pisa

Italia, here I am! I took a bus from the airport to the city center and decided to chill around there for a little while to visit the tower and a little of the city. I started walking around but keeping in mind that my intuition about directions and knowing where I am are very close to zero, I decided to ask a nice lady where the fuck I was going and where the tower was. She said we were kind of far and offered to give me a ride, to which I was hesitant because I didn’t know her at all but she seemed normal so I said, what the hell!, sure. I was then blindfolded by her gang and taken to a dungeon and… nah, she brought me right to the tower! What a nice lady, grazie! So I finally got to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, not bad. I think it may be smaller than I had expected but it was pretty cool. I wonder if it will ever fall over? Its situated in a little plaza with some other white buildings that were pretty. In that same plaza, there are a bunch of little vendors, a lot of which had very pretty decorated Carnaval masks with all different colors, feathers, sparkles, designs. I bought a purple feather one for Astrid which I knew was gonna be a bitch to carry around but I felt it was worth it. Since goba had told me that this was basically all there was to see in Pisa, I made my way to the train station and missed my train by less than 10 seconds. I hopped on the next one though and was definitely happy to sleep for a half hour more since I had gotten no sleep.

quickie in barcelona

Great fucking time even though I was only there for one night because I got to see carly! Made my flight over there alive, although once I arrived, it didn’t seem so sure I would make it alright. After approximately 17 seconds of sitting down on a park bench where I will be waiting carly for the next half hour, this sketchy guy with half his teeth and obviously not from Barcelona comes up to me and goes, ‘hey you wanna smoke?’. I was like, uh ya, if you weren’t the one askng me, or more politely said, no thanks. So he starts walking away and back to his gang of outlaws. They all start scheming and I keep getting random older guys and people from his crowd circling around me. At this point, im like ok, uh, no, im not about to get fucking jumped. The original guy that approached me comes over and sits down on the bench next to me with some friends and is like hey, come over, we are cool, we are good people. Ya thanks, not really. Later on, hes like ‘there are a lot of thieves’. Im like, thanks for pointing that out , you guys didn’t look sketchy enough… and he literally pushes my possibly believing in him as a good person by saying. ‘oh hey, if you want to go smoke or get a drink, I can watch your stuff’. … oh really? Thanks so much! Haha are you serious? No way dude. At this point, I feel as though swarms of his people are watching me, circling me, talking about the best possible way to grab my shit and rape me in the back corner. Awkward. Thankfully, carly calls! My savior! she’s here! We half run to each other because her ankle is about the size of a football. Im almost sad to see she doesn’t have her cane, which she has apparently been hopping around Barcelona with. She explains that she had been trying to catch the metro so she jumped down four stairs and rolled her ankle. The result was an enormous, black, blue, and purple growth on where her ankle was supposed to be, and the acquirement of a cane haha. Priceless. It was so great to finally be reunied with her! We start walking down the metro