Tuesday-Wednesday February 22-23

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty regular with classes and homework. However on Tuesday in the evening I met with a spanish woman named Eli who I met up with for a conversation exchange. She was about 32 and spoke English well. We went to a coffee house, and mostly spoke English, which I was a little disappointed about, but she is preparing for an intense exam to be accredited in English or something like that, so I wanted to give her time to practice. However, it was funny because we did an exercise in her practice book where we had to compare a nice house and a crappy boat house and say in our non-native language which one we would prefer and why. We are going to meet up again next week and we agreed to have a half hour of spanish and english so we could both practice. I am excited because she said she would be happy to take my roomate and I to the beach in Malaga sometime!

Monday February 21

On Monday I had my usual long day of school. I had to meet the CEA extracurricular person Dani, at the post office on my off time between 10:am-11:30 for him to show me where I would volunteer and give me some information. I got there early to send out a lot of postcards. The lady at the post office seemed very surprised that I had to buy stamps for 10. When I walked out of the post office I tried to scare Dani to make a joke and it failed. I grabbed him and yelled, BOO! And he said, "hola Lauren." haha. Atleast he has a good sense of humor. We started walking and I was trying to memorize everywhere we went so I would be able to find the place again. As we kept walking Dani (who can't stand any silence) proceeded to tell me in spanish all about the movie about facebook and how it started and then in any chance of an awkward silence he would start humming. It was pretty entertaining.

As the walk got longer and longer, I was starting to get worried that I wouldn't be able to find the place. I asked Dani if he would be able to meet me at the post office and show me how to walk there again ( being sarcastic) but I could tell he didn't understand me, because his english is pretty rough and I didn't know how to say it in Spanish. We then went down stairs (I don't really know how we did from being on the street) and walked into a shady looking room.

I was relieved to be interviewed by a nice woman who I was able to understand very well. She was considerate and talked slowly to me. I could tell she was a social worker because she was a little eccentric, kind, and very appreciative of volunteers. I couldn't wait to start volunteering for people with bipolar disorder. She told me of the activities I would be helping the people with and said I would be working with younger people. Then she said I could start today but I would go to another building.

Dani and I proceeded to walk to the other building. As we were walking he told me that the best person to ask directions from is a taxi driver. Then he stopped right in front of me as I slammed into him while he was asking a driver for directions to the other place. We finally found it but he just pointed and then we turned around to leave. I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to find the place again. There was only 15 minutes left until my next class and since we were out in boofoo spain he said we would take a taxi so I took a taxi to class.

When I finally got home from class I ate a quick lunch then got directions from my host sister Cristina on how to take the bus to my volunteering. I was too afraid to take the bus because I didn't want it to take me somewhere random so I decided to get some exercise and do the hour walk. I actually made it there with few mistakes which was very surprising for me. Once I got there and walked inside I said I was a volunteer and handed the person a business card from the woman Maria that I had met. He took me to a room where I met two women I had not known before. We talked for a little bit and they told me how excited they were for me to teach a class in English.

I got really nervous then, because I had been told nothing about teaching a class in english. I imagined myself in front of 20 people having no idea what to say. I told them I was a little nervous because I had never taught a class in English before. They said oh all you have to do today is start with the numbers and colors, and then they asked me if I needed paper.

I was relieved because then I found out I would just have to teach the numbers and colors to a couple people sitting at the table. A man next to me who of course only new some dirty things in english, asked me if I had a boyfriend, if I wanted one, and other random things. I just tried to laugh it off. Then some other people came in and everyone shared the numbers and colors they had learned.

Later on Maria gave a speech to everyone and recognized me, that I would be teaching english and helping out. But she also said that I was an english teacher, social worker and new about psychology. I definitely didn't tell her I was all that so I feel a little under qualified but at the same time I am good at winging things and feel experienced enough to take on the challenge.

After her speech a man came up to me who had his wife and daughter there and asked if I would be interested in doing a conversation exchange with them sometime. Their English was very good and they seem very interested so I will get together with them sometime next week. I think their daughter was about my age. After everything was done I was given a DVD to watch about bipolar disorder and left for the long walk home.

