Amsterdam!

Thursday 4/2
Our group of 6 (Anna, Rima, Eleanor, Blakeley, Jessica and myself) left drawing early to catch our flight at 7:00pm. The flight was less than two hours but felt like two minutes because I passed out completely for all of it. We took a 20 minute train from the airport to centre city, and then we were there! in the awesomeness of Amsterdam! Our hotel was Called the Heart of Amsterdam, and they certainly weren’t kidding about the name. We wandered around for a little while from the train station, and when we found the hotel we were smack (and I mean smack) in the middle of the red light district. I’m talking brothels and hookers next door, across the street and as far as you could see in pretty much any direction, not to mention sex shops, sex shows, peep shows, porn theatres, “coffee” shops and bars. It was pretty crazy, but we had a fun time walking around and just taking it all in. Terry took us to a coffee shop called the Jolly Joker to try some of the local flavor, then we went to dinner at a little hamburger place that served Obamaburgers. We walked around a little more after that and began to notice that all the bars and coffee shops close before the sex shops and peep shows. Interesting. We headed back to our 007 room in the hotel after that (all of the rooms have a different movie theme, pretty sweet - I’m sleeping under Sean Connery’s head)

Friday 4/3
We woke up to an extensive breakfast in the hotel, from which we also prepared lunch sneakily. Then we checked out and were off to find our next hostel (we booked a different one each night to get the full experience of Amsterdam) We passed the morning shift of the red light district on our way out. The walk took a long while, because we had a fairly large group and some seriously slow walkers (then again I’m a little biased because I walk like a “city girl” as terry says) But we got to Okay Stay eventually and dropped our stuff off. Then it was off to play in the sun!!! we were right across from Vondelpark which was huge and pretty, so Jessica and I started walking through there, taking pictures, envying puppies, climbing trees etc. It was a very nice stroll. After that we perused the shops on Leidseplein Stratte, which were adorable but very expensive. Then we had lunch at a little place with outdoor seating on the canal, and the sun was wonderful and felt amazing. After lunch we went on a hunt for “space cakes” and found some at a coffee shop called “The Rookies” (which we thought was very appropriate.) so we ate those and then rented a paddle boat, or “canal bike” to cruise the canals. Being on the canal was a lot of fun, but paddling always gets tiring after a while and our boat was crazy hard to steer. I had to practically climb on top of the steering stick to keep the thing going straight, and forget it if we had to swerve on-coming boat traffic, we were goners who got honked at big time. (and no it was not because of the space cakes, other people were struggling too) After our hour + of paddling we trekked back to the hostel to meet the others for dinner.

We went to The Bulldog (Amsterdam’s biggest and most renown coffee shop chain) before dinner then around the corner to Ristorante Italiano where I had pasta filled with spinach and ricotta in tomato cream sauce. Stellar. We got some ben and Jerry’s after that and went back to the hostel to get ready for the evening. Unfortunately Jessica, Rima and myself never saw the rest of the evening because we accidentally passed out in our clothes while everyone one else was drinking and getting ready. (we think the space cakes might have kicked in reallllly late.) but it was a busy, fun day, and we were also just really tired.

