Killarney and London

Killarney!
We weren't sure what to expect, but we discovered the town itself is mainly filled with shops all over the place. Unfortunately when we arrived everything we needed closed at 7, so we were forced to take an early and relaxing evening. Since the grocery store was closed, we ate a crazy "pay as you please" restaurant, which is exactly what it sounds like. Our hostel was great- we stayed in a little attic room that we had to duck to get into. 

Since there's not really much to do in or around Killarney besides see the countryside, we had planned on hiking taking up most of our short time there. Weirdly though, it's really hard to find hiking or get to trailheads in the Killarney National Park. On our first day, we ended up on a bus tour of the highly recommended Ring of Kerry with overwhelming views and an underwhelming tour guide/driver. Oddly the whole time we were there our tour guides, hostel, and anyone else made a big deal about telling us about all the hotels we were nearby/passing/not staying at. we also passed through a town which was notable for A) receiving Ireland's 'Tidy Town Award' and B) for hosting a Puck Festival each year where they find a goat in the hills, bring it into town, put in up on a really tall pole, then have a party around it for three days. (The goat is released back into the hills at the end.)

When we got back to the hostel we met Hannah, probably our favorite New Friend of this trip. We went out that night with her and a couple of german girls, and decided we would hear Irish music every night we were there (since like every bar had live music after about 8 every night). 

The next day we walked the 3 miles or so to Muckross House (the old Victorian mansion and estate that makes up Killarney's only real tourist attraction) with Hannah and had the most bizarre tour through the house itself. It was delivered via rapid-fire facts, like an inventory of everything in the house and each historical fact of interest (fact of interest: queen victoria visited the house for two days, and they spent six years preparing for her visit. A month before she arrived she wrote a considerate letter saying 'cant wait to be there, please don't anyone go to any trouble on my account.')
After the tour we hiked around Muckross Lake. On the way we met some Israeli guys from Philadelphia  who gave us tea from their camp stove as we squatted outside the extremely overpriced tea house on one shore of the lake. We also stopped off (aka hiked up a mountain to) Torc Waterfall, which we found after a bit of confusion with a very small and mildly disappointing waterfall. 
At the end of our extremely beautiful and mildly rainy hike, we hitchhiked back to town!!! Made confident by our massive group (three girls instead of two) we decided it was worth a try while we waited for our taxi. It was soooo easy! The first car we hailed stopped, and it was a single, really really nice older woman who was headed straight where we needed to go!

On our last day, we did a combined boat/hike/bike trip through Dunloe Gap, which is a pass between a mountain (Purple Mountain) and a mountain range. We were carried to the bottom of the gap in a small boat, then walked our bikes up a long long hill to the middle of the gap, then biked allllllllll the way down and back into Killarney. It bore some resemblance in theory to the VA Creeper Trail, except it was a lot more work. 

After that, we started the long journey home! Wednesday morning we woke up before god, flew to London, and spent a bit of time wandering around near Victoria Station. We saw the Buckingham Palace. It was okay. We also walked around the Ritz London, which was surrounded by the fanciest shops- Gucci, Yves Saint Lauren, Mikimoto, etc etc   All the shops where just going in is really out of our price range.

 London, as we found the last time we were here, is very hard to figure out and very expensive, but also very full of people more than willing to help you figure it out. We spent a good bit of our time today trying to withdraw money, since most european credit cards apparently have a chip in them (instead of using the magnetic strip system) which means that ours do not work anywhere but at a bank's ATM. This was INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING and a little scary since we had approximately zero cash when we found this out. Other countries had the chip readers too, but we always had some cash or another atm nearby to try, but this time we tried three or four atms and two cash registers before we got it to work.

Thankfully we are now be-cashed and more than ready to fly home tomorrow out of the London Heathrow airport! ALMOST HOME! This will be our last post in Europe! We'll do our best to update with the pictures we missed, and maybe some Reflective Thoughts, but of course we'll be very busy being jetlagged and doing the most satisfying load of laundry anyone has ever known. Thanks for following along (if you have been). It's been a truly amazing trip for so many reasons, and in a way it's hard to believe it's over. We can't wait to see ALL OF YOU- some of you it may take a little longer to get to, but being around people we know and love is one of the things both of us miss the most. 

Xoxo
Emily and Leah

Dublin

(preamble: Okay so obviously we didn't get around to pictures (alas!) but they will go up eventually.)


