Day three in Norway was reserved for a full day train and boat tour of the mountains and fjords near Bergen.
The trip started much before sunrise and started with a train ride from Bergen to the ski town of Voss. The mountains were large and looming when they peaked out from behind clouds and tunnels.
It kind of sucked because people were being very greedy about window seats, so the three of us ended up sitting on adjacent aisle seats in between a family of four who had laid claim to all four window seats in the section. Pretty rude. I returned the rudeness by shoving my phone in their faces to take pictures.
We arrived in Voss, still cloaked in darkness, and boarded a bus to Gudvangen.
I’m tellin’ you, man. This bus ride was something else. The sun crept up slowly as we crept higher into the mountains and the cold. Soon everything was cloaked in snow, and it was like we’d been transported to a winter wonderland fit for fairy tales.
The five of us had the whole back row of the bus to ourselves, so it was our turn to be greedy and take advantage of our all-angles window views.
When we arrived in Gudvangen, we took the liberty of playing and exploring outside.
We spied on this little hotel that we will likely return to someday. All the beds were covered in furs.
Cannot emphasize enough how gorgeous this place was.
Jonathan played the most… Hahaha.
And then we headed inside for some foods before our boat arrived.
But mostly, we did it for the cool viking chairs.
And then it was on to the most gorgeous boat ride of my entire life…
But that will come in the next post because all these beautiful pictures are taking up too much space in this blog post! WordPress actually cannot handle the beauty. Stay tuned, y’all.
Whichever day of the week this was, it was lazy like the best kind of Sunday. We’d purchased the Bergen Card for each of us, a card which allowed us free entry to most of the main attractions in the city along with free public transportation in the area. We were reserving our last day in Norway for some sort of fjord tour, so we planned this day to do all of the interesting things our cards could get access to.
But the house was just so cooooozzzyyy…
My mom woke us up around ten, and though it was hard to get out of bed, it was even harder to leave the living room. The view was so amazing!
I made us all the breakfast I ate everyday when I studied in Denmark: plain yogurt with chopped up apples (and this time I added raspberries and bananas) with muesli (soft granola) mixed in. We kicked back and enjoyed the sunrise, hopping between the balcony and the couch when we got cold. It was marvelous.
We finally did get the motivation to leave around noon, and we headed over the Gamle Bergen, an open air museum which is supposed to depict life in Bergen some two hundred years ago. Because we were visiting in the off season, the buildings were closed, and there were no character actors wandering around to answer questions. It was still adorable though, and we wandered around on our own for a while.
My mom had a very lively conversation with some geese because she a little cray..
And then we climbed a little hill to watch the beginnings of a sunset. (There really isn’t much daylight to go around this time of year.)
My mom also found a swing!!
Then more sunsetting…
And more exploring…
Then on to Bryggen, a colorful little street similar to Copenhagen’s Nyhavn in terms of fame.
We also marveled at this amazing building that actually turned out to just be a Starbucks.
I’m 99% certain it didn’t start out that way. That’s just kind of what happens in these old cities sometimes. Churches get taken over by Starbucks, four star restaurants taken over by McDonald’s, etc. etc.
Then it was time to ride up the Fløibanen Funicular! A funicular is somewhere between a train and an elevator in that it rides up on tracks, but the path it takes is so steep that the vehicle itself is redesigned at an oddly steep angle to better fit the slope, and it just goes straight up the mountain without messing with switchbacks or climbing all the way around and up.
It was a lot of fun, and the view of Bergen was beautiful. Jonathan kept saying he didn’t really care about what was up top and that he only wanted to experience the funicular itself, but, to no surprise, once we got to the top, he didn’t want to leave.
The town down in Bergen was cold and dry, but after only half the ride on the funicular, we started seeing snow and ice along the pathway. Up at the top, it was nothing but snow and ice. Like a magical teleporter train to a different world.
There were bunches of people riding up the funicular carrying skinny cross country skis, and all the kids were in little snowsuits.
Plus, the view was just breathtaking.
And there was a playground! Whoop whoop!
We also climbed this wheel thing that used to be an actual driving wheel for the funicular.
We found this out-of-season rope and zipline course…
And a troll!
More sunsets. (It was a long sunset… Haha.)
And the ride down…
We were hungry when we got to the bottom, so we stopped at a little tapas restaurant and ordered a few yummy dishes.
We’d planned on going to the aquarium, but we ran out of time while eating because everything in Bergen closed at three or four. The aquarium was the second-latest attraction available (closed at six), but we were a little too cozy in the restaurant, and it took about 25 minutes to get across town to the aquarium.
We wandered instead…
Over to the art museum, the latest attraction in Bergen…
Then we stopped for some unreasonably delicious hot chocolate before finally heading back to the house after a busy day.
We were all quite sleepy, but we had to stay up to book our fjord tour. It could have been all-inclusively booked at the tourism center, but we decided to book it ourselves in pieces to save the moneys. (Also the tourist office was closed by the time we could get there. Haha.)
Once all that was settled, we slumped to bed to prepare for an early and eventful morning the next day. Stay tuned for next time.
We had an early morning to get to the airport for our flight to Bergen, but that didn’t stop us from visiting Lagkagehuset twice before boarding!
The view from the plane was gorgeous in its own right. Snow-capped mountains and fjords galore!
The airport was also rather entertaining…
Downtown Bergen was positively adorable.
And the view from our Airbnb was just silly.
We dropped off our things and met our wonderful (and tall) host, Reine. He was a friendly, smiley teacher who loves to travel, and he was so kind about getting our place ready for us. His house was so cute, split between his area and ours. (His area could be considered a mother-in-law.)
We had the top of the house, considering of two bedrooms, a gigantic and comfy living room, a balcony with sweeping views of the water, and a bathroom and kitchen.
It was hard to say goodbye, but back to the city we went.
We weren’t exploring long before we got cold and hungry enough to settle down in a little Thai restaurant by the water.
Somewhere along here, Jonathan got it in his head that he needed an authentic Norwegian sweater. It had to be red, blue, and white with a zipper, and it had to be magnificent. Luckily, there was a six-story shopping center in the middle of downtown, and we set off in search of The Perfect Sweater.
We were about to give up hope, when I saw The Perfect Sweater in the very back corner of what Jonathan had deemed ‘the last store.’ It wasn’t cheap, but it was on sale for 50% off, and it was beautifulllll (his word, not mine).
The price made him hesitate, but I could see how much he wanted it. Might as well try it on, in my opinion.
I think he checked himself out for at least ten minutes. Finally, the following conversation took place:
Me: If you bought it, would you wear it tomorrow?
Him (instantly): Yes.
Me: If you didn’t get it, would you be thinking about it tomorrow?
Him (chuckling in defeat): Yes.
It was decided then. The pretty Norwegian store clerk cut the tags for him so he could wear it out of the store, and the big reveal to my mom was quite entertaining.
We had a last look at the mall through the floor of a glass bridge…
And then it was back to the Airbnb after some grocery shopping.
Our place really was so cute.
And I was positively pooped. Somehow being in the house was so relaxing though, so we all hung out in the living room for about three hours before actually going to sleep. Silly mistakes. We mostly spent our time marvelling the views and discussing the plausibility of moving here.
Stay tuned to find out if we bought the house in the end! Until next time…
(I’m going to stick to my Danish farewell since the Norwegians and the Danes can understand each other anyway.)
