No Me Ha Dejado

As I sit in my bare room surrounded by my luggage, I cant help but still be in denial that this whole semester is over. The days leading up to Spain could not come fast enough and now all I wish is that I could slow down time and make this last longer. While it is true that nothing lasts forever, I was hoping this would be an exception. I have honestly had the time of my life here and these have been the most incredible four months of my life. While I am ready to return home to that dirty water of Boston, I know that I will forever call Sevilla my second home. I want to share my love of Sevilla with all of my friends and family at home but there is only so much my endless Facebook albums and blog updates can do to convince people. Only the people that have gone on this crazy adventure will truly understand. We have had nights we can never remember, trips to foreign countries, awkward conversations that get lost in translation and countless other memories that can never be duplicated. What a journey we have gone on APIers, life will never be the same without you. But this only now means we have a whole new country to tear up together! Ever since our first nights in Madrid tearing up the weekday night, we have become a perfect little family. We have all grown up so much and learned endless lessons from each other. For that, I will always be eternally grateful.
To continue on the topic of grateful, I for sure need to thank my amazing parents for allowing me to come on this adventure of a lifetime. I am sure they were worried sending their little girl off to a country 5,000 miles away for four months, only being able to communicate with me via email, facebook pics and the occasional skype call. But clearly I survived!  Ever since I can remember, I have always wanted to study abroad and now in 12 hours, I will be a study abroad alum. My life will be forever changed by what I have witnessed on all of my travels and surviving four months on my own in a country where English isn't the first language. Being here has made me realize how much I love saying that I am from Boston and I really do need to travel around the US more now that I have friends scattered all over!
To end this quick blog entry, I am gunna go back to one of my last nights in the US. I went to PF Changs for a farewell dinner, and with every great Chinese restaurant, they ended the meal with a fortune cookie. They are my favorite part of the meal so I eagerly cracked mine open. I couldnt have asked for a better fortune that night. It read, "Sometimes traveling to anew place leads to great transformation." I kept that in my wallet from that moment on. It is now a tattered piece of paper but I will forever keep that with me. Traveling to Sevilla has transformed me in ways I dont even think I am aware of still but know I will come back to the United States being a better person because of the time I spent here and the amazing people that I have been surrounded by. The motto of Sevilla is NO8DO which means No me ha dejado, or it will never leave me. Sevilla will always hold a place in my heart. I will be back someday! That is a promise. This place has too much of a hold over me for this to be adios forever. This is only hasta luego Sevilla! Te amaré por siempre <3

Frolicking around my favorite place in all of Sevilla, Plaza de Espana :)

Feria de Sevilla :)

Sevilla is known for two massive festivals each year, the first being semana santa and the second being Feria de Abril which has just finished here. Feria is unlike anything I have ever experienced nor ever will, unless I come back again that is. It is something that cannot truly be put into words. It started last Sunday night when they lit up this massive gate to the entrance. We all paraded down the street in our nicest dresses and stood anxiously in front of it waiting for it to be illuminated. I have never been to New York for New Year's but it had a very "ball is about to drop" vibe to it. People were cheering and elated feria was about to begin. None of the API kids had ever experienced Feria so none of us knew what to do after the portada lit up. We just followed the locals and were floored by what we saw. It was like we were transported to a different world. There were cobblestone streets and horse drawn carriages everywhere. The streets were lined with casetas, which are basically private tents that Sevilla's elite all chip in on to own a part of and then they party there all week with their closest friends. About 90% of the casetas are private, meaning the other 10% are public and anyone can go in them. The private ones are much more fun. If you were lucky to get an invite into one, and make it past the security guard, you would be sure be treated with a liter of rebujito, the official drink of Feria. It was a mix of manzanilla sherry wine and 7up served in a pitcher but you are supposed to drink it out of a shot glass. Confusing I know.
When we werent tearing up the caseta scene, making an idiot out of ourselves pretending to know the Sevillianas dance, we were admiring the amazing flamenco dresses. These dresses were out of this world, and I dont think I saw the exact same dress twice. They loved a good polka dot pattern and bright color combination. They gave everyone such nice figures and I totally would have gotten one if they werent 300 euros! And thats on the cheaper side for these dresses. The custom ones cost around 1000 euros, oh and these girls usually have three or four dresses for the week!
Perhaps my favorite part of feria was the carnvial ride section. This was not your average state fair, they had like Six Flag style rides, but they came at a ridiculous price. You had to pay per ride and it would change per day but usuallly went from 3-5 euros and with the dollar being as weak as it is right now, that would run me $4.50-7.00 yeyyy exchange rates :) But I dont think Spain knows what safety regulations are since they had the fastest ferris wheel I have ever seen as well as cages on the swinging ship instead of rows of seats. To end the week there was a fantastic fireworks show bringing a close to a party filled insane week. And for me it was the last Sunday I was going to have in Sevilla! :( Its kind of like the fireworks symbolized the end of the most perfect semester of my school career. Only five more days until the US of A. I am trying not to think of that all right now and focusing on the three finals that stand between me and summer. Now I must be off to study all about Modern Arab History for my exam tomorrow. Besitos a todos. Playtime so soon :)