Since we got there so early, we had plenty of time to get a little lost, find and check into our hostel, head  out to find lunch,  finish just in the nick of time to join a free walking tour, and end with a very early but very well priced and quintessentially Irish dinner. It rained (misted, really) on and off the whole time, but our tour guide was really enthusiastic and everything was totally worthwhile. 

Having gotten our general exploring out of the way, we had plenty of time the next day to dawdle out the door, see the Trinity Library (with the Book of Kells!), the Decorative Arts Museum, Kilmainham Gaol   , and wander around looking for sweaters before coming back and making dinner (a progress augmented by free food we kept getting handed- most excellent). 

The Book of Kells  was pretty neat-o. It's got such incredibly minute details... it's hard to understand how they even achieved such tiny fine lines.  There's a really good exhibition surrounding it too, and the ticket also got us into the old Trinity Library, aka the Hogwarts library. Dublin is a very book-centered city- besides the Book of Kells, we also visited the Chester Beatty Library (an extensive and amazing private  book collection made public), and a printing museum. We didn't even touch the writer's museum or any of the stuff surrounding the famous Dublin authors (James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, etc etc) 
Of course, we also did do the required bits of any Dublin visit, which are: go to the Guinness Factory, go to pubs, drink drink drink. 
The Guinness Factory was all right- we went a mere three hours before closing, so multiple exhibits were closing by the time we got to them. We did get our complimentary pint of Guinness in the 'gravity bar', from which we had a 360' view of Dublin which was cool. After sampling Guinness (verdict: good stuff) we went on to a couple different bars to make a night of it, and got little sampler trays of both whiskey and beer. We even made a little comparison chart (not pictured here). In short, whisky is basically poison, Emily still doesn't like beer, and Leah, though pleased with our samples, is still searching for the perfect beer. A good time was had by all, especially after we met some native dubliners (and one Grecian woman) and helped them celebrate a birthday. Our new friends were in a little group of four, and it turned out that two had studied animation in college, and one is now a real-life artist (and bartender). We even swapped websites!!! (Frankhague.blogspot.com if you want to see his, and herrsuite.tumblr.com if you want to see mine)

The next morning we got ourselves woozily up, out the door, and to the train station just in time to watch our train drive away without us. No worries though, we successfully got ourselves to Killarney, just a few hours later than expected. 

Fort William and Edinburgh

So far, Leah and I are both about 99% sure Scotland is our favorite place from this whole trip. It's a fierce competition, and we haven't seen Edinburgh yet, but this place is really really beautiful. The only downside of Scotland so far is that all public transportation (and most other things to boot) comes, is, or starts late.

We've spent the last few days hiking and exploring Fort William and the surrounding towns, and we finally finally both bought rain jackets. The weather actually held out for us to do that, which was awesome. On our 'explore Fort William' day, we also went on a short boat trip around the loch and saw a salmon farm, a mussel farm, and a seal colony! Seals are so WIGGLY! Actually so are salmon as it turns out. Mussels do not wiggle at all. 

On our hiking days, we stumbled upon something fabulous every day. 

On our first day, we went to the top of Cow Hill, which loomed small-ly over the back of the town and had a radio tower on top. There were signs for cows everyhwere, but we didn't see any. On the way down, we made our discovery for the day: A little path made of boards labeled 'Outlandia' led us off the main trail and through some particularly moist and mossy woods. At the end of the boardwalk was a queer little faux- tree house. It was perched on the side of the hill about 15 feet off the ground, supported by a section of tree trunk that had been bolted into a cement slab. It's only window was on the back (facing down the hill) and the door was frustratingly locked. We can only guess it was someone's teeny tiny vacation cabin.  From there we went down to patter around in a stony creek, and then splash around downstream in the same creek aka the most perfect swimming hole ever- waterfalls, grassy flat area, little weird whirlpool thing, and a deep part that you could dive into off some rocks /headfirst/!! (we did not do this- there was a group of Rowdy Youths nearby that were doing it. 

Our next hiking day was serendipity itself. Originally, we had planned on using one day to ride the Jacobite Train, aka the Harry Potter train, which goes from Fort William to Mallaig and would cross the viaduct that was pictured in the movies. Unfortunately, they were totally booked. Fortunately, we ended up (TOTALLY BY CHANCE)  riding a different train along the same track (and thus over the same viaduct) and then wandering through the (very very muddy) hills around the train station until we came across the viaduct itself. We took some pictures, then discovered that we were actually in the prime spot for watching the Jacobite Train go across, and it would be crossing in half an hour! (we learned this from some people who were gathered on the hillside for that express purpose.) It was almost definitely a cooler experience than riding the train itself, and cost like a fourth of the price of a Jacobite Train ticket. So lovely. Plus we got to hike around this extremely amazing valley, and then eat delicious desserts in a converted railway car restaurant before our return train,  so we pretty much won that day. 

