Sunset

This is why I travel around the world. The view of the sunset over the mountains of Granada, from our apartment. Cada Noche!

It´s been a while old friends...

So it has been a while since I have posted. Well sadly we don´t have too many crazy party stories (at least not any worthy of posting). We have mostly been doing cultural stuff. The other day I decided to walk the whole city and walk into any bar I saw. I talked to many intersting bartenders (it was a sunday and every time I was the only one in the bar). I talked to Arabic woman who told me all about the old town (Which was all built by the Muslim Moors), talked to some other native Granadians who showed me different places to go and see, and also to a DJ who gave me an enormous list of music to download so I could throw decent ¨Spanish parties¨ When I get back to the states. The hospitality of these people is amazing and my Spanish has improved greatly. (I had to talk to all these people in Spanish).

After talking with enough people you can find a free,cool, cultural event every night of the week. Sunday - Free Tapas tour, Monday - Free Spainish dancing lessons, Tuesday - Table discussons, and debating different topics (last night was Religion and Reason). Sure, knowing the local language is helpful but we also found Irish pubs that have quiz nights, and other events in English. With a little searching, and walking around this trip has already been more enlighting and enjoyable than Mine and Nithin´s previous trip to Dublin two years ago.

Windows on the World

The Windows on the World section, in which I post the views from every window that I have stayed in, has been updated. Go ahead, take a look!

Indigo Youth Hostel, Valencia, Spain

The Results are in!

We interrupt this blog for some late breaking news! The Results from the the World Trippers´election are in. Let us not waste time, here are the results.

Granada - 2 first place votes, 1 second place vote
Seville - 1 first place vote, 1 third place vote, 1 fourth place vote
Lisboa - 2 second place votes, one fourth place vote
Madrid - 2 second place votes
Valencia - 1 fourth place vote

No hanging chads here! It´s Granada in a landslide, with 66% of the first place votes, beating Seville´s 33%. As of tomorrow, Granada is the home of portion #1.

Campione, Campione, Olé! Olé! Olé!

Election Night

Recap: The three of us have been traveling from city to city, to find the best place to settle down for 1-2 months on the Iberian peninsula. In every city we have been investigating numerous factors, such as youth population, relative ease of housing, nightlife, cultural activities, touristiness or lack thereoff, and general vibe. Here is the list of cities that are on the ballot as to where we could live.

• Barcelona (Nithin only)
• Valencia (Nithin only)
• Madrid
• Salamanca, Spain
  
• Porto, Portugal
• Lisboa, Portugal
• Seville
• Cadiz, Spain
• Torre del Mar (Ryan only)
• Marbella
• Malaga
• Granada

Tonight! is election night! The three of us will go into a Tapas bar, sit down, all write down our ballots secretly (detailed ballets with no hanging chads) and then choose the city. Where will we live? Check back in 7 hours - that´s right, 7 hours - to find the results posted almost live on this website.

Where will the World Trippers´ be for the next month and a half? Tonight, the long awaited question will finally be answered. Stay tuned!

Look

So you see why we haven't posted often?

Scorecard

Haven't posted in a while. But, for those keeping track, here's a list of things that I've lost so far in the trip.

• 2 Tubes of Toothpaste
• 1 Tube of Campsuds
• at least one pair of socks
• numerous important pieces of paper
• my 10 ride Madrid Metropass with 9 rides remaining

In one month, with me being diligent as all hell. But, nothing terribly important. A few close calls, but nothing else. Check back next month for the updated scorecard.

Nithin

Birthday Night

So it was pretty fun to celebrate May day in Madrid. Nithin and I had a serious disadvantage of our birthday coming on a Monday instead of any other night, so we celebrated it on Sunday night, since nothing starts in Spain until midnight anyway and we managed to have a good time. We started the evening with a football (soccer) game between the two smaller of the three Madrid soccer teams. (Atletico and ... someone else, Real Madrid is the big Madrid football team). Despite the fact that it was two of the smaller clubs playing, the place was still really full! It is very interesting to notice the defenses between watching American sports and Spanish soccer because there was really none of the typical American theatrics involved in the game, meaning no band, no cheerleaders, and very very little announcing, however I don't want to be painting the picture that the stadium was quiet by any means. Nearly the entire 90 minutes people were chanting, screaming, and cheering. I think there were two substitutions the entire game. Now all of this may just be a soccer vs. Basketball, American Football sort of thing, but still ... I found it very interesting and fun.

(Pictured Aaron, Me, Taryn, Karina)
From then started our night which was rushed from the very beginning... As Aaron already wrote about we had quite a full night, the evening prior, so Aaron and I were running on low sleep, and I managed to fit in a 30 minute nap at 10:30pm - haha, I love the Spanish lifestyle. Well, after we all showered up, got ready, and grabbed the metro we were already nearly 30 minutes late for our 11:15 rendeux-vous at the Plaza de Santa Maria, opps.