Saturday 4/4
We woke up Saturday to another big breakfast spread, in cool old part of the hostel. Seeing that they had chocolate sprinkles available I decided to try the traditional Dutch breakfast of hagelslag, which is essentially buttered toast with chocolate sprinkles on top. It was pretty much what you would expect it to be, different, but not bad. After breakfast and another stealthy lunch preparation, we began our trek to our third hostel -Intersail- on a boat! After some fine navigation on my part we arrived on the dock of Christina, where Tony the boat master sent us one dock over to stay on Waterland. Both boats were tiny creaky and cute, and the smell/feel reminded me of Fisher’s Island in Connecticut a little bit. Our rooms were tiny little bunks but I really liked the whole set up, very cool and boaty. We dropped our stuff discussed plans for the day and headed out. We didn’t get far before we ran into Terry and Blakeley, who we had lost to a coffee shop along the way. They were very happy to see us , since they had no clue what or where our hotel was.
Jess and I began exploring and found a flea market on Waterlooplein that Rima had mentioned. We shopped through there for a while. I bought a hippyish shirt and an awesome bicycle bell, jess bought a “leather” jacket for 19 Euro. We stopped in a café/restaurant to get warm (the awesome sunny weather of Friday decided not sleepover.) and eat lunch. (I ate my smuggled lunch from breakfast) we stopped in a little shop next door and I bought some stroopwaffles which are another Dutch specialty consisting of two very thin waffle wafers with some sort of caramel stuff spread in the middle. Very tasty. After that we wandered around some more, came across the botanical gardens, which had sadly just closed, but we peeked in and it looked pretty. We stopped in a spirits shop on our way back to the boat and bought some awesome Spanish wine before meeting the others for dinner. We had a glass of our Rotwein/Leiblich 2007 Vinto Tinto from Valencia then went to “Jasmine Thai Food” for dinner. I had a plate of fried rice for 2.50 Euro and realized it was the cheapest meal I’ve had in Europe outside the Czech Republic (besides my smuggled lunches.) After dinner we played some scrabble and hearts on the boat, then some of us walked over to the red light district to wander around again. A few people decided to catch a sex show for 25 Euro, but I decided it wasn’t for me and headed back to the boat.

Sunday 4/5
Another day another awesome breakfast, this time with fresh fruit. :) We packed up our stuff, bid our captain (I never got his name but he was an interesting fellow) farewell, and walked to the train station to store our luggage in lockers for the day. After that we rented bikes from Orange Bike, and began our leisurely ride through the city. My seat was just about an inch or two too high for me( toes justtt barely touched the ground) so I had trouble stopping throughout the day with out falling over. We rode to terry’s new hostel (he stayed a day later than us) so he could drop his stuff, then to Dam square where we got separated by the crowds. Jess and I continued biking and found ourselves in a pretty little park with tons of daffodils we poked around there for a while, then realized that we were right across the street from the Heineken Brewery. Heineken is evidently a Dutch beer that originated in Amsterdam. Cool! So we went in there, learned about the history of the beer, bottom fermentation, their special ‘A’ yeast strain, and that we were at Stadhouderskade the second brewery established. We ventured into a big room with tanks, where we tasted the wort of the beer, (water and barley) not so tasty. I decided it would be fun to climb in one of the fermentation tanks for a photo (they were fake and empty!) so I did, and managed to be sneaky enough that no one really noticed (not an easy feat for me.) After that Jessica and I got to ‘be the beer” in the Heineken 4-D experience. We traveled through the brewing process and got jostled, sprayed and fanned a lot, but it was cute. After that we did a tasting of two week old Heineken and observed the golden color caused by the barley. Jess and I made a Dutch music video in the next room, which failed to send to our emails :( then we watched funny Heineken commercials from the 50’s, 80’s etc in cool chairs (which I later banged my head on) after that came old posters, videos, advertising history (partnership with James Bond movies) and finally….BEER! We got two big glasses of beer either extra cold or regular, I had one of each then snatched the glasses, as I deemed that they must be included in the 15 Euro entrance fee, as otherwise that fee is pure extortion. We had a swervy bike ride back to the rental place after that. Then popped into a Mexican restaurant called Guadalupe for some soup before our trip home. Train station after that, some minor passport troubles for Blakeley which were luckily resolved, then another unconscious plain ride home. :) awesome weekend!

Lauren

Rest of Week

So Wednesday (4/1)was the first of many hectic days in studio. We are all sewing like crazy because we now have a midsummer night’s dream costume and a cocktail dress to make for the end of the program, which is less than three weeks away. Keep in mind that these were our only two projects for the semester and they were officially assigned only about a week ago. What were we supposed to be doing during the previous two months? No one seems to be sure. Also Nina and Ladya seem to think it’s helpful to scurry about studio yelling strings of “yes, yes, yes, yes!” and “oh no,no, no,no!” whilst providing us with plagiarized internet power points on fashion business (with of course nina’s spinning, flashing touches) to effectively waste our time. We also had a field trip to an art museum featuring paintings of 1700’s fashion for fashion history , which was cool. We saw some peacocks there.