steps when a real dirty drunk guy with a bike follows us, smiling with his half tooth grin and sketchy eyes. He then starts circling us with his bike and chants ‘sex, sex, sex’. Like, seriously? WHERE AM I? WHAT IS THIS PLACE? My first impression of barcelona now consists of trying to get robbed by some gang and getting eye raped by some homeless drunk. And why, why does no one here have teeth? I can only hope the rest of Barcelona has more to offer! We catch the ultimately last metro ride back to carlys house with no more major mishaps other than another sketch raising his eyebrows wildly and repeatedly at us as the metro drives away. I later learned from one of carly’s Barcelona books that there is still a place in the city where girl prostitutes with dicks walk the streets looking for customers (normal)- I bet I was near that fucking street earlier. ‘prostitution is the oldest profession on earth”- Barney from ‘How I met your mother’, a great show Al introduced me to. Anyways, we finally make it back alive to carly’s dorm, a room with two beds, a small kitchen, and a bathroom. I automatically know which side is carlys- the one with all the books neatly stacked, clothes put away, and the bed made… oh wait, no, I meant the exact opposite of that. We get ready to go out and go to this bar called Dow Jones, yes, like the stock market. It’s actually a really interesting concept- drinks are worth a certain price but at times, the stock market crashes or rises and drinks change price. And surprise surprise, this place actually had legit drinks! Tequila sunrise and sex on the beach and anything my little heart would desire! We got ourselves some drinks and I went to meet some of her friends. I met romy, a girl that had spent last semester in sevilla so she was so excited to talk to me about her time there. I met some people that knew Kevin from my program in sevilla back home from school. Small world. After chilling at this bar for a little while, carly and I set out to go dancing! (typical). The cab driver didn’t know what we were talking about so he dropped us off somewhere else, at this club called Bikini. To get in was some work. The guys at the first entrance were debating whether carly would be allowed to go in since she was wearing a flip flop on the foot that was bandaged up. The second entrance guy said we had to pay, and frankly, I was having none of that, so I told him it was my only night here, please, please, etc. he finally let us in for free, but he told me I had to work on my negotiating skills, especially if I was studying business… good to know. Bikini was an entertaining time but probably wouldn’t go there again- first, it was all guys, which I wouldn’t have minded so much if second, they weren’t all so creepy. All of them would continuously grab carly and mines hands and try to pull us to them. Gets tiring after a while. I did get a sweet score from that place though- full bottle of vodka with two sips taken out of it. Pocketed that, and we left. Got another cab home- that’s one thing that is annoying about Barcelona is that you have to take cabs everywhere and they get expensive. Metro closes down at night and they have sevici bikes but they are only for Barcelona residents. Since it was 4, 5 or 6 ish, I tucked carly in and just stayed up until the time that I had to get on my bus to get to the girona airport, which was so convenient because the bus station is literally around the corner of carlys dorm. From there, I was glad to take a little nap on my plane heading over to Pisa, Italy!

