Eurotrip 2009

Guinness Factory!

Buckingham Palace

WOW it's been a long time since my last post! I apologize!! I promise promise promise that's the longest I'll go for the rest of my stay here. 

Lauren and I had a great time this past week on our little Eurotrip. We started out on Friday night and caught a night plane from Granada to London. It was Lauren's first experience with Ryanair, which is the shantiest of all shanty airlines but will get you from Granada to London for DIRT cheap. Highly recommend it to anybody traveling in Europe... it's worth the lack of complimentary drink and the strict baggage requirements. We made it into London around 1am and caught a train into the city center. We were completely exhausted and got to our hostel and just crashed. 

The next morning, we got up and started out to sightsee. We saw Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Thames River, and the London Eye. I found myself quoting European Vacation that entire day... "Hey look, kids! There's Big Ben and there's Parliament!"... "Kids, Big Ben. Parliament." If you don't know what I'm talking about, you have to watch this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFsDjmceuDo. After conquering that area of town, we decided to venture over to Buckingham Palace. We took a veeeeery long route to get there which ended up being great because we were able to see some of the really cute residential areas. I, of course, decided that they all looked like they were out of The Parent Trap.

At Buckingham Palace, we saw the guards and the palace from in front and then took a walk through the gardens and through St. James' Park. After that we took the tube to Harrods, the ENORMOUS department store in London. We looked around Harrods for awhile, bought some mini-cupcakes (I had missed cupcakes!) and then wandered that area for awhile. We ended up getting lunch at a pub and then heading back to the hostel to nap and get ready for our evening. 

We had gotten tickets for Spring Awakening, which is one of my top three favorite musicals of all time. I'd seen it twice in New York and was really excited to see the West End's new version. It did not disappoint-- such a phenomenal show! And the box office even bumped our seats up because the theatre wasn't full-- so we had an amazing view! As a side note, Spring Awakening is coming to Chicago this summer and if anyone is looking for a good musical to see, go see it. I will put out the warning that it's very edgy and artsy and isn't your typical "family musical", but it's very thought-provoking and deep and has incredible music. Go to www.broadwayinchicago.com for more info :-)

After the show, we went to dinner in the Covent Garden area, which was so cute and I fell in love with. It was like if New York's theatre district was in the Village... so great! We then made our way to Piccadilly Circus to try to meet up with Lauren's friends from school but ended up needing to catch the tube back to the hostel before we could meet them. 

The next day, we checked out of the hostel and explored more. We tried to make it to Westminster Abbey for Palm Sunday mass but narrowly missed it because of a tube snafu. Bummer! We ended up walking around a lot and meeting Lauren's friends for lunch, which was really fun. Then we headed back to the hostel, got our stuff, and got on a train to the airport for our flight to Dublin.

We got to Dublin around 10pm and were able to find our hostel pretty easily. We checked in, got settled, used the internet there to send emails home, and crashed for the night. The next day, we slept in and then made our way over to the Guinness Storehouse for a tour and a free pint, which was a lot of fun. We discovered that Irish people are SO nice! Everyone was so great the whole time we were there. That night, we went on a little pub crawl to experience Temple Bar. My friends Meg and Caitlin studied in Dublin last summer and had a lot of great places for us to go. It was a very fun night. We spent most of Tuesday walking around and doing some shopping. We saw a lot of Dublin and then turned in early so we could get up for our flight the next morning. 

On Wednesday morning, we were up dark and early (think 2:45am) to catch our plane to Tenerife. It was a veeeery early flight but so worth it to get to the Canaries! The island was absolutely gorgeous and we had a great time hanging out with my friends and just relaxing on the beach. We both managed to get a little tan and it was definitely rejuvenating. 

One of my favorite moments in the Canaries was when we went into this little sandwich shop to get sandwiches to go one night. There were two older men behind the bar and they made our sandwiches and asked if they were to go or to eat there. When we said to go, they kept asking why and said we should stay there and talk to them. With my proficiency test in four weeks and one day, I'm in no position to turn down a conversation with a native speaker, and these men looked very un-creepy, so we stayed. They ended up giving us each a few free beers and shots of Ron Miel (honey rum... SO. GOOD.) and I got to practice my Spanish for over an hour, which was definitely needed after a five days of non-stop English. They told me I speak very well and when they asked if my parents were Spanish, I just about leaned over the bar to hug them. It was definitely a needed ego-boost. I know my Spanish has gotten better since being here, but just to hear people that I don't know and that don't deal with American students on a regular basis give me good feedback makes me feel a lot better about this test. 

We got back to Granada yesterday morning after a looooong trip home (7 hours in the Tenerife airport, 2 hours on a plane, a hostel stay, and a 2 hour bus ride). It was a great trip, but it's so great to be back in my routine and back to what I know. I'm someone who loves the familiar :-)

A big milestone happened while I was gone. Saturday was my one more month mark. I'm now officially into my last month. It's such a weird feeling and such a great feeling. I keep kind of going back and forth between "that's still kind of a long time" and "that's NOTHING!" I just am so happy that I've gotten this far and am looking SO forward to the rest of my time here and especially to my return home!! I CANNOT wait to see everyone!