Thursday (4/2) was a little less hectic, and more productive. I finished the vest part of my costume (it’s reversible!!) and started work on the dress. After studio I went for a walk through old town square which to my bewilderment was completely filled with shops, stands, food, games, decorations and people . Basically the Prague version of a state fair, minus the rides. Very crazy, very exciting, and steadily kickin’ until Easter Monday, whoo! It was also a sunny 60 degrees which had me in a fit of joy to begin with. Back at the institute we drew magazine figures in fashion illustration and then it was time for AMSTERDAM!
Too much excitement for one day.

Lauren

Berlin continued...

next two days..

Sunday 3/29
Another grocery store yogurt breakfast. (the sill of our hotel window has become a mini-fridge for yogurt and beer - just the essentials.) We left the hotel at 10am (9am on the body clock) and our whole group walked to the Pergammon museum. Where we saw a bunch of old Greek and Roman statues and art, Islamic art and textiles and a section on Greek mythology which I particularly enjoyed. On our way there we saw the Berliner Dom which is an awesomely ornate cathedral that was almost completely destroyed in WWII, and later restored, and the a big pretty gallery. After the museum we stopped in a flea market for a bratwurst lunch ( I’ve decided that I definitely prefer normal sized hot dogs, but globs of mustard helped) and then we shopped around a little bit, and I bought a really cute hat which helped keep me warm. We took a metro next, and walked to a preserved area of the Berlin wall. It was a little enclosed area of no-mans land with sand and footprints in it still, not physically accessible to anyone. Berlin has a big theme of preserving parts of the past so they are not forgotten, which I think is great and more places should do it. We climbed up the tower across the street to see the aerial view of this place, then watched some history films in the exhibit downstairs. Eye opening, and tragic, yet ironically most of the group fell asleep. We walked down the block to see a reconstructed church from a bombing in 1965? It was again neat how they preserved some old parts of it when rebuilding.
We headed to Invaliden Park after that, where we saw and climbed up the “sinking wall” (absent of water ) and played on a nearby playground with monkey bars and more spinny things. Next we continued walk down to Kanzleramt which is a big spacey park area on the river with huge-scale buildings and pretty bridges. We also saw throughout the day, brick line running through the city that represents where the Berlin wall used to stand. After that we headed back toward the museum area and Jeremy, Laura-nelle, Gennie and I broke off from the group to get some coffee and snacks. We went to the main train station, Hosbaunhof, where I had a big bowl of fruit and bought some cookies for later, then we metro-ed back to the hotel around 7:30. A small group of us went to dinner around the corner at Alpenlandische Sperinlitnten at 8:00, where I had wildgoulashsuppe (all one word) which was sort of a small bowl of meat and gravy- interesting to say the least. Then we went back to the hostel and passed out around 11:30pm.

Monday 3/30
We woke up early and packed up all our stuff to store in the hotel basement, (more yogurt for breky) then trekked out to the Nueu National Gallery In Kulturforum (center of fine arts.) It was a gallery that seemed to be pretty empty but had some really cool sculptures around it. I really liked the kinetic one by Michael Riki? After that we went to the Bauhaus which is a famous German design school that was shut down during World War II, but was the learning/teaching environment of a lot of well-know artists. There were a lot of cool things to see there. We took a short bus ride to a city center area next to see The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was bombed out during WWII but remains standing. We couldn’t go inside because it was closed but the view of the outside was pretty phenomenal in itself. We grabbed some cheap lunch from a little Asia stir-fry tent then watched a street show of guys performing crazy dance and skateboard moves to the tune of Thriller. It’s safe to say they put my dance moves to shame…and then some. We explored a few souvenir shops after that and a bunch of the guys bought 5 Euro suspenders with various silly themes on them. This was the point at which I placed Dave’s filthy rubber chicken “Alberti“ (which he found in the dirt of the railroad park on Friday) in a bag at the souvenir shop, as a joke, knowing he saw me take it. But apparently he was too distracted by his fish,/duck/gun suspenders to pay attention, so Alberti got left behind and I got the slack and dirty looks for it for the rest of the day, even though I probably saved Dave from some nasty disease like Chlamydia (that chicken was seriously gross.) We took the metro back to the hostel to get our luggage, then back to the main train station for our 5:00pm train back to Prague. Things went smoothly from there and we got back to Prague around 9:30pm. A jam packed weekend, tired legs, and sweaty clothing, but a lovely German experience.

