Stephen's Visit - Semana Santa!!

Stephen got here Thursday April 21st!!! :)

We spent the first few days relaxing here in Pamplona.

Estella

Easter Sunday we went to Estella! It is a little town about and hour from here. We went by bus, to see the Easter craft show they were having. There were so many vendors with so many different types of things. From cheese, to leather, to woodwork.. we got to see a lot! It was a little rainy in the morning, but luckily the rain held off for most of the time we were there. It was neat to be there for cultural event, which is what I wanted Stephen to experience. After the craft show, we walked around Estella a bit and explore the beautiful park on the outside of the town. We caught the 7:30pm bus home. When we got back to Pamplona.. we explored the city a bit. I showed him the bull fighting ring and the old part of the town. We did a little souvenir shopping and then walked up to the look-out point at the edge of the city. It was nice because he got to see the whole city.

San Sebastian

The next morning we head out to San Sebastian. It is a coast town about 45 minutes from Pamplona and it is beautiful. We spent two days there.. but, unfortunately, the weather was really sucky. :( Monday we walked around town a little, saw the beach, and had a yummy Spanish burger at a nice littler restaurant by the beach. Tuesday, we went to the aquarium! It was the best part of the trip. The fish and other sea creatures were really cool. And it was nice to spend some time inside, because it was rainy, windy, and chilly. After the aquarium, we explored the old part of the town some more and saw all of the historical monuments like the churches and what not. We also saw the other beach which has much bigger waves. We even saw people surfing! CRAZY! Then we got some yummy mango gelato and enjoyed it by the beach. I wish the weather was nicer.. because we didn't even really get to go down to the beach at all. We just looked at it from the "boardwalk". But, even though it was sucky weather, we still had a good time. We got to see all the beautiful architecture of San Sebastian and enjoy the aquarium. We headed back to Pamplona at 5pm on Tuesday.

Olite

Wednesday, we took our last trip to a little tiny town about a half hour away from Pamplona called Olite. The weather was great!! :) It was sunny and warm.. a little windy, but nothing too bad. Olite is a tiny old town with a huge castle! And the castle is unreal. It looks exactly like what you think a castle should look like. And I'm pretty sure it takes up like 75% of the city!! After exploring the whole castle, which took about 2 hours.. we went to the Wine Museum of Navarra, which is right next to the castle. It was nice.. and very modern. We spent about a half hour in the museum, and the headed back to the bus stop. We got back to Pamplona and relaxed after a couple long days of traveling.

Pamplona

Thursday, Stephen's last day here, we slept in. :) We both needed it after so much traveling. Then we went out that afternoon to get some yummy gelato in the main plaza in Pamplona. And we walked over to the Taconera Park. It is a beautiful little park with lots of flowers and bushes and benches. And then even have this little sanctuary area with deer and pheasants and goats and lots of other little animals. It was so nice to just sit in the beautiful afternoon weather and enjoy watching the animals in the park. It was a nice relaxing thing to do for his last day here.

This morning (Friday).. we woke up SUPER early to get Stephen to the airport for his 8:25am flight to Madrid and then back to Philadelphia.  He is on the plane to Phila now.. and I am still waiting to here from him when he lands.. which he should be doing in about an hour.

It was a fabulous week for the both of us. As Stephen's first time out of the country I think, I hope, it was a great experience. I think he got a little taste of Spanish culture. And, it was nice to travel and relax and just have fun. I already miss him. :)

I am now looking forward to my last month here in Pamplona.. which will consist of LOTS of projects and studying for finals. And hopefully a trip to GREECE! :) But we're still working on that.

And then I get to go HOME!! I absolutely cannot wait to go home on June 6th. I am counting the days until I see my family and friends and Stephen again.

I love and miss you all!!! :) <3

ROMA :) You really just have to go!

At the Spanish Steps!

Rome was AWESOME :) What more can I say?

We got there at about midnight on Thursday, after the hour and a half delay of our flight and the 45 minute drive from the airport to the hotel. We pretty much went to sleep right away. The next morning we enjoyed our free breakfast at the hotel and headed out to the Vatican Museum. After about an hour wait in line.. we finally got in. And it was breathtaking. The whole place is astounding. Every room is everything you would imagine the Vatican to be like. The artwork and statues are unreal. And the Sistine Chapel... WOW. At the top of the Sistine, the picture of the two fingers touching (I don't remember the name) is right in the middle. It is so cool to see it in real life. :) I have picture on Facebook of the Vatican. You should look if you haven't already! After the Vatican, we headed over to St. Peter's Square and Basilica. The Square is massive. And the Basilica is so high! And we climbed all the way to the TOP! It was a total of 551 steps.. but it felt like a MILLION. It was so worth is though. The view from the top of the Basilica is unbelievable. You can see the entire city of Rome. AMAZING. After the Basilica, we were lucky enough to meet up with Megan's friend Brittany, who is studying in Rome right now. She took us around on a little tour of the city! And we all got some REAL ITALIAN GELATO together. It was absolutely delicious. We stopped at the Spanish steps were Megan and Brittany went their own way and Candy, Maria, and I took a free walking tour. We got to see so many neat things and hear the amazing history behind it all. The Pantheon is unreal. And there is a real hole in the top!! So when it rains, it rains inside! There are even drainage holes in the floor! And we saw the Trevi  Fountain!! We threw in our coins and made our wishes. :) We finally met back up with Brittany and Megan and had dinner at a local restaurant called Dar Poeta. It was cute. And for those of you that like Nutella.. it is huge here in Spain and even bigger in Italy. At this restaurant they had a Nutella Calzone for dessert. It was awesome! Haha :) It was a super long day so we crashed after that.