So remember how I was complaining that if felt like we didn’t do anything on New Year’s? A lot of that feeling centered around two big missed activities: shopping at Tiger (we had shopped around on New Year’s Eve, but we didn’t actually buy anything, and then it closed before we could go back) and climbing the Round Tower.
The top of the Round Tower is likely my number one most favorite place in the entire world, so you can imagine my heartbreak when we decided to leave it for New Year’s Day, only to find that it was closed all day for the holiday. It seemed there was no way around these losses, seeing as we were scheduled to entertain/ be entertained by the Jensen family (my Danish host family when I studied in Copenhagen) all day long.
But wait! Sara’s bus didn’t get in until ten, so we wouldn’t meet up until eleven or so. And Tiger opened at nine. And the Round Tower opened at ten. A coincidence? I think not! It was reckless and crazy, but I was going to Copenhagen in the morning, gosh darn it. The crew decided to join.
Of course, the crew became sidetracked when they saw how close the train station was to a Lagkagehuset. This is my favorite bakery in Denmark, and my go-to pastry is the stor chokoladebolle, or ‘large chocolate bun.’ I picked out Jonathan’s favorite (meaning I assumed it would be his favorite thing in the store, and he swiftly became obsessed), a jordbær kage, or ‘strawberry cake.’ Less a cake and more a tart, this delicacy consists of a tart pastry cup dipped in chocolate, filled with such delicious and fluffy whipped cream, and topped with a healthy heaping of fresh strawberries with a sweet gelatin glaze.
Sorry if that made you drool at all. After trying his first one, Jonathan declared, ‘I think I could eat five more of those.’ This became a regular phrase when in the vicinity of a jordbær kage. My mom was more adventurous, as she chose not to limit herself and to instead order two to three different pastries each day. Don’t worry, don’t worry. She didn’t eat them all herself. I think her favorite ended up being the little pepperoni pizzas, though.
As we guiltily shuffled out of Lagkagehuset for the umpteenth time, a familiar ‘Lizzy!’ was thrown across the busy street of Strøget. Everybody turned but me, though I eventually realized it was indeed someone we knew. A wild Sara Jensen! She had been on her way to the Round Tower to tell us to meet her at home so she could go take a nap. Pretty funny timing.
Then on to Tiger and its less-lit, classier sister, Søstrene Grene, where we spent around forty dollars on many adorable things we did not need. Eventually, we did make it to the Round Tower.
As usual, the views were ahhhmazinggg…
Jonathan got pretty freaked out by the view down to the bottom. Supported by nothing but a plexiglass plate… He was mostly terrified because he didn’t see the glass at first, so he thought I was just trying to kill him. Whoops.
Then time for some posing!
It was bright. Tehe. Turned out we picked the right day to climb Rundetårn, seeing as the other days, we’d have been drenched, and our view obscured.
On our way to the train station, we caught sight (and sound) of something I’ve never seen before! It was the march that the guards perform before the changing of the guard at noon, but this time they were led by the royal guard band!
We’d have followed them if we had more time, but alas. A quick pølser stop…
Then running late as always, we took the S train to my Danish hometown of Birkerød, and I was able to show the crew my daily commute home. I had a moment of hesitation when trying to remember which bus to take to my house after the train, but we made it safely to the Jensens’.
Love this place. We exchanged hellos and my mom finally met my Danish dad, and then we went on a little walk around the neighborhood to take advantage of the sunlight.
This was all just a precursor, really, to the buffet at Louisiana Museum.
I cannot adequately describe how delicious this food is. It is just… Golly goodness. Jonathan went back for thirds or something crazy because he was bitter that we didn’t get a discount on Sara’s membership card. ‘Gotta get our money’s worth,’ he kept saying. Everybody looked stuffed and satisfied by the time we made our way to the actual museum. We started with the outdoor sculpture park and a view of Sweden across the water…
Then in to the winding depths of Louisiana.
This room was very strange. The lights were a mix of bright greens and blues, and it messed with our vision such that my blue shirt looked grey, and my mom’s red jacket and Jonathan’s red pants looked black.
This piece was also super cool. There were three sculptures covered in volcanic ash, and if you made enough noise by clapping or stomping around near one of the sculptures, more ash would rain down from these vents up above. Jonathan was very good at this, seeing as how he is essentially a child with no respect for the serenity of silent art spaces.
It was actually really cool though, and we got a bunch of other curious onlookers to join in. #art.
Then some colors and lines…
Mom was especially intrigued by this piece, called something like Mr. Hand, Mrs. Butt, Mrs. Knee, and Mr. Foot.
I was caught a bit off guard in that one.
Now these shoes. These shoes tell a story all on their own. You see, Thursday evening as I was leaving for work, I got a text from Sara Jensen. She had been in Seattle a couple weeks before, and she had found some Vans that she really really liked, but she had convinced herself she didn’t need them. Then she got home and discovered they were $35 more expensive in Denmark, and she instantly had to have them. (I’m paraphrasing.) So for the remainder of Thursday night and into Friday morning, Sara Lee went on a mad goose hunt for these shoes, and my mom carried them all the way to Denmark for Sara Jensen. Both Saras seemed rather pleased with the transaction.
This is the permanent infinity mirror installation in Louisiana. Yayoi Kusama designed the space. It was funny to see the hubbub created for her exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum a few months ago. Tickets were upwards of $40, and people stood in line for hours to get them, only to find that they would be sold out for the day. When I studied in Denmark, though, Yayoi’s exhibit was at Louisiana, and I saw it three times for the measly price of a one-time $20 membership! What a win.
This was some crazy ten-minute slow-motion video of about twenty people getting doused with firehose-type blasts of water from both sides. Not sure what it symbolized, but it was very dramatic and mesmerizing.
And theeennn…
More Jensens! I actually slept through the first hour or two of bonding because I was positively pooped. Jonathan, Mama Bear, Sara, and Maria played Partners, a game similar to Sorry but better in every way. I also forgot to take pictures because by the time I woke up, I was ravenous again, and I was so super pumped for Jesper’s cooking. He had made lamb, potatoes (so good!), a tzatziki sauce, and salad with my favorite Danish feta cheese. Seriously so much satisfaction. And my mom was super pumped that Jesper had gotten some gløgg for her.
We rounded out the night with some more games and some leftover fireworks from New Year’s.
Sara drove us to our Airbnb at the end of the night, but when we arrived, I realized I’d forgotten my jacket (with our keys in the pocket) back at the Jensen home. On our way back for round two, everyone was giving me a hard time, until I looked over and pointed out that Jonathan didn’t have his coat, either! Turns out he realized his mistake shortly after I did, but he had planned to sneakily grab his cost without letting us be any the wiser. Disgusting…
We were tired as can be, but we managed to stumble our way through packing before crawling into bed.
Aaaand that’s pretty much a wrap on Denmark. You’ll get an update from Norway tomorrow! Until next time…
The morning after New Year’s Eve hit us hard, despite the lack of alcohol the night before. I set my alarm for 8:30, but somehow needed to be woken up by Mama Bear at ten. We were better this day about getting up and moving quickly, though, after having experienced the full effect of three hours of daylight. (Disclaimer – there are actually about eight hours of daylight in the Copenhagen area this time of year, but on New Year’s Eve, we were really only outside for three of them. Whoops..)