Saturday February 19th- Sunday the 20th

This weekend was a lazy relaxing weekend. On Saturday Maggie and I went out for tapas with our Senora. We had the usual 3 pork tapas for each of us. We had to walk back before walking where we wanted to go because our Senora says she has bad balance so we walked her back to the house. Maggie and I then walked to the Albaycin which is the beautiful arab neighborhood near the Alhambra. It was quite a hike to make it up there, but definitely worth the hike once we got to the top. We relaxed at a popular meeting place but unfortunately it was really crowded... with creepers. As Maggie and I were trying to relax in the sun, two creepy old men were peeking around the corner of a building talking about us and staring at us. Finally they went away. Of course they were talking about the girl with brown hair, which was me... I attract all the creepers.

After walking down we walked around for a long time visiting the awesome shops in the Albaycin neighborhood. I was very excited to buy a sweatshirt that looked like the one I lost in Munich/England. And the guy who sold it to me was really nice, and gave us a free thing of tea!

While walking back, we spotted one of the best gelato places so far! I was so excited to have pistachio, my favorite kind of icecream. I also got a fancy chocolate flavor mixed in. Since I had no homework to catch up on when I got home, I decided to sit outside and take in the nice sunlight and read. But of course I can't have a peaceful moment too long without something awkward happening. We have a small shallow river that's underground that Maggie and I just refer to as the lake. You can look over a gate to see the water running. As I was sitting on a bench enjoying my book I hear this women looking over the gate into the lake yelling, "Chica! Chica! Toma el pan! Which is girl girl take the bread! Since there were a couple other people looking over the gate, I'm thinking, oh my god there's a girl in there and she's drowning and the women is giving her bread... or something. So I get up and look over, and it's just come crazy women yelling at the geese swiming in the lake and feeding them. After the others left, the lady still stayed there for about 10 minutes yelling at the geese.

On Sunday Maggie and I got ready and went to mass. I had never been to catholic mass before, let alone in Spanish, so I was confused most of the time, and the echo made it very difficult to understand. As usual I was hungry and couldn't pay attention. Maggie and I were very excited to have chicken and rice that day because when our sister is gone she usually makes it because our sister doesn't like it. But today it was very disappointing because before we left our senora said that her stomach hurt too much to make lunch, so she gave us money to buy some. But when we came back we were confused because it turns out she wanted us to bring it back and just drink something from home. So that was an awkward misunderstanding. Especially when we came home to her making a cake.

Wednesday February 16th-Friday February 18th

On Wednesday I had a couple fails at school. At first I walked into the wrong classroom (luckily the class hadn't started yet) When I attempted to get a snack from the snack machine later on in the day, it cost 1.30 euros, but the 1 was covered up with something so like an idiot with a line forming behind me, I continued to put in 30 cents and pushing the code. When I said the machine wasn't working, the girl behind me told me it costed 1.3o... that was embarrassing. Then I proceeded to wait outside a full classroom for my class which wasn't my class. Luckily that took care of the fails for a couple days haha.

On Thursday, I had my one literature class which went better than usual. Walking into that class is like walking into a sauna, but luckily a guy in my class realized that he could open the window from the outside because it is too tall for anyone to reach. I plan on doing that for the other classes I have in that room. Analyzing the poems went a lot easier than usual since I had spend an hour the night before looking up the twenty some words I didn't know. After Maggie and I had lunch, she took a long nap while I relaxed with a book which was great. And then I ended up taking an impromptu 20 minute nap. We ended up just hanging out at home that night because Maggie had to get up for a make up class on Friday morning. That is one of the things that I don't like about Spanish academics. If a teacher is gone, they can schedule the make up class whenever they want. For all we know they could have just not felt like showing up one day and would rather show up that friday.

Earlier on thursday I had snuck a bowl from the kitchen to eat some granola. I wanted to snatch some milk too but I knew that would be pushing it. After eating the granola I just hid the bowl in my closet and planned on putting it in the wash later that night. The bowls are in a cabinet stacked by other dish ware so I figured no one would notice if I borrowed one for a day. but low and behold, later that night my Senora comes in and asked if we had a white bowl. I was not expecting that, because that means she went in and counted the bowls in the pantry. No one ever uses those bowls. So I just played dumb (like my senora does when we ask for something that she doesn't want to make for us, or if we make a rebuttle to something she is accusing us of) and said, "Oh, I don't know, I don't understand" and then I went and washed it and put it back after she went to bed.

