Dia 19-20: Just another day in paradise

Well hellllooo there dahhhlings,

Thanks for opening my post! You are beautiful/handsome and I appreciate you :)

I have had two quite lovely days in Sevilla this week.

On Monday, I met up with friends in a plaza to have a coffee and a delicious treat called a "gofre" before my class at 1pm. A gofre is effectively a Belgian Waffle covered in chocolate with buttery whip cream on the side. So. Damn. Good. It was deff a FAB way to start my Monday.

(gofre nomssss)

After enjoying the beautiful sun in the plaza and chatting for a bit, I headed to my culture class from 1-3. When I returned home for lunch, my family had waited for me to eat. It is truly a special occasion for me when my family waits to eat lunch because otherwise I eat alone, and we all know I'm bout it bout it with social interaction. We had an orange stew called "Potaje de garbanzo y chorizo". This was a potato, carrot, garbanzo bean and chorizo soup. Very tasty. Sadly, Rafael nos dijo que si continuamos comer platos como eso vamos a engordarnos porque es tan grasiento. Pero, no pasa nada. I didn't come to Spain to watch my weight. Quiero disfrutar en todos los platos! 

(maybe it doesn't look that lovely, but who cares? It tastes DANK)

After our very very tasty lunch, Cassie and I went to a different barrio in Sevilla que se llama Triana to check out the shopping scene. We found a store called "Lefties," and it was super guay. Apparently there is a massive company called Inditex and it owns Zara, Mango, Lefties, Stratvarius and other awesome and fashionable stores. Cassie bought approximately one million different colored cardigans haha. Although things were pretty mono aqui, no encontre algo que me gusto. 

We continued walking around Triana y COMO SIEMPRE, compramos helado. We then went back to the center of the city and went to an awesome store called Stratvarius (I'm not sure if that's how you spell it, pero NBD). Here I bought a BAD ASS pair of pants that they legit call "pantalones de party" here in Spain. They are leggings with awesome patterns on them. I'd like to think that I invented this trend back when I wore crazy leggings to ULTRA. I haven't said this out loud to anyone, but lets be real, I'm totes una vanguardista de la moda. 

We camee home and PRAISE THE LORD we had salad for dinner. 3 cheers for fresh veggies!!!! Woop woop.

On Tuesday, I went to class from 10-3 rocking my new party pants. Needless to say, todo el mundo was totes digging them. Unfortunately, my 1-3pm culture class dragged on so painfully I thought I'd die before it ended. Usually we have awesome discussions but today consisted of our professor just giving us fact after fact after fact about dates, and acronyms and presidents and dictators and blah blah blah. Estoy llena de hechos sobre Espana ahora. 

(we are all rocking our spanish party pants! ... in other news: my friends have chicken legs)

Walked back home and had spaghetti with ground salmon in it. Que raro, no? It tasted good though. 

At 4pm we had a tour of a famous barrio in Sevilla que se llama El Barrio Santa Cruz. This is the famous Jewish Region of Sevilla that is no longer only inhabited by Jewish people like it was immediately after the Inquisition. It was lovely. 

The best part of this tour was that my favorite person, MJ, was giving it. She has an adorable spanish accent and is always speaking to us in spanglish. One of the words that she struggles to pronounce correctly is "Focus". She usually ends up saying, pardon the French, "fuck us". Naturally, we all die laughing whenever this happens and she does too. 

To make things even more hilarious, we were standing in a plaza and MJ was telling us about the history of the area and a mime walks up to us and stands directly behind MJ making weird faces. She turns around and tells him to go away and he quickly obliges. HOWEVER, as he was walking away, he suddenly turned around to pick something off the ground. What was this item you ask? A red G-string. He made it look like one of the girls in my program had lost her panties on the floor. She was wearing a short dress too. WE ALL DIED. Honestly, her red face combined with the giddy mood we were all in after laughing at MJ's mispronunciation caused people to legit cry from laughing so hard.

Regardless, the tour was still lovely.

