The next few weeks in Barcelona were filled with exploring the city, getting used to school (or what IES called school...) and pretty much just adjusting.
We spend two weekends in Barcelona, so naturally, we made a snap decision and decided to go visit Caitlin's friend Nicole in FLORENCE! I had loved Florence when we went to visit josh three years ago, and Caitlin had stopped there on her cruise once, but hadn't seen enough of the city, so we thought we both neeeeded to go back. The original plan was to go to Cinque Terre, but that didn't really work out as planned. Instead, we pretty much just drank wine!!
We were only in Florence for about 48 hours, but it was long enough to...
-get lost on the way back to the hostel and ask a person who we thought was a nice lady where our street was, but as soon as we asked her, we realized she was actually a he...and a prostitute. So, asking a hooker for directions- checked off our bucket lists!
-see the entire city by foot! we walked from one side of the city to the other, stopping at an amaaazing american diner for breakfast/lunch, where we happily ate omelets, veggie burgers, chocolate chip pancakes, milkshakes and everything else that was obviously not readily available in spain. Although this was an incredible meal, it was a sign that Florence was definitely not your typical italian city- it was fiiiilled with american students. not necessarily a bad thing, but we heard almost NO italian.
-we saw a beeeeautiful view of the city from a hill and then drank wine all over the city- from the banks of the river, on our walk across the city to our dinner, where we were given wine glasses the size of our heads and were refilled constantly...for free. we definitely didn't get this kind of treatment in barcelona!
...then we flew back to barcelona just in time for another wonderful meal of french fries and bread at the residencia!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Way Behind, yet again (Parents visit and La Merce)
Hello again! Happy second night of Hanukkah!
So, we're a bit behind, as you can see. We only have 16 days left here in Barcelona, but we figured it would be as good a time as any to catch y'all up a bit on what's been going on...starting with the end of September!
So we got back from our Oktoberfest shenanigans, my parents (lisa and jay) were in Barcelona! We did allll the touristy sights with them, from the Olympic museum to the Picasso Museum to eating paella and other delicious tapas and patatas bravas (potatoes with mayo and spicy sauce, one of our favorite spanish foods) and Parc Guell and of course, had a very long, long-distance call to Josh! We loved having them here, not only for the wonderful food.
The last day that my parents were here, Friday, La Merce, the cultural festival here in Barcelona began, so that night we were able to see the beginning fireworks with them! They were really pretty fireworks over the water near the beach and harbor, and we sat on the lovely, slightly polluted harbor to watch them. It was a really fun ending to their trip!
The rest of La Merce was absolutely crazy. The cultural events were very different from the type of cultural events that we have in the United States. It started with huge parades of HUUUGE puppets the size of trucks of kings, queens and jokers. The next night was the Correfoc, which is "fire parade" in Catalan. And it was exactly what it sounded like. Tons of people gathered around the beginning of the parade at these two large gates called "the gates of hell" where people began filing out with FLAMETORCHES and fireworks. We were literally five feet away from people shooting sparks everywhere, including into the crowd. Catalan people actually dance underneath the flames, so we guessed we were safe standing in the crowd? It was an incredible thing to see- strange because it would NEVER happen in the states. Correfoc would definitely equal tons and tons of lawsuits and possibly a riot or two. The next day, we saw another strange yet incredible cultural event- the Castellers. The Castellers are basically human tower builders- literally they build towers out of humans. The base is comprised of about 100 catalan people, then the other layers (up to 5) are made up of four people each. The fifth layer wayyyy on the top (about three stories high) are two children who climb all the way up (wearing helmets because two years ago a little girl died) and signal that the Castell is complete. It was completely crazy to see such a huge structure being built by humans, especially because it was so successful!
La Merce also had crazy concerts happening in Plazas all around the city, so we happened upon a bunch of awesome concerts. We also went with all the Spanish kids in our dorm to a techno-ish concert, where we danced in a huge forum area. It was so interesting to see how the spanish people dance at concerts- definitely different than american concerts. Our dance moves, aka the cabbage patch and the running man, were huuuuge hits. obviously.