Tuesday consisted of a trip to the fabric store “Flex Tex” across town, and an exhilarating beekeeping class in which we learned that “Honey is Money” and all about breeding and selling Queen bees. I also sewed Dave a replacement Alberti (his more fashionable cousin, Alberto) for which he was very grateful.

Lauren

Back From Berlin

The Landscape Architecture group had a pre-scheduled excursion to Berlin this weekend, and a bunch of us fashion girls decided to tag along. So worth it.

Friday 3/27
Our train left Prague around 9:30 on Friday morning, and after some lovely views of the Czech, and German countryside (complete with a field of serious power windmills) and an on and off 5 hour nap for me, we arrived around 1:30pm. From the train station we took the S-bahn (above ground metro system) to the very colorful Pegasus Hostel. After several frightening foreign arguments between Nina and the desk clerk about key distribution and paying our bill we were able to check into our room and get settled. We hit the ATM next for some Euros, and the whole group met up around 3pm to follow Fernando (landscape professor) around Berlin. We took the U-bahn (underground metro system) to the Sudgeland Nature Park. This Park was an incredibly cool place, that actually used to be a bunch of rail way lines, or maybe a station type place, but its been out of use for ages and nature has taken over it. So basically its lots of old stuctures and tracks all encompassed by trees, grass, and general over growth, which some awesome sculpture and development worked in. It was very cool and pretty, especially with the setting sun sneaking between the trees. I only wish it had been warmer. So we walked though there for a while then turned around to walk back up the other side of the functioning track. There we encountered some German boys (eh..) and their Husky puppy (yesssss !!!!!!). His name was Hanky and his older black lab friend’s name was Rocco. And they were both adorable, and the puppy rolled over my shoe!!!! I almost fell over, I was so excited. But then we had to go so I said goodbye (while of course contemplating how I could explain a stolen husky puppy in my carryon luggage to the train conductors- I couldn’t come up with anything besides pretending to be blind, which would have been a disaster for both my shins and anyone in my path, so the puppy stayed)

Our next visit was to Potsdamer Platz which was a big commercial area of Berlin with awesome new buildings, bright neon lights and a ton of cool fountains, sculptures and public art. It was a very hip place that was awesome to see at night. After that we stopped for a quick (very non-German, to my disappointment) dinner in a food court, before continuing on with Fernando to a cool hippie, gallery place in another happening part of town. It was so happening in fact, that we encountered a new aspect of German culture. It began with one women dressed in high heels and a puffy coat with a corset over top. I thought this fashion choice was odd but we all continued walking, and after passing several more corseted women, the realization sank in that it was less of a fashion and more of a “uniform.” Yes, we walked down a street of jazzy restaurants and German hookers (the tally got up to about 22, within a 3 block distance) It was eye opening, but we all were pretty exited that we got to add German hookers to the list of crazy things we saw in Europe (face it, you would be too. ) So we hit up the very artsy, grungy, slightly dilapidated, gallery hippie place after that where we saw lots of cool Berlin/political/random themed collage work, some graffiti art and this cool little display room called Eroto Shop, featuring, you guessed it, sex themed art. The artist lady was even in there working on some stuff. Pretty cool overall. A few people and I signed one graffiti wall - probably the prudest thing we could do in the grand scheme of that place. We got back to our hostel around 10:30 and I tried my first German beer- a Warsteiner from the convenience store next door. Tasty, but pricier than Prague :( Exhaustion took over next.