(a statue of a literary legend named Don Juan Tenorio, it is said he is the man that "conquered" the most women and killed the most men... AKA a literary P-I-M-P)

After our tour, MJ showed us one of her favorite little hole in the wall bars because it sells a specialty drink specific to Spain called "Vino de Naranja" (wine from oranges). She told us to go there soon. Being the persuasive group that we are, we convinced her to go with us right then and there and she said yes! We were quite excited :)

It was actually tasty. It wasn't as sweet as a cordial glass of wine, which I was glad about because those are almost sickeningly sweet.

(I am super proud of this picture. I really love when how the glasses are in focus and the faces are not. Me gusta mucho)

(Vino de Naranja con MJ y mis chicas)

(oh yea my new tucan top, you're jealous, I know)

After our little beverage, the group scattered to go shopping or return home. My friend David and I decided we wanted to enjoy the day outside chatting and having some sangria. We asked MJ if there was another local place she recommended. She looked at us, smiled and said "voy a acompanarte".

We knew this was gunna be good. To our surprise, she brought us into a chic looking hotel and told us we were going up to the azotea (rooftop). 

OH EM GEE. It was soooooo beautiful. This hotel was located in the same plaza as the famous Catedral de Sevilla and so it had a breathtaking view of the iconic landmark "La Giralda". We ordered una jarra de sangria y despues unas cervezas. Charlamos en espanol y todo fue perfecto. 

(the view from the azotea)

This was one of those moments that solidified that this trip would not be my last to Spain. El ambiente, la conversacion, toda fue inolvidable. I especially cherish the time I spend with MJ because she is so fun and relatable and since she works with ISA she's very busy and we don't get to have tons of one-on-one time with her. 

After our perfect afternoon, I walked home and bought un helado (como dije: siempre).  At dinner I told my family about the beautiful roof top experience that I had and they suggested a couple other roof top bars that I ABSOLUTELY intend to check out ASAP.

Now, I am lying on the couch en la sala con mi padre, listening to a movie starring Pierce Brosnin that is dubbed in Spanish. The spaniards are seriously infatuated with Pierce, which is another reason why I should live here.

Keep your eyes peeled for my next post! It will likely be a review of my first experience at a bull fight. I am anxious for this. I don't like violence, but I decided to at least give it a shot.

Hasta Luego,

Raquel

Dia 16-18: LEHHGO Lagos

Boa tarde!

As I promised myself from the beginning, I want to use this blog to remember all of my fun adventures in Europe. This means: the good, the bad, the ugly and in this case, the topless. Alright, now that the elephant is out of the room, I shall start from the beginning:

On Friday we hopped on a bus headed to Lagos, Portugal. 4 and 1/2 ish hours later we arrived! Luckily, Portugal is a different time zone so we gained an hour of daylight :)

From my program, there was a group of 15 of us but only 3 of my other friends were staying at the same hostel as me. I will tell you now that after we left the bus station and headed to our hostel, we never saw the other 11 girls again until we were back at the bus station leaving on Sunday.

We arrived at our hostel (which we were slightly nervous about because there weren't any online reviews because it's brand new) and it was AMAZING! It is owned by a bunch of British guys and everyone in the staff was British. This wasn't too surprising for us because Quique had told me that Lagos is full of British and Australian people that love to party and drink. Well, this was accurate. We checked into our room and the owner Matt gave us a tour and then took us to the roof top and gave us each a free beer (Cristal) at their tiki bar. We were in awe. It was awesome. The sun was setting and we had a gorgeous view from the roof top of all the beautiful homes. We deff knew it was going to be a great night.

 (these pics were taken the next morning)

 (awesome lounge on the roof top)

 (this gorgeous view and all the other amenities for 11 Euros a night!)

(tiki bar!)

Matt told us that one of his staff members was downtown at the bars and that we could meet up with him and he'd show us around if we liked. This sounded awesome to us so we got ready and then headed to meet him. Sadly, it was pretty damn chilly in Lagos at night and we were ill prepared for it. We froze our culos off.