MORE TO COME SOOOOON! (we promise actually soon this time. not two months later time...)
pictures above- fire parade GIANT sparks, castell building and little kids castell group
So, we're a bit behind, as you can see. We only have 16 days left here in Barcelona, but we figured it would be as good a time as any to catch y'all up a bit on what's been going on...starting with the end of September!
So we got back from our Oktoberfest shenanigans, my parents (lisa and jay) were in Barcelona! We did allll the touristy sights with them, from the Olympic museum to the Picasso Museum to eating paella and other delicious tapas and patatas bravas (potatoes with mayo and spicy sauce, one of our favorite spanish foods) and Parc Guell and of course, had a very long, long-distance call to Josh! We loved having them here, not only for the wonderful food.
The last day that my parents were here, Friday, La Merce, the cultural festival here in Barcelona began, so that night we were able to see the beginning fireworks with them! They were really pretty fireworks over the water near the beach and harbor, and we sat on the lovely, slightly polluted harbor to watch them. It was a really fun ending to their trip!
The rest of La Merce was absolutely crazy. The cultural events were very different from the type of cultural events that we have in the United States. It started with huge parades of HUUUGE puppets the size of trucks of kings, queens and jokers. The next night was the Correfoc, which is "fire parade" in Catalan. And it was exactly what it sounded like. Tons of people gathered around the beginning of the parade at these two large gates called "the gates of hell" where people began filing out with FLAMETORCHES and fireworks. We were literally five feet away from people shooting sparks everywhere, including into the crowd. Catalan people actually dance underneath the flames, so we guessed we were safe standing in the crowd? It was an incredible thing to see- strange because it would NEVER happen in the states. Correfoc would definitely equal tons and tons of lawsuits and possibly a riot or two. The next day, we saw another strange yet incredible cultural event- the Castellers. The Castellers are basically human tower builders- literally they build towers out of humans. The base is comprised of about 100 catalan people, then the other layers (up to 5) are made up of four people each. The fifth layer wayyyy on the top (about three stories high) are two children who climb all the way up (wearing helmets because two years ago a little girl died) and signal that the Castell is complete. It was completely crazy to see such a huge structure being built by humans, especially because it was so successful!
MORE TO COME SOOOOON! (we promise actually soon this time. not two months later time...)
pictures above- fire parade GIANT sparks, castell building and little kids castell group
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Oktoberfest aka OkSOBERfest
Gutentag!
So, as we try to catch up to our current activities, we decided it was necessary to devote a whole blog post (is that what these are called?) to our first trip out of Barcelona, MUNICH! After successfully getting out of our abroad program field trip for that weekend, we were ready and excited to meet up with our UCLA friends in Munich. Excited, of course, for the culture and museums of Munich...of course. We arrived in Munich on Friday morning after getting very little sleep the night before (due to a mishap with taking the wrong bus in the wrong direction for a long amount of time), and went to our fancy Marriott hotel on BERLINER street. The hotel was on a street with my last name in it! It was meant to be! After putting our stuff down, we went to go explore the city center of Munich. Most of the buildings were very cool, and we happened to stumble upon a traveling exhibit of the actual European Cup Football (soccer) trophy. It was pretty cool and very random to see the trophy/other soccer-related things. After that, our friend Josh discovered Lederhosen (the traditional German outfits- see later pictures) and was determined to find some, but unfortunately, they aren't really sold for less than 200 euros. Apparently, in Germany, they don't mass produce things like cheap Lederhosen- so different than the States! They don't like to commercialize their traditional holidays like we do...
The next day was the START of Oktoberfest. It was also the arrival of our friends Gabrielle, Bret and Ben! We got to Oktoberfest before the actual start of the festival, and got to see inside a beer tent when they actually started serving the beer, which was sooo crazy. All of these intense German people were standing on tables, singing, dancing and absolutely SCREAMING for the beer. The beer maidens are not the small, delicate German girls Josh was hoping for- instead they were pretty intense women who could carry up to 9 liters of beer in their arms, while not spilling. Very impressive! We spent the day wandering the festival, drinking beer at different tents, and generally just being in awe of the strange mix of family carnival and a festival entirely dedicated to beer. At the beginning of the day, these three people came up to us and asked how we had gotten our beer, and it turns out they were from Spain, and ended up spending most of the rest of our weekend with us! (they were also students- we promise they weren't sketchy). The beer was delicious- definitely better than any beer we've ever had back at home. Definitely the first time Caitlin enjoyed drinking a beer. Each tent had a different kind to try, but our favorite was the dark wheat beer that we had at dinner later that night.