Mid lighting of the Feria Gate

Horse drawn carriages down the rows of casetas

All dressed up

carnival

gate

last night of feria :(

Firework show!

Sevilla, Mi Amor

So I was thinking how I usually write my blogs on my adventures around the world, but I havent really done any on the city that will forever hold a piece of my heart, and the city I have gotten the pleasure to call my home for the past four months. When it came to doing the stereotypical touristy things, I was always like oh I can do it later, Ill be here for a while. Now with only 9 days left in this amazing city, I can no longer say that. I had a week full of Sevilla nonsense so here's a recap of what I have been up to over the past week.

Tuesday began my week of Sevilla fun. I am taking a cooking class here and as a little field trip, we visited the famous Sevilla cooking school. We got a tour of the facilities, like the cooking prep rooms and classrooms and to end it all we got to eat there as well. The students have to run the restaurant as part of their class so we got really good service at such a cheap price. We had fried artichokes with a garlic sauce for appetizers, mussels au gratin for a meal and then a delicious white chocolate mousse with a mango sauce for dessert! It was to die for. After that we went to my first and last bull fight. The only thing I liked about it was that I got to dress up for it, other than that it was quite gruesome. They kill six bulls in one corrida de los toros so it gets rough pretty fast. The bull comes out and the matador taunts it with a cap for a little bit, then a man on a blindfolded horse comes and stabs it in the back with a massive spear twice. Then after that, the matadors put these pinata like things in the bulls back to weaken it some more. In the end, they have a large sword and are supposed to kill it in one try. I dont know much about bull fighting but this one was awful. It took them like easily 5 or 6 times to kill it. It was a bloody mess. Good thing i was talking the whole time. The spaniards really loved that. They were getting so into it, like pacing back and forth and getting the shakes. Basically like how I get at hockey games, whoops did I make another hockey reference?

Anyways on to dia dos of everything Sevilla. Ever since we have been here we have been meaning to go to Alcazar, which is the old royal palace like ten minutes from my house and right next to my university. For some reason we never made it there until last week. It was a gorgeous Arab influenced castle and their gardens are to die for. We played in the harry potter like maze like kids and I proceeded to chase the peacocks...again. I am so glad I finally made it to Alcazar. I wouldnt have let myself leave Sevilla without doing that. The next activity for the day was a walking tour of sevilla. I have lived here for over three months and feel like I dont know the history behind a lot of stuff so I was so nice to play pretend tourist here and learn where NO8DO comes from and why people from Sevilla have such strong lisps. To wrap up the day, we did the typical botellon with the Spaniards in the local hangout El Salvador! I am having all of this amazing fun of course right at the end of my program. I want to stay here forever...well except I desperately need money. That is the one thing I wont miss about being here. Thats it though!

Back to Sevilla, being the wedding fanatic that I am, I pried myself out of bed before noon on a Friday to watch probably the most hyped up wedding of this decade. The royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. It became a family affair getting my senora and abuelita in on it as well. We crowded around the tv and watched in excitement as the wedding unfolded before our eyes. I spent a lot of the time telling them fun facts I had learned about the wedding and could not stopped reiterating how attract Prince Harry was looking.  It was a little annoying watching the wedding dubbed in Spanish but I watched my fair share of clips afterward on YouTube to make it alright.

