Almost there...

Et voila...my final installment of my spring break!
Well, not really spring break.  The weekend after, technically.  The weekend Katie and I went to Madrid with one of my friends from my program. Sorry it took so long.
We departed my apartment with what we thought was plenty of time to spare-turns out we were wrong.  We ended up standing in line FOREVER  to check in, and just as the cut-off time was nearing and Katie was freaking out (and Molly was secretly also freaking out in her head), we got pulled to the front of the line by a very nice ticket agent.  Turned out, our plane was delayed an hour and a half anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered in the end, but he saved us a lot of worrying.

 Waiting to take off...as a side note, this airline repeated all of its announcements in THREE languages- Spanish first, then English, then French.  It got to be a little annoying, as they made a LOT of announcements.

The Plaza Mayor was a five minute walk from our hostel, and hosted a variety of strange things.   The figures are people, dressed up.  There was also a very portly Spiderman and a Spongebob. 

The Mercado San Miguel was an indoor market similar to the indoor market in Boston.  We had a good time walking around and admiring the elaborate displays  and salivating over the food!

 

 

 We went traditional for lunch-tapas and sangria! And let me tell you, the Spanish know what they're doing when it comes to both.

 

In the middle of the city, there was a park, not unlike Central Park in NYC I would imagine.  Katie and I killed a few hours wandering around and talking, and then we found the "Crystal Palace"-a glass building that looked out onto the park around it.  It would be a beautiful place to have a wedding or reception!

 Our mid-afternoon snack- churros and chocolate, a traditional Spanish breakfast, and of course more sangria at a cafe while sitting outdoors.  I could get used to eating like that.

 

For dinner, we continued on the traditional path and got paella,  a rice and seafood dish.  We ate outside again (one of my favorite parts of Europe is all of the outdoor eating!) and were seated next to a bachelor party; apparently in Spain, they dress the groom up in a humiliating outfit-here it was a nurse's VERY SHORT dress- and take him out.

The next morning, we repeated the chocolate and churros-it was that good- and prepared to leave.  We also happened upon this bubble blower in Plaza Mayor and spent a good 10 minutes just watching.  I guess we all still have more of a child in us than we knew :) 

The Madrid airport is very airy and modern-they coordinate the gate numbers and colors with the paint on the pipes.  We were in terminal U, which was blue, so our pipes were blue!  I enjoyed that aspect.

A continuation

My spring break continued in the south of France with my mom and my sister-We met in the city of Arles (which, despite having stayed there for four days and having numerous people pronounce it for us, we still cannot say correctly).  Our first evening was spent getting a wonderful traditional dinner, and catching up on each others' lives for approximately 3 hours.  It was wonderful to see them both-it had been months since I saw a member of my family!

The next morning, we got up and, after finding the tourist information office, we took a train to Marseille and then a taxi to Cassis, the small bay town I had previously visited and fell in love with.  There wasn't quite as much sun this time around, but we still had a lovely time watching the giant waves and wandering in and out of the little shops. 

 Mom and Katie by the Mediterranean, and Molly and Katie enjoying some gorgeous gelato-in case you can't see it, Katie's gelato looks like a flower.

The next day, we woke to a cloudy day, but that didn't deter us from going and seeing the extensive outdoor market in Arles, and buying ourselves a delicious picnic lunch of baguette, veggies, and cheese, and the best strawberries we'd had in a long time.  We also got our first pain au chocolats, which Mom immediately fell in love with (she went on to eat five or six over the course of three days).   We then took yet another taxi into Les Baux de Provence, an old midieval castle ruin about 20 minutes away.  It sprinkled on us on and off, but nothing unmanageable.  In fact, the rain only served to deter other tourists, so we had the run of the place!

The view from the top of the mountain was incredible... on a clear day, you would be able to see all the way across the harbour to Marseille.

 

Learning archery....and that little blue dot right by the flag in the picture on the right is Katie.  Big surprise, I was too chicken to climb the incredibly steep stairs to the top!

 Mom figuring out how to use the castle-storming thingy (I forget the real name for this contraption.  It's the thing they used to batter down the door.)

The view of the village below the castle, where we bought our beautiful (and very impractical for airplane travel) pottery.  Well, where Mom bought our beautiful pottery as our Easter gifts.

Our last day in Arles just so happened to be Easter, and so we had plenty to entertain us, as the town throws a festival on this weekend.  We started the day at a French mass, then followed it up with seeing the sights around town and eating the tradional paella for lunch. Mom had a day-long search for a particular pattern of cloth she liked, and ended up finding it in just the form she had wanted.  The Provence region is known for its bright fabrics and great pottery.

The next morning we were up bright and early to catch our train to Paris, where we managed to squeeze in a couple days' worth of sightseeing into one.  We started with lunch at my host family's house, to let everyone meet everyone else, then headed to the Eiffel Tower.  We then hopped on the metro to one of Molly's favorite places in Paris, the Saint-Michel area, where we got falafel (SO good), saw Notre Dame, the Saint Michel fountain, and Shakespeare and Co, a famous bookstore.  We finished with full French meal at my host family's, then put Mom on a train to her hotel near the airport with an impossibly heavy load of all of my gifts and souvenirs to take back to the States.

