday were the most incredible views I've seen in my life. Hands down. The tour guide wasn't so impressive, but that didn't matter. 

We woke up at 6:50 a.m. and headed down to the bus station, witnessing an amazing sunrise on the way. 

After an hour and a half bus ride to Chamonix, France (they didn't even check our passports....) we took a gondola up to Mont Blanc. When we passed the poles on the way up, the gondola kind of sort of flung itself vertically (not 90 degrees of course, otherwise we would've smashed the poor people in the back), and shocked everybody. Luckily, I was just getting my camera out to document how jammed we were in the cable car and was able to capture Megan's expression of sheer terror. 

It was really cold at the top, but views like this made it worth it. 

After the Mont Blanc experience came lunch in L'M, a cute Brasserie in Chamonix. I had a salad with croutons, cheese, hard boiled egg and bacon to start, followed by chicken with mashed potatoes and mushrooms and the "dessert of the day", chocolate cake with melted vanilla ice cream on the side. They must've known I would be there that day because the dessert was heaven in my mouth. 

After lunch, we had free time before taking the bus home since the train wasn't running to go to Mer de Glacier (we got a 10 swiss Franc refund for that...something tells me that that is highly un-proportional given the price of the overall trip and the fact that the train is basically 1/3 of the excursion). We thought about shopping, but decided that we were looking more for souvenirs from Switzerland than from France, so we ended up sitting down on the steps of a church and contemplating this amazing view. 

So, speaking of our tour guide... Not only was he pretty grumpy most of the tour, he left without waiting for people multiples. First, he left for lunch and left a couple behind and then we left at 4:45 p.m. sharp from Chamonix even though four people had been left behind. It's a 300 euro taxi trip to go from Chamonix to Geneva! YIKES! 

We decided to splurge for dinner Saturday night, and went to Restaurante Les Armures for fondue and salad. We ordered red wine and the salad had goat cheese and ham. So delicious! The only college-budget part to it was that the only thing we dipped in the cheese was the bread that came with it. No meat for us (minus the ham in the salad...dirp). 

Día tres: Ginebra -----> Madrid. 

We left the hostel by 10 on Sunday and decided to wander to the "art district". We didn't find the pacman string (not sure if it's only up at night or during a specific season), but we did find a park with giant chess boards and the reformation wall! 

Chess in the park!

Reformation Wall

After tiring out, we decided to call it a day on the touring (or call it a trip, I suppose) and we sat down on a bench by the river to do a little reading. 

Well, as you know is a theme to my trips. Something always has to go wrong...or almost wrong. When we got to the airport (really early), we lazed around and did a little browsing in the stores. Then, we decided to go through security. When we got there, the security agent asked Megan if she was "traveling tomorrow" as in Monday the 22nd and not Sunday the 21st. UH OH! Megan had booked the wrong flight. Sooooo we had a brief moment of stress but then went downstairs and changed the ticket. It was more expensive for her to change the ticket to Sunday than to buy a new one, so she had to pay for a new ticket, buuuutttt, the important thing was that we got home. 

Last night, we stayed NH Pacifico, a hotel close to the bus station (and REALLY nice for the price..especially when you divide it between two!). We arrived at midnight, and woke up at 5:50 to make sure we made it to the station on time for our 7 a.m. bus. I slept most of the way, but kept thinking that when I got home it would be bed time and not time to get ready for the rest of the school day! 

That's a wrap!

<3 Katie