We met Jamie at a bar called Eddy's and it was a cool scene. We had a beer here and then he took us to another bar called RedEye. This bar was SICKKKKK. It was a surfer themed bar and all the British and Australian guys that come to Lagos to surf go to this bar. It was full of quite handsome men. I met a pretty hot blonde buy from England that teaches surfing everyday. I don't remember his name, but our conversation was relatively short lived. 

Jamie, being the awesome bar tour guide that he is, bought us a round of shots. Matt was great. He is the very typical surfer looking guy (longer blonde hair, beanie, board shorts), but more of a Cali West Coast kind of look than a Florida East Coast one. This bar was very cool. Obvi they were playing all songs from America so the 4 of us were in our element. 

I went up to the bar with Cassie to go get another drink and saw this "tall dark and handsome" guy sitting at the bar with an open bar stool next to him. Naturally, I sat down next to him and said hi. His name was Rich and he too (along with everyone and their mother) was from the UK. His accent was heavenly. My ultimate goal is to meet some awesome Spaniard but clearly in Lagos, a British boy would have to suffice (a hardship I know). We chatted at the bar for probably a good while. Maybe we kissed. Maybe we didn't. 

Most of the bars in Lagos only stay open till 2am, so around 145am we headed to a bar called Shakers that was POPPIN because it stays open till 4am. We were here enjoying drinks and hanging out and people watching until 330am and then we trekked back home in the cold. Quite the successful first night in Lagos, indeed :)

The next morning we enjoyed our free breakfast in our Hostel and got ready to go to the beach all day. We walked to a supermarket called Pingo Doce which looked EXACTLY like Publix. The workers were wearing those little green outfits like people at Publix wear. It was refreshing to finally be in a real grocery store that has lots of variety and is structured like the ones in the US because I have yet to find one like that in Sevilla. We grabbed champagne to drink on the beach because there is no open container law in Lagos... did I mention how much I love Lagos? 

We headed out to find the beach. After walking for 15 minutes and asking some strangers where to go (who were all British), we finally found a beach. This beach was slightly disappointing. This sounds terrible, I know. However, I had googled images of the beaches in Lagos and I knew that they had these huge rock formations and grottos and that they looked like complete paradiso. This beach looked nothing like those beaches. All beaches are beautiful, yes, but we knew that we could do better. Also, this was a family beach. No one was topless and no one was drinking. 

After wandering around the beach for another 30 minutes trying to find a better beach, someone finally pointed to the top of a hill and said that we had to go all the way over there. Hailing a cab was definitely imperative for this journey. 

Finally, we got dropped off at a beach called Dona Ana. This beach was totally worth all the previous hassle. It was breathtaking. I still can't believe that this is where I spent the whole day. Hands down, one of the most gorgeous beaches I've ever been to. I think it's tied for first place with Magen's Bay in St. Thomas. It is completely different, but equally as gorgeous.

Cassie and Laura found some prime real estate in the sand and we posted up. This beach was 50/50 topless which was a good enough ratio for us. It was about to go down. We popped our bottles of champagne and cheersed to the most beautiful day ever. Then, like any self-respecting European traveler, we went topless. I set the puppies free!!!! At the beginning it felt very very very scandalous. Even though plenty of other girls were laying out topless, it didn't matter. I was a giddy little school girl. It took me a while before I had the balls to stand up and walk down to the water. Eventually, you forget and become numb to the situation. I suppose a bottle of champagne aided in speeding up my acclimation period. hahahahaha. When in Portugal... do as the British do (I repeat, there were zero Portuguese people in this town).

(oh yea topless yea)

We basked in the sun, drinking our champagne, and when we finished our bottles an old man walked by our towels selling beer from his cooler for only 1.50. Clearly, it was imperative that we indulged in this. It was a perfect day. I feel as though my pictures speak for themselves. Sorry for no epic nudie pics. There's plenty of other girls naked on the internet so just hop over to any of those sites if you feel like I short changed you. I shall try to maintain some dignity, seeing as this is a public blog :D

After we had consumed all of our resources we climbed up to the beachside bar to get more beers (with tops on) and then went back to laying out (without tops). We did nothing. It was amazing. I would love to do nothing at Praia Dona Ana everyday.

