You´ve been all over...and it´s been all over you

Last week was an exciting one; one of my best friends came to visit me, and boy did we ever have a packed week! Madrid, Sevilla and my hometown of Huelva...all in about 7 days. I shall try to recap everything we did along with some of the highlights.
Cynthia arrived on her birthday, the 22nd, and I had already booked us a hostal in Madrid for 2 days...I had figured that this would give us enough time for sightseeing and having a little bit of discoteca fun. I was right.
The first thing we did was dump our stuff at the hostal and then go grab something to eat at a cafeteria that was located on Gran Via, Madrid´s main street. I had prepared Cyn for the fact that spaniards barely eat breakfast, usually just coffee and a pastry...so we had ourselves a nice croissant with fresh orange juice. Cyn had met a really nice Montrealer on the plane named Christian, and he accompanied us for a while (and I managed to spill orange juice on his pants, OF COURSE, being the klutz that I am...thankfully he managed to clean everything off). Since we were all extremely tired (I had barely slept on the bus to Madrid and she was jet-lagged), we decided to head back to the hostal for a nice long nap. About 2 hours later, we freshen ourselves up and start our downtown journey. The weather is hot, but nice....not too extreme, so we wander for quite some time, taking pics of this and that. The picture above was taken close to the Palacio Real, one of my favourite spots...Cynthia was impressed by the grandeur of the building, and liked the little gardens of Sabatini. I didn´t want to overload the tour on the first day, so we met up with Christian and his friends from his Contiki tour for some beers and tapas. Christian, like Cyn, had never tried real tapas, and was impressed by the meats and cheeses.....hmmmm yes, it was quite something. I had a nice Clara (beer with a lemonade twist...a nice summer drink). I wasn´t too impressed with the other people from the Contiki tour...most were American and it REALLY showed...from the 15 people that were there, I think that I would have only bonded with 4 of them. Some just looked so young and....stupid. I´m talking pink baseball caps and ill-fitting loose clothing (I´m sorry, but north americans just do not know how to dress most of the time...they need to follow a bit of the european look). We did have a nice night of just socialising and hanging out with Chris for a bit....then we decided that we were pooped and headed home for a well deserved sleep.

The next day, it was roasting. I remember walking with Cyn and searching for a cheap place to get something to drink...like, really dehydrated and wishing I was a camel ("My Humps" song comes to mind now). Anyways, I saw this gay ad and just HAD to be snapped. I even burned my hand on the damn billboard...oh well, it was worth it.


THIS is my kind of man. Every woman wants a manly, hairy apelike husband to make her look like a million bucks. The star wars character is just an extra bonus, and who the heck wouldn´t want this IgotsotannedIburntmyskintoacrisp look?







This is where the ape-husband picture took place...below the Fuck store. "Hey, where do you work?" "Fuck." "What, what happened?" "No, man..."Fuck" "Man, WHAT?"... You get the idea. This store exists in a little mall on one of the most popular shopping streets of Madrid, Fuencarral. It´s also an expensive street to go shopping on, as Cynthia noticed. This place had some funny t-shirts....and well, that was about it.
I bet you YOU don´t work in a store that has a great name such as this...



Cynthia in front of a statue of one of Spain´s kings, located in front of the Palacio Real (which you can´t see cuz it´s behind me here). As you can see, no clouds, nada. Close to the Palacio Real there is a great little ice cream place called "Nice coffee and cream"....hmmmm I had some good Cookies and Cream with Chocolate (one day I´ll overdose on chocolate, but that day hasn´t come yet so let me taste life´s sweet delights). Cyn went absolutely nuts over the ice cream as well...it was just the way that it was made, with chunks of fruits and chocolate, etc...we had both never seen ice cream that good in Canada.