We managed to meet up with a bunch of people, including my friend Laura who I studied abroad with in France three years ago, however no one could decide where to go... In the confusion, Aaron, Laura and I slipped away to grab the best grec (a Greek sandwich filled with lamb, which can be found ANYWHERE around Europe and I believe in bigger cities in the US, I wish they had them in Kansas) I have ever eaten my entire life! Anyhow, we did manage to jump to a couple different bars, include a really small friendly bar where as soon as we entire with our group of a dozen or so people the owners started cheering, clapping, and dancing around the bar.



(Pictured: (Left) Aaron and Nithin DANCING! (Top Right) Me and Romanian girl (Bottom Right) Me and JB)
We started to slowly loose people, which was sad but then Aaron ran into the Romanaian girl and JB (the French guy from our first hostel). As you may have gathered, we aren't very good at remember everyone's name... So we ended up going to another club (if you could call it that, it was very small), but we somehow got drinks half price cause we knew people there. Only a week in the country and we are already connected. ;) I love going to clubs overseas with Aaron and Nithin because, again, they both started dancing in this tiny little club with people we have only known for a few days, acting like best friends already.

By the time this club closed (3am, keep in mind it was a Sunday), everyone else was going home, and we walked Laura to her Bus stop. Determined to stay out until the sun came up, Aaron, Nithin, and I, set out for another bar we saw earlier, alone, for the first time all night.

However, before we got to this next bar we met some friends who were really eager to show us the best club in town which was open really late. Naturally as travelers we were both open to being social with everyone that we met, but cautious at the same time. This group of kids seemed friendly enough and before I knew it I looked around and Nithin was in a different group talking with two other guys and a girl and Aaron was in yet another group talking with a mixed group of guys and girls. This shot a red flag up in my mind, and then I felt the piece of paper in my back pocket slowly slip out of my pants. I turned around to find another girl just standing there smiling at me like nothing happened. Perhaps I should have been more assertive right then, but I decided to politely start excusing myself claiming that we were really just hungry and were going to a food place down the road and we would meet them later. Oh no, they were too friendly to accept that as an answer so as appropriate answer so as I keep walking away calling to Aaron and Nithin to come, but I only saw Aaron, who looked at me curiously like why was I shunning these nice people so quickly after meeting them? (Keep in mind we had dozens of great experiences with the people in Madrid before this, even late at night). It must have been soon after that, when Aaron found one of them in his front pocket because in the matter of a minute or two he quickly changed his mind that he DID want to go find some food with me. All the while, I kept feeling things in my backpocket gravitating upwards. Maybe I should have let them succeed, and end the night with a valuable map of Madrid. In the bar, we realized that Nithin was still missing, so Aaron, pockets emptied, walked out into the fields, to rescue our friend.

(Picture: Nithin and I outside of the cool bar with cool bartenders)
Reunited we all had another beer, and got to talking with the bartenders who were so much fun and eventually got free shots. Madrid did end up redeeming itself. As we left we saw one of the guys from the group of pickpockets who came up to say goodbye to Aaron and one more time try to reach in his pocket. Amazing...so, we got home safely at 6:30, exhausted and fell immediately asleep a half an hour before the sun rose ... almost made it, maybe next year!

Photos

I'm starting to get a little sick so I'm taking it easy today and will take care of a lot of housekeeping kind of stuff (Laundry, getting money, posting photos and getting organized, as well as sleeping!). Here are a few photos to wet your teeth.




<---A Spanish Plaza







Us with Karina at a Football match.




<---This is Courtney, Laura, (The two girls from Iowa) and Rebecca (The Canadian) at our hostel, the night we watched Flamenco.

Ryan

Porto and Port

So the main reason we don´t photos yet is because I have yet to find free wireless internet (though we have hardly looked) and all my photos are on my laptop, so without that... no photos!

Currently we are in Porto, Portugal so I can make crazy characters like ç º ª But we can communicate pretty easily, most people speak English, our lady at the hotel speaks Spanish and the guy from this internet cafe spoke french .... ahh I feel so cultured. We are planning on doing something ridiculous like see 8 cities in 11 days or something so I think I will very little access to the Internet. Last night we had an amazing time drinking different port wines (if you can call it that, 20% alcohol, whewww). But the owner of the port bar we went to was soooooo kind and told us all about Portugal and port wine and everyone he has met for like 3 hours, plus us and these two Swedish people next to us were the only ones there. But its strange to go home at midnight instead of very late in Spain when they don´t even finish dinner until midnight.

Their is very little communication between Spain and Portugal, only one or two buses and/or trains run between Salamanca, Spain and Portugal every day, nothing is posted in Spanish, only French, English and Portuguese, sometimes German; but the guy from the port wine bar said he loved the Spanish. Where else in the world can you go to a bar at 1 am and two 70 year old women sitting down drinking a beer? ´´The Spanish just love living life´´ he said. He was very very kind to us and full of insight. (We also gave him the website address, so if Gustav is reading this, hello from Nithin, Ryan, and Aaron).

Okay, more later... and I realized Nithin nor I have posted about our birthday so I´ll try to do that soon as well... too much to do, whew.