The Metro.......

....is seriously honestly probably definitely one of the best places in the world... especially when it comes down to collecting totally bizarre stories.

Today, Emily&I experienced the best sober metro ride EVER.

So, we got on at Sol, and then a couple of stops later someone jumped on with a guitar. Not going to lie, he deserved our stares. We liked his face. Anyway, I was hoping that he was going to crack out his guitar and show us what he was made of, and he TOTALLY did. Amazing. But it gets better...

He came over , and asked Em if she wanted him to play Bob Dylan, which is three hundred times funnier than you can ever know! Basically, this seems to be a common occurrence for Em, as only last week did she have a different Spanish boy singing Bob Dylan to her! Fantastic. So of course, Bob Dylan was chosen over flamenco, and off he went.. wanting us to join in (we definitely didn't) and kept pausing and laughing at us. I'm pretty sure usually when he gets onto a carriage and says 'would you like me to play Bob Dylan?' he isn't faced with two faces of absolute shock and then fits of giggles.. but then again, he's never asked us before.

After a beautiful rendition of Knockin' on Heavens Door, and about 4/5 stops (which is awesome, buskers usually stay on for 1, although that's a good thing usually) he said thanks to everyone and we felt we really really had to give him some change so we did, but then he missed the doors so he had to get off the next stop... so we got flamenco AND Bob Dylan, what a star. My fave was that he actually walked off the metro playing his guitar then he turned around and smiled at us, brilliant.

So I already felt like I was in a dream and then strange man turned around and asked where me&em were from.. and then so continued this TOTALLY bizarre conversation in broken english and broken spanish of him seemingly giving us all sorts of strange advice and telling us totally random things like.... you have to be careful of sharks, English girls are paler than Spanish girls, America is the New World...and some strange sproutings about Jesus as well...


Basically.....awesome & the experience deserved to be written down.

Madrid, I'm going to miss you ....

BARCELONA

I attempted to write this blog yesterday but cleverly managed to lose it, I didn't really think I was going to give it another go but since I'm sat in the sun, dangling my feet in the pool and listening to Kasiuss, I reckon I'm in a good enough mood to try again!

Em&I kicked offf the weekend with a very romantic evening.. watching the sunset by the Temple de Debod together. We'd all gone down on Thursday morning after being out to watch the sunrise.. but it turns out that the sun just rises behind some buildings, so it's not quite so impressive.. my bad! Anyway, so we enjoyed the beautiful sunset surrounded by happy couples then set off to Lavapies to find somewhere to have our romantic dinner for two. I absolutely loved this barrio, it was so alive and full of people. One street was lined with restaurants (mainly curry houses etc) and completely full of tables and chairs, we made our pick but getting a table outside was impossible. However, inside the curry was just as cheap and gorgeous... how incredibly spanish of us!

Then it was time to head to the bus, which we were catching at 1am to arrive in Barcelona 8hours later, oh the joy. HOWEVER, we totally had the 'best seats in the house'.. haha.. no seriously. We had the seats behind the stairs therefore meaning we had tons and tons of space, awesome. Still, it didnt really help to put us in the mood to sleep and I'm pretty sure that we annoyed every single person on that coach with our lovely giggling and gossiping.. sorry! Thankfully, the eight hours went crazy fast, and soon we were in Barcelona...

We dropped off our bags at the hostel, went to get breakfast, freshened up in the toilets (pretty sure the waiters thought we were taking drugs or something), and then decided to walked up La Ramblas. This was totally insane.. it made Puerta del Sol in Madrid (the main tourist area) look like a locals favourite hangout! We saw some strange things on this street.. In particular one being that game where there's 3 matchboxes and you have to say which one the ball is under. . it was so clearly a con but people still seemed to be falling for it. We saw two games, the first we saw got broken up by the police before we could work out what was even happening, and it seemed like an Italian girl had lost about €90... idiot. The second game we watched for a while until they all split up, and it seems that there's a gang of about 4-6 people all in on it, and then probably a few people over the street looking out for signs of police to break up the games.. Bizarre, I really don't know how people fall for it, they try to convince you to bet with €50 as well, and only grudgingly take €20. I've since found out since watching it that this game is totally illegal, and you can get fined €3000 for just participating, I'm assuming this is based on gambling in the streets.. not just specifically this game.. I still really cannot understand how people fall for it, or don't realise that handing €50 to a clearly dodgy complete stranger in a street that is renowned for crime.. is never going to be a good idea.