granada

After a week of sevilla partying, we are on the road again going to Granada. As I just learned today, and will for the rest of my life, I just don’t learn. As with any other time that allyson and I have had to catch the bus, today was no different, and we decided it appropriate to leave the house at the time the bus was supposed to leave. The walk isn’t too long but when youre carrying a bag of heavy shit and walking fast, its kind of a bitch. So naturally, you say, well ‘next time’ we will know NOT to do this and we will leave earlier because we now know how miserable this brisk walk is. So, keeping this is mind this morning, at 9, when we should have been leaving, we went upstairs and sat ourselves down for a bowl of cereal… oh wait, sorry I just started talking about this morning, like 3 weeks later. Ok so I will come back to that in another post. Anyways, you get the point, it sucked but either way, we made it on the bus. And actually waited on the bus for 15 minutes before it left, so we might as well have walked calmly. Granada is probably a three hour bus ride, of which I took full advantage to catch up on some Zs. Getting to Granada is all going through winding roads in the mountains- definitely good for road tripping and seeing some pretty stuff. Ive probably most definitely mentioned this before but road tripping here is soo much nicer than in America; its not just all highways and rocks and that’s it. You really get a sweet view of all the land and olive trees and pretty sunsets and cool trees. Its nice. Somehow just made me think of that time I saw two cows fucking each other in france- that was wild. But that’s another story. So we get to Granada. First stop: hotel, which is real nice, and all the way at the top of the city. API has been real good about that type of stuff- we always get put into 4 star hotels, which now that I think of it isn’t entirely necessary at all since I think I spent about 5 hours total in our room, and I would actually much rather sleep in a 2-3 star hotel and get 500 bucks back in my pocket for my alcohol that week.. alright, make it two weeks. In the hotel lobby, I saw a flyer for Arabian baths that were real cheap so allyson and I book a couples massage and bath for later that day- so exciting. Right away, allyson, Kevin, eric, Chelsea, adam, 2 spanish girls, and I left the hotel to go explore Granada. We start descending down the hill and theres lots of little spots where we can get a sick view of the whole city on the bottom. There was so much cool graffiti in Granada too. I have always thought of graffiti as art, but I definitely prefer the really sick art graffiti that is actually drawings and paintings rather than people who just sign their name 37 times on the same wall. And there was some sick shit in Granada- real graffiti art. We found a little restaurant that did drinks and tapas so we stopped in- got tinto verano (basially wine and a sprite ish type thing, they serve it everywhere and its delicious!), and as a group, we got this couscous with peppers dish (not that great), croquetas (my favorite), shrimp, sausage, and bread. We stayed there for too long so we missed the beginning of the walking tour for Granada but met them halfway downtown- we went into a cathedral that had the tombs of Isabella and Ferdinand, I think it was. It was a pretty simple church but the outside was real pretty. Granada has sweet architecture and culture because it was the last region to be under muslim control so it has all the repetitive, symmetrical type of architecture which is real sweet looking. Allyson and I went through this one alleyway that had soo many little stores and they were all hippie-ish and chill and Buddha-ish even with all sweet decorations and colors and, yeah, I wish I could have bought that whole street. We had a chocolate crepe and then we headed to our Arabian baths appointment. The place was cool- it was in an old caves type setting. There were 7 pools, one that was freezing cold, and the other six were different temperatures ranging from warm to real hot. They also all differed in size and depth. We were given one hour to chill and switch between all these pools. They served caramels and tea too in one of the nice colored tiled rooms. Then, it was time for our massage, yes! We got to choose between back or legs, to which I chose back, and it felt so great, except it only lasted 15 minutes! It was an interesting type of massage though- it wasn’t necessarily hard at all which I usually like, but it seemed like my massager’s fingers always went right into the muscles or along them that they made them move and took out the knots, idk. We chilled in the pools more after that too. It was so relaxing and we stayed warm for many hours afterwards. With all our tensions melted away, we made our way back to the hotel for dinner which was buffet style and had really good paella, a typical Spanish dish ive been meaning to try, which its base is rice and you can add vegetables and meat to it.
