off to italy

okay I'm going. I'll be in the eternal city in a couple hours. I'll have to catch you up on Merida - my fave trip so far, and Morocco - crazy busy, when I get back. See you in April!

visit from a friend

so a month ago, this amazing person I worked with last summer and who happened to be studying in Sevilla came to visit Madrid for a weekend. unfortunately, I got the flu that Thursday. it was bad like can't stand up and super chills bad. but gladly I was able to make it out Saturday.

met up at sol, at the bear and walked to this tapas bar called Zapateria. when you walk in, there's this huge, huge bowl..no thing, thing is the better word - thing of paella. here's a blurry picture of it.
we had a seat under the staircase. like if Harry Potter had a table at a restaurant, this would be it.

we had snails, paella, of course bread and sangria. I think our waiter had a little crush on my friend because he kept refilling the pitcher for free. or maybe that's how it works. idk. anyway it was really good.



another thing about this place: it was on the travel channel! I watch the travel channel a ton at home. like way too much. it's like you get to pseudoexperience all these places without actually leaving your home. so good. anyway, this place is the first one on this clip of bizarre foods. one of my dad's favorite shows.



then of course we went to Kapital. the huge nightclub Madrid is famoso for. good times. this isn't a fire, it's just the cool gas stuff that relieves the mass of sweaty people. it comes during the peaks of the techno songs. we try to anticipate when it happens and got pretty good at it by the end of the night.



and like any night at Kapital we caught the 6 a.m. metro home.

read Amy's blog here: http://besosfromespana.wordpress.com/
she's way more diligent with her posting schedule. I'll have to go down to Sevilla sometime to see her city of study.

so behind

ugh wow I'm behind on blogs. everything's so busy here. I wish I could just take this weekend to stay in and catch up on this thing. all this traveling is exhausting. but no alas I'm off to Rome in a couple hours. so don't feel too bad for me. Italy for Holy Week? not something to complain about.

I'm glad the rest of April will be all Spain. I think.

break

so that took a lot longer than expected. today since most of my friends are in Ireland or Morocco and my roommate's gf is visiting him, I'm gonna explore Madrid alone today. gonna try to get a haircut and find some sushi. new post tonight though.

grecia!

ok I think I'm gonna do a blog marathon today. like two whole blogs.

soooo greece. we left not last friday but the friday before that. I realized that the one english novel I brought to read was nearing its end, so I quickly went to FNAC (Fédération nationale d'achats des cadres), the French version of Borders fused with their version of Best Buy but it has 6 floors so it's way better. The international language books were on the 5th I think. so I went there around 2 p.m. and tried to buy four books with my credit card. but apparently FNAC doesn't take american cards without a passport. I tried showing the lady a copy of my passport but they wouldn't accept. how french.



so I broke a 50 and left with 4 American books and change in my pocket.

my flight was a little before 7. the best part about it was that it was on Iberia, so it took off from Barajas' new terminal - T4. They just built it a couple years ago and it is amazing. The ceiling looks like rolling sand dunes and there's a bunch of cool shops and it's just all sparkly and stuff. This was my favorite part of the trip....okay that's an exageration, but still it was pretty neat.







We got to Athina around midnight their time (just one hour ahead of Madrid). Took the bus to the city square - Syntagma, and took the metro to our hostal. Our hostal apprently overbooked and couldn't hold all 10 of us, so a couple of us got to go to the one next door (that's usually 20 euro a night) which was way better. oh we were spoiled.

Syntagma at night.


went out to eat at some local Greek cafe, these three old Greeks were playing cards at 2 a.m. I had a hot dog that was soo Greek. it had onions and Tzatziki sauce and oil and vinegar. should've taken a picture.

the next day we split up. I should have gone with the big group. they all went to Santorini, the ancient island of Thena (which had a volcano that distroyed the Minoans - =thanks archaeology) and it's supposed to be the most beautiful island in the world. just seeing Colleen's pictures of it on facebook makes me so jealous.

look how nice. but nope never went there. maybe I'll go back sometime in my life. doubt it.

but no I stayed back with Suz. we did get to see a bunch of amazing stuff though. like.....

the Agorra

and the National Gardens

and the original Olympic stadium

and some ancient ruins with a bunch of tourists

and the Acropolis

and some place with columns in the background

and Monastraki Square

which had the best gyros ever. (only 1.80 too!)

and the National Archaeological Museum more of that here: http://picasaweb.google.com/nathanancheta/4GreecePt2#

and Peace and Friendship Stadium (2004 Olympics)

and Vouliagmeni Beach.........wow that took a while.

but our hostal was terrible, in a terrible part of Athens. thank goodness they were all out of dorms, so we got our own room. we didn't risk showers. one of the owners got in a fight with some guy from Africa one night. the street it was on was so shady I don't want to worry my parents by describing it haha. we did meet some nice travelers though. there was this guy from Germany who is normally a grocery store mover who came to Athens on his vacation. he went to the Archaeological museum 4 times. and then there were these two Tunisians who only spoke French and Arabic, so we used my ipod's translate app to communicate. we showed each other where we're from on the google maps app and talked about how dirty Athens is. then after they went to bed, one of the owners from Guam basically accused them of being terrorists.


the best day was Monday, after the exhausting task of seeing all those sights, we took a day trip to Cape Sounion, the edge of the peninsula Athens is on. It was about a 2 hour bus ride. I read a good chunk of one of my FNAC books. At Sounion, there was the Temple of Poseidon, basically a tribute to the god of the sea. There we had lunch and watched the sunset.





there I took one of the best pictures of my life. Ironically it was on my small camera because my SLR battery ran out just then.



Tuesday we met up with the others and went home. Sent a couple postcards through the Hellenic post. Overall the trip was fine, probably not my favorite place. Wish I could have seen the white terrace houses overlooking the beach like that movie that's always on HBO with Rory Gilmore in Greece because that's the stereotypical view of it. But no Athens has a lot of history and a lot of grime.