Last day in the VLC

It's hard to believe that today is my last full day in Valencia.  Semesters usually go by pretty fast, but I've never had one fly by as fast as this one has.  Today is dedicated to getting some last minute shopping done, trying to squeeze everything into my suitcase, and visiting my favorite places in Valencia that I know I'm going to miss.

It's only 10:30am and I've already checked one place off my list.... I woke up at 5:30am this morning to catch the (severely unreliable) bus to the beach and watched the sunrise over the Mediterranean.  The original plan was to do a polar bear swim, but seeing as it was in the low 30's we quickly nixed that idea.  We did strip down to our swim suits though to snap a few spontaneously fun photos.

This afternoon I'm off to climb the 207 winding steps in the Miguelete, the bell tower of Valencia's cathedral.  It's a beautiful sunny day and I know the view from the top is going to be stunning.

I'll be ending my day in the Plaza de la Virgen, which is hands down my favorite spot in Valencia.  After la cena (dinner) I'm meeting up with my girlfriends to enjoy some sangria and just people watch in the plaza.  Virgen is known to have numerous wedding parties every night.  Almost every time I've been there I've seen at least one bride and groom getting their photos taken by the fountain.

Tomorrow morning my bus for the Valencia airport leaves at 5:30am and by midnight I'll (hopefully, given there are no delays) have touched down in Detroit :]  Even though I'm going to miss my madre and all of the friends I've made this semester a lot, I'm ready to go home and be with my family and friends for the holidays.  Miss you all and can't wait to see you soon!!!

XOXO

P.S.  I have about 7 half-finished blog entries that I haven't published yet about all of my travels during the second half of my semester.  I will eventually get these done haha.  So even though I won't be in Spain anymore, you can still expect new entries for the next few weeks :p

When in Rome... (October 13-14)

Our early morning train ride through the Tuscany countryside got us to Rome with more than enough time to explore the most famous attractions as well as get lost several times.  Luckily, the directions to our hostel were very straight forward.  The directions they included with our reservation confirmation said, "We are at number 36, in a small and ancient building," and sure enough our hostel with the smallest, most ancient building I've ever seen.

We dropped our bags off and went off in search of the ruins that I was most excited to see, the Colosseum. Surely a monument as large as the Colosseum would be easy to find, right?  Well after wandering around for at least an hour, we finally spotted it, and WOW it's HUGE!  We saved 8 euros and countless hours of waiting in line and skipped going inside and instead meandered through the bajillion other ruins that surround the Colosseum.  

Emily, Shauna, and I at the Colosseum

Just in the first day, we made it to Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and a gazillion other monuments/ruins.  Needless to say, our feet were dead by the end of the day.  We all threw coins over our shoulders into Trevi Fountain, ensuring our return to Rome one day, and really really hope that I will be able to return. 

Trevi Fountain

Emily and I in front of some ruins.... after seeing so many ruins, you tend to lose track of their names :p

The Pantheon

Inside the Pantheon

At the end of the day, we found the perfect little Italian restaurant for dinner, La Carbanera.  This restaurant has been owned by the same family for 104 years!!!  And it was DELICIOUS :]  I really like pasta, but after my meal at La Carbonara I LOVE pasta.  Too bad I don't know how to make pasta from scratch by hand like they do.   

We added our own messages to the walls of La Carbanera, as hundreds of others like us had for the past 104 years.

The next morning we woke up extra early and hiked all the way across Rome to the Vatican.  Everyone we talked to told us we should take the bus, but not wanting to get lost on the confusing bus system in country whose language is completely foreign, we opted to walk for an hour and a half instead.  Fortunately, we bought our tickets to the Vatican Museums the week before and got to skip the ginormous line of people who weren't as smart as us :p  The size of the Vatican Museums was exhausting... and it was rare to find a wall/ceiling/floor that wasn't some sort of mural.   The Sistine Chapel was the final part of our morning in the museums.  We weren't allowed to take photos inside the Sistine Chapel, but that's fine because I honestly don't think pictures would have done it justice.  It was truely breathtaking.  I can't image how Michelangelo painted all of it while lying on his back on giant scaffolds and not gone crazy.  We ended our morning at St. Peter's Basilica before spending the rest of the afternoon randomly exploring more of Rome.

Courtyard in the middle of the Vatican Museuma

Hallway full of massive tapestries 

St. Peter's Basilica

Castle and bridge of Sant'Angelo 

Four Rivers Foutain

Outdoor market near Four Rivers Fountain

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Our last night in Rome, our hostel had a pasta party on their roof top terrace.  We gorged ourselves on free pasta, but, of course, we still managed to have room for gelato :] 

All in all, Rome was an absolute success and was one of my favorite trips of the whole semester.  

Practically Perpendicula Pisa (October 11-12)

After a relaxing weekend in Valencia (October 9-10), Emily, Shauna, and I packed our backpacks (full of the essentials... clothes, food, and books :p of course) and set out to explore some other parts of Europe for the week.  First stop, Pisa, Italy!  After a 4 hour bus ride to Barcelona and a 6 euro RyanAir flight, we made to Pisa Monday night.  Upon landing we exited the plane directly onto the tarmac, which I've found is more common then being connected to the terminal directly, and we all boarded a bus to take us to the terminal.  The ride to the terminal was probably about 10 seconds long and the bus moved maybe 50 meters.  The most pointless transfer ever.  I thought all three of us were going to pee our pants we were laughing so hard from the pure pointlessness of what had just happened.  Everyone else on the bus seemed to think this was standard practice and gave us funny looks.  We entered the terminal to find the driver for our hostel holding a sign with my name on it, and we imagined we were celebrities being picked up for an important Italian event :p  The ride to our hostel was straight out of The Fast and the Furious.  I thought Spanish drivers were crazy, but nope, Italians may be worse.  According to Italian drivers, lanes, traffic lights, stop signs, and speed limits are pointless.  I don't know how, but we made it safely to our hostel and along the way we got a glimpse of the Arno river that cuts through Pisa, beautifully lit up by the moon.  Our hostel was located in Piazza Garibaldi, a piazza that's always full of students at night and home of Pisa's best gelato.