Another day, we got ourselves out to  Arisaig (a very westerly little peninsula) and walked out along the coastline, which was covered in bright yellow and ochre seaweed. We also discovered a really old stone/brick house in the woods, which we expertly estimate to be over 100 years old. All the wood bits were totally gone, and trees, moss and ferns had moved in with a vengeance. It felt like a sunny, green, mysterious secret garden. It also had an old cast iron stove still built into the wall, and some sort of decorative stonework crest thing over the front door. 

Fort William itself was just perfect for us- it was not merely a hiking base like Innsbruck. We stayed a really great hostel (essentially a guest house with only six beds and a full real kitchen) which was run by a sweet couple. The husband/proprietor was an absolute hiking guru for the area, which made figuring out where to go much less of a headache. The town was filled with exactly the things we wanted: thrift stores, rain jacket stores (really), and sweater stores. We also got a healthy double dose of some Scottish culture, first by a street performance of Scottish dance and pipe band that featured really cute little dancing girls, and second by a ceilidh evening in a local bar/club/venue. 

We got to Edinburgh via a really cold bus ride, and our belief was confirmed! Scotland is the best. Edinburgh is a city that feels like a castle- filled with stone buildings, cool rooftops, stairs, tunnels, bridges, and more. There are quirky, interesting little shops everywhere, and delicious looking and smelling restaurants and pubs and cafes filling in all the rest of the space.

We planned to come during the festival Fringe, which is an enormous annual performing arts festival that runs for all of August and coincides with about five other festivals along the way. Since it's festival madness season here it's hard to tell what the city's like normally, but right now it's absolutely steeped in creativity and energy and artistic fervor. The streets are crawling with performers in full costume, and the Royal Mile on High Street (literally on a hill in the middle of the city) is jam packed during the day with performers sampling their shows and handing out fliers- we gathered an inch-thick pile of fliers in about an hour. Fringe is great and good and exciting but overwhelming- it deserves a lot more time than we were able to give it (the same could be said of Edinburgh itself). We were both sad to leave so soon, and it's the city that Leah wants to go back to the most.  Neither of us could stop thinking about how this place would be heaven for all the theater people we know (Evan, lord. It's crazy. You pretty much have to come here.)

Aside from simply breathing in the atmosphere, we did get to go to a few shows- we saw a couple 'real' shows (shows we had to get tickets and pay for) and a few free shows. Surprisingly, the free shows ended up being better than our ticketed choices (although our real top ticketed choices were sold out). 
 We started off with the craziest randomest wierdest possibly drunkest solo performer ever, and it got better from there. Our other shows included an a capella group, a science guy, a couple of comedy acts of varying success, a dance/spoken word piece, and a pretty simple circus. There was a huge variety of shows to choose from, but most of the free shows were comedy acts. 

Whew these posts are getting longer and longer, aren't they? Fortunately we are now in a hostel with computers, and you know what that means! (pictures) ((or, procrastination and feeling bad for not putting pictures up)). Hopefully the Dublin post will be up soon too- we're getting so close to the end of the trip! It'll be a race to be up to date by the time we're on the plane home... We're both really really really excited to head home, but we still have three cities left, and our next couple of days are packed full of plans here in Dublin. Cross your fingers for pictures and get excited because we're about to go see the Book of Kells! 