Saturday 3/28
Saturday began with breakfast from the grocery store across the street, and tagging along with the LAR kids once again. We walked down the street a little bit a discovered we were staring at the Berlin Wall. (one of the parts that remains standing) we walked along it for a while snapping lots of pictures, (I tried to squeeze through one of the cracks in it to the other side-unsuccessfully) till it ended and we were at a very large bridge. It was old and ornate and looked very pretty with the shiny water and sunlight. After walking though the bridge (it was tunnel-like in design) to the other side we hopped on a metro to the Jewish museum. We didn’t actually go in the museum but, it was really cool because it has two parts. The old building, which was a traditional museum-like design, and the new part which was all metal, huge semi-star shaped with big gashes in the sides that served as windows. Very drastic differences and the new part is only accessible though an underground tunnel from the old part, pretty awesome conceptually. Around the outside of the museum there were some little metal play spinny things that we hopped on and immediately began abusing ourselves via warp-speed spinning, inevitably getting flung to the ground. Very hard core (my knuckle even bled a little.) After the ensuing Vertigo, we stopped at Dix Café, part of a another museum, for some quick lunch. I had potato Soup with Little slices of salmon in it. Perfect for the cold day.

After lunch we walked through a lot of neighborhood parks and Fernando talked about “space” to the LAR kids. Then we went to Check point Charlie, which was the main American base/checkpoint along the Berlin wall in WWII. It was really cool to see and there were a lot of historical info plaques set up so we could learn more about it -People did some crazy things to get out of East Berlin. We stopped at a little tent/cart thing after that so the hungry boys could get some Bratwursts, then we were off to Potsdamer Platz again for the daytime view. We climbed up this cool triangle shaped hill outside of the main commercial center and got to watch a little screaming German boys run down the hill with his ice cream cone, only to fall and drop it at the bottom. We all saw it coming and I couldn’t have planned it out more perfectly in my head; the ball of ice cream just plopped right off the top. It was pretty hilarious but he didn’t seem upset so we didn’t feel too bad laughing. Moving on. A few fashion girls and myself broke off from the group to get coffee and pastries, because we were cold and craving sweets. Then we met up with the group again to go to the Holocaust memorial. The memorial was amazing. It was basically tons of stone rectangles (slightly resembling tombs in size) all different heights, arranged in rows on varying levels of land. It was very stark looking, but walking though it was actually very playful because it provided the perfect hide and side and peek-a-boo arena. So, we shamelessly creeped around the stone blocks popping out at each other along with the rest of the tourists.

Our group moved down the road to the Brandenburg Tor next. This is the only remaining gate of a series that formerly entered Berlin. Now it leads into Unter den Linden which is the big boulevard of linden trees that we walked down next. Here we saw a green peace demonstration, which was a bunch of people on trashcan drums. Pretty cool. One guy came over and explained to us that they were protesting/ spreading awareness about nuclear energy/power and the danger it poses to workers. He was very friendly. As we were walking down the street we stopped to watch a group of puppeteer people manipulating this life size stick figure guy for the crowds. they had some awesome choreography. It was fun to watch. After that we made our way back to the hostel, stopped at the supermarket for beer, took naps and got ready for the night. We went to the Biergarten next door for dinner, where I had a traditional wiener schnitzel (fried pork chop type deal) with potatoes and salad and a dark Kostriker beer. Sooo filling and delicious! We went back to the hostel to try our grocery store beer and then ventured out to a club down the street that was a really cool old building near the wall. We had lots of fun there, then realized around 2:45am that it was really 3:45am due to Europe daylight savings time, and promptly decided to leave. A very long and tiring day, with more ahead of us.