The other excitement on La Ramblas was definitely the little pet stores, absolutely loads and loads of them!! Hamsters, guinea pigs, lizards, rats, ferrets, rabbits, tortoises, chickens, canaries, and a gazillion other bird varieties too! Mental. Although it was kind of sad because on some stalls there was loads of each animal in one cage, more things. However! The cute tiny baby hamsters has totally relit my desperation for a little grey hamster called Aldo... one day.. one day..

Back to the hostel about 130 for a 45minute nap.. we woke up 3 hours later at 430. Shit! Totally stressed at the waste of thre hours I forced Em out of bed and we showered and left to go visit the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's church that started to be constructed in 1882, and work on it has continued since his death in 1926 (pretty sure he was run over by a tram, gutted).. and at the minute it's expected to be completed in 2026, 100 years since his death, but really chances are it will never be finished. I was both impressed and disappointed at the same time. I think I've got a bad habit of really building things up in my mind so that they could never live up to my expectations.. although I don't really know what I expected with the Sagrada Familia. Some bits were awesome, and really impressive, and it is totally crazy that it is STILL being built.. some bits were just average, and it really was too big to take in as a single structure.

Back at the hostel we finaly bumped into Jeremy! Me and Em cracked open the trust 95c wine and started on making our delicious pasta for dinner. To be honest this was a massive fail on my half, I think all I did was put salt in the water and I added the mushrooms and pasta, sorry Em! We watched a bit of the Champions League Final but to be honest I really wasn't that into it, I couldn't care who won, so we scampered back up to our room to decide what to do that night and polish off some more wine. When we went back to watch the last ten minutes of the game we decided on settling for the bar crawl as we were told loads of people were going on it.. awesome idea!

Not so much, we only had five minutes to get ready. Absolute panic. I don't think I've ever got ready for a night out in five minutes in my life.. I didn't even have time to decide I didn't like my dress and change! Bizarre. Totally bizarre. However, I ended up looking exactly the same as I do when I spend 90 minutes.. so maybe this is a new me? No.

Anyway, it turned out to be an unexpectedly awesome night and definitely a fantastic choice. Despite the first bar being scary and confusing because this was the WRONG pub crawl (where is gary? why isn't it free? where are we going! where are the transvestites? haha...) things soon looked up..apart from my absolute failure at taking pictures, I have 17 and half of them are rubbish. Not impressed. Nevermind.. memories will have to do..! I love love love how we were looking forward to being able to go to bed whenever the hell we wanted, and not having to wait until 6am for the metro to open.... Em&I finally got to sleep at about 730, and for some bizarre reason we decided to share a bed (to be fair Emily was on the top bunk, pure effort!!) & witter excitedly about our nights until we realised if we weren't careful.. we would miss free breakfast!

OK.... so that was Saturday, & I've already written too much.
I've decided Sunday deserves a post of it's own.
Less than 2.5hrs of sleep, and excitement, and sun, and hangovers definitely lead to the funniest day of my life.
Oh, Barcelona, thanks!

sunset :)

Temple @ night...

Jack!

Sagrada Familia

Fish..

Ohh.. Aldo ♥

Yum :)!

Fantastic.

MADRID, I LOVE YOU.

Four weeks today and I'll be at home (depending on the volcano!), this makes me ridiculously sad.
I honestly love it here, okay sometimes living with a host family can be awkward and there are down sides (creepy bus drivers being one of them..) but I couldn't be having a better time!