(obvi I had to take the classic toes in the sand pic)

Around 530 ish, the rocks started to cast giant shadows onto the beach, so that was our cue to leave. We decided to search for a place for dinner before we hailed a cab back to the hostel.

Quique had previously recommended that we go to a restaurant called O Camilo, located at O Camilo Beach. Fortunately this was only a 10 minute walk away from the Dona Ana Beach. The restaurant was on top of a cliff and overlooked the ocean and the distant city. It was gorgeous. I shall repeat: this day was perfect. It was a little chilly sitting in the shade and with the strong wind from the ocean so the waiter brought us over blankets, we were very thankful for this. For dinner, Cassie got this appetizer that had little samples of pulpo (octupus), bacalao (codfish), chorizo and camarones. It was mighty tasty. Her and I split a salad and fish filet dish (what she order? FISH FILET). Damn. I can't tell you how incredible it felt to eat fresh veggies. I need more vegetables in my vida loca in Sevilla.

Hailed a cab back to the hostel and when we walked into our room (which wasn't 1 room, it was like a whole bottom floor of various rooms and bunk beds but there was only 1 door with a lock on it) we found 2 Australian guys asleep in one of the bunk beds. Seeing as were rowdy, we woke them up immediately. They invited us to go out with them that night. Laura and Katherine had gotten sufficiently toasted at the beach earlier so they were committed to staying in and hanging out at the hostel. Cassie and I decided to put our party pants on and go out with these two Aussies (which they actually do refer to themselves as Aussies). They hadn't eaten dinner yet so we went with them to a mexican restaurant that was called Green Room. It was soooo cool. It reminded me so much of all the mexican/beachy restaurant spots in Melbo.

Here are some awesome things I learned about my Australian friends named Reed and Vince:

- they use this word "arvo" which means "afternoon". Here's a sample sentence: "G-day mate! What are you doing this arvo? Wanna cook some shrimp on the barbie? The dingo ate my baby. P Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney. I come from a land down under! CROIKEY" 

- they are, and I quote, "Big on the barbie" (they like BBQing)

- they saw some girls grinding in a club and said "there were these girls doing the jiggle and bum dance" ... I cracked up at this

- they once shot gunned a Four Loko... I'm not sure how they didn't die

- they've done a "Tequila Suicide" (snort the salt, take the tequila shot, squeeze lime in your eye)

After dinner we went to a bar called Whytes where I can say that I VERY PROUDLY represented the USA. This bar had a tally up on the wall for people who have completed a beer bong. The USA had a sad 5 tallies and countries like Germany had over 15. It was my duty as an American to at least add 1 tally to our list. It was more than a pint of beer, but I did it like a champion. Mission accomplished.

We then went to a couple other bars. Did a little dancing... no bum dancing, that's not our style. At 130am we went to another one of those bars that stays open till 4am and played beer pong. Vince had never played before so he was of zero help to Cassie's team. Fortunately, she was ON FIYAHH. I was with Reed and we were both having a pretty good night which made for a competitive team against Cassie the Pro and Vince the Pathetic. Around 230am we headed home. On our cold walk back we were very disappointed that there was nowhere for us to go and satisfy our drunk munchies. 

The next morning we laid by the pool at the hostel and headed to that lovely grocery store for lunch and then met up with the rest of the group at the bus station. We were all excited to see each other and share all of our fun stories. 

The bus ride was... a bus ride. Nothing to say about that.

When we got home around 8:15pm we sat and talked with Rafael about our weekend and then he went and made us dinner. We sat down to enjoy fried fish and a side of french fries... like I said, I am in desperate need of fresh veggies. Rafael then brought a plate of dark meat sitting in a yellow sauce and set it on the table and told us to try it. IT WAS HEAVEN. Oh lord. Delicious, tender, savory, the sauce was divine. Cassie and I were digging it. Then Cassie asked "Cual tipo de carne es este?" and Rafael laughed and told us it was "los pajaritos" (the little birds). (Side note, a week ago we had discovered grocery bags full of fully feathered little pigeon looking birds in the freezer and Rafael thought it was hilarious that we were so scared of them. He pretended to throw them in our face and was cracking up at us.) Cassie's jaw dropped when we realized we were in fact eating those little birds. They are called "Zorzales" pronounced "Thor-thalays" in Spain. I didn't care what they were. It was so damn good. That dish is now tied for first place along with the Paella he made us last week. Sadly, I can't make Zorzales in the US unless I find some place that sells those little birds.... unlikely.