I was a bit torn due to our limited daylight and full plate of activities. I really really really wanted the crew to see Frederiksborg Castle, my favorite castle in Denmark. When I was studying in Copenhagen, I would sometimes stay on the train after class and pass my house so I could hang out by this castle for an hour or so before heading home.
The problem is that Frederiksborg Castle is up north, and Copenhagen was south of where we were staying. To see the castle would eat up two to three hours of our time, slashing away our options for sightseeing in the city.
But alas! I am weak, and my crew refused to guide me, so I decided the castle deserved our company.
We were greeted in Hillerød by a friendly windstorm, dashed with rain here and there. The castle and gardens were worth it though, to no surprise!
I was sad that there wasn’t any snow on the ground, but the castle gardens were gorgeous, nonetheless.
And the castle itself wasn’t half bad, either!
A successful trip to FrederiksborgSlot, if I do say so myself.
Next, we headed into Copenhagen to peruse Kastellet, a beautiful star-shaped fortress from back in the day.
I guess that stop was mostly a Jonathan photo shoot…
But not the next one! On to see the Little Mermaid. But first, the BIG Little Mermaid!
Gotta love her. And her abs.
The ‘real’ Little Mermaid was next on the list. We stopped for a sandwich and a French hotdog first, though. Ate too fast to take pictures!
Circling around Kastellet, we made our way to my mom’s favorite fountain, Gefionspringvandet.
The water wasn’t running )’: but normally the fountain sprays up at the oxen so that it looks as though they are storming through a ferocious river.
Afterwards, we set off for Amalienborg and the Marble Church. (As I’m writing this, I realize how silly that day was. I ended the evening feeling as though we didn’t do much during the day, but we actually did so much!)
Next was a walk to Nyhavn…
And my favorite Nyhavn waffles and ice cream with whipped cream and strawberry jam!
Aaaaaaaand, finally, that’s a wrap on New Year’s Day! Time for some sleeping. Until next time…
I hope everyone had a lovely New Year! Whether you were celebrating, dancing, babysitting, or marveling the fireworks, the most important thing is that we got to celebrate about nine hours before most of you. 😛
New Year’s Eve was a longgg day for us. Jonathan and I woke up around 4:30, and my mom woke up around 6. Of course, that didn’t help us get out the door before noon, but what are you gonna do?
I sent my mom and Jonathan to the grocery store at some point to get us body wash and breakfast, and they came back far too quickly, my mom giggling up a storm because they hadn’t actually managed to find the grocery store. I’m pretty sure they went the exact opposite direction from which they should have headed, and they found themselves in a little grocery kiosk called Circle K. They decided that was good enough, so they grabbed some snacks, forgot the body wash, and headed back.
Next, my mom tried venturing to the Lagkagehuset across the street, my favorite bakery in Denmark. She came back a few minutes later, flustered and frantic because the Danish was just too much to handle! I had to go back in with her and sort everything out (in English, because everybody actually does speak English here.) The baked goods were worth it, though, and I got my signature stor chokolade boller for free because they only had one tiny one left. Huzzah!
Then on to Copenhagen. We wandered my favorite store on the entire planet, Tiger, and then perused the shopping streets of downtown. Everything was alive and bright, and it was hard to resist the sales.
Street performers were braving the cold just as we were, and they were pretty talented, too!
We took our time crossing the canals to Christiansborg Slot (Castle).
The tower in the castle was closed because of the holiday, but my favorite part of Christiansborg is the view of the royal stables, anyway!
We took advantage of the pretty Copenhagen Orange buildings…
And mom posed with this creepy statue.
On our way to the Black Diamond library, we found a sidewalk trampoline (my favorite!) and messed around for a while!
Never too old to take advantage of an unoccupied playground…
Next, we sipped down some gløgg (spiced wine) and wandered Christiania.
The sun faded pretty quickly after that, so that when we made it back downtown, it was already pitch black. Oh, and it was positively freezing. And raining. Yaaaay. Also, the entire city seemed to shut it’s doors at 4:00, something I’ve never seen before. Dang New Year ruined our chance at more shopping and a real dinner.
One thing we were keeping in mind was that we really wanted to see the famous New Year’s speech that the Danish queen does every year, and we also wanted to warm up, so we grabbed a table at the Hard Rock Cafe to await the big 6:00 appearance.
But alas! Either that silly hostess lied to us, or somebody forgot, because 6:00 came and went with no sign of the queen. It was pretty annoying, honestly, since we really only stopped here for that, and we paid about $20 for a single drink to share. Ugh.
On to Tivoli…
Tivoli is always pretty when dressed for the winter season, and this time around was no different. We dazedly wandered the lights and markets, sipping yet more gløgg and snacking on some very expensive and sub-par æbleskiver (traditional Christmas pancake balls with jam and powdered sugar).
I also found a crazy bathroom that had a normal sized toilet and a tiny kid’s toilet in the same room:
Crazy.
We were too tired to stay for the fireworks at 11, so we headed back to the Airbnb around 9:30. After a quick shower and a nap, we woke up to celebrate the new year by staring in awe at the crazy fireworks in our neighborhood. It was honestly like we were under siege! I’m not kidding. Fireworks everywhere. Big ones. Loud ones. Bright ones. In every direction. And they lasted for nearly an hour after midnight came around! My mom said it was the craziest thing she’d ever seen. Not sure where these crazy Danes got all the money for their pyrotechnics. Must be state-subsidized… Hahaha.
Jonathan and I finished off the night with some flødebøller, to which he remarked, ‘I didn’t know this was missing in my life.’
Flødebøllers are hard to explain without being able to taste it for yourself, but it is essentially little mound of marshmallow fluff covered in a thin, crisp layer of chocolate with a wafer cookie on the bottom. They truly are life-changing.
So, that was how we spent our New Year. Mostly cold and rainy, but it went out with a bang (literally). More come in 2018…
So here we go again! And this time, I can actually say ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ because I’ll have two adventure buddies in tow for the entire trip!
Here’s how it happened: I wanted to take advantage of the long New Year weekend at work, and I originally thought that might mean taking a long weekend trip. BUT THEN I realized that if I took the whole week off, I would only need to take three vacation days off work. That, my friends, is valuable. Sooo, while waiting for the bus to work some cold October morning, I began perusing flights. I found a pretty cheap one and sent a screenshot to my mom as a conversation starter, and much to my surprise, she responded something along the lines of, ‘Ohmygosh I really wanna go! Can we come back on Sunday instead of Monday so I don’t have to take work off?! Ohmygosh I really wanna go!’
I was flabbergasted. I’d been trying to get her to travel with me since before I started this blog! And always to no avail. I hadn’t technically meant to invite her on any sort of adventure, but I certainly wasn’t going to say no to my first-ever adventure buddy. In fact, the last time she went to Europe, she was pregnant with me! Don’t worry, we’re going to try to recreate as many pictures as possible.
So just shy of a week later, on Halloween night, I bought plane tickets to Copenhagen from Seattle and to Seattle from London for the two of us. We would leave December 29th and return January 7th/8th as newly cultured and more bonded than ever.