Anyone who knows me or has read another post from my blog knows I am beyond obsessed with hockey. Like its a borderline problem, anyways, it has been my goal from the beginning of the semester to watch hockey in Spain. You wouldnt think it would have been as challenging as it has proved to be but the unthinkable happened recently. I was walking by the American bar we usually hang out at and I quickly saw the face of Eric Staal, a player on the Carolina Hurricanes. I literally stopped in my tracks and walked right into the bar and knew that I had finally found it. I watched the last 4 minutes and 29 seconds of the Bruins Flyers game one when the B's won 7-3. It was unreal and made me the happiest person for the rest of the night. The next night exceeded all of my expectations. Nora, one of my friends here, is a hockey fanatic from San Jose. Her team, the San Jose Sharks were playing this night and I told her we would for sure find them on tv. We went back to our bar and convinced them to turn on the game. I was in such a zone, and both of us were elated to watch an entire hockey game in Spain. To make things even better, the Sharks won and they even put the Celtics playoff game on. That was the perfect way to kick off Feria week which is something I will explain in my next blog! Until then!! Besitios. See you in 9 days America!

Bull ring and matadors entering

a lock of love on the bridge

the cathedral in the center of Sevilla

View of the Giralda from the Alcazar

I love this city

botelleon at el Salvador

NO8DO symbol of Sevilla

at a Scottish bar

Italy! Italy! Italy!

Sorry this one has taken me so long to post. Ive been so busy with my last week of classes and trying to cram in as much Sevilla as possible before I leave in two weeks :( But anyways on to Italia! I was never the girl growing up who was like "Oh before I die, I need to visit Italy." It was never really high on my priority of places to visit but once I got here, I began to research different places to go for spring break and the Amalfi Coast instantly captured my attention. We figured we would need some relaxation after 7 days of sightseeing cities so beachy Italy proved to be the perfect solution for this.

We had an 11am flight from Budapest to Naples and after a quick 90 minute flight, we were in the land of pizza, pasta and fast mopeds. We hopped right on a bus and headed to Sorrento, a small city an hour south of Naples, where we would be spending the next three nights. It was an hour ride and we were absolutely exhausted but we couldnt fall asleep. We passed some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. Winding mountain roads leading down to the Mediterranean below was absolutely unreal. When we finally got to our hostel, which was this amazing little hostel next to a church, we dropped our bags and headed to grab a bus to head to Positano, a town 45 minutes away from us. Our ride on the bus was absolutely horrifying. Italian drivers are insane and the winding mountain roads which include vertical drops to the ocean bellow are frightening. After experiencing these roads, I am quite certain that these were the roads they filmed those tire commercials on. Once we made it to solid ground, we began to explore the picturesque landscape. This town was full of lemon trees, like orange trees are in Sevilla. The scent of lemons were in the air and the sun was just about to set over the mountains. It was one of those things that no amount of words can adequately describe. After that we ventured into downtown Sorrento and bought the biggest Italian pizzas we could find! I can now cross off eating pizza in Italy off of my life goals list! Gah it was so amazing and to top it off, the Red Sox were playing on NESN. It didnt get much better than that on our first day in Italy!

Day two in Italia bought out our historical side. Kel and I went to Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius for the day. It so hard to grasp how old things like this are. The eruption of Vesuvius happened in 79 AD so yeah like 2000 years ago. It blows my mind and I still think I couldnt fully appreciate it. Just a helpful tip, if you are ever offered a audioguide, especially in a country where you dont speak the language, spring for the extra 6 euros and do it. We thought we could just teach ourselves about it. Yeah not so much but we had a ball trying to create our own stories of what buildings were back in their prime. After our self guided tour of UNESCO sites, we continued onto Mount Vesuvius. The bus ride there was utterly frightening. It was the same treacherous roads as the roads to Positaino but this time we were passing tour buses at the same time. I wouldnt even dare to take Tori down this roads let alone have two buses on them. When we had made it safely to the top, I was looking around for the crater. Yes, no one told us that we would have a 20 minutes walk up a volcanic sand dune to see it. Oh and we were both wearing flip flops. You know how much traction those old navy gems have. Lets just say that was a terrible hike. Im positive I breathed in a lifetimes worth of volcanic ash and soot. But at the top we could literally see all of Italy, I felt like. I stayed far away from the crater. I had no desire on falling down there! For dinne,we grabbed some typical Italy pasteries and ate it on the roof deck and watched the sunset. So romantic I know haha!

