Semana Santa / Easter Week

Easter weekend was a lot of fun. Hillary came out here from San Fransico and styaed with me for 9 days. Our Andalucia excursion started in Malaga/Nerja, then we took a bus to Sevilla, and back to Granada for the last few days of our trip. I'm sad she's gone now but we had a lot of fun!

At the beach in Nerja. The weather was perfect and we spent the entire lady being lazy on the beach. We look cold in this picture but it was 6pm when we took it!

Just lounging around in the eighty something degree weather in Malaga. Those sweatshirts came off shortly afte this picture was taken! hahaha

Our first night out in Nerja. We went to a local bar and had some Tinto de Verana (red wine mixted with lemon Fanta) and had some shrimp tapas (appetizers)

Our 3 hour bus ride to Sevilla.
We rented bikes in Sevilla and rode around for a couple hours before it started to rain on us. At least we had good weather for a couple hours! We're in Park Maria Luisa.

We stopped to enjoy the little kids park for a few minutes. Whom's to say we're too old for this?!

A quick picture in Plaza de Espana.

Upset because it was raining so hard and we still had the bikes for a few hours. We were completely soaked by the time we returned the bikes and got back to our hostel.

Goofing off in El Corte Ingles (The English Court, Department Store) trying on Flamenco Dresses. It felt like we were wearing 100lbs dresses. I don't know how they dance in those and they were at least 500 Euro.

In Granada on a wonderful day!

Skipping through the park, happy it's not raining!

At the Albaicin over looking the city of Granada.

There's so much "art" painted all over the entire city! We really liked this wall because it was so colorful!

Hillary's last night, having a couple drinks at Paddy's (an Irish pub) in Granada!

I have midterms this week and then I'm off to Amsterdam with 6 other girls for the weekend! A good way to celebrate the end of midterms!

Goodbye Hair

IT'S ALL GONE! When I got here I wanted to get a trim, so I took a friend who speaks great spanish and went to get my hair cut. Well I showed him where I wanted my hair cut and I said the only thing I knew how in spanish, KEEP IT LONG. The only thing I saw was huge pieces of hair falling on the ground. He cut half my hair off and I hated it. Apparently everyone who went there got a cut they didn't ask for. My Spanish teacher told me that she doesn't get her hair cut here because they don't do what you ask them to do. That made me feeling better because it wasn't a lost in translation situation, that's just how they are. I spent two weeks trying to get used to it. It was at an awkward length right below my shoulders with no layers. I told myself that the only way I could fix it was to cut more off so I went in again (to a different place) and asked for my hair to be cut like this and now I love it! I never thought I would have short hair like this and I do miss my long hair sometimes when I look at pictures, but all in all I like it! The bangs are weird so I will grow those out but I do fit into the spanish fashion style with this cut! hahaha

Lagos, Portugal

Portugal was the best trip so far because we went completely for relaxation on the beach. We didn't take any tours of Palaces or Cathedrals. We spent the days on the beach and went out to dinner and clubs at night. It was the perfect 4 day weekend.

This is the car we rented for our road trip to Portugal. It was a manual car, and yes I was the only one who knew how to drive it! I drove the whole trip and it wasn't bad at all. It felt weird to drive because I haven't driven a car in 2 months.

Almost there, and can't wait!

Crossing the bridge from Spain to Portugal. I wanted to take a picture on the border but I can't exactly pull over in the middle of a bridge.
We finally made it Portugal 6 hours later and we were goofing off at a rest stop.

Our guesthouse that we rented right on the besch in Lagos. We had a huge sun patio, private rooms with bathrooms and full kitchen (that we didn't use once)

The talk of the town was a fish bowl full of alcohol with abnormally long straws, and it tasted really good!

The beautiful beach in Lagos.

The weather was perfect and the water was cold but warmer than california's at this time.

Happy to be here! I love the beach especially when the water is crystal clear and clean!

Just goofing off in the water. I like this action picture!

We took a boat ride to see some of the sea caves. The boat was really sketchy and the driver only had 3 teeth. We thought we payed for a informational tour but we pulled up to individual caves and said, "See this one, it looks like a bear." "That one over there looks like an Indian." Even though they did look like those things, it was really awkward.

Portuguese Penguins.

Inside one fo the caves, it took the guy 20 minutes to take the picture.

The water was so beautiful inside the caves.

Another beach close to Lagos.

A funny story, on our way back to Granada we stopped to get gas. This was the first time we had to gas on the entire trip. I go to the bathroom and Meagan fills the tank up. When I get back she had a really concerned look on her face. She thinks the car takes diesel but she put regualr in it. We all thought no this little thing doesn't take diesel so we hopped back in and drove off. Well, we made it about 10 minutes before the car started driving really strange. We pulled over and turned the car off. Once it was off we couldn't get it started again. We stayed at this gas station for about 2 hours trying to figure out the number to our 24 hour road side service. The Spanish Civil Service car pulled up and we got out to ask them for a phone number to a raod side service company. They offered to help us out and started checking the car out. Out of nowhere this guy comes up and tells us he's going to syphon the gas out. He startes to suck our gas out and it was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. It was all over his face and he just kept spitting it out. Then we put diesel gas in and took off. Thank God we did that for us!

Gibraltar, Sevilla, Cordoba

Unfortunately on our 3 day, 3 cities vacation we had really bad weather. So, I didn't take very many pictures. Also all of our tours, this time, were in Spanish so I only understood about 25% of what they were saying to us. I'll try to tell you as much as I can but the pictures won't be very descriptive. Besides that, the trip was good and we got to see some interesting things.

GIBRALTAR

The rock of Gibraltar.

It was really painful to take this picture. It was raining and 50mph winds! That's not a joke, I thought we were going to get swept away. We tried using umbrellas but they would turn inside out and you would still get all wet!

It's a little hard to tell but that's a sunken ship. It's a lot closer than the picture makes it seem. I would of told you the story of why it's still there but I didn't understand it!

We're inside the rock of Gibraltar, it was really beautiful inside. They also had a theatre inside for events and shows.

The monkeys are all over the rock and they're not afraid of you. I was trying not to get too close because they have 4 inch teeth and one of them bit another girl because she was trying to play with her baby! (she's not very bright) They really like to give high fives and they have the biggest/nastiest butts! hahaha

From the tip of Gibraltar you're supposed to be able to see Africa but since we had horrible weather we couldn't see it. But, we go to Morocco in May we will ship out from Gibraltar and be able to see Africa.

SEVILLA

We're goofing off in Plaza de Espana in Sevilla.

Posing infront of the Granada sign in Plaza de Espana, not sure why we decided on that pose though.

The Sevilla palace.

Of course every palace has to have a long pool filled with nasty green water.

The 2nd largest Cathedral in the world!

Christopher Columbus's tumb inside the cathedral.

Another view of his tomb.

The Organ inside the Cathedral. For some reason I really like the organs because they're so big and have millions of pipes.

You could walk up to the top of the Cathedral (36 flights to be exact) and this is the only picture I took on the way up!

A picture from the top.

CORDOBA

Cordoba actually had better weather but our bus got stuck in Sevilla for 3 hours because they shut down the city for a marathon and we couldn't drive anywhere until it was finished. So, our Cordoba trip was cut in half. Another Cathedral, I'm starting to think all they have in Spain is Palaces and Cathedrals. All of them are starting to look the same now!

The arches inside the cathedral. Since I didn't understand the tour guide I started at these thinking of candy canes.

The famous street in Cordoba. Calle de Flores (Street of the Flowers) I understood that!