Today, there was nearly a massive crisis, we were having lunch and I had my phone on the table, a tramp came up asking for money from us (which is incredibly common, especially on the street that we were on, also known as 'prostitute street', cute) but then placed his newspaper on our table, to be honest I thought he was asking for a leftover sandwhich we had on our table, but no. Em saw that he'd picked up my phone when he picked up his newspaper-seriously a good job she saw it, none of the rest of us had any idea, just a bit confused and wanted him to go away! But Em saved the day ;)

Done quite a lot since last post, sort of. Went to the Royal Palace last Wednesday. It's free on Wednesdays for EU residents, and we got there super early so that we didn't have to queue for a silly amount of time-there was actually -0% queue and we just walked in. Unfortunately you're not allowed to take any pictures when you get inside, which is annoying because it's really absolutely beautiful. I loved it! It didn't take us very long to get around it, (I've discovered I'm not really the type of person who can stand and look at something for ages, I see it, I appreciate it.. and then I move on!) but almost every room we walked into got a 'wwooowwwww!'. I liked the throne room.. I honestly don't think I've ever seen thrones before, and this one honestly reminded me of Narnia. Love!!

Also, Saturday 15th was San Isidro day, who is the male patron saint of Madrid.. or something. He looks after us all here! So there was heaps going on. A few of us went to a picnic in a park, which was full of people and it was a total festival atmosphere, then we left to go and see a flash mob. Well that was the plan, I think the fact I'd heard about it showed it wasn't very secretive, a lot of people knew about it! And it wasn't a flash mob at all, it was a group of people dancing on a stage, and a group of people following them. Oh well. Oh and then we nearly died getting out of the crowd... there was about a five second time period where I honestly thought I was going to die... everyone just started pushing and running for no apparent reason, scary! My life didn't flash before my eyes, all I could think was that I needed to get into Corte Ingles!

After the absolute excitement of the 'flash mob' we headed to Burger King & Maoz to get some food down us. Then sat at the fountain drinking our boxed wine until the pub crawl started at 11. We totally were NOT feeling it, having already been out the house since 3pm, and the prospect of having to stay out until 6am... I was lacking. BUT as always, the pub crawl didn't let us down! It was actually just the 4 of us and then the bar crawl leaders.. who we've got to know a bit so it's all okay! So yes, at 10pm we were worried about having to stay up & out until 6... I actually ended up geting home at 1030am. Honestly, Madrid is the best. AND I still stand by the fact that the metro early in the morning is the funniest place of the entire world...

Well, fair enough since then I've not done much. Hanging out in the city, walking around, eating and enjoying the sun. Currently sat outside with Anabel 'teaching'. Nobody wants to work in this weather! But we are , like good little girls. We're also on facebook/tuenti/taking pictures/discussing music.. but she's managed to complete an English paper, so all is well!

Barcelona this weekend, and going to 'Pacha' tonight :)

4 weeks left it's already 19th May ... how is it possible this year is going so fast?

Might have broken a laziness record...

So, I got home at 830 this morning, it's currently 0030.
I've so far left my bed twice.
Awesome.

Last night was a strange one, the weather was absolutley awful. Stupid rain. But we managed to haggle and we bought an umbrella for just €2! Wow.

We started the night looking for somewhere to eat, there's a food market thing near the Plaza Mayor which is meant to be good for tapas and things.. but it was packed, and to be honest none of us knew what to do! We ended up at the trusty 100 Montaditos, seriously it's my favourite place ever, I'm gunna miss it heaps when I'm back in England.

Then we did the classic looking for promoters to give us free drinks! This usually works fantastically, the other week we struggled to AVOID them, literally walking out of one bar and being dragged to another.. we had to search a bit harder last night though, clearly the rain had driven them away!

It was time to head of to Kapital, oooooh. Exciting. I'd heard a lot about it, and it's supposedly a pretty famous night club. In my opinion, it was totally over rated, and totally over priced. It was €12 for a mixed drink..I can't think of any situation I'd ever be happy with paying that amount of money.. especially when an entire bottle of vodka costs less than that, the cheek! There were seven floors (including a kareoke bar!) and I guess it's all super nice but it just wasn't anything special. Not to mention the crowds were barely dancing, and the music was bizarre.