Lauren

Tour de Studio

Entrance area



Computer area outside kitchen and common room


The very cramped kitchen


The one and only classroom


Our studio space



My desk

Middle o' March

Here are the highlights of the last 2 weeks

Tuesday - Double beekeeping session, visited bee supplies shop near studio -cool beeswax candles and honey wine (mead). Blakeley develops rare puking disease from eating a chestnut.

Wednesday - puking disease continues, I remain unaffected

Thursday - I made banana bread which earned more yummy noises from the troops (and myself). We worked on our body blocks in studio. Blakeley emerges from toilet for the first time in 2 days. Gennie develops puking disease.

Friday - no class, Jeremy and I ventured to the top of the metronome/skate park, saw beautiful view of the city as I mumbled curses under my breath for not charging my camera batteries. We continued wandering about Narodni Tridu, and I got a strawberry milkshake at Café Imperial. I also tried fried cheese (glorified mozzarella stick in sandwich form) from Wenceslas Square earlier in the day. Gennie continues puking.


Saturday - Sunshine! and mild temperatures! I had a very good run around town. Later on a group of 8 of us went to U Fleku, Prague’s oldest brewery. Their beer was very tasty, and the atmosphere was very cool and old beer hall-esque, but it was a very touristy place and their prices reflected it. Also, one of the waiters got very agitated when we wouldn’t take the shots he was offering us (we found out beforehand that they weren’t free and are a bit of a trap) but he went away eventually mumbling about “tradition.” We met up with the rest of the group at a sports bar after that for the beginnings of March Madness. The place had cheap beer and paintings of famous American rock and rollers on the wall (thumbs up!). I had a fit of delight when I saw Bruce up there too :) (also, the puking disease appears to have died with Gennie.)

Sunday - I organized my registration stuff for the fall and made spaetsel for dinner.

Monday - packed for unplanned trip home and finished up sketchy leprechaun preparations

Tuesday-Sunday - early flight home and a week of family time.

Monday - back in Prague after a 6 hour layover in Heathrow due to an idiot security guy, who wouldn’t let me jump in line to make it to my flight. Luckily, the British Airways costumer service lady was very nice and gave me a food voucher along with my new flight which made the wait less painful. Made it back in time to sprint (in heels on cobblestones!) to the opera house with Jeremy, who had kindly waited for me with a ticket. We arrived 2 minutes too late for the 7pm door closing, but ran into the rest of the group at the café across the street with news that the show actually began at 8 and everyone had been misinformed. Hooray! So I was able to see the whole show which was nice but unfortunately my 16 hours of sleepless travel caught up with me in the plush chairs of the warm theatre, and I caught myself dozing off several times during each act. I’m still glad I was able to go though, the theatre itself was incredibly old and beautiful on the inside.

Tuesday - sleeeeep, rest, dinner, made fun-fetti cake (which Terry coined “America Cake”), shared it with ecstatic studio members, 80’s workout in room with Blakeley, shower, more sleep.

Today - doing some serious work in studio (only 4 ½ weeks left!) and Nina is officially obsessed with powerpoint effects. We spend more time watching pictures spin and glitter on the screen than we do learning why they are important.

In other news, our whole group is headed to Berlin on Friday morning for a long weekend. Cant wait!

Lauren

Spring Break Europe - Part 2

Continuing on…

Wednesday
We woke up early to pack up and catch our flight to Alicante, Spain. We ate our last free breakfast at the hotel, and took a train to the airport. We waited for a long time amongst the hoards of old people waiting to board our flight, (apparently Alicante is the Florida of Manchester) and then we were on our way! On the flight we had some sort of rowdy birthday party happening behind us, but otherwise things went smoothly. Jeremy and I were both taken aback by how many people ordered food from the little concession cart thing. It cost about 8 lbs for a dinky little sandwich and people had full out picnics of food in front of them. The lady next to me alone ordered four beers for her and her “mate.” Jeremy and I sufficed with our crumbly package of Czech caramelized biscuits (which by the way are my replacement cookies for the semester.)