We then all headed out as a group to the caves to go see a flamenco show, another typical Spanish activity id been dying to see. We were seated in a long narrow room with all the chairs placed alongside the walls. At one side of the room were all the singers and guitar and drum players and then the dancers would go up and down the narrow hallway dancing in between us. They all had different dresses on with different colors and patterns, and flowers in their hair. It was a little different than I had expected- it is a lot more about intensive footwork than anything else. It made me think of tap dancing. And the singing is very unique. Towards the end, a guy came in, who was super hot and super in shape, and super good at dancing, and, marry me? At times two women danced together and at the end, a couple danced together. Apparently, one of the girls was only fifteen and had started at age 3, but they all looked so much older so it was crazy for us to know that. After the show, we went out looking for places to drink. A lot of bars we came across were not yet open for the night but then we came to a plaza that opened to a couple of bars and a bunch of people with drink and entrance tickets trying to lure you to their club. Before heading into a bar, we were lucky enough to see people training for semana santa. It was a group of guys carrying a huge load topped with cement- they would walk slowly, all in unison, and stop at every street corner. That thing must have been damn heavy just like the semana santa floats, so that was pretty interesting. The first bar we went into wasn’t very busy at all but we decided to start the party early. All of a sudden, Michael Jackson walks in and starts showing off his moves- well, not the real MJ but his dance competition. After a couple more drinks and song requests, I actually got to meet this character because he told me that his brother, cleverly dressed in a Duffman (from the simpsons) costume, was getting married and he was celebrating his bachelor’s party. Im not sure if it’s the same deal all over Europe, but definitely in Belgium, france, spain, and italy, whenever guys or girls are getting married, they have a bachelor’s party out on the town and the bride/groom to be has to get dressed up. Ive seen a bunch of people walking around like that. This guy was no different. He requested allyson and I write down our phone numbers to which al wrote 123-sex-sex. We never got a call from them- maybe they lost our numbers… MJ was cute but got kinda creepy kinda quickly. I wasn’t ready for a blatant makeout show for the whole bar yet so I ducked out and went back to my group which happened to be standing approximately 1.7 feet away. Then, on my way to the bathroom, he caught and my arm and was like ‘you disappeared’ to which I said Im going to the bathroom. He takes this as an open invitation, follows me up the stairs, and tries to come in with me. Uh, no thank you. Shortly thereafter, we leave that bar and make our way to a different bar where I was able to get everyone free sangria, yay! We then headed over to this what was supposed to be a great bar/club right near the caves where we saw the flamenco. When we got there, we were told entrance fee was 8 euros to which we said fuck that. So allyson and I started walking away back towards the hotel. On our way back, I stopped to pet a dog, obviously, and we started talking to two guys. They said they were going to that club we were just wanting to get into, and I exclaimed we had just been there but that we hadnt wanted to pay. They, of course, offered to get us in, how nice. So we climbed all the way back up that wretched hill and they paid for us. We immediately dipped into the bathroom, and when we came out, we weaved in through all the caves in the bottom floor, where we legit found zero people and I thought, ‘thank god I didn’t pay for this shit, nobody is here!’. But then we headed upstairs without bothering to look for the guys and there was for sure a party up there. It had a whole inside club and outer patio that had a sweet view. We found all our friends from API and started raging. Not long after, two extremely angry guys start yelling at me saying they aren’t dumb and aren’t just going to buy a ticket in for American girls who think they are retarded because they disappear right after, etc, etc. with some expertise, I calm them down explaining we didn’t see them so we went upstairs and im so sorry, blah, blah, blah. He asks for the ticket back which I learned 4 seconds before that it was actually a free drink ticket as well as an entrance ticket so I explained I had accidentally thrown it out in the bathroom because I didn’t know. Then, I of course went to the downstairs bar, pulled out my ticket from my pocket and got myself a free drink. Ruthless. The night was really fun and walking back to the hotel late that night didn’t seem so bad since we were singing like crazy fools. Im sure the sleeping town appreciated it.
Next morning, allyson and woke up late and got the breakfast door closed on us. There were still so many people in there and the guy wouldn’t let us in and was watching the door like a hawk, bastard. Everyone said it was delicious with chocolate croissants and everything. We then all headed out to go explore the Alhambra. Its real fucking big and its more commonly referred to as ‘patios with a palace around it’ or something like that because its all patios and wide open spaces with walls around it rather than a legit palace. Its all really pretty, and its actually all white even thought it used to be all colored but because of the sun and erosion and whatnot it, it all turned to white. It still looks gorgeous though with so much detail. Only thing that was lame was that the main fountain piece with the lions was gone and in restoration and has been for the past 5 years or something and will be for the next probably 10 years. But still, real awesome. The Alhambra claimed one of my rings as hers also since I fucking lost it. It had a ton of real cool looking gardens though. After exploring this immense area, allyson and I walked out for lunch. She was absolutely set out for pasta. We found this little restaurant that was a good deal for a menu- it was all real good, except that as for dessert, I asked for fruit, expecting a fruit cup with fresh fruit and instead got an apple with a knife. Oh hey, thanks, I coulda got that on my own…
Bus back to sevilla…