Saturday, Megan traveled to another city with Brittany since it was not her first time in Rome. Candy, Maria, and I went to the Colosseum!! ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE. I am telling you.. if you ever get a chance.. GO! It is amazing. It was so cool to be in such a old place with sooooo much history. Gladiators really fought there!! And we stood in the same spot!! With our tour of the Colosseum, we also got a tour of the Forum. It is where the Emperor lived wayyyy back when. :) We spent most of the day soaking up the amazingness of the Colosseum and the Forum. After we were done.. we walked around the city some more, we went to the Trevi Fountain to get some pictures during the daylight, and went to one of the main plazas for dinner. We had dinner at a cute little Italian place where Maria and I had pizza and Candy had pasta. And then, of course, we got some more gelato. :) We ate it in the plaza while we watch a group of guys break dance. It was so cool!! After that we headed back to the hotel to call it a night.

Sunday morning we had our free breakfast again.. and then headed out to do our souvenir shopping before our flight home. We also got paninis for lunch! We were really trying to experience Italian food. :) We finally headed back to the airport to catch our flight.. only to find out that it had been delayed. AGAIN. We tried our hardest, but the delayed flight caused us to miss our bus back to Pamplona from Madrid. So.. instead of getting back to Pamplona Sunday evening.. we got back at about 7am Monday morning. I slept a little and got up for class at 1pm!! It was rough.. but I did it. And it was totally worth it.

Roma was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. And would definitely recommend to anyone that gets the chance.. GO TO ROMA. It is something you will never forget. It is a city where you really feel like history is REAL. You can SEE the efforts of the people that lived there soooo long ago. I loved it!!! :)

Bilbao - Guggenheim!

The "Puppy"

(Part of the Guggenheim)

It is GIGANTIC! :)

The weekend following our Lisbon trip, we had no trip planned. We decided to take a day trip to Bilbao, Spain on Sunday. Bilbao is about 2 hours from Pamplona, therefore it was an easy day trip. We arrived around lunchtime, so we were all ready for food. :) We ate at subway.. a little taste of home. I had a delicious Italian BMT hoagie. MMM it was so nice to have a hoagie :) because they are not very popular here in Spain. After eating, we headed over to the Guggenheim.. the reason for going to Bilbao. Like they say, the architecture of the building itself really is the most amazing part of the museum. It's unbelievable the way it is built (pictures on Facebook). The exhibitions inside were pretty cool, but unfortunately the biggest part of the museum was closed off for a change of exhibition. That was a bummer. After we explored to whole museum, we ventured through the old part of the town a little as well. It was nice. Nothing too exciting. But, it was raining.. of course. So we found a nice little restaurant to eat and relax until our 8pm bus arrived.

It was a good day trip.. except for the rain. Now, I would like to see the Guggenheim in New York City to compare. :) There are only three in the world.. Bilbao, Venice, and NY City.

Portugal - "It was.. interesting." :)

Belem Tower

HI!! :) Okay, I know it's been about a million years since I have updated. Sorry! :( I have been so busy and it is so easy to forget to blog.. and then when you realize you have like 5 trips to blog about, it takes courage to sit down and do that, haha. But, here I go!

So.. Portugal. Like the title says, it was interesting. It wasn't exactly what we had expected. To be honest.. it really wasn't as great as we expected. BUT.. I think that is because Ireland and Barcelona are really difficult trips to follow, because they were so incredible. It was still a good trip, all in all.

We arrived n Portugal early Friday morning, checked into the hotel and left our bags there to start our day of travel. The first thing we did was visit the Lisbon Aquarium. It was so big! But, surprise surprise, it was under construction. It was still really cool though. There were so many fish, and penguins, and otters, and sharks and everything! :) It was awesome. After the aquarium, it was time for lunch. We went to the Lisbon HardRock Cafe. It was sooooooo nice because we got to have burgers and shakes. A REAL AMERICAN MEAL! It was yummy. After lunch, we headed out to meet for our walking tour. However, unfortunately, we found out that you actually had to have a reservation lined up for this tour. We had never run into that problem before, so it was a little unexpected. But, we made the best of it. We decided to walk up to the look-out point at the top of the city. It was nice.. not nearly as nice as Barcelona.. but still nice. We continued on to try and find a beach, as Lisbon is a coastal city.. or at least we thought it was. We spent about 2 to 3 hours walking aimlessly trying to find sand. Finally.. we found what looked like a patch of sand! We walked excited to it.. only to find out that it was concrete!!!!! It was concrete next to the RIVER. Apparently the coastal part of Portugal is about 10 miles up from Lisbon.. NOT where we were. Oh well.. at least we didn't throw off our shoes and start running to it! Haha. :) After all the walking and the little success (it was pretty much a fail of a day), we decided it was time to head back to the hotel. We got in and reception gave us the keys to our room. We walked up and opened the door with the key... AND THERE WERE PEOPLE IN THE ROOM! The room was alread occupied. Talk about an awkward moment!! Hahahaha! :) We said sorry and quickly closed the door. We walked to the elevator and started cracking up. We couldn't stop laughing. Reception apologized for the mistake and gave us the correct room. We slept well that night after such a long day.

Saturday was a relaxing day. We woke up around 10 and decided to do a hop-on, hop-off bus tour to see the city. It was nice to be able to sit down and hear the history behind everything we wanted to see. We got to take a look at the major historical attractions, of which I have pictures on Facebook. By the time we finished the bus tour, it was raining. We did some quick souvenir shopping to get our trinkets and then had dinner at a nice Italian place. I had a delicious carbonera pasta. Yummy. :) Since it was still raining pretty hard.. we headed back to the hotel to call it a night. We had to get REALLY early for our flight home on Sunday.

It was nice to see Portugal, because it's very different than the other cities we have been to. But, if I ever were to go back.. I don't think I would go to Lisbon. I hear the countryside is beautiful. :)