lagos, portugal

Here it is...the last trip before leaving Sevilla, the last weekend everyone was still here, last weekend before finals...and we went to Lagos and had a blast!!!! We may or may not have had the best most relaxing weekend ever.

On Friday morning we took a bus at 9 am to head to Lagos. When we got there, we first got to climb on the rocks and had a great first view of Lagos:

We could even crawl in that little cave down in the bottom and got really excited to find out we could take boat rides through the grotto later that weekend!

 So lets just say this whole trip was full of beautiful beach views! Pictures didn't even do it justice. Later that day, we laid out at this beach and there was a big rock in the middle that people that wanted to brave the freezing water could cliff jump off of.

first beach we laid out at

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At sunset they took us to "the end of the world" which is a big cliff that leads off into the river.  Well, there wasn't really much of a sunset because I think we were pretty early and it was also cloudy, but that didn't stop us from taking lots of pictures!!

After that we went to have some Chinese food for dinner and our server was sooo sweet-when we asked if we could order something she always said "Yes please!" Our trip gave us tickets to go to a clubish thing that night so we went for a little and then got back to our hotel.  The next day we went to a much bigger beach, and this day was super fun! We did this little thing called "sangria boat" where we got free sangria the whole time and they took us out on the ocean, and then on a smaller boat through the grottos! We basically spent all day on the beach/water and even swam in the freezing water but it was worth it!! 

sangria boat!!!!

View from the grotto tour

For dinner we went and had some of the best burgers ever at Nahnahbrah and tried one that had made it onto some famous burger list. Pretty tasty :) We had big plans to go out that night, but ended up taking a glorious nap, waking up at 12:45 and watched the boogeyman with our leftovers and chocolate...success! Then we went to bed for real because we had a long day ahead! 

We woke up and ...went to the beach again! Same one as the first day and stayed until it was time to go.  Luckily all our hotels served tons of bread, meat, and cheese during our breakfast buffet so we all sneakily made a couple sandwiches to take to the beach with us for lunch.  

So basically, a great last weekend! Although it made for a couple of late nights of studying during finals week, it was definitely worth it! :) I had so much fun with everyone, and I already miss our study abroad group so much!

Feria de Abril

La portada de feria

Las casetas...so many

Sooo after returning from London at 8:00 pm after a full day of traveling since 5:30 am, we went out for Feria de Abril-Sevilla's week long celebration of dancing Sevillana, wearing flamenco dresses and suits, and having tapas and rebujito in casetas.  We were about to get ready to go out, and our mom had given us Flamenco dresses to wear, but since it was raining she told us to not wear them that night but to wear them the next day if the weather was better.  So we went out, met up with our Spanish friends and met a lot more.  They had their own caseta-like a big tent with a bar, dancefloor, decorations, etc-and you basically have to be invited to get in because each caseta is private with the exception of a few public ones.  We learned a little bit of Sevillana flamenco dance and tried Rebujito- Manzanilla wine and sprite-the typical drink of Feria.  

amigas espanolas en la caseta

The next day we got to wear our dresses :))))) So exciting!! We walked over to the fair and this time we met  other American students that were studying in Sevilla and hung out with them for a while.  We stayed until midnight when the fair ended with fireworks! I wish we could have been at feria during the week more, every tells us that the best days to go are Tuesday-Thursday because that is when the Sevillians are all there with their flamenco dresses, but the weekend is more for tourists.  But, we were still glad we got to go and that Mama Rita let us wear her flamenco dresses!

England

Finals are over!!!! I'm officially on summer time! But I have gotten pretty far behind on my blog so I've got some catching up to do.