We arrived in Vienna to be met once again by someone from our normal lives who has been scattered across the world. Ellie, our housemate of last year and this coming year, had been in Vienna studying German for the last 4 weeks, and had just enough days left there to show us around a bit before heading to Germany. 
As soon as we stepped off the train it was gogogo- since it was the last few days of Ellie's program there were a lot of activities to which we could tag along.  After checking into our hostel and getting briefly but amusingly lost, we made it to a wine garden and met some of the professors and students in Ellie's program (but not in her class). After a bit of time there it was on to a club in the Prater (which is a public amusement park that's free to enter-you pay for each ride individually). The club was enjoyed by all except Emily who affirmed her dislike for all clubs. We didn't get back til about  5:00, which made the fact that we slept in till 3:30 slightly less ridiculous. 
We got ourselves together just in time to be swooped up by Ellie to  join an after hours tour of the oldest zoo in the world. It was okay, but not very impressive, possibly because they haven't been allowed to change the shapes or sizes of the cages for at least 100 years since it's a monument and part of the Schonbrunn Palace grounds. We spent that night hanging out with Ellie's classmates in their dorms and helping them get rid of all the food and drink they couldn't/didn't want to take on the planes back home. It was great to meet and hang out with a bunch of people we could both communicate with and actually liked- most hostel people are doing their own thing or not very interesting or only interested in getting smashed in every country. Unfortunately Leah got a little ill again and had to turn in early, but otherwise it was a great night.  We slept in the vacated bed in Ellie's dorm, and by the morning (when we woke up at ungodly-o-clock to help Ellie move out) we were all feeling a little ill. Since we woke up so early though, we had a huge long day to do Vienna things. We:
- went to a big flea market where Leah got a new scarf and Ellie got a funky shirt/coat/patterny thing. 
- went to a pool Ellie had discovered that looks out over the whole city from a high hilltop. We had it all to ourselves because it was pretty much way too cold to swim (we swam anyway). 
- had a Viennese food experience of dessert and coffee with Justin- the last classmate to leave town before Ellie. 
- wandered a bit and hung out at an excellent playground
- went out to find a karaoke bar with our new hostel friend Flora. The goal was to hear Austrians hilariously singing English songs, but the place we found had a lot more talent than we were expecting. Emily discovered a love for karaoke bars, but everyone else was in favor of moving on, so we ended up at an Irish pub and played never-have -i-ever into the wee hours. 

After sleeping through breakfast for the third time, we had a planning day and saw Ellie off, then wandered around for ages trying to figure out how we were going to get to the airport in a couple days. Eventually we gave up and went to the Prater again, this time to actually ride one of the rides. We chose a swing ride... the mother of all swing rides

It was absolutely terrifying. 

The next day we had another Vienna exploration day, this time without Ellie to guide us. We:
- went to the Kunst Haus and Hunderwasser Haus which were reminiscient of all the Gaudi stuff in Barcelona but more recent and arguably better. 
- couldnt figure out how to get into the church at Stephensplatz (eventually we realized it was closed derp derp). 
- went to the Leopold  and saw a fake Jonathan (see previous post)  along with a lot of Egon Schiele and an interesting exhibit that included a fair amount of Gustav Klimt. 
-finished buying flights and booking hostels for the rest of the trip!!!!!! YEAH!

The whole time we were in Vienna we were on a fast food binge, since we were surrounded by such delicacies as noodle boxes, kebab boxes, falafel boxes, ice cream, pizza, etc. and we were afraid the UK wouldn't have any of our beloved kebab. (No worries, they do) 

Now we are in Scotland, in a town called Fort William. More on that later, since we have to check out of this hostel very soon and go hiking on the coast

Jonathan what are you doing here!!

doppelgänger

JONATHAN HOW DID YOU GET TO VIENNA

AAAHHHHHH

RIDICULOUS

***this is in the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria.

Munich and Innsbruck

After Amsterdam, our plan was to stay with Leah's great aunt and uncle (Jerry and Rita) in Rutzhofen for a week, which meant we were traveling through Munich to get to their very small town in southern Germany. Unfortunately, Rita ended up coming down with a serious case of pneumonia about a week before we arrived in Germany, and was still very ill once we were in Munich. 

We lit a candle for Rita in a church we found (pictured below)

 Even after a lot of thinking and trying to figure out how to make it work, we weren't able to stay with them. Instead, after a few fast decisions and a lot of generosity on the part of Jerry and Rita, we ended up with tickets to Innsbruck, a small city just barely inside Austria in the foothills of the Austrian Alps.

We did spend a full day in Munich though while all this was being figured out. Having time to explore was the silver lining of missing Rutzhofen, since we weren't planning on spending much time there at all. We knew things were good because on our first night we were greeted with a mysterious fireworks display that went on forEVER, which we stood in the middle of a road to watch. The next day we went on a long and excellent walking tour of the city, on which we learned about beer, maypoles, nazis, beer, rebuilding of churches, the Glockenspiel,  beer, etc.

We also saw this guy play. Munich has the BEST buskers.

And we went into a church that was all white inside - quite a relief after all the gold leaf and crazy marble. This is where we lit Rita's candle.

That evening we headed for a Biergarten that we'd heard good things about on the tour. It was a confusing place but we ended up with absolutely delicious food (Leah's favorite so far!!) and some weirdly disappointing beer. It was a relief to be in a place where food was affordable again (Amsterdam was wonderful but pricey).