And that's all folks. 

Hasta Luego,
Raquel

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Dia 14 & 15: Plaza de Espana y Caracoles

Que pasa guapos?

On Tuesday I went to class as usual and then came home to promptly get my homework done in preparation for an awesome activity ISA had planned for us. The activity was called "Salir con los Espanoles", which basically meant that we were going to meet up with a bunch of students from the University of Sevilla and split off into smaller groups where they'd take us to the cool young bar and restaurant scenes. Well................. it wasn't as magical as I expected. We didn't really go anywhere new that I hadn't seen before. Furthermore, we were paired with a married couple. I was actually hoping to be paired with my future novio. LOLZ. It deff was not the case. We only spent about an hour and a half together and then we all went our separate ways and didn't really exchange contact info. Fortunately, other people in my program had really great experiences and they said they were going to hang out with their people soon and said I could join. You can't win them all, pero no pasa nada.

I did have 2 pity beers after our relatively unsuccessful night which turned it into a successful night because beer always = success. 

On to a much better day :)

Wednesday was the bomb diggity. 

Today in my culture class I learned about a slum called El Vacie that is located just outside Sevilla. The slum is terrible. If you google it you will see lots of very sad pictures. We watched a documentary about it. It said that 300 families live in the slum which totals to 800 people. People's homes are made from scrap metal and random pieces of wood. They don't usually have doors, electricity or water. Everything is rat infested. Basically, hell on earth. It is literally unimaginable to think that this slum exists in the same city that I am living in. Sevilla is GORGEOUS. They have workers that pressure wash the streets every single night. I'm telling you, its an immaculate city. It's especially sad because there are so many children living in El Vacie. There's a big social and political issue about El Vacie and whether the gitanos (gypsies, aka people that live in El Vacie) should receive government housing and government assistance. Here's the two sides
1) The gitanos should receive government support because they are citizens of the city and are currently living in a vicious cycle where they have no money to buy houses or pay for food because no one will hire them because the live in El Vacie. In result, they steal from people and stores to survive.
2) The should not receive government support or be given jobs because they cannot be trusted because they are always stealing from people. Many of these people are also previous drug addicts or prostitutes which is not helping them receive empathy. Peopling working for a living and paying taxes don't want their tax dollars to go to "free loaders" and "thieves" when they are in an economic crisis.

Personally, I haven't formulated an exact opinion on the issue. It's too complicated.

Sorry for the buzz kill. Let's get back to party time!

After class I went home and had a yummy soup with carrots and potatoes with strawberries for dessert. Delish, as usual! I went in my room and tried to work on homework but desperately needed a siesta. After my siesta, I met up with a group of friends at 530pm to go to the Plaza de Espana. They had never been and, as you all know, this will now be my 3rd time visiting it. Honestly,  I can never take enough pictures to capture how gorgeous it is, so I was excited to return. What was the best about this time was that there were 5 girls and 1 boy. AKA 5 models and 1 photographer. We had a field day. I could not be happier with how all of these pictures came out. BONUS POINTS: I deff took some gems that will be worth printing on canvas.

 

(you have no idea how many times it took us to finally get this picture. we were creating quite the scene)

After our glorious photoshoot, we started heading to Plaza Alfalfa because at 8pm we were meeting up for an activity called "Caracoles con MJ". This activity is one where ISA buys us all plates of carcoles (snails) to eat and each a glass of beer. Caracoles are a completely normal and widely consumed tapa, especially in Andalucia (the south region of spain). We arrived at the plaza earlier than expected so we took advantage of our additional free time and got a couple pitchers of sangria. Oddly enough, I hadn't had any sangria yet in Spain so I was excited. 