We landed in Alicante around 2pm, I got bouncingly excited about the palm trees at the airport, then we took the c-6 bus from the airport to Plaza del Mar. Que bella Alicante! We checked into our hostel - Penzion la Milagrosa, and began wandering the sunny streets. We ate a late lunch/dinner at an outside place called Ceylon, where we each had a glass of Estrella Damm, (big Spanish beer) and shared the paella valenciana (saucy rice dish with chicken) veryyy tasty. We stopped for some gelato after that and then headed back to the hotel to change into some fresh evening wear. We prowled the streets for something to do for a while, and it slowly became more obvious that Alicante is more of a seasonal destination and has less to offer in the winter months. .. A little disappointed but none the less thirsty, we eventually found a fairly busy place called Havana offering sangria and cerveza for 1 euro each and shots for 2 euro. Jeremy took full advantage of the beer and shots deals, but only had the stamina for one glass of sangria (it was about this point that I was beginning to develop the angriest sore throat of my life.) After drinks we walked along the beach in the gale force winds for a little while before heading back to the hostel.

Thursday
We decided to sleep in for a little bit on Thursday , still recovering from all the travel earlier in the week, so around 11:30 or so we made are way up to see the Castillo de Santa Barbara, which is a stone fortress way up on a huge hill about a block form our hostel, (visible from most anywhere in Alicante.) We took the lift up, mostly because we could figure out how to walk up, and a big long tunnel lead us to it. It was also free because the ticket machine wasn’t working, which was a sweet bonus. We stepped out of the elevator at the top, took about 10 steps into the brilliant sun, and found ourselves quickly being forced back into the elevator. I’m sure you’re think hmm who or what could have pushed them back into the elevator? Was it a pushy security guard? Or aggressive Spanish youths? Perhaps a rogue Spanish mountain lion? But alas we were not that lucky. It was violent assaulting winds that threw us back, and continued to do so for the next hour and half. (My bag became airborne on more than one occasion and I seriously considered shaving my head afterwards over dealing with the massive beehive of knots… yes I said beehive, be afraid. But I would have to say that the paralyzing winds were worth it for the gorgeous view we saw of the city and the shiny sea below…and there was sun, and that’s all I really asked for. We also snapped a lot of very nice pictures.



After a treacherous journey down the mountain, we wandered through the city a bit, walked though a market with a ridiculous amount of fresh meat, ate some pizza and ice tea at a restaurant called Wong’s , and strolled through the Explanada de Palmas, browsing through the little trinkets and gifts in the vender stands. Our stroll ended at the entrance to the beach so we decided to play there for a while. (spoiler alert: the pleasantness ends soon) I sat down and attempted to catch some rays while also shielding myself from the wind, which resulted in a babushka fashioned scarf around my head. Eventually I gave up and Jeremy and I decided to go stick our toes in the Mediterranean. We took off our shoes and sock and placed them next to my bag about 15 ft away from the water. We hoped around in the cold water for a minute or two, snapped some evidentiary photos and retreated back to the warm sand…only to find our shoes minus my bag. So long story short, I had idiotically forgotten where I was, made the unbelievable (I still can’t imagine how my overcautious brain let that one slide) mistake of neglecting my belongings , made the second unbelievable mistake of including my passport in those belongings, and after some intense panic, frantic running and searching, crying in the police station, talking to visa for half an hour and more frantic searching . Jeremy (to whom I owe serious metal therapy fees) and I decided to pack up all of our things and catch the 1:40 am bus to Barcelona to get to the U.S. Embassy before the weekend. (exasperated sigh) It was hard to abandon the hope that my bag would be recovered, but it wasn’t really something we could risk since we planned on leaving the country on Saturday. We ate some dinner at 11pm at a restaurant called Pizza de Pietro. (awesome tomato soup) and began our 8 hour bus ride to Barcelona. We slept most of the way so it wasn’t a bad ride, but by this time the sore throat that had started brewing on Wednesday was in a full blaze of glory, so I was a little uncomfortable. I woke up around 7 am to the warmth of a bright orange sun rising over the Mediterranean…the first beautiful sign of light a the end of the tunnel, and distracting for a little while.

