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