Finally, it was time to eat some snails baby!!! MJ has coordinated for us to go to her favorite caracoles restaurant so that we can all experience them together for the first time. Once we were all seated, she got our attention to describe how we were supposed to eat them. She told us, and I quote: "Chupalos" (suck them). We cracked up. She then was like "I know it sounds bad in Spanish but it sounds bad in English too so what did you want me to say??". Ohhh MJ, so cute. 

So they arrive on plates as if they were a mountain of popcorn. Everyone was very hesitant to try it because these little guys had faces!!!! But you're only in Spain once so I bit the head and sucked that little baby out of its shell (I hope you enjoyed that description, because there was no way of avoiding it). They were delicious!!! They were a little salty and had the same texture as a clam or an oyster so I was very accustomed to it. Usually with food that has a face I can't look at the face, but somehow I put my big girl pants on and was able to look at each one of my victim's faces before I ate them. I felt like a bad ass. Most of the girls tried a couple just to check it off their bucket list but I was going to town. 

 (MJ teaching me how to bite and suck)

 (got it!)

 (look at its little face)

It was also funny because we were seated on the terrace and there were many spectators sitting near us that were thoroughly enjoying our squeals as we tried them. Overall, I give caracoles an A+.  

After our snail snack, Cassie and I went home to have dinner with our family but we told our friends we'd be back asap to continue the festivities into the night. On our way home we passed by a clothing store that I walk by everyday on my way to class. I've been wanting to try on a pair of these skirt like pants for a while and finally had the chance to do it. I can now say that I am the proud owner of some awesome ass pants (literally ass pants). They are very popular here in Spain and I will totes be the fashion forward diva who brings this look to Estados Unidos.  

Dinner was fried on fried on fried. We ate french fries, fried steak and bread. This was a little too much starch for me, but oh well. The spaniards really love their fryer. Everyone's house parents own deep friers.

We headed back out to Plaza Alfalfa where we found most of the girls sufficiently toasted after having downed mojitos and shots. Shortly after arriving we went to Plaza Salvador because it was poppin off. There were lots of boys there, but not very many were guapo. There was one guy that was super guapo but he may or may not have had a girlfriend... sadly we didn't run off into the sunset and elope :( I'll keep you posted on when that does happen.

After some of the girls in our group headed home for the night, 3 boys (Americans.. boooooo) came up to our table to talk to us. They were whatever. Their very animated friend was epically bald and with the biggest caterpillar eyebrows ever. He is from somewhere in the US that I don't care to remember and had just arrived in Spain a few hours ago. He's here to teach English. His friends, who were much quieter but much cooler, were legit biking through the Iberian Peninsula. They told us they would be biking from Sevilla to Lagos, Portugal this weekend. This made my jaw drop because earlier I was complaining to Cassie about how it was a 5 hour bus ride and these guys are going to freaking travel on bicycles!!! Craytown, USA. 

As we were about to leave I heard an older man yell "Raquel!", so naturally I turned and looked. Well, evidently, he wasn't speaking to me but we made eye contact and I said "Este es mi nombre" and he replied with "En serio? Necesitas besarte". I have no idea how my name being Raquel meant he wanted to kiss me hello (double cheek kiss... we didn't actually kiss, gross, please, this guy was like 40 years old). Regardless, we did the kissy hello business and then exchanged a couple of words and the two women he was with asked me where in Spain I was from. Wait. Let me repeat that. These SPANIARDS thought I was from Spain. Yes. BOOYAH. Mission accomplished. I told them I was from Estados Unidos and they were shocked. Apparently, my tan skin, brown hair, light eyes and KILLER spanish accent made them think I was from Cordoba. Hearing that was music to my ears. I will rest on these laurels till the day I die.

They told me to look up a famous painter from Cordoba named Julio Romero de Torres because he paints women that look like me. I looked him up. They don't look like me. Whatevs. I'm still flattered.

And this concludes my very wonderful Wednesday in the beautiful south of Spain.

Hasta Luego,
Raquel

PS
Dont forget to comment below and then go stand on the tops of mountains shouting to everyone you know how much you totes love my blog. How awesome would it be if I became blogger-famous? Spread the word!

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