spring breaking in spain and portugal

Oh dear, I just saw that my last blog post was in March... total fail! I have a very good reason for having neglected my blog so much and that is that I've been way too busy enjoying and soaking up all of Paris and going on my two week spring break extravaganza! I had been looking forward to this spring break since I arrived in Paris. I had all my flights and hostels booked, I knew where and when I was meeting up with friends... and then a volcano in Iceland with a name that cannot be pronounced by anyone in the world decided to blow up and send an ash cloud over Europe. That volcano may have prevented me from getting to Greece and Turkey, but it didn't stop me from have the best spring break ever! Take that, Eyjafjallajökull!

So, after I had my flight cancelled I got together with my friend Emily that I was traveling with and came up with the most glorious back up plan of all time. We decided to go to Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla, Lagos, and Madrid. However, the universe still had some tricks up its sleeve to try and prevent us from leaving Paris... the French train system was on strike (as usual). Therefore the only way to leave Paris was through a car or a bus. We opted for the latter. Since most of the schools were on vacation everyone and their mother was trying to get out of Paris and I wasn't able to book my bus ticket to Barcelona, so I ended up going to Madrid first and staying with my friend Hannah.

After a chaotic scene in the bus station and having pushed my way through a crowd of angry travelers, I finally got onto the bus with my friend Geena. Seventeen grueling hours later I was in Madrid! I stayed at my friends Hannah's homestay. She lives with a single woman in her sixties that is lovely but has a reputation for still having a colonizing attitude(ie she is pretty racist). However, she was very nice to me and fed me and let me stay at her gorgeous apartment. One day during dinner, Hannah and I were speaking Spanish and she was fumbling around in the kitchen. All of a sudden she turns to us and says that she was so happy that we were speaking Spanish and that I had to continue practicing Spanish with Hannah when we go back to D.C. but she warned Hannah that she was not to pick up my accent! Hahaha I think she is someone that definitely has to grow on you. Anyway, the Madrid study abroad program has a reputation that precedes them. All of my friends that had already gone to Madrid had come back saying that they are hardcore partyers. They did not disappoint. The nights that I went out I didn't get back home till the wee hours of the morning. So all in all Madrid was an amaazing time!

My next stop was Valencia were I was reunited with Emily. Valencia is a gorgeous coastal town in Southern Spain. It is a pretty small town so everything is walking distance and the architecture and landscape is gorgeous. Emily and I had already decided that we were having a relaxing spring break. We were going to take it easy with the museums and instead eat as much of the local food as we can get, drink too much for our own good, and spend as much time lounging in parks and people watching as possible. So, that is precisely what we did. We had lots of tapas, way too many empanadas, and lots of Agua de Valencia. The first day there we did the touristy things walked around a lot and had an amazing dinner. The next day we lounged at the beach and got sun burned then at night we did a pub crawl. During the pub crawl we were peer pressured into doing a Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick Shot and well with a name like that it didn't take much pressuring. It was a disgusting concoction of jagermeister, vodka, gin, and tabasco sauce, but we are Americans and we took it like champs... no chaser needed thankyouverymuch.

The following day we caught a train to Sevilla. A gorgeous town that was hosting the famous Feria de Abril. The feria is basically an opportunity for the people of Valencia to get dressed up in their flamenco gear and get wasted with the whole town. They have a gazillion tents set up on the fair grounds and everyone just drinks and dances until six in the morning. The hostel we stayed at was a bit sketch and I was a little scared that I would be raped in my sleep. Thankfully all went well except that I lost/got my phone stolen. But I decided to learn from the Spaniards and have a no pasa nada attitude about the situation. The second day we were in Sevilla Geena joined us. We all had a great time wandering the city. We spent a few hours in the Palace Alcazar which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and also had a tour of the bull fighting arena.

Our last stop on our grand spring break adventure was Lagos. And thank god it was our last stop because if it had been our first we would have never left and would probably have gone home with permanent liver damage. Our guide book of Spain and Portugal called Lagos a black hole because once people travel there they never want to leave. This was evident as soon as we got there. I didn't feel like I was in Portugal at all; it was more a giant melange of Anglophones... Canadians, Aussies, Americans, Brits all had just stayed there and made Lagos home. We stayed a a hostel called "The Rising Cock"... need I say more? So we spent the next three days sun bathing on the beach, meeting a ton of new people, and taking full advantage of the two euro shots there bars had to offer! Lagos has some of the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen. It has rolling cliffs, gorgeous beaches, and blueblue water. I will definitely be going back there again!

So, even though spring break didn't go at all as planned it was an amazing adventure and probably was better than Greece or Turkey would have been. It was my first real spring break but sooo much better than Cancun could ever be because there was culture added to the debauchery AND no one ended up on Girls Gone Wild. I was really impressed with myself and my friends for being able to literally pull out an itinerary for two weeks out of our asses and make the best of it. Although, now I really caught the travel bug and can't wait to explore more of the rest of the world STAT! My plans to marry rich need to get rolling!