The final full day in Italy was the perfect way to end our European escapades. We made a little picnic lunch and just laid on the beach for hours. We spent so long playing in the black sand and collecting the most perfect seaglass I have ever seen. To end our trip, we went to this nice Italian restaurant and ordered the stereotypical pasta and we also learned that splitting a liter of wine between two people will lead to sloppy walks home. This walk home included a necessary stop for some gellato which oddly contained a squirrel cookie? I dont know but it kept me highly entertained. I am glad that we got to relax on Wednesday because Thursday proved to be on of the worst and most stressful days of my entire life. Ok here goes the sparknotes version of this. 

So to fly back to Sevilla our flight was out of Bari instead of Naples because it saved us 300 euros and was only a two and a half hour train ride away. Totally worth it. So we get to Naples at 845 am to catch the 910 train to Bari which would get us there in plenty of time for our 440 flight back home. We go to the counter oh and are talking in Spanish since A. no one speaks english and B. its very similar to Italian and they tell us that the train is sold out and to try the bus. The bus was a no go since it wouldnt get us there in time. So we thought about renting a car but nope still no luck. It was easter weekend in the most religious nation in Europe. FAIL. At this point we start to panic so we head to the airport to see if they can change our flight.Nope since Naples doesnt have ryainair they couldnt even look up other flights. I was beginning to think I was going to spend the next week in the Naples airport until we could manage to find a cheap flight. Our last ditch effort was to withdraw all the money from our account and convince a taxi driver to take us 3 hours to Bari. It worked and we got their in plenty of time for our flight. Moral of the story. Always book train tickets a head of time, especially in Italy, during Easter, unless you like spending 250 euros for a cab ride!

Sunset in Positano

Positano

and again!

 

 

rooftop of our hostel

 

 

 

Pompeii

Budapest, Hungary!

As bummed as I was to leave the amazing city that was Copenhagen, I was equally as excited to travel to the amazing city of Budapest in Hungary. All I knew about Budapest was what I learned from Bettina, one of my roommates from Amherst who was part Hungarian and what I had seen on my favorite tv show The Amazing Race. I heard nothing my amazing things about it so I figured what the hell. When else in my life can I run to Hungary for the weekend. Our Hungarian adventures got off to a rocky start. We had a connecting flight in Germany that we barely made due to a delay from our Copenhagen flight. Put at 9pm we finally landed in Hungary! And to think that we thought Danish was confusing…yeah that had nothing on Hungarian. We literally couldn’t even begin to pretend to know what was going on.  After a confusing journey from the airport, getting stuck in ATM’s, and wandering down dark streets the wrong way for blocks, we finally arrived at our hostel. The description on the site said it was a party hostel and it for sure was not lying. We were so exhausted from traveling all day, the last thing we wanted to do was explore the raging Budapest nightlife scene. But that didn’t stop our roommates though. I am quite certain that I didn’t fall asleep that first night until 630 am and with a 945 wakeup to explore the city, we were struggling hardcore three hours later. 

Saturday was our day for exploration since we had arrived so late the night before, we couldn’t get a feel for what Budapest was all about. We grabbed a quick pastry at a local bakery and then we were off exploring the city. Our first stop was the chain bridge which connects Buda to Pest. Yep they are technically two separate cities. Our hostel was in Pest so we would be walking over to the castle district in Buda. Along the way we saw some amazing architecture and I never really got the “im in eastern Europe” vibe at all when I was there…well except for the language. Once we crossed the bridge, we decided to climb up castle hill to get a better view of the city. From there we could see all of Pest,had amazing views of the Hungarian parliament, which has a striking resemblance to the parliament in London, and as well as the basilica. Since the weather wasn’t that great we figured we would head back to the hostel for a little midday nap and then make a game plan for what to do the rest of the trip. We were talking to the girl who was working at the hostel and she recommended a few restaurants to try as well as typical Hungarian dishes.  After chilling for a little bit, we wandered down the main road to heroes square. That led into this gorgeous park with the famed Szechenyi baths and endless castles which made it seem like we were frolicking around Disneyland and not a park in a European capital. After our visit to the park, we were starved. A huge plus about Budapest was that it was beyond cheap. We took out 20,000 forint (which is a little more than $100 USD) and that lasted us three days, for food and hostel! We grabbed some typical goulash at a restaurant that the girl at the hostel recommended! It was soo good. We came back to the hostel, fully intending on going out. Kelly and I were bonding with the three Australian girls that were in our room, and one by one our voices faded and by midnight all 5 of us were passed out. Whoops!