Her main stipulation for the trip was that we spend New Year’s Eve in Tivoli, a beautiful amusement park in downtown Copenhagen. While we were discussing this stipulation on the phone one evening, she asked jokingly, ‘How’s your boyfriend gonna feel about you being away on New Year’s?’ I honestly didn’t think said boy would care too much, but I responded, ‘I guess we could just invite him so we don’t have to worry about it.’ And then, to my surprise again, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, that would be fun!’ I kid you not. This really happened.
So that’s how the boy got involved. It’s quite the trip, especially since I have been left to plan everything. They won’t even help me make decisions in the moment. For example, I might ask, ‘Are you guys getting hungry? Should we find a cafe or something?’ and I will be met with silent shrugs or indifferent, distracted stares.
But no matter. The planning seems to be going well so far. We left on Friday and had a seven hour flight to Keflavik airport in Iceland. We found a wild Varun in the airport and marveled at his gorgeous $800 jacket purchased on Champs Elysees for $30 before running off to our plane.
I was pleasantly surprised to find blankets and pillows at every seat. Mom somehow managed to watch four whole movies. I watched one and three-quarters, and Jonathan basically slept the entire time.
Jonathan’s under that blanket somewhere.
And sometimes he slept like this instead.
You know, the thought just occurred to me that I normally write these blogs to my Mom, but now that’s she’s with me on this trip, she may not even read these. Maybe I’ll start addressing them to Dad instead, in case he wants to check to make sure I’m keeping Mom alive and well. Yeah, I’ll do that. Crisis averted.
When we arrived in Iceland, we stopped for a quick layover breakfast of chia seed pudding and smoothies, croissants, and salmon bagels. I also picked up my favorite salted Icelandic chocolate so we’d have something to snack on later, and then it was back on to another plane.
This plane was a little smaller, so the rows only had two seats next to each other instead of three. Jonathan and I sat behind my mom, and it seemed like she would get the row to herself, up until a gargantuan Scandinavian man (who we later named Ingmar) came trundling over to her. He leaned his seat all the way back so that he was essentially laying in Jonathan’s lap, and he kept his arms wide on the arm rests so that my mom was forced to either cuddle or cower. (She chose to cower.) There was also a very, very, very unhappy baby on board, and he had a very ugly cry. All in all, it was a great flight. Tehehe.
We landed in Copenhagen airport, one of my favorite places on Earth, and headed for the train station. Rather than drop our things off at the Airbnb, we (meaning ‘I’) decided we’d go straight to Sweden for the day! Because why not, right?
I’d been to Malmö and Stockholm, but there is another little Swedish town to the north called Helsingborg that I’d never seen, and it was sort of close-ish to where we were staying. We dropped our things in a locker and wandered in the grey.
The buildings were pretty as can be. I could definitely see myself living here. It felt like a mini Copenhagen! My Swedish was definitely rusty, though. Whoops.
We explored some churches, wandered up and down some streets, and pursued a pretty copper-roofed building in the distance. It turned out to just be some sort of office building, but I’m sure it was used for something more grand back in its day.
Next to this building was a gigantic tower called the keep of Helsingborg. It was closed in the winter months, but we still got a nice view from the front door.
We also explored the Rose garden, which gave us another lovely view…
On our way back down to the main shopping streets, we stopped at H&M to get some warm underlayers, and then there just happened to be an adorable cafe across the street. I got some sort of cashew cheesecake thing, Jonathan got a fruit tart/cake thing, and my mom got a little open-faced sandwich.
We had a little bit more wandering to do, and I bought some very pretty socks, and then it was on to the ferry back to Daneland. My mom got a kick out of these to-go shots that were being sold on the ferry:
The bus back to Hørsholm was pretty smooth, and our little Airbnb is adorable. We got lost on the way and wandered through a park in the dark for a while, but we made it eventually. Again, I could definitely live here.
For dinner, we tried our hands at some kebab and salad pizza because it was the closest thing to our house.
And then we hit the hay around 8:30pm! We have a big day ahead of us on New Year’s Eve, so we needed all the shut-eye we could get.
Ha. Just kidding. After this, my goal is to finish up blogs from study abroad and last September that I never got around to. Especially The Great Missing Paris Post of 2015.
But for now we’re in London. Here are some shots of the plane ride, on which Kristina and I snagged an empty row in the back for the umpteenth time.
We were supposed to meet my flight attendant cousin, Pauline, shortly after landing. She had waved the magic fingers and scored a shift that would take her straight to our door, but, alas! Another delayed flight! My poor friends just couldn’t catch a break. And because I was only in London for a day this time around, it meant I wouldn’t be seeing Pauline at all. Meh. Next time, Pauline!
Kristina and I found an apartment in Camden Town, described by Pauline as a ‘hipster’ district of the old British city. We were practically on top of the Underground station, so that was nice, and we were right in the middle of bunches and bunches of little cafes and restaurants tucked into busy and dilapidated streetsides.
We had a real struggle trying to actually get into the apartment. We couldn’t get ahold of our host, and I hadn’t had the sense to contact them ahead of time to figure all this out. We stood outside the door for a solid five to ten minutes, fumbling and knocking and knocking louder, until a girl magically appeared before us!
She was just another tenant, and she assumed (quite ignorantly and kind of dangerously) that we were also tenants. She told us exactly how to get into the building and then held the door for us. Hopefully she wouldn’t do the same for some random passersby!
The apartment was nice but small. Our room was essentially just the bed, and the housekeeper was an absolute mess. She was sweet though, and she gave us the host’s phone number so we could actually figure out how to get in and the details of WiFi and checkout. The bed set-up was a bunk bed with a double on bottom and a single on top. Room for three.
But who was the third, you ask?
Why, none other than John Jeff Jeng! J^3!!!
I had been looking forward to dancing with this weirdo once I got back to the States, but I noticed on some bus ride somewhere that this would not be possible. Scrolling through Facebook, I came across one of his posts, declaring, ‘Bye, America! See you in three months!’
Luckily, timing was on our side, and he just so happened to have nothing planned for essentially his entire trip. Cue: Day With Lizzy in London! Yahoo! He found us. We relaxed a bit, and then we planned our half-day of adventures.
I really wanted to see a show. John and Kristina didn’t really care. And, ta-da! Due to planning, sell-outs, and prices, we ended up buying tickets to a very random show that none of us had ever heard of, with hopes that our money and time would not go to waste.
And then, dinner. Yummmmmmmmmm. Fancy Indian food at a very reasonable price point. We each got a lassi (smoothie-ish yogurt drink). Mango is the most common, and in fact, I have never seen anything else. But here, there were several flavors to choose from! John went strawberry, I went ‘sweet,’ and Kristina stuck with the mango. This was all in spite of the fact that the waiter insisted mango was the best anyway. When we got our drinks, we played musical chairs for a couple minutes until finally settling on our original orders, though we technically all liked the mango the best. We should have listened!
The food was delicious, and the wait staff was super nice about us being in a hurry (in order to get to the other side of town in time for the show). We scarfed down two different curries, two different rices, and a coconut naan. Gah. So good.
And then we were off! To the Westside! To see a new show called Half a Sixpence. Our seats were beautiful. Top row, smack in the middle. The thing about London theaters is that there just isn’t a bad seat in the house. Even from the farthest rows, we were still close enough to see everybody’s faces. No such thing as second, third, and fourth mezzanines here.