Tuesday Night

On Tuesday night Maggie and I heard the doorbell ring and she joked about it being my Valentines day package from my mom. (We have been anticipating this package for a week because we were craving the homemade cookies we would finally receive) I got excited for a second but then realized why would someone deliver a package to a specific apartment. I noticed that my family hasn´t checked the mail for a few days so I was going to figure out how to say something in Spanish about if they could check the mail (I can´t get to it) because I think my package is here. It probably seems like we were being ove the top about it but I was not about to let my cookies go bad so I was being overdramatic about it. My senora knocked on our door and when I was expecting her to come in and say, ¨dinner will be ready soon¨ she came in holding a giant PACKAGE! I was so excited and surprised that I didn´t even make an effort to speak spanish and I just yelled, ¨YES!¨and threw my hands in the air and took the package. I didn´t want her to see me open it and comment about how there was food so I just set it down and stared at my computer until she left. Once she did, Maggie yelled, ¨Put on our song!¨And I grabbed her keys and tore open the package like a rabid animal. As I was frantically searching for the cookies I was soon disapointed because I didn´t see any and figured they were in the upcoming package. I was even more disapointed to find 2 tubes of pringles knowing that my mom knows that I don´t like pringles. As I was being irrational not even thinking about looking in the tubes, Maggie says, ¨Wait, check the pringles!¨ And once I did I was overjoyed to find cookies and taste a little bit of America. This isn´t even an exageration, we were SO HAPPY to get them because we have had so many food issues lately. We danced around our room for 10 minutes eating cookies. It was the best belated Valentines day ever.

Sunday 13th-Tuesday 15th

On Sunday the giant CEA Group (CEA is our program) went to visit the famous Alhambra which is full of beautiful Islamic castles and many interesting things to see. I enjoyed the trip but I wish we visited it when it was warmer out because no flowers were blooming and it was very cold up in the mountains. We spent about 5 hours there to see everything with our tour (I chose the english tour) but I still suck at paying attention during long tours so I can't really give any more information about what we saw right now. Afterwards Maggie and our friend Jenna and I went to get dessert at a place Maggie and I have been looking at for a long time. I had a pretty good dessert that was a chocolate raspberry thing, but the waitress was really bitchy so it took away from the experience. She wouldn't take my slighty ripped $5 bill and so I had to rummage through my purse trying to find change while she was watching me with her stink eye.

When we got back Maggie and I just relaxed and did homework for the rest of the night.

On Monday nothing really interesting happened. My host mom asked me about 5 times if I was doing anything for Valentines day. I ran out of ways to say no, so I joked about calling up the guy Jenna and I met when we did a conversation exchange; but she still kept asking me. I celebrated Valentines day by taking a nap! At dinner we got lectured again awkwardly about what food we like and if we like our family.... Every dinner they seem to bring that up.

On Tuesday I slept in and got ready for school. I love having only one class on tuesday and thursdays. Even though that classroom is like walking into a sauna. After class I came home and was productive for once and Maggie and I went to our friend´s Jenna and Audrey´s dorm to hang out with them. Then we went grocery shopping and and to do the usual, sprint to our room and hide our food so it doesn´t look like we bought any food because we would probably get in trouble. Then for dinner we had the same food as lunch, but it was good because we had pork with carrots and onions and fries. We have fries all the time in Spain. Then another hilarous awkward moment happened that I will talk about in the next post.

A dramatic interpretation of what happened Friday night.

Ok so I figured I'd post this hilarious incident that I didn't feel like typing before. One of the funniest/most irritating moments happened when Maggie and I got back from Ronda on Friday night. We came in to our house hoping to find a good dinner since we were really hungry from a day of travel. We were very disappointed to find a tortilla (microwavable circle of eggs and potato) and a small bowl of gross vegetable soup that we had the day before for lunch. Luckily I have hid peanut butter (and other food) in my room so I was excited to know that I would be able to eat a peanut butter sandwich after shoving down some of the tortilla. But we had a problem. We know that there is sandwich bread somewhere because we have toast in the morning. There was only one time that the sandwich bread was in the fridge and all the other times I haven't been able to find it. (yes I've searched the whole kitchen a couple times)

So those of you who know me well, know that I get crazy when I need my food, so I was frantically searching around the kitchen trying to find the bread when Maggie says the magic words... "There's a hidden pantry in the back room!" And I'm like, "YES!" So I run back there and can't find the light but I'm continuing to search for the bread anyway with no light. And I finally found it and yelled out a cry of joy! I quickly brought it out (having no idea where it's proper place was) and we made pb&j sandwiches and were very much enjoying them. I set my soup to the side counter and planned on not eating it. As we were only a couple bites into our sandwich we heard the noise we didn't want to hear. The door unlocking! I FREAKED out and was being all irrational. "Maggie what do we do?" I yelled as I'm running around the kitchen like a maniac holding the bread and peanut butter. And Maggie quickly calmed me down saying "they will already see the sandwiches on our plate just try to hide the peanut butter and sit down."