Heading to Innsbruck, we had a really beautiful train ride through the mountains of southern Germany- we passed through bundles of little adorable villages, between cloud-topped peaks, and above grassy countryside. After that double-shot of charm and beauty, we were a little disappointed by Innsbruck itself- it was fairly industrial and not very interesting or cute (from what we could tell on our walk away from the train station). We found nicer bits later, but the real appeal was the mountains. On our first full day, Leah ended up feeling pretty sick, but by the afternoon was in shape for a hike to a cable-car trip that took us to the top of the peak behind our hostel.

Leah is (almost) on the top of a 3300m tall mountain in the Alps!

It was absolutely awesome, even though we only got to be up there for 10 minutes because we'd made it just in time for the last car up and down. Feeling the temperature change from the bottom to the top was surreal.

The next day, we were set on doing a real hike, but had to figure out where such a thing was and how to get to it. After some searching and whining, we decided to follow a path through the alps described by some guy on the Internet 30 years ago. It worked out great!

Before it started raining.

We cable-carred up, walked through beautiful beautiful mountains, got rained on, saw cows with bells (they sounded like windchimes) went down horrible steep wet hills, got chair-lifted the rest of the way down, saw a little bit of the cute city/village of Hall-in-Turin (not much to see), and then caught a bus back into Innsbruck.

These are some of the cows we saw. They were scary. And big. And one was a bull (on the left). We were like a foot from them. Eeeeeeee!

Leah's 'hiking picture' pose. The path was crossed by a couple rocky creeks falling down the mountainside.

It was an adventure, especially finding the buses and lifts we needed, but everyone there was soooo helpful and friendly! If they didn't speak English, they were happy to find someone who did, and if they spoke English at all, they were thrilled to practice with us.

After Innsbruck it was back on to Munich and straight through to Vienna to find Ellie!

Photos from Barcelona to Amsterdam (aka PICS FINALLY)

At long last, we we´ve reached a real computer! Welcome to the last four weeks of our lives in fast forward. We´ve written to you about all these things but haven´t been able to give you pictures until now. 

BARCELONA:

Antoni Gaudi´s unfinished masterpiece: the Sagrada Familia! Its interior was recently completed, and it was sanctified as a true cathedral, but work is STILL being done on the exterior (one whole facade is basically yet-unbuilt).

Our new friend Saliou (closest to the camera). Looking back at our Barcelona post, we never explained this at all apparently! Through our host (my second cousin) Lissa, we met this guy Saliou who is an African drummer from Senegal. He speaks four languages but only a sentence or two of English, and was nice enough to invite us to the African dance class he plays drums for (pictured), and then to a club his band played at the next night. He was incredibly nice and kind, and the whole event was put Emily through her paces with the little Spanish she has - that and energetic body language was the only way we could communicate the whole time. 

Us in Gaudi´s Park Guell, overlooking Barcelona.

Still in Park Guell - the place was filled with wonderful trees and plants. 

More Park Guell

Montserrat! We took a day to hike around on a mountain nearby Barcelona. It had a real live monastery on it and also some climbable crevasses. 

Montserrat was topped with finger-like rock formations that apparently attract rock climbers from all over. Some of us are more ´rock sitters´ though. 

SALOBRENA:

Stretching after a long walk up and up and up and up. This beautiful white coastal Spanish town was made of stairs. 

The beach! It was freezing cold but Emily was too excited to be deterred. 

Leah´s sitting on what is locally known as The Rock. It juts out off of the shoreline of Salobrena and is very high over the water. In the background here you can see another little white village that is very nearby (we walked to it in like 20 minutes or so. 

GRANADA:

 Leah is Already Cool. 

We went out on a guided hike to the Sierra Nevadas where we walked over a rope bridge...

....and Leah Experienced some waterfalls. 

The Alhambra was every bit as beautiful as Emily wanted it to be. The water really was as green as it looks in this picture, no idea why. 

The science museum in Granada (the Parque de las Ciencias) was having a special Escher exhibit, which of course we had to see. This room was part of that exhibit, and is otherwise indescribable. We took pictures here until the camera died. 

 MADRID:

For the Imaginauts: we found a statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza! It´s not a great picture, but it was a pretty great statue. Also, we have almost no other pictures from Madrid. 