We took a tour of the Palacio Real, and unfortunately, I couldn´t use my flash so there are no pictures of that...suffice it so say that, although I had already been in it, it was still enough to make me gape at all the rich beauty with wide eyes and my tongue half hanging out, lol. I don´t even want to imagine how much they had to pay the maids to clean all the nooks and crannies.
After our little tour of the palace, we took a little break and napped in the park. The Palacio Real park holds a lot of nostalgia for me...all of Madrid basically, since this is where everything began. I was able to see myself writing in my journal in this place or that, and was also able to recall all the little events and happenings that ocurred to me in various little places. I´ll never forget this city...and I´ll never really get tired from it. Taking the metro, the trains....I felt extremely comfortable there.
After our nap, a guy walks up to us and hands us brochures for a pub crawl that was going to happen later that night. I didn´t even think twice about it, "Sure, heck, it´ll be fun meeting new people and having a blast in the bar", so we took the brochures and read its contents a little closer after he had gone: 4 bars, 1 discoteca, free tequila shots and discounts on beer, only 10 euros. We looked at each other, "Well, we probably won´t be able to drink much anyways, but it´ll be fun to just hang out and meet new people from all over the world".
That night, we met up with the others at the Plaza del Sol and made our way to the first bar. There were a LOT of croatians, americans...and just us canadians. I was a little poo poo about that, cuz I was kinda hoping to have other nationalities in our group, but we ended up dancing with other people we would meet at the bars; brits, spaniards (of course), russians, and ukrainians. It was sooooo much fun, the great thing about Spain is that people dance in most little bars...you don´t even really need to go to a discoteca. Reggaeton, Dance, Spanish music, it´s a mix of everything. The first hour we were at the first bar, it was happy hour, and you could get as much free beer as you wanted (just the pub crawl gang though, of course).
Let´s just say that 2 beers for Cyn and I is a lot. Yes, we are pathetic. But, we accept our case. We don´t drink that often, but that night we decided to go all out since we were partying together...which meant "Bring on the Tequila!".
2nd bar. I´m already seeing things slightly slanted. The waitress starts pouring tequila shots, 15 glasses in one row. Cyn and I see a plate loaded with free potato chips, and scarf them down. "To.....................us!" Down goes Mr. Tequila. "Cynthia, I´m....kinda hungry. Wanna get....some tapas?" "Sure!" After letting our leader of the pack know that we are going to go grab some food, we find a little empty tapa restaurant where we eat some chorizo with cheese...mmmmm (now there are many tapas in spain, but this is just one of my favourite). Somehow, everything seems funny all of a sudden. I tip over my glass of water, bread crumbs fly...etc. To add hilarity to the scenario, a man gets thrown out of the restaurant (but HE apologizes to us WHILE he is getting kicked out....waiter???).
We figure that about 30 minutes went by....after paying, we head back to the 2nd bar only to realize that everybody has left....thankfully, I find the dude´s number on the brochure and he gives us the directions to the 3rd bar...."Corleone". Somehow, we find it and JUST as we are entering we get another free shot. Nice. Right on Time, mates.
In the 4th bar, we REALLY get our groove on and just go nuts with the music. About half an hour into dancing at that bar, a burping contest gets announced and 4 guys climb up on stage. I don´t know what the hell I was thinking but I make my way on stage. I guess I was really THAT drunk. I don´t know. But, after standing on the stage for exactly 1.6 seconds, I get told to politely step off, making all the men poo poo the announcer and me making a face as if I am about to cry.
The american wins at burping, but get this: he proclaims himself to be australian. Cyn and I both know that he is american since he is with our group...ha! You can just imagine how all of those hoots and hollers would have changed to jeers if it had been known that he was truly an american. I kinda feel sorry for the americans...but not really.
The rest of the night is a blur of dance and sweat. It was fun. I´m glad that Cyn had an amazing time.

Sevilla,te quiero! This city was just unbelievably precious...and here I am in traditional Sevillan attire. Yes, I realize that this picture is just ginormous in comparison with the others...but it´s my blog and I´m kinda proud of this picture. I´m happy that Cynthia and I decided to get these done...I´m sure that my family will appreciate these as well :) I felt like a real spanish señorita...
Our first day in Sevilla consisted of doing a little bit of sightseeing....but we did most of this during our second day. We were still exhausted from the night before, so our first day in Sevilla was spent napping and taking a little walk through a part of downtown Sevilla. Cynthia couldn´t help but keep commenting on the fact how men pay so much more attention to women than in Canada...she´s right on that. Men will basically whistle at you in your face, yell "guapa" (beautiful) and make kissy faces when passing you by. It´s worse in the south than in the north, when I used to live in Logroño. Maybe it´s the heat? LOL