Friday
We arrived in Barcelona around 9:40 and wasted no time figuring out where we had to go and how to get there. A nice lady helped us buy tickets in the metro station (to avoid a recurrence of the ape-like poking in Manchester) and we were on our way to Reina Eislenda (street name) another nice lady here pointed us in the direction of the embassy and - cue choruses of hallelujah - we were there. I filled out all the paperwork, took a photo in the little photo machine and like some kind of crazy miracle magic, I had a new passport within the hour. (cue more choruses) so Jeremy and I found ourselves standing outside of the U.S. embassy on the sunny streets of Barcelona, at 11:30am, starving, exhausted, relieved and not exactly sure what to do next…We discussed our travel options for quite a while, debated whether it would be worth taking another train back to Alicante immediately to catch our original flights to Manchester and then home to Prague. And after a long discussion, throughout which we were both a little grouchy and mostly just tired of thinking, we decided to relax in Barcelona for the rest of the day (call it mental, and in the case of my throat, physical health) and catch a direct flight home to Prague in the morning. It was by far the pricier decision, but also by far the best one I’ve ever made. Barcelona was wonderful, even just one afternoon’s worth made me feel like the whole passport thing was just fate kicking me (pretty painfully) in the direction I was meant to go. (I was fantasizing about visiting Barcelona for spring break before I even left for Prague, but the travel options just weren't working out)
Anyways Jeremy and I had a lovely afternoon there. We found a random inexpensive hostel called Hostel Flores along the main drag (Rambla Street) of very busy Catalunya, so we dumped our stuff there scrambled into the nearest restaurant for the menu del dia (6.50 Euro), were shocked when the bill came to find that our sangria and beer cost more that our entire meal, then proceeded to explore the sunny streets of Barcelona! We saw the Arc de Triomph, strolled down the Pg. Luis Companys (walkway) admiring the palms lining either side, watched a cute group of old Spanish men playing bocce ball, and continued wondering past the museum of natural science, on to Paseo de Colon. We moseyed along the pier here had a pretty view of the ocean/bay? , some cool ring sculptures in the distance, the world trade center (Spanish version??), the Moll de Espana and of course the statue of Cristobal Colon sitting high in the sky. We also we enticed by a tasty smelling little vendor cart and bought a waffle with chocolate goo on it. We had a pretty view from the pier of the sun setting on the water. Ahhhh…. Our last stop was a metro ride over to Barcoloneta to see the Sagrada Familia, this crazy old stone cathedral that I remember learning about in 8th grade Spanish class. Unfortunately it was being renovated while we were there, which took away some of the glory, but it was still magnificent to see. So much intricacy, and splendor at first sight you can’t do anything but stand there for 5 minutes muttering whoaa…….eventually we regained our senses enough to take some photos and then drag our tired bodies back to the hostel for refreshing. I bough some halls for my cactus throat and a postcard+keychain on the way there. We had a quick pizza/pasta dinner down the street and drinks at the cerveceria with some papas fritas. Then zombied back to the hostel to pass out. Long but successful and enjoyable day.

Saturday
We woke up early to catch a shuttle to the airport, and on our way I saw a sign that I had also seen right after my Alicante incident. It was an advertisement for coca cola with two smiling people on it and it said “Estas aqui para ser feliz” which translates to “You are here to be happy” I remembered how seeing that sign had comforted me after walking back from the police station feeling hopeless. I guess I just liked the simplistic, positive view on life it offered, and it reminded me not to let bad things get you down too much or for too long; you’ll get through it the best you can and things will be sunny again. And they were :)

At the airport we bought some delicious fresh orange juice, and ran into the group from our program who went intentionally to Barcelona for spring break. We ended up on the same flight as them and it turns out they had experienced some theft as well. Our flight took off without any hitches and we were back in Prague around 12:45. Jeremy and I bought some supplies for sandwiches at Billa, had a small feast then relished in doing nothing for the rest of the day. It was good to be home!

Lauren