AMSTERDAM:

WE ARE A WINDMILL

We went on a really fantastic and well-led bike tour through Amsterdam and into the surrounding countryside. Besides this windmill, we saw a cheese farm slash wooden shoe making place, a house boat neighborhood (price range: 500,000-1,000,000 €), a lovely park where our tour guide claimed to have been conceived, and some baby cows. 

This is a quintessential picture of Amsterdam: bikes, canal, trees, and Leah trying to figure out why the street names don´t match the map. 

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was great! It was the land of 'plans shmans'. We started to do so many things, only to change our minds, but we really liked everything we did.
Things we ALMOST did:
- visited the Prostitution Information Center (explaining how prostitution functions in this country)
- had a Heinekin Factory Experience
- visited a museum we know as 'the craft thing' (it has a really long ditch name that neither of us remember.)
- visited the Anne Frank Museum (waited in line for an hour before giving up and getting bagels)
- bought coats (too expeeeeennsive and not perfect!)
- rent bikes (we got a ride on a rickshaw though!)

Things we DID do!!!:
- walked around a LOT
- went coat shopping a LOT
- went to the largest market in Holland (not very large)
- visited the oldest botanical gardens.
- went to the oldest comic book shop in Europe
- visited the infamous red light district
- sampled many cheeses and bought several
- Emily went to the Rijksmuseum (an art museum stuffed full if Rembrandt)
- ate at a three-story Chinese restaurant
- had Belgian waffles (and a LOT of other sweets)
- went on an amazing bike tour which included a tour of a cheese farm/wooden shoe place.

We were surprised by a lot of things about Amsterdam. For instance, we had no idea it was so riddled with canals, or that Dutch sounds SO much like English but gibberish.

Also, fun fact: there are more bikes than people in Amsterdam. This place is FLAT.

We head to Munich in almost 8 hours, and then hopefully on to Leah's great uncle and aunt's house in Rutzhofen.

Madrid and Amsterdam

So of all the places to be in the world, Madrid is not the worst. We definitely wouldn't call it the best either though. 
The best things there were 

1. The gigantic, enormous, huge street market that we wandered through for hours and hours
2. The Garden of Earthly Delights (one of Emily's favorite art pieces)

Fortunately, we are now in Amsterdam, which is a rather lovely place! The transition from Spain was rather shocking, since we left a place with no humidity at 90', and were welcomed by a miserable, gusty, cold rain, but today was sunny and warm(ish) and perfect, and the weather-app predicts more of the same. Hopefully our luck will hold out, but just in case we devoted all day today to shopping for raincoats (nothing purchased yet though).

Tomorrow, we will explore the city outside of the stores.

Salobrena, Granada and Madrid

Okay, so this time we actually were having too much fun to post- Granada was great.
But first, we have to add to Salobrena. Literally right after we posted our last blog post, we had a surprise visitor show up at our hostel. Elisa, a Spanish teacher from Richmond who we met in Loches at Gail and Maury's, and who is now studying in Granada, had decided to spend the day at the beach with us. We had been emailing her because we were planning on meeting up with her in Granada, and couldn't help raving about the lovely beach we were at and telling her she should visit it if she got a chance. Unknown to us, she promptly decided to come right away, shot us a quick message (which we didn't see until later) and jumped on a bus. Meanwhile we were having one of our planning days, and when we finally finished buying our next tickets and all the boring work stuff, we headed back to our hostel intent on finishing the day out at the beach. We walked into our hostel at 3:42, 3 minutes early for the meeting time Elisa had proposed without us realizing it! Elisa was waiting for us with a big smile, and after sorting out how such an amazing coincidence has lined up so perfectly, we spent a great day at the beach together.
Once we got back to Granada, we walked into our hostel, looked around and decided we needed to stay for an extra day. The hostel was covered in helpful posters and flyers offering activities and day trips and sangria... Also it was just an awesome building in the Carmen style - based around a central courtyard, with bridges coming off the central stairs to each room (it's hard to describe but it was very cool). What did we do in Granada besides admire our hostel?