Here is Cynthia doing the same pose as me....we took a lot of different poses, but I couldn´t post all of them of course...if you do want to see some others, just email me. I think that they turned out quite nicely :) Isn´t she pretty? Guapa, Cynthia!
We saw lots of beautiful sights, with one of the most popular sights being the cathedral. We didn´t go in it, but I will eventually. It looks really impressive from the outside, so I can just imagine how beautiful it looks like from the inside (you gotta pay to get in).
We did get annoyed by some women pretending to be palm readers. When we arrived at the cathedral, two women swarmed us and started pressing some type of plant in our hand. At first, we didn´t know what was going on and then they started telling me about "my future". They only spoke spanish, so Cynthia couldn´t understand anything....but the other woman just kept talking to her and telling her "her future". So yeah, apparently I will be very happy, will travel a lot, my mother is proud of me, yada yada yada...I bet she tells that stuff to every poor fool who has never been "gypsied", lol. She then asked for money, and me being the overly nice person, gave her a little....(incidentally, my friend Abel once refused to pay them, and told him he was going to die a horrible death, etc....gimme a break). Cyn and I had at first thought that they belonged to some religious organization...they kept making crosses and all that...but nope. Just gypsies wanting money from tourists (why else would they be so close to the cathedral?).

This is one of my favourite pictures...taken close to the cathedral, moments after the gypsy attack. The lantern was just simply gorgeous...
You´d think that pink buildings would be ugly, but because of all the little details, this one looked amazing. You gotta hand it to the spaniards for designing green, pink, yellow and other coloured buildings that would probably never work in Canada (imagine one of these in downtown O-town (shudder).










Ahhh, the cathedral. Grandiose, majestic, breathtaking. Isn´t it obvious that I can´t wait to go back? I checked the weather network and it´s over 40 degrees in Sevilla right now, so maybe sometime in late September might be a good idea. Although, it´s super hot here too...I´m simply sitting in my chair and can feel the insides of my knees sweat. Icky. Sunny and cloudless skies are what the south is all about...I think that it has only rained in Huelva, in total over the last 2 months, for a few hours...probably less in Sevilla.



A nice little street....there are lots of these everywhere in Spain, but I still find them cute and picture perfect.
Anyways, where was I? Ah, yes...after our little tour of downtown, we snapped our Sevillana pictures and decided to head home for a little nap (spanish siestas are just essential, people...it´s the heat...ask Cynthia). We had already planned that night to go to an amusement park called, "La Isla Magica". Since it was so hot, we only went at 9pm...and there was barely anybody (and it was a Friday night!). We never needed to wait in line, and had the chance to go on all the rides that we wanted. Some of them seriously made my heart bounce, but it was all very fun and we both won´t forget our fear of the giant water log slides and the enormous rollercoaster...we had to remove our flip-flops a few times since some things involved getting jerked upside down :)



Ah....yes, how COULD I forget? Earlier that day we had also gone for a little guided tour through the enormous Plaza de Torros. For only 4 euros, it was worth it. If you want to see the outside of the plaza, let me know cuz there are 3 pics...this is the inside of it (well, a part of it at least). I learnt a lot of interesting little facts: youngest bullfighter ever was 9, torrero suit can cost up to 25,000 euros, horses used to be unprotected during the bullfights up until 1928, if a bull kills a torerro, not only is IT killed but also its mother because that she-bull is believed to be carrying the "killer" gene (they admit that they are superstitious, but still do it as it is custom).

This picture was taken of a little park in Sevilla. Feel like you are looking at something from a brochure? So was I. Que maravillosa!
Our 2 days in Sevilla were cheap and extremely fun...my roommate from Huelva had an apartment in Sevilla as well, and he lent it to us for those 2 days...for free! Bless the guy :)
After Sevilla, we headed to Huelva, with Cynthia being excited to see Lucy Knoo again. Ah, that knoo. In Huelva, we went to the beach and danced at a few bars and even at a discoteca, where Abel managed to get free entrance tickets. Even though I cut my foot twice from people dropping their glasses, I had a lot of fun :)
So, all in all last week was a ton of fun. Cynthia is already planning on coming to see me again sometime next summer before I leave for Teacher´s College, and we are tentatively planning for Italy...but we´ll see, since that´s still very far off and my parents will come to see me next July. Showing them Spain will be great :)
Wow. This has been a long entry, but since I finally have stable internet I felt like writing it all down since it is all still fresh in my memory.
Today I booked my flight to Greece and am in the midst of making plans for Marocco with Abel. Teacher´s College applications start on the 19th of September...lots of stuff coming up...new job October 2nd...I´m excited about what´s all about to happen, and am enjoying every minute of the present :)
xoxoxoxooxox H.