Review of the show: loooooved it! The songs were great. The jokes were hilarious. The protagonist was adorable. He was having some lady issues throughout the show, but I just wanted him to come offstage and pick me! 10/10. Would recommend. Would see again. John and Kristina were also big fans. Sometimes spontenaety pays off!
After the show, we made our way back to the apartment to chill off a bit before John and I set off again while Kristina did laundry. Bahahaha. It was by choice, I swear.
Why would John and I leave the house at 11:30, you ask? Well, dancing, of course! John had already been in London for a few days, so he’d already had time to go dancing a few times and had heard about tonight’s venue by word-of-mouth. The dance was supposed to last until two or something crazy, so we were just on time showing up at midnight. And the place was still hoppin’!
I had some seriously great dances here. Everybody was good. Everybody was nice. Plus, I got to dance with John, who is arguably one of my favorite people (and dancers) on the planet. John was a little less enthused than I, but he was comparing the venue to Seattle, where he still has the energy to dance approximately many times a week. I was tickled pink, and I tired quickly.
I knew it was my last dance when my partner began apologizing profusely immediately after our song ended, sometime around 1:30. I couldn’t figure out what he was apologizing for until he told me I might want to check myself for blood.
Blood?? Am I bleeding?? Where??
Nope! It was his blood! And it was everywhere.
He had a giant scab on his finger that had opened up during the dance (yuck!), and there were about three dozen giant drops of blood on the floor around us, plus some on my hand and some dripping down my forearm that I wouldn’t notice until John and I were comfortable on a double decker bus. If that doesn’t signal the end of a night of dancing, I don’t know what does.
John and I made our way back to the apartment, stopping for fried chicken along the way. (Dancing makes you hungry!) And then we took some much-needed showers before snuggling into the ridiculously comfy clouds that were our bunkbeds.
I awoke at nine, just in time to shove everything into my backpack for one last time, and then Kristina ran out for a quick goodbye breakfast. I was leaving her all by her little self to explore the terrors of London for a few solo days. We hit up Costa Coffee, London’s Starbucks, and grabbed croissants, berry things, a smoothie, and an americano at about five times the cost of the coffees in Spain. Still good, though!
And then the goodbyes. ): I hugged a groggy and underweared John (at least there weren’t six of them like in Portugal), hugged Kristina about three times, and then hit the Underground.
My flight was a nonstop to Vancouver, and I managed to book another of those wonderful windowless window seats. I got four and a half blogs written by the time we landed, plus a bit of a nap. The bus from Vancouver to Seattle was a bit more eventful, if only because my seat was slightly unhinged from the bus itself. Every time the bus stopped, started, sped up or slowed down, my seat went catapulting abruptly and violently forward or backward. What a mess! There was no way to sleep on that, and bracing myself with my feet on the back of the seat in front of my accomplished next to nothing because that seat was experiencing a similar, if less violent issue.
I felt a little bad about it, but after the bus unloaded at border control, I sneakily snagged the seat behind me. Whoops! No more violent rocking for me. Can’t say the same for the other guy. (:
So.
….
I guess that’s about it…
….
Yep! A wrap on the Third Annual Europe Extravaganza. ‘Twas extravagant, indeed. Very hot. Fairly busy. Lots of friends. Even more food. Many alcohols. Even more fresh orange juices. And art. And Kristina. And languages! And…. Yep.
Okay guys. It’s the home stretch. I’m almost all caught-up. We’re in Portugal now!
When planning our leg of the trip, Kristina and I had originally wanted to just do the big cities: Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Porto. But the connecting flights weren’t the nicest price-wise, and we got some tips on checking out Cordoba and Sevilla. Therefore, when we ended up in Sevilla, it was too expensive to get up to Porto. Cue a Google search or two to find the little town of Faro, a bus ride away from Seville. Reviews said that most people just use Faro as a gateway from Spain into the rest of Portugal, but the town has quite a bit to offer in and of itself. Sounds like my kind of place!
We arrived mid-morning and stepped into the heat. Our hostel was nice and close to the bus station, so we went to check-in and drop off our things. The girl at the front desk was so sweet! She was from Brazil (they speak Portuguese there, too), and she had come to Faro to go to school. Supposedly Faro is a college town, but I really wasn’t getting that vibe. The girl kept calling us ‘girls’ very endearingly. ‘Okay, girls, you can just leave your bags over there…. Girls, it is too, too hot today, so be careful.’ It was so cute!
We were pretty tired, but seeing as it was a hostel, we didn’t have the option of taking a nap because our beds weren’t available until two. Kristina wrapped up her blisters and we set off to find lunch. We actually stumbled upon a place right around the corner from us, and only because we went the wrong way in the first place (away from downtown). It was one of those lovely little places where patrons sit almost exclusively outside. I got a chicken salad and a fresh orange juice, and Kristina got….. hm… I actually can’t remember what Kristina got, but I’m sure it was delicious! We kept trying to speak Spanish to the waiter, though. That was a bit awkward. It’s a tough habit to break!
The heat was getting to us, as usual, so when we turned around toward actual downtown, we ended up sitting down in practically the first snack shop we came to. Ha! Too hot to move. This place was a fresh fruit and frozen yogurt shop. I got a giant cup of mangoes and peaches with natural frozen yogurt on top (tasted almost exactly like the Greek yogurt Jamba Juice puts in their smoothies), and Kristina got a smoothie.
‘Liz, you have to try this,’ she said shortly after I handed it to her. ‘This is the realest smoothie I’ve ever had in my life.’ And she wasn’t joking. I had watched them make it: three apples were pressed in a juicer to make fresh apple juice, and to that, she added whole fresh plums and a bunch of other whole, fresh fruits I can’t remember right now. It wasn’t a chunky/ thick smoothie because the fruit was all fresh instead of frozen, but it sure was tasty.
We ran back to the hostel to change into swimsuits, then wandered a bit more and got some crepes.
And then a ferry ride to Faro Beach! No beaches within walking distance, unfortunately, but the ferry was cheap, and it was a great place to nap.
So.. uh… You’ll never guess what we did when we got to the beach…
Sorry, not sorry. That salmon toast was to die for, even if I couldn’t properly finish it off. Plus, Somersby! My favorite cider! And it’s Danish! Eep! With a fresh orange juice on the side, of course.
We hung out at the shady restaurant for a bit too long, maybe, but we did have an excuse: we were not prepared for the beach. The thing is, nearly every beach I’ve ever gone to in Europe has the same setup – lots of lounge chairs and umbrellas, with men walking around and charging five euros to sit. Therefore, we brought zero towels. We did manage to bring an umbrella, but it was a tiny portable rain umbrella that would provide approximately Zero Shade. We did manage to visit the beach after lunch (? Dinner?), and it was very pretty.
Made me wish we had a proper setup! But we didn’t want to hang around getting sunburned, and we had a dinner to get to back in the hostel. Hahaha. We ate a lot that day.
On the walk from the ferry terminal to the hostel, we walked by what appeared to be a dress rehearsal for a dance showcase, so that was one hundred percent wonderful. We stayed and watched a few numbers, and the kids were adorable. Quite talented, too! My favorite dance was a semi-modern duet interpretation of Flight of the Bumblebee.
And then…. Dinner time! Woohoo! When booking our hostel for Faro, we made sure the hostel description explicitly mentioned that there would be a dinner offered. Last time I hosteled in Portugal, both hostels offered multi-course, home-cooked Portuguese dinners for around ten bucks, and it was one of the best parts of my stay. I knew this would be the same for Faro, and I wasn’t wrong.