Sunday brought a rested day and a walking tour of the city in the morning. We basically went on the same walk Kelly and I had done the day before but it was nice to know what we were seeing as well as some stories behind it. This day we again climbed up castle hill, but it was gorgeous and I think at that moment I fell in love with Budapest. On castle hill this day we ventured over to the castle that they believe in part influenced Walt Disney in the creation of Cinderella’s castle. Side note, we noticed a lot of Spanish speakers in Hungary which was comforting to hear something familiar to us. But I am not sure how anyone could travel to such a country like Hungary and not speak English. Anyways after our walking tour we grabbed gelato which was put onto the cone in a shape of a rose! It was soo cool looking! We also bought Túró Rudi which is a Hungarian chocolate bar which is filled with cottage cheese. Yeah it was as gross as it sounds but I figured we had to try it since we were there. We were all exhausted from exploring the city all day so we headed back to the hotel to chill before going out to dinner on our last night in Budapest. We watched music videos and even saw the Katy Perry Firework video which was filmed in the castle we were at earlier! For dinner we went to this really nice restaurant. There were 6 of us. Kelly and I, the three Australian girls we had met as well as an American guy who was going to grad school in Copenhagen. We ate some amazing food and it was so cheap. For the six of us, our bill only came to 11,000 forint, a little more than $50. Back at the hostel, we began some birthday celebrations for Matt. He had a friend visiting from the US and brought the forever missed red solo cups and flaming shots! We had so much fun with everyone but by the time everyone was getting ready to go to the bars it was close to 2am and we had an early flight to catch to Italy. We called it a night and wished the birthday boy well! We met some amazing people in Budapest and highly recommend that everyone visits Budapest. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming and there are some amazing sites there! 

Kel and I on the top of Castle Hill

Jumping pic in front of the Disney Castle!

Chain bridge connection Buda and Pest

St. Stevens Basilica

Heroes Square

Castle in the park

over looking Pest

church

Hungarian Parliament

Parliament in the background

rose gellato

København, Denmark!

Oh Copenhagen. Words cannot possibly describe how in love with that city I am. I feel like it is such an underrated city. I never hear anyone talk about it and even when one of my best friends said she was going to study abroad there, I specifically remember asking why? When she returned she had nothing but amazing things to say about it. She said if I ever had the chance to go there, I needed to go. Alex was absolutely telling the truth. Im not going to lie, I had no idea what to expect from Copenhagen other than cold weather and expensive price tags. It proved to be so much more than I could have ever dreamed of.

My Danish adventures began last Wednesday. My roommate Kelly and I had a 9am flight from Sevilla to Barcelona. During the layover in Barca, I shelled out my last remaining euros to purchase an American cosmo. Probably one of the best things I could have spent 5 euros on. God I’ve missed those 107 things to do with a silk tie articles. After a quick layover, we were off to Copenhagen. I saw more blondes boarding the plane than I had seen over the past 3 months in Spain. Little did I know what I was getting into.  It was only a three hour flight and we were finally in Denmark! Stepping off the plane was brutal. We had gone from 35C to a mere 7C but I didn’t care since we were in CPH. We stood in such awe of the Danish everywhere and then soon realized we couldn’t even begin to pretend we understood what was being said. Good thing the danes realize no one else speaks Danish and had English subtitles under everything. After a quick metro ride to the central train station and a three minute walk to the hotel, we immediately dropped our bags off and began exploring the amazing city. It was about 530 when we started to wander. We decided to walk down Strøget which is Europe’s longest pedestrian walkway. It was over a kilometer long and it was lined with little restaurants, pastry places and shops. We stumbled upon this store called Made in America. It sold all sorts of American delicacies like jello, marshmellow fluff, mountain dew, reeses and cheetos. We were in such awe and seriously considered shelling out some big bucks for these treats. Side note, Denmark uses the Danish krone. So 1 USD equals a little more than 5 krone.  Anyways, one pack of reese’s were 20 krone so we passed on that fast. We couldn’t help but notice all the 7-11’s that lined the Strøget. It was insane, like how dunks or starbucks is in Boston is how 7-11 is in Copenhagen.  We assumed that they would have cheap prices for things, but we were mistaken. We were in CPH so everything was pricey. A carton of Ben and Jerrys was 50 krone. Yep $10 dollars. For dinner we settled for a box of Chinese takeout for 45 krone. We decided to call it a night after that and headed back to our hotel room, ate our Chinese food and watched a little Jersey shore in Danish. What could be better!