The next day we pretty much repeated our Oktoberfest exploring, walking and drinking with random people we sat down with. There was even a family sitting next to us, whose BABY was downing a beer. Slightly adorable, yet slightly disturbing. We learned how to "prost" or cheers in german, where you say "PROST!" look someone in the eyes and clink your glass. We all felt very cultured. It was all very stereotypical of what you would picture Germany/Germans to be like- way to live up to your hype, Oktoberfest!
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| Our friend Ben prost-ing with a baby |
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| with Gabrielle |
adios amigos!
Saturday, October 16, 2010
ESPANA!
hola!
we realize that its now been two months since we've left home, but we do really have tons and tons to update y'all on. you can probably get that its erin now because of the y'all.
our first day here was nice, mainly because of our amazingly nice hotel room and shower. little do we know that we shouldn't have taken those showers for granted. the morning we were allowed to move into our dorm, we had to first find our abroad program center which is in the middle of the most touristy part of Barcelona. unfortunately, it took us more time than we thought to find it, mostly because IES (our program) did not exactly tell us how to get there. This was just the first sign of the unorganization of their organization. so eventually we found it and then found our dorm. then we found the 7 flights of stairs that we had to carry our massive bags up...once we got to our room and met our (awesome) roommate, we were both extremely winded. our room is WAY WAY WAY bigger than my dorm at UCLA. some of the other girls on our floor were complaining about how small they were, until i showed them a picture of my room in Hedrick Hall...which was about the size of a closet. Anyways, the dorm is really fun, we live with 18 american students and about 200 spanish students. the only downside to our dorm experience is the food. It's pretty much typical american disgusting dorm food, with some spanish dishes thrown in sometimes (white rice with tomato sauce and a fried egg is a favorite meal...and apparently the mystery meat somedays is rabbit. as you can guess, i haven't been eating that). they like to give us french fries alot, which at first was nice, but now, we've eaten more french fries that i could have ever imagined eating. caitlin thinks her body is made of french fries. our only other complaint are the showers- you know those sinks where you have to push to turn them on for like 20 seconds? yeah, that's our showers. but it makes us really appreciate real showers. at our last hostel visit, we felt like princesses in our continually running shower! living with the spanish students has been a really cool experience, we eat dinner/lunch with them and they like to take us out at nights. they like to laugh at our attempts to speak spanish, but talking with them really does help. a lot of them want to practice their english, so they will try to talk to us in english, which is good and bad- doesn't really help our language skills. but they are all very nice and funny- its interesting to see that college students really are the same in every country.
the first week we were here was exciting, we mostly hung out with the people in our dorm and explored the city, mostly nightlife. we had orientation with our IES program, but it was not very helpful! the first weekend, my friend Felipe stopped in Barcelona on his way to study in Paris. We did a lot of touristy activities, such as seeing all the Gaudi architecture in Barcelona, including Parc Guell, an amazing park that kind of looks like Candyland, and La Sagrada Familia, a strange cathedral that has been under construction since 1926 and won't be finished until 2026. Unfortunately, Felipe was also here during the Robbery of the Marc Jacobs Red Purse. The first Sunday of our abroad experience here, we were at a cafe, and somehow (we still don't understand how, it's just one of those unsolved life mysteries), my purse disappeared from the table, which was right next to Caitlin's and Felipe's belongings. We decided the only plausable explanation must have been invisible ninjas. Anyways, everything was stolen, including my spanish phone, money, credit cards, license, student ID...even my new Stonehenge keychain. Luckily I still had my passport back in my dorm room! It was quite an inconvenient way to start out my abroad experience, but my mom was happy- we talked ALOT that week! Everything was straightened out eventually, but drinking a lot of sangria in front of La Sagrada Familia with Felipe definitely helped.