A few weeks, during Feria de Abril, we had a week off of class and some friends and I had a little vaca to England!! Some of our friends had gotten there the night before, and Emily and I got there on Saturday afternoon.  We checked into our hostel, which was a good ways away from the center of London and took the tube to get to the center.  Someone recommended to us to go to a Jazz Bar but the line was too long to get in and we just decided to wander around the area and find something else. We went out to a little Irish bar/restaurant and met up with our friends there and also met some really cool people from London and Scotland! It was amazing listening to British accents! We had a lot of fun and tried a cider beer which turned out to be really good! But had to leave (very) early because the tube closes at 11:30 and we had to get on it to go home. Luckily, our friends had a nice hotel and we were able to stay with them that night instead of going all the way back to our hostel, which was quite sketch.

Welcome to carnaby street!

The next day we got up and started our next adventure! We went out to start sightseeing but it was a little difficult seeing as there was a marathon going on throughout the whole place.  We started out looking at Big Ben, guards, Green Park, Buckingham Palace, and some stuff along the way.  We even noticed that they had exercising parks outside where people actually went and did elliptical machines outside in the park. 

The guards in London

Buckingham Palace

Green Park

Helloooo palace

After relaxing in Green Park, we decided to go to Starbucks for some food, caffeine, and bathrooms.  After nearly losing Emily (Emily nearly losing us), we happened to find two other girls in London from our ISA Sevilla program also -what a coincidence! About this time it started raining, but we still went out to do more stuff-we walked around London Tower and on London Tower Bridge, saw London Bridge, and thought about fish and chips and icecream. We even ventured out to Hogwarts because I took the Hogwarts Express at platform nine and three quarters. :)

London tower bridge

Off to hogwarts

We also enjoyed the best wallfes in todo el mundo... with toffee! SO deLICIOUS! That night, we went to a place called The Comedy Store where we watched a comedy show like Whose Line is it Anyway while enjoying fish and chips. The whole show was improv and we all loved it! Afterward, we all went to a bar called O'neils and listened to a really good band! Again, we had to leave super early to catch our 11:30 tube deadline, and nearly missed it because of technical difficulties with our Oyster cards and such, and actually ended up making the very last train, que suerte!

Improv comedy show at the comedy store

great band in o'neils!

The next day, we wanted to see the changing of the guards but it was raining so they didn't do the ceremony but we we went back to Buckingham palace, Westminster Abbey and saw Big Ben up close this time, and got lots of pics with him. 

benny

We took the tube so many times with our Oyster card (and I still have like 8 pounds to use on mine if I ever go back) and wanted to make the memories last so we took lots of pictures in there. Great times

all my friends in the tube!

We went to The Monument, a tower that we could climb up and see a lot of the city of London, but once we actually got up there, we were out of breath, it was raining, and a least 30 degrees colder than at the bottom, so we came back down to fish and chips.  We went to a huge market, and little did we know it was St. George's Day and everyone there was celebrating, we got to see the Mayor, and little dancer people in the marker.

Leadenhall Market on St George's day 

Next, we took the tube to Abbey Road and were pretty much the Beatles!!!!! It was amazing! This is when Keon starting having trouble with languages-we all had met someone at our hostel that spoke Spanish so we had been going to all these places together speaking Spanish, and Keon starting speaking Spanish to all the other (normal English speaking) people in London without even realizing he wasn't in Spain anymore, and this happened multiple times..que gracioso!

Abbey Road

It was raining again so we decided to warm up with porridge, and then went to Notting Hill to see where the movie was filmed. That night, we went to see a theater show-"One Man 2 Guvnors" and it was hilarious! Taylor had been the night before already but liked it so much we all went again.  I got to sneak a little picture in before the show of the stage. We loved Picadilly Circus-the square the theaters were in - all the shows, big square, lights, tv screens, it was amazing!

Hyde Park

theater

one man 2 guvnors

Picadilly Circus!

The next day we went around and saw some Sherlock Holmes stuff, went to Hyde Park, saw the Queen's stuff, went to Chinatown and spent about 2 hours figuring out which Chinese restaurant to go to, got icecream in front of the asaggetti sign,  got on our first tour bus, saw the London Eye and bridge and Ben, went to Trafalgar Square, and then watched some of the Chelsea Barcelona Futbol game at a restaurant.