So we acted like nothing was different and ate our sandwiches. Our host mother and daughter came in and asked us how our trip went and then immediately looked at the sandwiches as Maggie and I continued to eat them. After talking about our trip for a while, she told us that, "We need to eat what she puts out for us and to not take things from her." over and over again. And we said we ate what she put out and then were still hungry but she just kept repeating the same thing

While this was going on I realized that I had my untouched soup sitting on the counter next to me and the half eaten tortilla was sitting by the microwave. I played the dumb card and said, "Oh that's where I put my soup" or something like that I just whipped out some spanish words and headed to the microwave. While my soup was heating up my senora came over and was about to open the half eaten tortilla and realize we only ate half (which is still a pretty big portion) and I quickly pulled my soup out of the microwave and forced it down while I hear her say in the backround that we barely ate the tortilla.

So that's pretty much where the story ends. Our senora decided to put my peanut butter in the cabinet but luckily it's almost gone and I have another can stored in my closet. So as soon as I can, I'm going to by some bread!

From Sunday the 6th - Saturday the 12th (today)

Nothing really exciting has happened since then and now. Maggie and I had to run around the bus station in Malaga to buy our bus ticket home because we have realized that no one in London or Spain knows how to give directions in their own town. I finally have a schedule with all Spanish classes that I have had to fight for all week. People always say that in Spain they are more relaxed when it comes to academics and such, but that is actually a bad thing for Americans studying there because it means they won't try as hard to help you out. But luckily I am finally on my way to taking the right classes. And no night classes! Yesterday (Friday) we visited the town Ronda which I loved. I wasn't looking forward to taking an 8am bus ride to a town 2 hours away but it turned out to be one of my favorite places that I've visited thus far. I got to enjoy the weather and sunbathe outside while walking through the world's first bullring! I would love to visit Ronda again sometime while I'm still here.

Saturday February 5th

Saturday was yet another busy day full of seeing sights in London. We ate at our hotel and visited Hyde Park where we saw the Princess Diana Memorial and some creepy guy taking around 30 pictures of a peter pan statue. We waited for like 10 minutes for him to stop so I could take Maggie's picture by it. He even had a tripod. He must have really liked Peter Pan. We saw a Jack the Ripper tour, that we literally had to run to because we barely made it on time. I thought it was really cool to hear about the history of the famous serial killer and visit the places where the girls were murdered. (yeah that sounds really sick but the tour guide did a great job so it was fun) We also got to go on a rock and roll tour (that we barely made also) and see all of the highlights of places for the famous rock and roll stars. I felt so cool to get my picture in front of Paul McCartney's office and see where the beatles gave their last public show on the roof of a building. Then we ate lunch at Garfunkles (where else?) and were exhausted so we rested for a while in our hotel and came back to eat dinner at a cool international restaurant. We then had a craving for dessert and I had some amazing chocolate lava cake.

Friday February 4th

On Friday we started the day at our favorite restaurant Garfunkles with a great American breakfast. After that we went to buy tickets for the musical Jersey Boys to see later that night. We spent the day seeing St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London. Then we saw a big castle that has been used by the Kings of England for ages. We had to hurry and get back on the tube to get to our hostel, where we grabbed our luggage, got back on the tube, and took it to our hotel where we would stay for our final two nights. Our hotel was nice and reasonably priced. We stayed in the Bloomsbury neighborhood. Our room was the "theater room" and was decorated with pictures of movie stars and such with a giant high ceiling and tall windows. Before seeing our show, we needed to find somewhere quick to eat... and like a miracle, Chipotle popped out of nowhere and we could satisfy yet another craving for American food. We headed to the theater and saw the production "Jersey Boys" which was great and a lot fun. Especially because we snuck in bags of peanut mm's and ate our weight in them while watching the show.