-shopped (a lot). There were little Arab market shop things on windy little alleys filled with beautiful stuff, which we spent a lot of time in. Emily acquired some excellent green puffy pants.
-saw a flamenco performance in a tiny little cave room. Flamenco is supriaingly stomp-y and tap dance-like!
-went hiking in a beautiful valley along a windy little stream, encountering waterfalls and rope bridges and rock climbers along the way.
-met up with Elisa again (this time a little more clearly planned), had dinner together, and ventured out to the hot springs at 10:30 pm. We were chauffeured out into the Spanish countryside (just the three of us) by Pepe, in his very old truck, to the lulling music of Lady Gaga's Alejandro. The hot springs were made up of several different pools- the first one we found ourselves in was apparently the pool designated for naked gay men, as Pepe informed us. This was a bit much for us, so we stuck to the main pool after that.
-went to the Alhambra! It was every bit as wonderful as we'd hoped.
-visited the Parque de las Ciencias (the Granada science museum) and saw a really good exhibition on Escher, learned a lot about safety in the workplace and home, and saw a giant whale heart.
-bought some cheaper than cheap wine. Some was palatable, some was less so, and some was poured out. Surprisingly the bottle that cost .85€ (obviously the cheapest) tasted the best.

Now we are in Madrid, and devoted to keeping a slower pace. Today, we wander.

Granada and Salobrena

So from what we saw of Granada, it seems pretty good and we're looking forward to spending the next couple days there. For the moment, though, we're pretty jazzed about this adorable white beach town-on-a-cliff we are in. Salobrena (spelled with a tilde over the n) is made of steps, winding roads and pretty tiled foyers. The beach is covered in pebbles and children, and the freezing cold. Despite that awful sounding description, it's really great- the water is crystal clear and the coastal view is one of mountains and the other tiny adorable white villages that surround us.
Tomorrow, we spend half the day on the beach before we head back to Granada. (yay!)

Terrassa and Barcelona

Wow, that week went fast. We´re totally tuckered out, and have a full travel day ahead of us tomorrow, so we´ll just say this:

Barcelona was great, though we never quite made it to the beach. Instead we got African drums and dancing, all the Gaudí we could ever want, and a beautiful hike on Montserrat. Tomorrow we are stopping by at Granada before heading down to Salobreña for a few days to make up for lost beach time (no worries, we´re headed back to Granada after the weekend.)

Terrassa

After spending all day Friday on a long series of train rides from Loches to Barcelona (we had to go back up to Paris to catch a train that would make it to Barcelona) we made it to Terrassa into the waiting arms of Lissa and Alex.

Of course we slept in on Saturday, but then made up for it with a very full afternoon and evening. In Terrassa right now, the whole city is putting on their Festa Major, which is a festival celebrating the city´s identity. There are lots of parades, performances, and concerts everywhere in the streets. So, we:

-ate out at an amazing Spanish vegetarian restaurant

-saw a building designed by one of Gaudí´s contemporaries (warming up for the Gaudi buildings themselves)

-watched a bit of a parade – mostly this means we saw a lot of Catalonian folk dancing and multi-person dragon costumes.

-went to an ... interesting meditation session/didjeridoo and singing bowl performance.

-watched part of a very long ten-couple uncoreographed performance of the Argentinian Tango.

-witnessed the city shift into mob mentality as the street lights went out and teams of dragons and devils representing the different sectors of the city paraded through the streets. The devils (usually young teenagers) had pitchforks with spinning fireworks, and the dragons were covered with them as well. Each dragon had its own ten- to twenty- person drumline following it, which gave the whole event a wild, tribal air. Almost everything about this event would have been frowned upon, if not completely illegal, in the U.S. Imagine people of all ages (including like 5 year olds jesus) dancing under fountains of sparks and flames through the city streets. It was so great.

Us in our "fire protection" (most people had on jeans and hoodies, with bandanas over their mouths)

Sunday was a little calmer, though also pretty amazing. After sleeping in again, we went out to see the Castellers (http://www.castellersdeterrassa.cat/), who are huge teams of people who build themselves into human towers topped by tiny children. The picture doesn´t do it justice- the scale of it all, plus the shaking of limbs and graceful climbing up and down (really sliding down) is really not captured in an image.

Afterwards, we had a traditional Spanish/Catalonian meal prepared by Alex, and then a super-siesta (we are very good at siestas).

Monday is a planning day, and then we hit Barcelona!

Paris and Loches

Picture catch-up post!
Now that we are on a computer that we can use to put up pictures, we get to show you all the placs we´ve been talking about:

Catacombs:

Eiffel Tower Hat

 Versailles (Our favorite part was the bushes)

 and this tree

The patio in Gail and Maury´s backyard, where we enjoyed many of our meals.

More bushes, but at a chateau near Loches

Chateau Chenenceau - built on/in/over a river. It doesn´t even look like a real place, does it? It looks like we changed out minds and went to Disneyland Paris or something.

