Paris, France

Well, I think I should start out by saying I'm very sorry for neglecting my blog for so long!!  It's definitely been a crazy, crazy few weeks.  First of all, I finished up with school, 4 exams in one week...yikes.  Hopefully they all went well, although I apparently won't know any grades until August!  Anyways, though I have not posted, realistically, there was not much to post about.

However, on May 12th we had our 'cena de despedida' (goodbye dinner) on a rooftop of a hotel overlooking the Cathedral.  Absolutely gorgeous views!!  It was definitely a hard night though because I had to say goodbye to nearly all of my friends.  Everyone was leaving either the next morning or within a few days.  Honestly, I never expected to get so close with so many people over a period of 4 months but I definitely did, and I miss them all SO much now that they're not here.  Fortunately, most of them go to UW-Madison so we will be reunited soon enough :-)  Below are some pictures with my friends and one of my Professors:

PARIS!!!

So that party was Thursday night, and I left bright and early Friday morning for a weekend in Paris :-)

We arrived and got settled in and by 4pm we were ready to head out and start sight-seeing!  We started out by heading to the Louvre because it was free for people under 26 on Friday afternoons/evenings.  I'm not a huge art person, but I did enjoy seeing some of the classic pieces like the Mona Lisa!

After visiting the Louvre we walked down Champs de Elysees, which is one of the main shopping streets in Paris, to the Arc de Triomphe.  We didn't go up in the Arc de Triomphe because we planned to do that with Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower and we figured that would be sufficient, but it was very cool to see it!

That night we were exhausted from traveling all day so we went back to the hotel and planned to get up real early the next morning. We started out Saturday by getting supplies for a picnic to have lunch in front of the Eiffel Tower.  So we bought a large baguette, cheese, lunch meat, stopped at a bakery for some fresh pastries, and of course had some champagne.  We went and sat and ate French food and drank French champagne while sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower...perfect start to our Saturday!  We ended up going up in the Eiffel Tower right after eating and although the line was fairly long it was worth it in my opinion.

After our trip up the Eiffel Tower we took the train out to the Palace of Versailles.  We were originally planning to go into the palace, but upon learning that it was 15 euro and we'd only have 3 hours, we chose to just go through the gardens.  The gardens were one of my favorite things we did while in France.  They were so beautiful and we ended up going during the music and fountain show, so all of the fountains were going and they had hidden speakers throughout the gardens so you heard it everywhere, it was magical :-)  I would highly suggest that if you're planning to visit the gardens, you do so during the afternoon when the fountains are on.  

That night we went up in one of the tallest skyscrapers in Paris to get a view of the city at night.  Unfortunately, the outdoor part was being remodeled so we could only stay inside to take pictures so they didn't turn out very well.  This was a little bit of a disappointment but it was cool to see the city lights at night, and of course the Eiffel Tower.

The next morning, we went to the Luxembourg Gardens to walk around.  We were warned that there would be scattered showers throughout the day but being the truly intelligent people we are, we both forgot our umbrellas :-/  So, our walk through the gardens was spoiled half-way through and we had to take shelter in the area with all the trees.  On the bright side, the park was beautiful and we found the miniature Statue of Liberty.

After the gardens we walked to the Musee D'orsay.  Photography isn't allowed within the museum so I unfortunately have no photos of this.  However, I highly recommend it!  The building itself is a train station that they converted to a museum so it's really open and bright and the detail on the ceiling is beautiful.  I enjoyed this museum more than the Louvre because it had a lot of Monet and I love his work!  

We ventured to Notre Dame after the museum.  Definitely a beautiful cathedral inside and out.  We took the time to climb up it to see the gargoyles, which was my favorite part of it.  I'll be honest, after being in Sevilla and having the third largest cathedral in the world here, I found Notre Dame a little less exciting.  That being said, the gargoyles made up for the cathedral itself in my opinion!

The last stop on our agenda was the Eiffel Tower at night to celebrate my friends 21st birthday!  We went out for dinner and got crepes with cheese, sausage and egg...yummmmy...and then made our way to the tower to make it in time for the light show!  Of course, we stopped to get crepes with nutella and banana :-)  And so we sat in front of the Eiffel Tower eating crepes and drinking champagne.  Pretty good end to our adventure I'd say!

So, with these pictures I end my incredibly long and much overdue blog post!  As it has taken me so long to actually do this post, there are only 5 days left until I come home.  I honestly feel like I'm living in a dream right now and cannot believe I come home so soon!!  Starting to think that leaving from study abroad is the dictionary definition of bittersweet, because although Madison is my true home, Sevilla has felt like home for me as well over the past 4 and a half months.

I'm going to go on a picture taking spree the day before I leave so I'm sure I'll be posting those...but who knows, by that time I may be able to show all of you when I'm standing next to you :-)

Hope all is well, can't WAIT to see you all!!!

An American Abroad

It was a pretty big week I'd say, not only for America, but around the world as well.  I guess I never really realized how far reaching the effects of 9/11 were, but being abroad when Osama Bin Laden was killed has definitely changed my perspective on that.  After the announcement of Bin Laden's death my host parents and I were talking and they said that they too can remember exactly where they were, and exactly what they were doing when they heard that those towers fell.  I guess you could say I've started to realize how interconnected we are; whether we live in the same  area, speak the same language, eat the same foods, etc.  that particular day, in some sense, 'happened' to everyone.  No matter how different we may be, there are some things that simply are universal.  That's definitely one of the greatest things I have learned while here.  

My host Dad asked me how I felt about Bin Laden's death, he wanted the 'American' opinion on it.   Now, I will say that my host parents are obsessed with America and that is not how everyone is here, but I thought it was interesting that he asked.  Obviously I could never speak for all Americans because if Facebook has taught me anything, it is that there is NEVER one opinion about anything; however, I said that over anything else I hoped that it would help bring the families that lost loved ones on 9/11 a small sense of closure, and I was glad that 'good' had prevailed.    

I definitely picked an interesting time to be abroad though!  They have raised all of the travel advisories for Americans in Europe.  I have received countless emails from UW-Madison and my University here urging me to be cautious...their main advice being not to take part in any displays of celebration.  But I think one of my friends Dad's said it best: "Keep speaking Spanish, and acting 'local' not loco."  This being said, Sevilla is a very VERY small city, and none of you need to worry about anything :-)

Alright, I thought that would be interesting for you guys to hear about my experience with that, but enough with the seriousness.  This week in Sevilla is FERIA DE ABRIL!!  Now, whoever just thought 'wait, it's not April' you are very intelligent, because it in fact, is not April.  In Sevilla, Feria always starts 15 days after Easter.  And as Easter is celebrated based on the lunar cycle and this year it was way late, it moved Feria to May!  Now, anyone catch that it's not 15 days after Easter??  They decided that it would get too late, and be too hot if they didn't change it this year, so instead of 15 days they chose to move it to 8 days!  The classic Spain comes out during the week of Feria.  The flamenco dresses, the suits for the men with the sash and the hat, the dancing, etc.  It's by far one of the coolest things I have yet to see while in Europe.  I don't have a lot of pictures yet, and no good pictures of me in my dress, but I have a very cute one of my little brother and sister!

How cute are they?!  I will be sure to post more pictures and tell more stories at the end of the week but I wanted to let you guys know what I've been up to :-)

As of tomorrow, I have only 3 weeks left here in Spain.  Unbelievable if you ask me!

Have a great week everyone!

When in Rome!

This is my last post about Italy!  If you guys have not read about Florence and Cinque Terre, go to the older posts first because Rome was actually our last stop!!


Day 1

We arrived in Rome early that night so we decided to fit some stuff in since we only had 2 days to explore the whole city!  That night we chose to go to walk down the main commercial street in Rome, Via del Corso.  We went first to the Piazza del Popolo, which we really knew nothing about other than that it was a big thing on tourist map...so we gave it a shot!

We walked down that street and went to the Trevi Fountain!  And yes, I threw 2 coins into the fountain for good luck and so I'll at some point go back to Rome :-)

A restaurant was suggested to us by some friends and it was in the 'Jewish Ghetto' which I promise is safer than it sounds!  We walked through the Piazza Venecia and saw a really pretty monument, again, I don't really know what it was for but it was pretty!  Unfortunately, the restaurant required reservations so we had to walk all the way back to the other side of the city pretty much, but we did get to walk past the Colosseum at night which was pretty cool!

Day 2

We woke up incredibly early this day to get to the Vatican Museum!  We found a line and just assumed it was to get into the Vatican Museums but unfortunately, we were mistaken.  On the bright side, it wasn't a long wait.  It was actually going to St. Peters Basilica because as it turns out, it was Pope Day!  Unfortunately, someone told us he was speaking at 1, when in reality it was at 10.  So we had already left for the Vatican Museum line and ended up missing the Pope speaking, which would have been fun!  But, oh well!  We ended up only waiting about 45 minutes to get into the museums which is pretty much unheard of.  In total we spent about 3 hours exploring the Vatican Museum.  It was really fun to see all of the art, especially the Sistine Chapel.  You weren't technically allowed to take photos of it, but I snuck a photo because my camera doesn't have a flash and I didn't think it was going to hurt anyone.  To be honest, the Sistine Chapel was very beautiful, but so was every other ceiling in the Vatican.  I guess I just had very high expectations going into it.  Either way, it was still a cool thing to see, and I can cross it off my bucket list :-)

Afterwards, we went, a second time to St. Peters Basilica.  This time, we actually got to go inside of it!  One of the prettiest churches I've ever seen by far!

We were literally exhausted by the time we were done with all of the touring and walking so we went back to our hostel and slept for about 3 hours!  We went out for dinner that night and ate some of the BEST pizza I've ever had.  It was recommended to us by our friends and we ended up waiting for 45 minutes but it was definitely worth the wait!  We even decided, since it was our last dinner in Italy, to buy a calzone-type desert that was filled with Nutella.  It was pure heaven on earth!  A great way to spend our last night in Italy :-)

Day 3

Thursday was our last day in Italy!  We left the Colosseum for Thursday morning since it was something we would only want to spend a few hours at.  Unfortunately, the metro was INCREDIBLY packed on the way there.  Britt had a leather backpack that was cinched closed and buckled and someone still managed to steal her wallet!  I have no idea how no one even noticed it going on, but needless to say it definitely put a damper on our morning.  We didn't notice until we were going to pay for our tour through the Colosseum.  She wanted to go back to the hostel and call to cancel her debit card but we convinced her that she would regret not doing the tour so we paid for her to go on it and successfully put the incident out of our minds for a few hours.  So we took a guided tour of the Colosseum and then went back to the hostel and got it all taken care of!  

So, my adventures in Italy came to a close!  We went out for one last lunch...which actually turned out to be really delicious even though we just randomly picked a restaurant!  We left for the airport and fortunately, all the flights went as planned!  Apparently we were really lucky because there were bad storms in Madrid that kept a lot of our friends there over night!

Hope you all have had a wonderful week!!  Have a happy Easter!  It's definitely going to be weird to not be with my grandparents and family,  I'll be thinking of you all :-)  Less than 5 weeks until I'm home, which sounds crazy to me, but I can't wait to see everyone!