We also went to Mount Tibidabo with Felipe, which is the second highest mountain (hill) in Barcelona, and has an absolutely incredible view of the city. It also has the best chicken sandwiches we've ever had. The kiki sauce on the sandwiches was definitely worth the trek up the mountain. We've done it twice now. There is a pretty sketchy amusement park up at the top of the mountain where the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona was filmed. We both hate that movie, but it was kind of cool to see a slightly abandoned amusement park?
We have a lot a lot more to fill y'all in on...I guess that's what happens when you forget to post for two months. Coming soon...we go to Munich for Oktoberfest and Florence to eat!
love,
erin (and caitlin)
we realize that its now been two months since we've left home, but we do really have tons and tons to update y'all on. you can probably get that its erin now because of the y'all.
our first day here was nice, mainly because of our amazingly nice hotel room and shower. little do we know that we shouldn't have taken those showers for granted. the morning we were allowed to move into our dorm, we had to first find our abroad program center which is in the middle of the most touristy part of Barcelona. unfortunately, it took us more time than we thought to find it, mostly because IES (our program) did not exactly tell us how to get there. This was just the first sign of the unorganization of their organization. so eventually we found it and then found our dorm. then we found the 7 flights of stairs that we had to carry our massive bags up...once we got to our room and met our (awesome) roommate, we were both extremely winded. our room is WAY WAY WAY bigger than my dorm at UCLA. some of the other girls on our floor were complaining about how small they were, until i showed them a picture of my room in Hedrick Hall...which was about the size of a closet. Anyways, the dorm is really fun, we live with 18 american students and about 200 spanish students. the only downside to our dorm experience is the food. It's pretty much typical american disgusting dorm food, with some spanish dishes thrown in sometimes (white rice with tomato sauce and a fried egg is a favorite meal...and apparently the mystery meat somedays is rabbit. as you can guess, i haven't been eating that). they like to give us french fries alot, which at first was nice, but now, we've eaten more french fries that i could have ever imagined eating. caitlin thinks her body is made of french fries. our only other complaint are the showers- you know those sinks where you have to push to turn them on for like 20 seconds? yeah, that's our showers. but it makes us really appreciate real showers. at our last hostel visit, we felt like princesses in our continually running shower! living with the spanish students has been a really cool experience, we eat dinner/lunch with them and they like to take us out at nights. they like to laugh at our attempts to speak spanish, but talking with them really does help. a lot of them want to practice their english, so they will try to talk to us in english, which is good and bad- doesn't really help our language skills. but they are all very nice and funny- its interesting to see that college students really are the same in every country.
the first week we were here was exciting, we mostly hung out with the people in our dorm and explored the city, mostly nightlife. we had orientation with our IES program, but it was not very helpful! the first weekend, my friend Felipe stopped in Barcelona on his way to study in Paris. We did a lot of touristy activities, such as seeing all the Gaudi architecture in Barcelona, including Parc Guell, an amazing park that kind of looks like Candyland, and La Sagrada Familia, a strange cathedral that has been under construction since 1926 and won't be finished until 2026. Unfortunately, Felipe was also here during the Robbery of the Marc Jacobs Red Purse. The first Sunday of our abroad experience here, we were at a cafe, and somehow (we still don't understand how, it's just one of those unsolved life mysteries), my purse disappeared from the table, which was right next to Caitlin's and Felipe's belongings. We decided the only plausable explanation must have been invisible ninjas. Anyways, everything was stolen, including my spanish phone, money, credit cards, license, student ID...even my new Stonehenge keychain. Luckily I still had my passport back in my dorm room! It was quite an inconvenient way to start out my abroad experience, but my mom was happy- we talked ALOT that week! Everything was straightened out eventually, but drinking a lot of sangria in front of La Sagrada Familia with Felipe definitely helped.