London Eye

We spent the next few days in Wales with friends and had a great time too! The first thing we noticed was that they drove on the wrong side of the road and it was so crazy to see the traffic doing everything wrong!!! The first night we went out, and the next day Emily and I explored the parks around town, and later went bowling and hung out with everyone. We also got to see a castle and the gower, which is a great view of the ocean from the cliffs, and they took us to a Welsh pub and told us we were probably the first Americans to ever be in there. Also we tried to pick up some Welsh sayings that were different than how we said things-like how when you call someone, they say "Are you alright?" and we just say "What are you doing where are you?" Definitely got a kick out of the sayings!   

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At the Gower

Driving on the wrong side of the road!!! (not really...chiste)

On Saturday morning we got up bright at early at 6am to take our taxi, bus, bus, plane, and bus back to Sevilla for Feria-and made it out until 5 am that night!! Locoo

Buenas tardes!

I can't believe how fast time is going by here! We only have 8 days of school this month. Next week we have Feria de Abril, then one more week of classes, and then finals week. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was just receiving my rooming assignment to stay here!

Last Monday we went over to Emily's intercambio's apartment for dinner with her other Spanish friends. We enjoyed paella (delicious) and hung out for a while, we were practicing our Spanish and they wanted to practice their English. One of them also knows French, and she taught me a few sentences in French, but she said it was difficult because she had to think of it in French, then translate it back into Spanish and English to teach it to me. Her friends were impressed that we were speaking French to each other!

This past weekend was pretty great! On Thursday night, I experienced my first real Spanish futbol game! It was Sevilla vs. Zaragoza, and we won 3-0! Before the game, 2 of our friends that live really close to us came over and met us at our house to get ready and met everyone else at the stadium for the game. The game was really fun, and it reminded me of being at an OSU game a little bit! Everyone was chanting and singing the whole time for Sevilla. It was great!

The next day ISA took us on our last excursion to Cordoba and Granada.  We walked through the little streets in a cute little part of town, visited the Great Mosque of Cordoba, and had tapas and icecream before heading out to Granada, where we spent the rest of the weekend. I LOVED Granada!! My first thought when I got there was that it reminded me of Sevilla a little bit, but there were a lot hills and mountains also.  It was quite a bit colder in Granada too, and after the first day it pretty much rained the whole time.

Cordoba

The first night, we went to see the "viewpoint," where you can see the Alhambra and the rest of the city on top of a mountain. After that, we went to a Flamenco show. We all sat around in a circle, which was great because we could all see the dancers in the middle of us. We saw about 6 of them, and they were all great to watch! We wandered around Granada for a little bit, got some Kebabs, which are really famous in Granada, and found some interesting things, like a bachelor party where everyone was dressed up in the streets like Romans doing different things, a girl dancing with fire, etc. Eventually it started raining and we went back to our hotel.

at the viewpoint

flamenco show

The next day we visited the palace and gardens of the Alhambra in Granada. It was raining pretty much the whole day, but we got lucky and found someone selling umbrella hats outside the entrance! I think they made for some great pictures. I wish we could have seen the gardens during the spring, in one of the pools you are supposed to be able to see a perfect reflection of the building inside, but since it was raining and cloudy, I didn't get to see that :(

Alhambra

Umbrella hats!!!

OSU girls at the alhambra

After the Alhambra, we went and got tapas. The great thing about Granada was they had free tapas if you order a drink! So you could order a drink and get a huge thing of noodles (chinese tapas..glorious) for only 2 euro! Perfect! We went to some little shops and explored, but decided to go back to the hotel and hang out because it was cold and rainy outside. We rested, hung out, had dinner, and went out for tapas at 1am, and then went out! The next day was rainy and cold again, but we ventured out for more chinese tapas, kebabs, and icecream (i'm on a diet). Luckily Sevilla was warm and dry! A lot of the trip I kept thinking how much I liked Granada and that I would like to visit it again, but then as soon as I got back to Sevilla, I changed my mind and decided I could stay there forever instead. Either one!  Here are just some pretty pics of Granada: