This and That...and then some

Yay, it's allergy season!!! No breathing through my nostrils for a few weeks...awesome. I'm loving Spring, but man is it ever hard on me. Itchy eyes, itchy ears, sneezing, blocked nose...seems my allergies get worse every year.
Even the cat's not doing so well and it twitching all over...going to bring her to the vet tomorrow morning if I can get an appointment. Yes, cats can get allergies too. Poor Knoo.
This entry will be a little bit about this and that...just cuz I said so. I'm too allergy-ridden to properly concentrate and am trying to wheeze through my mouth...so forgive me.
Malaga was great. We had a grey weekend, but it didn't rain. It's a small city, but has an awesome nightlife. One only needs 2 days to see most of the city.
This ship here to the left was actually a restaurant, surprise surprise. It probably features posters of Captain Sparrow and has a sweaty/slimy Orlando Bloom greeting customers at the door.


"...where everybody knows your name..."


I never really followed that show, although it did provide me with some laughs on the odd days I'd catch it. Oh, one thing: Kirsty, dang! What a pity.

The Picasso Museum was really interesting, although it had the structure of a labyrinth. Seriously, when you need to hire 25 people just to tell tourists through which doorway/hallway to go through, you should definitely call those architects back and give them a little spanking. Of course, not the good kind. And if you do give them a spanking, make sure to sport a Dali moustachio...just to be an ass. Cuz everyone knows how crazy Dali was. Haha, oh Dali...you crazy boy, you.

Another church...another person getting doomed by God. When we walked into the cathedral, there was a boy/man (gremlin?) playing with the security switches. It only took security 5 minutes to politely tell the gremlin/boy/blob to take his hands off of it.

Preparation H, anyone?

This was a nice fountain right by the port...I somehow managed to strategically hide the kissy couple that was making out riiiiiiiight behind it.


Love the details on the ceramic tiles. Everything has ceramic tiles here in Spain. Just 3 days ago, I saw a woman wearing a ceramic-tiled hat. Then her feeble body crumbled and she sank into the ground. That sucked, man.

The view from our hostel. We were located at an awesome sport that overlooked main street.

Notice the drenched streets. I lied, it did rain...but just at night. No drops hit my lil 'ol head during the day. :)

On Sunday, we went to Ronda...a beautiful town located about 65 km North-West of Malaga. The air was so pure, the grass was so green, my nose was so blocked. Ahhhhh, Spring.

This is the really old bridge that makes Ronda famous. I'm not quite sure in what year it was built, but it might have been sometime during the invention of bread.

Down, down, down...couldn't take it all in. Quite the sight!

Who feels like a little serenade? You've got to hand it to the spaniards, they sure know how to make their balconies look all cute and stuff. Well, Cordoba rules in that area, but I still found Malaga and Ronda beautiful with its flowery balconies and little streets.

I truly had a great weekend with my friends.
My next trip will likely (and hopefully) be somewhere in Portugal. I'd die to go to Valencia and Barcelona again, but unfortunately they are just too far for a weekend getaway. Oh well, at least I've already been ;).
This upcoming week will hopefully be short and sweet. No classes on Tuesday, and no evening class on Friday (there might also be a slight chance that I'll finish at 7pm tomorrow!). May's the last long work month, really. God, the weeks are flying by faster and faster.

Hopefully I'll be able to breathe better soon, but I doubt it...May was worse for me last year than April (eep!). I've got pills, but I don't want to take them every day, ya know?

Other than that...I'm dying my hair tonight! I'm also going to be heading over the hairdresser's this Friday...be shocked, be amazed, be surprised. This girl's gonna look different.

I heard rat-tails have become popular again.

xoxoxoxo H

Weekends are for Winners

I had a d'oh moment yesterday. Ha!

Carmen had asked me to take down the curtains for her, since she wanted to wash them. Thinking that I'd be doing her a favour, I took them down for her yesterday morning and then also decided to wash them for her. Big mistake. Lord knows I'm not the washing queen (Shane recently made me aware of the fact that you can mix 25,000 different shades of colour together in cold water without having everything turn pink or black...so there.).

I put them in the washer, spin-dried them and everything. When I hung them up, part of the window's glass could be seen from the bottom...I had somehow shrunk them. A lot. But HOW??????? I wailed, and wrote Carmen a message before leaving, which went something like this (of course in Spanish): "I washed the curtains for you, and in cold water too...but don't they seem shorter to you?"

When we all finally met up at the WOK (yummy chinese restaurant), she explained to me that the curtains shouldn't have been spin-dried...and that she had re-washed them in the bathtub and hung them up (still wet) so that they could stretch out. Apparently my note gave her the laugh of a lifetime, too. "Of course they seemed shorter to me, Heidi! There was practically a foot missing!!!" :-P

Let's not even talk about ironing. My ironing in Spain involves using my hair dryer and a nice, solid table. Oh yes, high five!

It's Friday, hooray! I'll be leaving for Malaga tonight after my class...pretty pumped :) On Sunday we'll be going to other little villages and beautiful places such as Ronda and Arcos de la Frontera...should be good, weather permiting.

Weather's been weird these last couple of days, very hot and then slightly chilly and cloudy...might rain today, too. Hopefully not.

This week flew by again. I don't know what it is, but I'm assuming it's because I'm loving Spain and am clinging on to the last few weeks as much as possible...

It's funny because I remember counting the weeks and months I'd be here...I stopped counting sometime between starting work at Covent Garden and Xmas. Guess it means that I'm just really comfortable here, and don't feel the need for a countup/countdown?

There's only 1 full week of April left, and on the 1st of May we have a holiday since it's Labour Day here. It'll be strange having a day off on a Tuesday, but we gotta take what we can get, eh?

I booked my flight to Rome! 94 euros...so excited for that as well. Now I'll just have to start booking hostels and planning our route.

In other news, thinking about having to find new roomies in September is scaring the bejeebers out of me. I hope that I'll find a good place close to UWO...with normal, fun people.

In other un-related news, I've been having bad dreams and my allergies have been preventing me from getting any decent sleep. Yes, I've caved and am taking my meds now (this time I even managed to avoid mixing them with beer...I earned my star for the day). They aren't as bad as when I was living in Logroño, but they're still poopooing my nights.

I think I'm gonna be a nerd and continue playing my PC game...I mean, c'mon...last time I played was in February...swear to God. What?

xoxoxoxox H

Times are a changin'

Paris was amazing. Can I keep on travelling forever? After a shitty night of trying to sleep on uncomfortable airport benches, I touched down in Baguette Country at around 8 a.m.

Our hotel was located in the very northern area of Paris, but it was still in a good location since a metro stop was within metres of our bedroom and could be seen from our window.

Oh...where to start? We saw and did so much in that one week we were there together! We were lucky that it didn't rain, and were blessed with sunny (albeit sometimes windy) days. Ha...people at work have been commenting that I tanned a little. Go figure!

I was extremely tired on the first day (due to aforementioned lack of a good sleep) but we decided to go to the Louvre. Yeah, that pic up there is of the Notre Dame (reason being that it took me practically 2 days to find a good battery for my camera...don't ask, long story.) but just stay with me. I'll get to the Notre Dame soon.

The Louvre was HUGE. We only managed to see a few floors overall. We weren't impressed by the Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo, but did enjoy our visit. I'm still surprised that I didn't pass out in the museum...I was THAT tired. Good thing I had a nap that same evening because afterwards we went out for some drinks at a little bar close to our hotel called "Fischer's" which had great ambience and nice service. Shane made me try Kronenbourg 1664 and I fell in love with it :) Very good beer indeed...

On the next day, we went to the Notre Dame...and boy was it beautiful. It was pretty windy and chilly on that day, but we queued just like everybody else and waited to get the chance to climb the steps that led upward to the Great Bell. I think half of that queuing was spent with me waiting to get hot cocoa and coffee for us at a nearby stand...bunch of chinese that all wanted different crêpes...grrr.

Notice the blue sky...are we really in Paris?





Gotta love the Tim Burton-esque metro signs. Oh, sorry...I just noticed that it's a bit hard to see in this pic...but trust me, it had its goulish charm :)
The metro in Paris costs 1,40 euros. Yikes, that's 40 cents more than in Madrid...but hey, it's Paris. This is a city where a normal coffee goes for around 3-4 euros, depending on the location.






Feelin' Groovy in downtown Paris. I miss him already. We had a great time together and even went to see the musical Cabaret...not to mention an ass-kicking great Rocky Horror Show with live actors. The best part was when they thrust a plastic doll's private parts into my face...several times.

And why on earth did I keep jumping the wrong way for the Time Warp? Even Rif-Raf was unimpressed and gave me the evil eye. I think I wet my seat.














On the 3rd day we finally went to the Eiffel Tower and started queuing at around 10 a.m. It took us about 45 minutes to get into the elevator and it cost us around 11 euros. Not bad at all, since we had expected it to be around 20 euros or so (hey, this is where crazypants Cruise proposed after all).
It's really a gorgeous structure, although I had expected it to be jet black and not some light brownish hue. It was sooooo windy up there on that day...we slowly felt our fingers freezing off...totally worth the wait though.

After the Eiffel we went to see the Catacombs, much to Rachel's delight. Quite creepy, and like a true wuss, I held onto Shane's arm for the first few minutes while we walked through the narrow passage ways. Millions upon millions of bones and skulls just lined the walls from left to right...incredible.

On the 4th day we went to the Montmartre area to see the Sacré-Coeur, Moulin Rouge, and other places. It's a really nice area with lots and lots of tourists. Notice again the blue sky.
We went into the Moulin Rouge to look at ticket prices, and promptly left again when we saw that the cheapest tickets were going for 89 euros. Yikes. We were quite happy with our 25 euro Cabaret tickets (and lucky too, since the theatre was half-empty and we were able to get seats that were much closer to the stage).











Not as pretty as in the movie (d-uh). Still pretty cool though.
There was also another mill called Moulin de La Galette, but we couldn't get near it because they were doing some construction...wonder if it would have been worth it. Looked pretty cool from afar.






Probably one of my favourite pics that I took during my parisian stay. What a gorgeous city. It's definitely everything that I had thought it would be.
Clean, surprisingly green, and has got a vast repertoire of things to see and do. One could never really get bored in this city, I believe...










The wall of "I love you", located in the Montmartre area, was pretty cool. It had I love you written in many different languages, and of course I tried finding the ones for English, French, German and Spanish. Quite a cute idea.







On the fifth day we went to Père Lachaise's Cemetery, and went to visit the tombstones of Edith Piaf, Jim Morrisson, Molière, Oscar Wilde and some other famous "personnes" of our time. Wilde's tombstone was totally defaced with lipstick and graffiti, but the others were all nicely intact and clean.
It was a wonderfully quiet and peaceful morning, and we met up with Oli afterwards for a few beers and dessert...hmmm. It was great finally getting to know her, since the last time I had seen her had been over 2 years ago and I only really remembered her from Tommy as the Acid Queen.
On the 6th day we went to a market and just strolled around the stands, glancing at old furniture and interesting postcards, some of which were from the 1940's or even older...very interesting reading material, heheh. I found a nice postcard where a woman was accepting a marriage proposal (almost bought it actually...was touched). I wonder how these old postcards got collected and why the owners didn't keep them, or at least give them to their relatives for when they passed on? Will a stranger read my poscards one day? Will they somehow land up in a 1 euro/dollar/God knows what currency bin?
In the evening, we met up with Oli again and went to the Latin Quarter. What a great place for bookstores and cheap eats!!! Too bad we didn't find it earlier, otherwise we would have eaten there a whole lot more. I finally tried frog legs, hehhe. Yes, they tasted just like chicken. Shane ordered the snails, and they were quite tasty as well, to my surprise. Sacré Bleu, que c'était bon!
It was on my very last night in Paris that we decided to attend a Rocky Horror Show that was happening in the area. I'll never think of the Village People the same way ever again. I think that my song of the year is going to be "Sex Over the Phone". If you haven't seen the video yet, youtube it and you won't be sorry. The actors did a hilarious rendition of it all with a huge plastic telephone...priceless.
My trip back proved to be torturous. An 8 hour bus trek from Madrid to Huelva ended up being a 10 hour one due to traffic jams. It was a quite pathetic Easter Sunday, and I wished that I was with Shane and Oli in the Notre Dame, attending mass with them and having a picnic in the gardens...
Oh, but what a lovely time I did have :) I'd go again one day...I totally needed the break, too. I'm feeling energetic enough to finish this last semester. I can't believe that I only have about another 2.5 months at the Covent Garden Academy. That's peanuts, that's nothing.
On another note, I'm going to be attending Western University in the fall. Although I did have my heart set on U of T, it's not the end of the world and I'm not feeling sad anymore. I'm actually looking forward to it all now. Western's supposed to be a good school, and I'll be close enough to everyone...at least I won't be a whole continent away. Hurray for weekend visits, right? I'll be so busy anyway, judging from my schedule that they sent me...
I'm also certain that those 8 months will just fly by. Now I just hope that I'll find good people to live with close to the uni...
New changes again for little old me. Exciting, scary...I'm looking forward to meeting new friends and reconnecting with the old ones.
Alright, and because I'm me, I shall now book my flight to Rome and send my deposit to Western via internet banking...
xoxoxoxoxo H