Thursday brought endless adventures. It turns out we picked some of the best days to be in Copenhagen. Thursday was opening day at Tivoli, which is an old amusement park which Walt Disney based Disneyland off of.  There were Easter decorations everywhere and I felt like a little kid again running around in such awe of everything Tivoli had to offer. The highlight of Tivoli during the day was certainly stumbling upon a wild peacock. It was making such god awful squawking noises at me but I honestly don’t think I’ve seen a peacock in person before.  It was so beautiful and I knew Nini would be insanely jealous. After meandering though the park, we discovered they were having a fireworks show at night to commemorate opening day. We were thrilled since we both absolutely love fireworks. After Tivoli we ventured to try and find the famed Little Mermaid statue. We navigated though the confusing street names until we came across this area which said it contained the Little Mermaid. Im not sure what I thought the Little Mermaid would be but it was literally a small rock with a bronze mermaid on the top that was no bigger than I was. Oh well. I couldn’t hate since I love the Little Mermaid terribly. Walking back towards the city center, we stopped to get Pølsers which are Danish hotdogs essentially. Next stop was Christiania, little did we know we would be in for a royal treat on our way there.  We came across these massive crowds and tv crews and literally had no clue what was going on. We asked a few locals and they said it in a few minutes the Danish royal family would be arriving to the church for the baptism of the royal twins, the new prince and princess of Denmark. We stuck around and caught a glimpse of the Danish royal family! It was so cool and I’m sure we couldn’t have even found this place if we tried. Next stop before reaching Christiania, was climbing this church to seeing panoramic views of Copenhagen. Of course we got their right before it was closing so we had to run up and down in record time. The views from the top were spectacular and it was a little frightening since once we had made it through the church, there was a spiral staircase on the steeple. I loved every second of being up there. Seeing the city from up high was definitely the best way to do it. After the church we made it to Christiania. Words cannot describe this place and neither can pictures since photography is prohibited. It’s basically this outlaw community that isn’t technically a part of the European union. They sell weed in little baggies like its candy and there are no cars there. It’s a very hippy community with a really cool vibe and intricate graffiti everywhere. Kelly described it as a Morocco with blondes.

One of the best things about Copenhagen is their men. It is such a 180 from Spanish men.  Spaniards are most of the time shorter than I am and have very dark features. Danish men are tall, blonde and have amazing blue eyes. It was heaven for sure.  On our way back from our adventures, we grabbed some typical Danish pastries and went back to the hotel to get ready for the fireworks.  Went ventured back out to Tivoli at 10 for the show. Even though they were only 15 minutes long, I still loved every second of it. Fireworks are my favorite part of 4^th of July and it just reminded me of being back on the cape. IT was the perfect way to spend our last night in CPH. Friday we had a 5pm flight to Budapest so we could spend a few hours in the city before we left. We decided to take a walk along the canals and played with the geese! Our last stop was the famed Nyhavn district. It is the most picturesque area of Copenhagen. It’s a canal lined with boats and various colored houses. I wish we could sit at an outdoor restaurant and stay there forever. I loved Copenhagen so much and am literally going to tell everyone I know to visit there. I want everyone else to loved Copenhagen as much as I did. It’s just an indescribable feeling but seriously, I cannot wait to someday return to this amazing ciy. Jeg elsker København :)

playing with the peacock

Tivoli :)

just for you Nini

Little Mermaid

bikes, bikes, bikes everywhere

Prince and Princess at the baptism

At the top of the church

entrance to Christiania

Fireworks!!

Nyhavn :)

Kelly and I at Nyhavn