This view is from a keep or donjon, looking out over the Chateau d´ Loches

Loches

As you can tell from our lack of posts, this has been a lovely but lazy week, but it was not totally inactive! During the time that we were not lounging in the sun and lingering over delicious meals we:

-made a delicious cobbler inspired by the extra-delicious raspberries from the weekend market.
-had a east-coast swing and waltz lesson (led by Leah of course!)
-gained a new love for scrabble
-went on a rousing bike ride through the Royal Forest (oh yes.) The many (many) hills ended with the reward of a nearby village filled to brim with flowers.


also some more castles.

Also, we had an adventure. One night during dinner we noticed some drifting sounds of nearby music, and decided to venture out in search their source. We and three others thought to ourselves "How hard can it be? It's right around the corner." After about two hours of wandering we realized that this was not the case, and that we were quite lost. Ross, our leader, confidently directed us into a park, which meant that we found ourselves on a little gravel path walking through seemingly endless dark fields, holding up our iPods for light. After what seemed like ages we came a patch of grass littered with piles of teenagers. Judging by that and the louder music, we figured we had to be close. At this point we were desperate to find any sort of civilization, and to escape the dark forms in the grass. Nearby lay what seemed to be our only option: an alley ending in a closed and locked 8-foot tall gate. After minimal debate (go back down the endless path to nowhere? jump a fence into a french reggae concert? hmmm) all five of us clambered over.  About five minutes after we had finished looking around, congratulating ourselves, and two of our group going to buy wine, we noticed the two police officers standing about 30 feet from the fence and about 10 feet from us, who had apparently been on break for the time it took us to jump over.

In other news, pictures are not going to happen at this point, but we'll try again in Barcelona.

Loches

Oops, didn't figure out the camera + computer today, so no pictures yet. We spent all day enjoying ourselves inside (out of the NINETY-SEVEN DEGREE heat. Finally it's warm.)

Paris, Loches

We finished up Paris by giving our whole last day to Versailles (which we were both honestly disappointed by, at least concerning the chateau - the gardens are spectacular and huge and we were very envious of the people who were exploring them on bikes.) By the evening we were in Loches with Maury and Gail (family friends from Emily's church) and a lovely little bevvy of their other house-guests. On Saturday we went to Loches' amazing twice-weekly market and got the best raspberries in the whole world (unanimously agreed upon within our group of eight world-travelers), and then went on to spend the last couple days touring the most beautiful chateaus in the surrounding countryside (all > Versailles). To round out the weekend we went to a wine-tasting, which included a tour and explanation of the wine-making process. That means we got to go under the mountain the vineyard is on, into the caves where the wine is stored. It was extra-cool and informative, and we'll post pictures tomorrow if we can get the computer to work! (Pics to follow of the other things above as well.) 

(In other news I am the Queen of Parenthesis -Emily)

Paris

We went to our favorite museum yet today! The Orsay Gallery is a collection of art nouveau furniture and impressionist paintings (also maybe some other stuff but that's what we liked.) We also paid a visit to the catacombs of Paris, which was not as scary as we expected but wayyy more impressive (aka FULL of bones. Six million bodies worth of bones.) Tomorrow is our last day in Paris, and then we head to Loches!

Paris

Oh, also we went into a small art store that sold very large paintbrushes

and very small mechanical pencils- this one is so much smaller than it even looks here. (And it costs around 23 euro!!!!)

Paris

Tuesday and Wednesday in Paris were much more eventful than Sunday and Monday.

We...

-saw the Anish Kapoor exhibit at the Grand Palais
-went to Notre Dame
-and a couple other churches (mysteries all - we didn't write down the names)
-saw the lock bridge
-Leah got stabbed by a petitioner/beggar... with a pen.... but still. Really.
-got a little lost in Paris
-ate snails and raw meat - steak tartare, and only a bite or so each. Bleh. The snails were good.
-went to the TOP of the Eiffel Tower (it's SO tall. sooooo tall.)
-made it back to solid ground safely
-saw the longest, wettest, saddest line in the world (outside of the Louvre)
-made it into the Louvre without waiting in the long sad wet line. There we saw many wonderful artworks.
-survived many rude tourists (people wayyyy more annoying than us).

So far it's been fabulous.

Anish Kapoor exhibit - for scale, the background person in black is directly under the arch.

Lock bridge - it's a tradition here (and apparently some other places) to write your and your amant's name on a lock, lock it to the bridge, and then throw the key into the water. 

Leah's first delicious bite of escargot.

Ta-da! Way more awesome and worthwhile than either of us expected. Paris is truly the City of Lights.