Thursday February 3rd

On Thursday, we bought a hop on/hop off bus tour pass for the London bus tours. This pass was good for 48 hours but don't mind us using it for 3 days because they never looked closely at the ticket. It included bus transportation to all the major sightseeing spots in London, as well as 3 walking tours and coupons for 2 traditional English meals. We took great advantage of the pass and started with the Changing of the Guard tour. We got to see the guards change at St. James' Palace first, before they headed off to Buckingham Palace. Then, we took a short cut so we should up in time to see them change at Buckingham. I thought it was weird that they still uphold all of the old traditions but still cool at the same time. The bus pass gave us discounted fish and chips at the Sherlock Holmes restaurant which was awesome. I definitely enjoyed that meal. After lunch we hopped on the bus again and saw the buildings of Parliament, Big Ben, The London Bridge, (even though the Tower Bridge was much cooler than the actual "London Bridge") and the Imperial War Museum. At first we were just going to stop in the museum to find a free bathroom but we ended up staying there for almost 2 hours. We really enjoyed seeing the "Children of War" and a holocaust exhibit. We would have stayed longer to finish looking through the extensive holocaust part but the museum announced it was closing for the night. We were so happy to conclude or day with dinner at TGI Fridays. My first of about 4 burgers during London because I missed them so much in Spain and wanted to be sick of them by the time I got back.

Wednesday February 2nd

Today was our first full day in London. After finding breakfast we headed to the free British Museum. Somehow I am always stuck going to museums when there is an annoying school trip there of elementary school kids but it wasn't too bad. The museum was pretty cool but always I get really distracted and bored quickly in most museums so we left. When found a great place to eat called Garfunkles which had American food that we were so excited about. After that we went back to our creepy hostel to plan our week. We had collected many brochures and ideas so it took a while and of course soon enough I was hungry again. But I had a food fail because we wanted to just eat something light. Maggie bought a banana at a random restaurant and I ended up dragging the both of us around town DETERMINED to find this yogurt parfait I had seen in a window of some restaurant. But of course I couldn't find it and ended up walking into this super awkward arab food place because I just wanted to get some rice and an orange. So I went up and asked for an orange and some rice and had some language struggles because the woman barely spoke any english. And apparantly saying I want an orange meant she needed to take 15 minutes to squeeze an orange to make orange juice for me while I waited in line by this creepy drunk guy. And since we had like a 20 minute walk back I wanted a lid for my cup. When I asked her for a lid this is how the conversation went. "Can I have a lid please?" "A lid?" "yes a lid" "Lid?" (really confused look on the girl's face) so I said "No it's fine." And she said "No it's fine." So I left without a lid. We were glad to get back to the hostel to rest up for our next busy day in London.

Tuesday February 1st (aka national strug day)

Today Maggie and I ate breakfast for the last time at the Carat hotel :( Of course the weird lady who didnt like us was there, and when we went to sit down, she asked if we could pick any table but that one because some sick man wants to sit there because he needs room to do his exercises. And then she acted out the exercises he had to do... he never showed up. So after breakfast we when to watch the glockenspiel where everyday at 11 and 12pm the characters in it move and act out historical events. Then we hauled all of our stuff to the underground for about 40 minutes to get to the airport to fly into London... if only it were that easy.
When we arrived at the airport we had about 1.5 hours until our luggage needed to be checked in. Since we couldnt find the ryan air booth we went and asked the information desk where it was. the woman said that ryan air didnt fly out of that airport and that the airport we needed to go to was in a different town that was over an hour away! Earlier we had been assured by multiple people that there was only one airport in munich and that we were headed to the right one. The lady said that our only chance that we..¨might make our flight¨ is if we took a taxi there. So Maggie and I ran to get in a taxi and got in the first car. The driver looked like santa claus and didnt speak any english. we showed him our boarding pass and pointed out the town. He started driving and then pulled over after 5 minutes and wanted to see that paper again. (he just made a gesture that looked like a piece of paper) he put the town in his GPS system and started driving again. After about an hour we saw the exit for the airport (it even had a plane on the sign) and were relieved that we might have time to catch our flight. The driver was driving too fast, and braked harshly but missed that exit!!! And then he conveniently drove past the next 3 exits that came up on the road while continuing to mumble probably German swear words randomly. So he kept driving for about another 20 minutes and turned around in another random town. Then Maggie had to practically tell him how to get into the airport parking lot by pointing. And we were the foreginers... By this point we were very stressed and frustrated with this Santa taxi driver. Especially when he just wrote a price he thought the ride should be. Atleast he had stopped the timer when he got lost but 200 euro was pretty ridiculous for a lost taxi driver and we didnt even have that much on us so we gave him what we had which was pretty close to the amount and jumped out of the car. Luckily we were able to make our flight and get to London.... But then the strug continued...
After that stress fest all we wanted to do was relax. When we arrived at our hostel we found another creepy hostel owner who was quick to tell us all about how everyone meets on the first floor at 10pm and will get free alcohol and transportation to clubs. Maggie and I pretended to be interested and were even more freaked out when the poster advertising one of the clubs looked like a girl on fire. I did not want to be that girl on fire...
We got up to our room only to find that the website had lied to us because there was only one twin bed.... with some creepy stains. We put our stuff down and started walking around town looking for hotels, but we eventually decided to stick it out and it wasn´t too bad. It was actually really nice and quiet at night but I was definitely ready to go after 3 nights of the creepy owner trying to dance with me and all the awkward moments that come with unisex bathrooms.