We also went to Mount Tibidabo with Felipe, which is the second highest mountain (hill) in Barcelona, and has an absolutely incredible view of the city. It also has the best chicken sandwiches we've ever had. The kiki sauce on the sandwiches was definitely worth the trek up the mountain. We've done it twice now. There is a pretty sketchy amusement park up at the top of the mountain where the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona was filmed. We both hate that movie, but it was kind of cool to see a slightly abandoned amusement park?
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| soaring over barcelona! |
We have a lot a lot more to fill y'all in on...I guess that's what happens when you forget to post for two months. Coming soon...we go to Munich for Oktoberfest and Florence to eat!
love,
erin (and caitlin)
paris
written by caitlin:
since we're so behind on this blogging thing, we're just going to do paris really fast bc we did so much that this post would be endless if we described everything.
since we're so behind on this blogging thing, we're just going to do paris really fast bc we did so much that this post would be endless if we described everything.
we took the train from london to paris and met my mom at the train station and we left for Caen/Normandy and Honfleur from there.
We only spent the afternoon in Honfleur, and then went on to Caen, where we went to the War Museum and then went on a tour of a couple of the beaches where the Allies landed on D-Day and the American Cemetery.
On the way to Paris, we stopped at Versailles. In Paris we pretty much saw everything: the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, Musee d'Orsey, Marmottan museum (Monet Museum), a little Shakespeare bookstore near Notre Dame filled with stacks and stacks of books. we never wanted to leave. rumor has it, Ernest Hemingway hung out there. Erin bought 2 books.
I pretty much died seeing all the impressionist art in the Musee d'Orsey, and Erin made jokes about the impressionist paintings "blending" together. Also saw Napoleon's tomb, the Champs-Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe (not sure how to spell that in French bc it's different for the one here). Went to the Eiffel Tower, where my dad suggested we eat dinner (at the 1st level, not the swanky upper level, but still pretty awesome). Erin said she was glad it wasn't her shout that night.
The first night we were there, we also saw our friend Gabrielle from UCLA who had been living and working in Paris all summer before starting her abroad program in Sussex, and she showed us around some parts of Paris at night.
quickest summary ever of a week in Paris.
Friday, September 24, 2010
london
hola amigos y familia! bienvenidos to our blog...
sorry that it's taken us so long to start it, but when faced with acceptable siestas and erin's forgetfulness, are you really surprised? we'll do our best to update it more regularly from now on. so we officially left home over a month ago, and so far we've both gotten multiple tattoos, erin's on her way to obtaining a motorcycle license, and despite craig's biggest fears, caitlin's already met a spanish man and planning to elope. JUST KIDDING! but we have mastered the metro system in 4 cities.
we arrived in London on August 19th. our first 2 days we struggled to sleep at appropriate times, but eventually adapted to our new time zone. our first exciting order of business was traveling via metro, train and bus to get to Salisbury to see the incredible, mysterious, awe-inspiring site of Stonehedge. it exceeded expectations (despite the death trap of a double decker bus that drove us around) and our experience can be summed up in 2 words: stonehenge rocks!
when we were buying our tickets for the death trap stonehenge bus, the man selling the tickets told us that the magna carta was in a church around the corner, and "if we were clever enough" we could get in for free. we just sort of nodded and didn't respond, so he then asked us if we knew what the magna carta was. erin couldn't hear so she just stared and caitlin was too appalled to respond quickly, so he thought we actually didn't know what is was. oh, you mean that little known document that's sort of the first written constitution?? yes, random man selling stonehenge tickets of all things, we've passed out of a few high school history classes!
the next day we saw WICKED at the Apollo Victoria. it was absolutely amazing, as could be expected!
that night, our friends from UCLA who were doing a Shakespeare/English program arrived in London from Stratford upon Avon and we spent the next few days doing touristy stuff with them. we did everything from riding the London Eye to Buckingham Palace tour to Westminster Abbey to Platform 9 3/4.
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| Abbey Road |
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| Buckingham Palace |
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| Parliament and Big Ben |
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| London Eye |
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| Westminster Crabbey for any Friends fans |
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| PLATFORM 9 3/4!!! with Josh and Megan |
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