We were ushered to ‘where people usually eat,’ which, quite honestly, was not the large, multi-table dining area I was used to in a hostel. We found ourselves on a small patio with a single picnic table set with eight places, and we were the first to arrive.
We sat down and chatted while the hostel employees finished up dinner in the kitchen, and one girl soon joined us. She was Scottish, and very sweet, and it turns out she worked in the hostel. Next, a Spanish girl joined us, very sarcastic and with an air that told me she could be a fashion icon someday. She also worked at the hostel.
After a couple other introductions, it became clear that Kristina and I were actually the only two dinner guests who were, in fact, guests! The girls (the Scot, the Spaniard, a Mexican Texan, a Torontonian, and a Brit) all worked at the hostel and dinner was part of their payment. The hostel owner gave them grocery money every night and the British girl usually ended up cooking just because she was a great cook. On the menu tonight: homemade lemon risotto and some crazy delicious fried eggplant thing. It was so good! Everybody was full to start with because the girls had all gone eating at the beach like we had, but that didn’t stop us from all getting seconds. Couldn’t help ourselves!
The best part was, of course, the homemade sangria. (: The girls explained that they only got to make sangria if guests joined them, so Kristina and I assured them that they would definitely be getting sangria tomorrow.
I woke up the next morning surrounded by men in their underwear, and one of them had his nose in my feet.
Ha! Actually not joking, though. Not sure how, but both nights in Portugal, Kristina and I ended up being the only girls in our eight-bed bunk room. Add this to the unbearable heat, and you get a lot of guys sleeping on top of the covers in their underwear. Not a single one wore a shirt. Not a single one wore any sort of bottoms. It was uh… a sight to see, to say the least. My bunk was also jutted up against another at the end, and for some reason that boy had decided he wanted to smell my feet all night. His nose was literally inches from my toes! A little alarming. This particular boy also happened to be a French Canadian Harry Styles look-alike, which was pretty entertaining.
We forced ourselves awake and out of the house around nine because we really really wanted to actually get some ish done before the heat set in. Our first and only stop was Old Town (Faro isn’t that big).
We passed by a little outdoor restaurant boasting crepes on the menu, and this happened:
Neapolitan-filled ice cream crepe. I almost licked the plate clean.
After this, we spent some time in the grass, and I accidentally laid down in some dog poop. 10/10 experience.
(You can’t see it, but it is hiding nice and squishily underneath my left knee, unknown to me at this time.)
And then we found a tower!
It wasn’t the tallest tower in the world. It may not have even been the tallest tower in the town. In fact, it really wasn’t much of a tower at all, come to think of it. More like a little lookout on top of a reasonably tall church. Still pretty, though.
Our ticket to the tower also got us into the church and museum. And uhh… there was also this:
That is a chapel. Made out of bones.
Real bones.
Like, real human bones.
I was pretty disturbed, and Kristina wasn’t having it for a second. Apparently there is an even larger bone chapel in downtown Faro (not sure where the obsession came from), but we were never able to make it there during opening hours. Kristina was not sad about it.
After this craziness, we made our way back to New Town…
And did some modeling…
We also found evidence of a drinking game the hostel girls had told us about the evening before called the Pi Challenge. We thought they meant Pie Challenge at first, something involving both pie and alcohol, but oh no. Basically, the number pi is spelled out along the length of this street downtown, and the challenge is so try to recall the digits of pi all the way to the end. Every time you get a number wrong, you drink. This is a long street, mind you. Many numbers. I guess people get pretty drunk!
After deciding the Pi Challenge was not nearly as interesting as my version of the Pie Challenge (it involves leisurely enjoying a slice of delicious home-baked pie), Kristina and I went to assemble our beach-going supplies. We borrowed a beach umbrella from the hostel (for free!) and purchased a giant elephant-print tapestry from a shop downtown, and then we were off! To Farol (Lighthouse) Island!
You can just make out the lighthouse through the fog if you squint hard enough. Here’s a better view:
The first thing we did upon arrival with likely come as no surprise to you: we ate.
Sorry, did I say eat? I guess I meant drink. Hahahaha. Here’s a picture of drink number two, with some actual food in the background:
Somersby so good. They put mint, apple slices, and a cinnamon stick in it. Never would have thought to do that! And here’s me forcing Kristina to eat her vegetables. (She was not happy about it.)
We didn’t spend quite as long at this restaurant. We were really only here for the drinks…. Tehehehe. We found a nice stretch of sand on the beach and set up our new tapestry and sunbrella, and Kristina promptly fell asleep.
I was wearing Kristina’s pants so my legs wouldn’t get sunburned if the umbrella shadow moved. I’m basically a vampire, by the way.
We lay there for quite a while, and I dozed a bit, too, but I knew I wanted to get in the water before we left. Kristina’s Lizzy Senses must have woken her up, because she stirred of her own accord to take some photos.
We then jumped into a full-on photoshoot, complete with acrobatic poses and lots of near-falling-over-in-the-water experiences.
I really should have taken my dress off before going in, but I thought I would just walk in a little ways. Then a big wave caught me off guard and I was basically soaked from the chest down. Felt so good, though!
We enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the cute little island homes on our way back to the ferry…
And then Kristina passed out again.
Bahahahahaha. Don’t be fooled. She is one hundred percent asleep in that photo. We were pretty tired. (:
For our last Portuguese shebang, we had another meal lined up with the hostel. When I had paid for our reservations that morning, the British girl who can cook (can’t remember her name, haha) asked for ten euros instead of seven. I was about to complain and point to the price written on the chalkboard in front of her, but then I realized she meant it was ten euros for both tickets! I didn’t argue.
On the menu tonight was ‘delicious homemade burgers!’ I was a bit bummed, hoping for some sort of home-cooked Portuguese concoction, but I figured at that price, only a fool would say no to a full meal with endless sangria.
A few more hostel guests were joining us this time around, so we moved the dinner location up to the rooftop terrace. The sunset was gorgeous, and the temperature was just starting to cool off for the night.
As Kristina and I settled in across from French Canadian Harry Styles and poured our first glass of sangria, a few more boys joined the table and we started in at burger building.
Okay. Now, do not take what I am about to say lightly. That burger was one of the best burgers I have ever tasted in my entire life.
In my. Entire. Life.
The British girl was at it again. She made patties from scratch with beef so soft and tender. She seasoned it with soy sauce, hot sauce, and tooooonnnsss of fresh herbs that were visible in the burgers. Then to top it all off, she made a homemade garlic mayonnaise aioli.
I died.
And then I came back to life so I could eat a second one.
I really cannot adequately describe how delicious those burgers were. I was slightly in pain after the second, but the sangria helped. Bahahaha. Just kidding. I mostly just ate the fruit.
Kristina and I took some much needed showers before retiring for the last time to our way-too-hot bunk room.
I awoke again to a room full of underweared, snoring men. Such a strange thing to wake to, really. And this time, Kristina had joined them in spanks and a sports bra. I was the only modest one in the whole hostel! Hahahaha. We savored our delicious Portuguese-hostel breakfast (four kinds of cereal, granola, fresh fruit, toast, juices, milk, teas and coffees and hot chocolate and this hot honey drink that I couldn’t bring myself to drink because of the word ‘hot’ in its name). So good.