Monday, January 31st

Today we got up early to have more time for breakfast. Then we went to Marienplatz to meet with our tour group for the Hitler's 3rd Reich tour. We had a good tour guide who had a really high pitched laugh for a man, which always cracks me up. We walked all around town to see all the places Hitler had been at and learned a lot of history along the way. It was cold as fack again that day but I was happy to still be in Munich. We went to yet another sandwich and pastry shop for lunch (they're impossible to get tired of) and I splurged and got two donuts. We came back to the hotel for a short rest and then headed out to look at some churches that we could get into for free. We tried to go to one place for dinner but it turned out to be way too expensive so we had to awkwardly leave. We ended up just going to hafbrahaus again because it doesn't disappoint. Then we headed back to the hotel for an early night to get ready to travel again the next day.

Sunday, January 30th

Today Maggie and I went to breakfast at the Carat hotel. It was amazing and was worth the 13 euro. Especially because I may or may not have taken a bunch of their tea packets. But they were free. I had a huge breakfast which felt so great since we have barely any breakfast in Spain. There was a creepy lady who helped serve breakfast everyday who didn't like us. Maggie got in trouble for using a coffee cup to drink her juice. Then we walked to the Marienplatz which was the main meeting point for all the tours. We met our tour guide for the Dachau tour. We took the underground train to get on a bus to Dachau. It was extremely cold outside with completely white skies. Maggie and I were very cold the whole time, but at the same time it was a good environment to experience a concentration camp in as opposed to a nice summer day. It was very powerful and thought provoking to be on the actual sight. It was the first museum that I've been to and not been bored at all or fidgety. We got to see all the buildings, baraks, beds, monuments, chambers, and creamatoriums. As weird as it sounds, it was my favorite part of the trip.

When we got back to Marienplatz we went to a panini and pastry place for lunch then rested and went out to Hofbrauhas for a liter of beer! It was a great time and experience.

Friday January 28-Saturday 29

I'm skipping Thursday because nothing entertaining happened that day.

Friday I took my exam and did well on the random listening, reading, and speaking parts but I still have no idea how I did on the huge grammar part of the test. I don't know if I will know how I did because they didn't give us a way to check our grades, but I'm assuming I passed! Maggie and I came home and rested a little and then packed for our trip. We hauled ourselves to the train station and made our way to Malaga (a beach town 2 hours south of Granada) by bus. The bus got super hot and my ears kept popping afterward. We took a taxi to our hostel. It was pretty creepy and the owner really creeped us out, but that's expected of a hostel. The whole experience was pretty shady but luckily it was quiet. We got up at 3am to take the same taxi. Maggie forgot her glasses but luckily she remembered it while we were still in the taxi and we turned around to get them. She had to call the hostel to be let back it. Then back again to the airport. We flew safely into Munich and had to take an hour bus ride to our hotel. Then took another underground bus to get nearer to our hotel and then we finally made it. It was a rude awakening of snow and wind since we had been used to the Granada weather and had left our Illinois winter clothes in Illinois.

We found a nice pastry and sandwich shop and got something to eat, and then took a long nap in our great hotel. Then we got up and went to a nice Italian restaurant that turned out to be a slightly difficult experience due to the language barrier but we made it through. It was a candle lit restaurant with a nice atmosphere. Maggie and I joked about how it was our first romantic dinner of the trip. We were confused and though we were going to get charged extra for not making a reservation because the waiter wrote down a number on a piece of paper and set it on our table. But I just hid the paper and luckily it had meant nothing... I think. We had some good pasta and wine and left for an early night to get everything ready for the next day.