Glass breaking and dropping drinks was definitley a theme for the night..! In one bar I offered to take a picture of these girls, and literally the second after I said it her drink was on the floor.. not entirely sure how it happened, and I am pretty sure it was nothing to do with me.. but yes. Second time was definitely more my fault, I'm still not sure what possessed me to do it, but in Kapital the table span around, so I wanted a picture of this.. I actually moved the drinks into the table so that they would be safe... but unfortunately they weren't! Bye bye free drinks. The best thing about this scenario is that I think Em actually caught the exact moment Steph and Martina's drinks went flying off the table... and all over Emily, whoops. The final incedent of the night was Em dropping her €12 cocktail all over the floor as soon as she picked it up from the bar, nice work. The bar man was nice and replaced it for her though, lucky ducky.

Well, I had an great night overall, especially Em and I going crazy at the bus station this morning :)

Abzxo

MAYO?! QUE?!

Not entirely sure how it is May already, nevermind May, infact the first week in May has already happened. WHAT!

Tomorrow is a really important date-it's my half birthday! Yaaay. Only six months left of being a teenager, eek.

The past week and a half has gone ridiculously fast. I've spent a lot of days lazing about doing nothing, hungover, and a vain attempt to save money however I've somehow ended up spending more than usual?! Also visited the bull fighting museum, got hyped for a Lady Gaga night, bar crawled for the 3rd time, helped lost Irish tourists, stayed up for over 24 hours at least twice, fell down the stairs, had lunch at 100 montaditos (again), had my first 3D experience with Alice in Wonderland, celebrated cinco de mayo with tequila shots (but without lemon or salt, eurgh), said 'hasta luego' to possibly the best person in the world, moped at the irratating results of the general election, took Anabel to the movies.. and now it's today.

A day to tidy my room, update my diary, and decide what to wear tonight..... xoxo

Cinco de Mayo

3D !

Retiro at 7am, lovely.

Bar Crawl

Anabel

Hangover cures.

<3!

Chocolate&Churros. 5am?

Cheryl Cole Love!

Boats & Montaditos

Another lovely day! So we headed to Retiro park to have a go on the row boats.
It was a disastrous start, but we soon got the hang of it.. sort of. It was quite nice and empty-ish on the lake as well, so that limited worries of bumping into other boats.. it totally happened loads though.
After boating we walked up to 100 Montaditos which is definitely one of my favourite places to have lunch ever-especially on a Wednesday! The idea basically is tiny little sandwhiches , which are yummy, and on Wednesdays everything on the menu is €1 (apart from salads, these are €2). Exciting! This picture is just a boring looking pollo with some sauce. My faves are pollo con césar, pollo con bravas y chorizo y queso brie :).
So basically, more GORGEOUS weather and food.... and tomorrow Lady Gaga tribute!

free ice cream and soaring temperatures...

So I thought I may as well update whenever the thought crosses my mind!

Today we went to see Goyas Tomb, which was pretty cool. I don't exactly know much about it, it's like a dome chapel, and he painted the roof etc with fresco, so it's sometimes known as 'Goyas Sistine Chapel' but probably about 1/8 as impressive. It was pretty, but not really awe inspiring. He is buried there as well, and without a head! I haven't really got to the bottom of this story yet.. but if anyone knows.. let me know!

We then decided to nip up to Sol (where else?) and we discovered it was free ice cream day! Yaaay! So we got to Ben & Jerrys and waited in line for half an hour.. for one scoop of ice cream. SO worth it though.. especially since one scoop is €2,90 usually! Crazy. I had baked alaska, then we went for lunch, came back and had caramel chew chew.. or something. Yummyy yum.

We went to lunch at 'Maestro Churrero' as it's Felicia's last week, and her favourite place to eat. I had a ham&cheese sandwhich (so similar to those you get at Anahi/Mirasol, yummy) and we paid an extra €1 for the privilege of sitting in the sun! Crazy. Soft drinks were €3,30 so we sneakily nipped across to a small shop next to the cafe to get a can of fanta for just €0,85.. living like a student already? loves it.

Emily made a friend on the metro today, totally awesome. She did a me and just took a seat because standing up isn't too fun, next to this guy with the cutest dog, and it basically fell in love with her. Tried to eat her bag alsoo...She had thoughts of snaffling it into her bag but no :(.

So now I'm home, sat in the garden , struggling to see my screen with a schweppes naranja straight from the fridge. Yum. I love Spain.

Abzxoxooxox