Mom perusing at Shakespeare & Co.

Katie then spent her week in Paris seeing all the sights while I was in class.  She spent one day at the Louvre, one day seeing the Arc d'Triomphe, and a day at Versailles with me.  We also got to go to the ballet at the Opera Garnier-a gorgeous building, but a super modern and super weird ballet.

The Grand Trianon in the gardens at Versaille-Katie's favorite palace.

 

 

The "Queen's Hamlet" in the gardens of Versailles.  It was Marie Antoinette's experiment in living like a commoner.  She didn't exactly succeed, but she created a little paradise!  It was our favorite part.

Our week ended with a visit to the Marais to get another falafel, and a trip to Madrid over the weekend. I think that is fodder for another post however...

spring break

Ok, so writing in detail about my whole break is kind of daunting, so here is the Reader's Digest version:

I began on a night train, where I shared a compartment with five total strangers and got very little sleep.  But I did enjoy the experience...as it will be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.  I don't think I'll ever purposely book one of those again.  When I arrived in Milan, I was greeted at the station by my sorority sister, who took me to her apartment and made me much-needed coffee and breakfast.  We then went around Milan a bit, and I got to see where she goes to school and have an incredible espresso.  They don't just give you espresso, they put GELATO in it.

 

We then hopped on a train to Cinque Terre, a costal region with five little villages attached to each other by hiking trails, and spent the next day and a half exploring the villages, trying the local wine, laying out on the pebbly beach, and meeting Canadians who gave us lectures on the state of our country.  It was a beautiful region, and I'm so glad I got to see it with a friend from home!

A view of the trail named the Via Della Amore (Way of Love), me with the love-locks, and an adorable fishing boat in on of the villages.

Getting a little sun before we headed back to Milan.

After I said goodbye to Milan, I headed to Rome, where I met up with three girls from my program.  We stayed in a really nice hostel/apartment, and hit all the big tourist sites: Parthenon, Pizza Navona, Vatican, Coliseum, Trevi Fountain...and of course ate a TON of pizza and pasta. I also unfortunately "misplaced" my wallet, but thankfully did not have much other than money in it. 

Throwing a coin into the Trevi and making a wish...

 The BEST gelato outside of the Vatican

After Rome, we got on yet another train, this one heading first to Naples, where we planned to get some famous pizza during our layover, then to Sorrento for the night.  When we arrived in Naples, all excited for our pizza, we found ourselves in a city COVERED in trash.  It was raining, the trash was everywhere, there were bums everywhere-needless to say, Naples did not make a good impression.  However, we persevered in our quest for pizza, trudging through the rain with all of our bags.  Finally, we came to a little trattoria with room for all of us and our baggage, where we thought there would surely be pizza! We sat down, took off our wet jackets, looked at the menu, and found...NO pizza.  By this point, we were just hungry, so we ate there anyway, and it turned out to be a fantastic meal. 

Despite the happy ending, Naples has forever left a horrible impression on my mind, and I will not be returning any time soon.

 Beaten down by the rain and no pizza.                                    Cheered up by the delicious pasta.

We continued on to Sorrento on what we THOUGHT was going to be a train, but really turned out to be a glorified metro. We went to the platform to get on, and when it pulled up, the crowd made a mad dash for the doors, completely taking us by surprise.  We ran for it, barely got on with all of our bags, still soaking wet.  Nowhere to sit, packed in like sardines, the situation was just so ridiculous we couldn't do anything but laugh. Eventually, we made it to Sorrento, to our very nice hotel (where they upgraded us from a 4-person room to two 2-person rooms for free!)

 

The ride from Sorrento to Amalfi was terrifying.  Only the gorgeousness of the views made it worth it-otherwise it would have just been a solid hour and a half of heart-stopping twists and turns and sheer drop-offs into the ocean.  Once we got there though, it was a week of sun, amazing food, adorable small-town Italian-ness, and relaxation, with just a small amound of random day-long illness thrown in

.  We had an incredible time, despite the fact that the town pretty much shut down by 9 pm, and I would go back in a heartbeat. It was  a perfect place to unwind and enjoy Italy.

Our apartment was huge, airy, and CHEAP.  Six of us were there, and it was the perfect place for us to stay.  Right in the center of town (albeit a very small town), huge kitchen, plenty of sleeping room...we got an amazing deal when we rented it for the week.

We made dinner several of the nights

On the beach in the Medeterranean!

The cemetary...we hiked up the hill to it, and discovered a really cool cemetary built up on the mountain over generations.

I ended my break with a missed connecting train, a 100 euro cab ride to Nice at 1 am, and a reunion wiht my mom and sister in Arles, France...but it's late, I'm tired, and that is a story for another day.