At least Sevilla didn’t lie to us in the beginning. When we stepped off the train in Cordoba at eight in the morning, there was a cool breeze and the day seemed promising. It wasn’t until after that nap that the scorching reality of the sun said hello.
Sevilla, on the other hand, was straight to the point. Honest. Cruel from the get-go. We entered the city around nine, moaning and gasping as we hopped off the air-conditioned bus and into the oven that is this place so many silly people call home.
I’m pretty sure the first thing we did was drop our things off at our Airbnb…. But for some reason… I just can’t seem to remember anything about our host or our stay…. It is literally all a blur………. Gahh…. Come to me, memories!
Oh! I remember! Wow, that was weird. Okay. Yes. We went straight to our Airbnb, and we celebrated at how close our stay was to the train station. Go us! Go planning!
Our host buzzed us in, and he began speaking rapid Spanish the second he opened the apartment door. Kristina was terrified. I was delighted! It was pretty easy to tell that he was just giving us a tour, showing us how to use the keys, giving us the WiFi and a map. I’m sure he said some stuff in between all that, but I figured I could fill in the blanks. Every time he turned his back, though, Kristina looked at me with raised, scrunched eyebrows and widened eyes. This delighted me even more! Bahahaha.
At one point, he asked a question that we could not answer, and Kristina finally told him what she’d been dying to all along. Well, technically I started it by saying, ‘Espanol…’ with a shake of my head, and Kristina added, ‘poquito.’ Our host laughed and repeated the question in English. ‘Where are you from?’ We told him Seattle, but he had no idea where this was. I think he may be the first person I’ve met abroad who hasn’t known this famous coffee capital!
Kristina was relieved that he now understood to speak in English, but he threw us a new one by switching right back into Spanish once we had established that Seattle did not exist on this man’s mental map of the world. Bahahaha. We walked around for a few more minutes and he gestured and blabbed, showing us the lights, the AC, and the bathroom. Gah. So great. I love pretending I know what people are saying, and I’m pretty sure he believed me!
Recalling the disaster that was The Great Cordoba Slumber, we made a huge effort to rest hardly at all so that we could attack the city before it reached You-Might-Die temperatures. It was already pretty stinkin’ hot, though, so we were fairly slow moving. We managed to see some pretty things and buy gigantic bottles of smoothies and some fresh fruit to cut through our thirst during our explorations.
Then we passed by this cute little coffee shop advertising iced caramel lattes, and I couldn’t not check it out! It was like a mini, hip Starbucks. The menu had basically all of Starbucks’s drinks, and everything was in English. It was all run by an adorable-yet-swarthy Spaniard, who gave me extra caramel without even having to ask. He also taught me a pretty cool coffee trick. You know those mini little French press things that I think you can make coffee or espresso in at home? He poured my milk into that, plunged the plunger thing about a dozen times, and voila! (sp? haha) Frothy milk! Pretty neat.
Shortly after this, we found an outdoor restaurant that sprayed mist onto its customers while they ate, which was kind of exactly what we needed at the moment. Kristina ordered a coffee, a tomato toast thing, and a ham and cheese croissant, and I ordered a plain croissant and my now-standard fresh-squeezed orange juice.
You see, we have this problem, Kristina and I. We think it will be a good idea to explore early, before the heat, but then we realize that we are hungry. And after we sit down in the air conditioning of a cafe or under the mist of an outdoor restaurant or in the shade of an awning, it becomes easier and easier to want to stay there forever. Thus, by the time we decide we had better get to some Actual Exploration, the heat is out. This has happened nearly every day since leaving the rain of Berlin. Meh.
We found a set of swings near our restaurant, and they were in the shade, and I love swings, so we swung a bit there, which was nice. We did manage to explore just the teensiest bit more…
But then Kristina gave in. Mrrrrr…. I wanted to give in, too. Believe me, I did. The heat was clawing at my body and throat like a million monsters trying to reach into my very soul. I have thought I’ve been hot before, but never before have I experienced the physical sensation of Real Heat. I was wearing a skirt and a lightweight long sleeve shirt, so my torso area was just generally sweaty, but my legs, the two largest exposed body parts of mine…. My poor legs. It felt as if a scaly, lizard-like demon hand that had spent its whole life in the fiery depths of a volcano was grabbing onto my calves and ankles. Wrapping its fingers around and around, pulling me down and telling me I would stay put and I would like it. I kid you not! I could actually feel physical hands!
Kristina felt the same physical sensation, though she put it a little more kid-friendly and less-creepy: ‘It feels like I’m just wearing a really warm snuggie, but I can’t take it off.’ Never before have I heard truer words, my fellow heat warrior. Never before.
The thing is, despite all this heat and general I-Want-To-Die-ness, I couldn’t help but feel horrible about our mostly-wasted day in Cordoba, and I really didn’t want the same to happen in Seville. We might tell ourselves that we were only retiring for a one or two hour nap during the worst of the heat, but we had a pattern, and that pattern involved stretching one-hour naps into six. Kristina set off for the apartment, and I lowered my head and walked straight into the sun.
I had many thoughts during those three or four hours of solitude, and many of them involved phrases such as: Why me? Why am I so stupid? Why is it hot? What is this? What is life? What would happen if I just lay down here for a little while? Would I melt? I think I’m melting.
It was clear that the city was on siesta. The streets were slow and empty. Only a choice few bars and restaurants were still open, all of their lights off and their workers hiding behind counters or in the refrigerators in back.
I walked these empty streets and felt I was the last woman on earth who hadn’t already been incinerated by the sun’s heavy rays. My throat screamed at me like it would never be not thirsty again. I fed it water, but it wanted more. It protested my stupid decision to leave the rain of home.
And then…
And then I found a shopping mall.
A huge, air conditioned shopping mall.
*insert heavenly music and crashing cymbals*
It was really more of a gigantic, six-level department store of some sort, but they called it a mall, and there was even a grocery store in the basement, which was pretty darn weird. I also got an ice cream on the way in. I was pretty proud of myself.
As I walked through the gracious doors, I encountered the entire city of Seville. These people ain’t dumb!
I wandered slowly and lavishly, savoring every second of the cool and begging my body to return to its normal level of function. I even found my dreamy mint-colored printer that I spent last summer pining after! (They made these in the same office I worked in last summer, and the mint is too cute! I spent many working hours trying to plot how to get them to give me the one mint printer we had in the office which was on display, but no luck.)
Close to the printers, I found my final resting place.
I almost fell asleep in this hanging egg basket chair, not gonna lie. I think I will almost certainly invest in one in the future. I kept getting nervous when I saw employees because I didn’t want to get kicked out, but then a group of boys my age joined me on the outdoor couch sectional in front of me, so I figured if they could do it, I was in the clear!
But then they started talking, and I realized they were just Americans, too… Haha. Oh, well. None of us were ever bothered by workers.
I left shortly after them, once my body had stopped whining and yelling at me, and I took off to teach it another lesson.
It was bad.
…
It was so bad.
…
That hot lava monster had brought its friends this time, and they meant business. They dragged me back and melted my shoes to the concrete below so that I had to put in a conscious effort to lift each leg with every step. When trying to get to the water, I encountered this one long stretch where Old Town ended and New Town began. Thing is, these stupid newbies didn’t seem to have the sun in mind during their city planning.