Our room in the hostel was the one with the porch full of flowers :]

Piazza Garibaldi - Giuseppe Garibaldi is considered a national hero in Italy

The next morning we went on a free walking tour provided by our hostel.  We got to see ALL of Pisa, not just the leaning tower, which is the only thing that most people think of when they picture the city of Pisa.  Our guide was a recent grad of the University of Pisa and had lived her whole life in Pisa.  Therefore, she was literally a walking encylcopedia of everything to do with the history of Pisa.  The best part of the tour was her accent.  When Italians speak English they pronouce every single letter and thus every English-speaking Italian sounds like they're from a mafia movie haha.  Here are some highlights from the tour:

Churches during the middle ages served both religious and political purposed.
Political advertisements for the University of Pisa are written on the front of
 this church near Piazza Garibaldi.

A very elite university in Piazza del Cavalieri, that only admists a handful of students every
year based on scores of a crazy difficult exam, and everything is free for those students
including tuition, housing, food, and more!  If only MSU was free for me.... :p

Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of Miracles) -
contains the Duomo (cathedral), baptistery, Campo Santo (cemetery), and the leaning tower. 

Piazza dei Miracoli

Arno River that cuts through Pisa

Tuttomondo by Keith Haring - One of Haring's most famous works, this mural
is on the side of a church and art students from the University of Pisa helped
Haring fill in the colors of the outlined characters.

After the tour we were starving, and what better food to eat in Italy than PIZZA?  We found an authentic little Italian restaurant near the Square of Miracles and scarfed down the most delicious margarita pizzas everrrr :]

Shauna and I with our pizzas, yummm!

After lunch, we returned to the Square of Miracles to take stereotypical leaning tower photos and to take a siesta in the sun, and also set off the explore more of the city on our own.

After a few failed attempts, like the lovely picture on the left, we managed to get a couple good stereotypical leaning tower photos.  The square was FULL of tourists like us and it was very amusing to see the different poses people were making with the tower.

Shauna, me, and Emily in the Squre of Miracles (aka the best people-watching/siesta-taking location in Pisa)

The baptistery in the Square of Miracles

Relaxing in a park we found

Our hostel had a deal with one of the bars in Piazza Garibaldi... buy one drink and get free appetizers!
It made for a perfect super cheap dinner for us :]

Nutella, cookie, and dark chocolate flavored gelato YUM!

We headed to bed fairly early that night because the next morning we woke up extra early to catch the train to Rome.

The Tuscany countryside during the train ride to Rome

Día de la Comunidad Valenciana (October 9th)

It's time to play a little catch-up and do some posts about Fall Break (October 8th - 17th).... better late than never, right?

The first weekend of fall break I stayed in Valencia because October 9th is el Día de la Comunidad Valenciana, one of Valencia's biggest holidays besides las Fallas in the spring.  In a nut shell, this holiday commemorates the arrival of King Jaime I to Valencia in 1238.  The day is filled with traditional Valencian festivities which I realized are actually difficult to attend.  You either miss them because Spanairds have no sense of time and always begin/end events early/late, or if your lucky you just stumble upon random events that weren't on the schedule.  The holiday kicks off at midnight with a HUMONGOUS fireworks show.  Although I love the fireworks at Crystal during New Year's, I don't think I'll ever be impressed by them again.  Valencia fireworks simply can't be beaten.  Even the one's at Disneyland weren't as good, and that's really saying something.  These fireworks were epic, to say the least, and Emily and I randomly stumbled up them on our walk home.  We really didn't have a choice whether or not we wanted to watch them because they were set off in the Río (the giant park that bisects the city) and the police weren't allowing anyone to cross the Río, which is the only way we could get home.  Only in Spain do fireworks start at midnight, last til 1:30am, and involve eardrum-damaging amounts of noise.

We let our ears recover overnight, and the next morning went to the Procesión de la Señera, or the parade of the original flag of Valencia, La Señera.  The parade included a lot of Valencian government officials and people dressed in traditional clothes of las fallas.

We tried to go to a Fallas dance performance, but off course missed it due to false advertising and instead got stuck in a freak rain storm.  The streets flooded within minutes and Emily and I, desperately trying to get on any bus who's route seemed vaguely familiar, got on one that took us completely out of Valencia.  We were keeping track of where we were on our Valencia maps that we carry with us everywhere, and at one point we actually disappeared off the map.  It was quite the adventure and I now avoid using the buses as much as possible :p

El Día de la Comunidad Valenciana also coincides with the festival of Saint Denis, aka Spain's version of Sweetest Day.  It's tradition for boyfriends/husbands to give their girlfriends/wives tiny marzipan fruits wrapped in a scarf.  I went to Mercado Colon that day and got to see pastry chefs making the marzipan works of art, and even got to try one myself.  I felt bad eating them because they were so pretty!