Old Town is made up entirely of alleys and crooks full of shade and shadow. The squares are small, so it is easy to dart across or to skirt around the edges. But when I came to the end of this glorious city design, I was met with an endless, unforgiving, menacingly calm stretch of sunny sidewalk. No trees. No buildings. Just me and the sun.
I took a deep breath and speed-walked, picturing some action movie explosions happening behind me and a fire-breathing dragon ahead. I almost didn’t think I would make it.
But I did. Barely. I made it to the shade of a tiny city map on a post, where I was joined by five others waiting to cross the street. It would have been a pretty funny sight to see, if not so horribly sad and horrible.
I finally found a park:
And some pretty buildings:
And then I made it all the way to the river:
The end goal here was to make it to the monastery on the other bank. It was around five o’clock by this time, so it was as hot as it was ever going to get. All cool-down from here, right?
I wasn’t feelin’ it, yet, that’s for sure. I literally ran from shadow to shadow while I was in that monastery. It was really pretty, though, in its deserted state. I got a second wave of the apocalyptic feelings while I was in here.
And then the worst of it: getting from the monastery back to the other side of town. The most direct path took me along the riverbank for about ten minutes. With no cover.
You’re probably getting tired of me complaining about the heat, but I’m just trying to adequately convey how ridiculously and painfully and unbearably HOT it was. It felt like my feet were going to burn off! And my poor legs! The sun had no pity for me.
I was also starving, so when I finally made it back to civilization, I sat down in the first restaurant I found and ordered a salad and a fresh orange juice. I needed something that was the exact opposite of hot food.
There were three other customers in the bar, and I was the only one who wasn’t there just to drink the heat away. A Jackie Chan movie with Spanish voice-overs played on a small TV in the corner. I sat there for about an hour and chugged about a gallon of water, but I still had things to see, heat or no heat, so I set off once again.
I made it all the way to Sevilla’s round tower, but… Oh no! It closed about two minutes before I got there! Curse you, Heat, for trapping me in that restaurant! Curse you, Jackie Chan!
So no climbing for me. Luckily, there was another tower to be had…
Cathedral time! There were so many carriage horses surrounding the cathedral, and it made me so sad because they were obviously dying in the heat. They all just stood there with their heads down, hardly ever moving. It was like they had already died but had melted into place so they couldn’t fall over… :/ I really wanted to feed them some of the granita I was slurping on!
AND, to top it all off, both the tower and the main cathedral seemed to be closed. I couldn’t even find a door, in fact, and was forced to settle for the small chapel inside. As I walked in, I noticed the No-Scantily-Clothed-Humans sign like the one we had seen in Barcelona: a male stick figure in a tank top and short shorts and a female stick figure in a tank top and a short skirt, both with a big X over the top. Next to this was a conservative male stick figure and a female one with long sleeves and a skirt below her knees. Cue skirt-pulling. I didn’t get it all the way to my knees, but there wasn’t a scarf patrol at this church, so I figured that was good enough.
I sat down for a while and admired the architecture and the shade. When I was feeling close to being ready to leave, I reached across with my right hand to pull my left shoulder purse strap up, but I did this motion rather quickly and forgot I was holding an open bottle of Coke in that hand. Needless to say, that Coke went everywhere. I poured it ALL over my shoulder, on the side of my face, on my purse, on my hat, and all over the pew next to me. I was pretty shocked, especially at how the Coke seemed to be warmer than the air around us now. As the cola made its way down my arm and neck, I began hearing snickers from the rows behind me and decided to make my exit.
The liquid dried almost immediately after walking outside, and honestly, I was already so sticky from sweat that I quickly forgot about the incident entirely.
Plus, I found some art! Huzzah!
So pretty! The paintings were really small, but they were gorgeous oil painting originals, and the artist was selling them himself, which I love. As I picked mine out, he said, ‘Ah… and this…’ he then grabbed my shoulders and gently turned me around to look out of the archway we were standing under, ‘Is this!’
The painting I held in my hand was a miniaturized, nighttime version of the view in front of me. So cool! He said this was the best view of the tower in the whole city, and that’s why he did all of his work here. He was pretty cute, and he even made me stand under the archway so he could take a picture of me with the same framing as the painting.
I didn’t take a photograph of the painting I bought, but picture that without me in it, with a crescent moon hanging overhead.
And then it was time to finally meet back up with Kristina at Plaza de España!
This place was beyond gorgeous. I hung out for about twenty minutes before she made her way there, and I quickly and graciously joined the other plaza-goers by taking off my shoes and sitting with my feet in the fountain. It felt so good. My feet screamed at me at first, and I couldn’t tell if it was because the water was too cold or if my feet were just sore from being taken advantage of every day for the last week. I think it was the latter. They calmed down eventually and thanked me for the drink.
When Kristina joined, we spent quite a while walking around this massive square. The moat in front of the building even had boat rides, which was pretty hilarious considering it was only a ten minute walk from one side of the building to the other. Not much of a sightseeing boat ride.
The plaza was also lined with these beautiful ceramic benches, each displaying one of the founding moments of one of the major cities in Spain.
There was also a little group doing flamenco! Two or three guys played the music and sang, and these two positively fierce young ladies killed it with the moves. They were mesmerizing to watch. So passionate and into it. There was one dance that they did together, and one of the dancers was waving a bright red fan around with practiced swooping and slicing motions. The fan matched the giant flower in her hair, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Then, boom! The other girl whips out her own fan, cream colored to match her scarf. Kristina and I both audibly gasped. They waved and swirled their fans in sync, twice as mesmerizing as before. Kristina kept shouting, ‘Olé!’ every once in a while, and people gave us funny looks but she just couldn’t help herself. Tehehe.
We did one last walk around the square…
And then dinner! We went to a pretty shmancy place, and people kept coming off the street to sing for us and ask for tips. One of my favorites was a man who sang ‘Don’t Worry About a Thing’ by Bob Marley. His voice was so pretty, but I had to pretend I wasn’t interested so I wouldn’t have to tip him… haha. Another favorite was this young vocals-and-guitar duo.
The guy singing had such a clear, beautiful voice! It was magical!
For dinner, I got scallops with hummus because it was the cheapest thing on the menu, and it came served in a giant seashell. Kristina got an octopus and potato dish that she had heard was a traditional Spanish dish. Yikes! It wasn’t horrible, but the octopus was definitely too chewy for my liking. At one point, we were attacked by a HUMONGOUS grasshopper. This thing was as big as my hand! It hopped out of nowhere and landed near my feet on Kristina’s purse. We spent about five minutes squealing and squirming until our adorable waiter came out and shooed it off. Haha.
All in all, it was a nice day in Sevilla despite almost dying most of the time. I’m never traveling south in July again, I tell ya. Never ever.
That cold shower felt so good that night. Actually, when we were in Cordoba, our host had explained that if we wanted hot water in our shower, we would have to plug in the water heater. That evening, Kristina brought it up and said, ‘Yeah, when he said that, I was like, Why would we not want hot showers? …Eh. I get it.’ Hahahahaha.
Supported by nothing but a plexiglass plate… He was mostly terrified because he didn’t see the glass at first, so he thought I was just trying to kill him. Whoops.