flying kites

God daym! I haven’t written in this thing in damn long, huh? Well, I sure do have a lot to say. Lets start at the beginning.

Going back about 2-3 weeks.
High as balls adventure with allyson, matt, and Kayla.
We decide to park ourselves right at the inside entrance of the Parque de Maria Luisa (which I now realize may not have been the smartest idea since just this morning I saw a cop on his motorcycle doing rounds right where we had been sitting. Oops. Other side note on cops on motorcycle- one night allyson and I were bike riding slightly drunk and one of them was following us right along side us reallyyyy creepily). Anways, back to smoking our joints. Mhmm, I miss blunts. So naturally, we start talking about the most obscene and hilarious topics. Somehow got on the important question of what it would be like if there were a million cigarette butts right where we were. Being the germophobe that she is (she always carries hand sanitizer with her and doesn’t want to touch the metro bars), allyson comments, “oh my god, imagine all the germs that would be on you from their mouths! You would be so wet!” hahahah you would directly take that towards germs. Classic. Next, comes Thomas Edison. Kayla claims she did a report on him once and he was deaf and it had something to do with a train conductor. After debating for some time, she decides to look it up on her phone and lo and behold, she was right! For all you who don’t know, Thomas Edison had early middle ear problems due to infections and then grew completely deaf when a train conductor hit him in the ear. My next question was, the train conductor as in the person or as in the electricity conductor, but I guess that doesn’t make any sense, which is exactly why I kept it to myself, until allyson asked the same thing. Haha. Great minds think alike. We sit on the bench and enjoy the ten minutes of sunshine before the storm. Matt comments on how his pants are ripped. Very unfortunate. Him and allyson have a very elaborate conversation on what the quick fixes are, how it bothers him, what he can do to fix it later, etc, etc… to which all of a sudden, I blurt out ‘.. omg you guys have been talking about a pants rip for so long! But im sorry your pants are ripped!’ it does not sound funny at allll on paper but allyson for some reason found that hilarious and kept repeating ‘im sorry your pants are ripped’ for the rest of the night.
We decided it was time to head over to our next portion of our adventure- the movie, avatar. Oh yes, that’s the one Kayla has already seen 3 times, haha. Because Kayla doesn’t have a bike, she shares one with matt by balancing on the seat and matt sits up, and then allyson and I each have our own bike. We go, and we ride fast, real fast, and we have no respect for any of the typical rules of the road, but then again, neither does anyone in spain. There was for sure a close call at one point though when we charged through a construction point on a busy street going in the opposite direction of traffic with a huge fucking truck coming our way! We finally, thank god, made it to the nervion mall alive, where the theater is. And just in time too! Because about 3 minutes after we got in line, there was the biggest downpour ever! Matt and I get in line for tickets and Kayla and allyson get in line for candy. Matt and I sadly learn tickets are sold out for that time, and as we go to relay the bad news, Kayla and allyson round the corner each with two huge bags filled with candy- sour, chocolate, hard, soft, whatever you wanted. They were like two little kids on Halloween about to devour all their treasures from the night. After telling them it’s a fail, obviously, we head into the mall to discover what it has to offer. We find a carousel and fake horse to ride, oh joy! While we all wonder whether that carousel has an age limit, or at least I do, we watch a 3 year old ride the horse like it’s a bucking bronco- one hand and everything, quite impressive I must say. We go into cien mondatitos, which is about 23 times larger than the one in the center, to get something to eat, oh right, on top of that candy. Some funny moments there- allyson strolls up to the counter about to demand the food she hasn’t even ordered yet, of course.
We then leave to go see avatar, which I basically sleep through, but I justify it because I have already seen it, so its ok! I needed to nap after smoking anyways. Considering its past midnight by then on a Sunday with nothing done for school yet, not that that even matters and anything ever gets done, we part ways til our next toke.


Another day, allyson, Kayla, matt, and his two friends, Stephen Harvey and kyle, and I went to Tigris, the hookah bar right around the corner from us. Its pretty legit- has some sweet decorations, good pillows, cool lighting, big hookahs, and a nice bartender! We got two rounds of hookah- melon and then tutti-frutti, very yummy. I loooveee hookah. Oh, I forgot to mention our most interesting topic of conversation- butt sex. ‘I mean I didn’t receive it, if that’s what you mean’-kyle. Hahaha. Oh man. I think Stephen was shocked way past his comfort levels, entertainingly enough. After hours of chillin, Kayla and I decide its ‘time to dance! I wanna dance!’ but we all decide to smoke a joint, from which we get pretty fucked and by the time we get to the club, are so retarded our dancing has turned into stumbling swaying and ignoring creepy advances from guys, and our conversations have turned into mutters and jumbles of words. we, naturally, go to the bar to get another drink, which of course they have run out of orange juice or juice in general. Seriously, the bars here could not be any less prepared! HAHHAHA I just remembered something!! ‘ive got some business to take care of.’ We ran into Kaylas friend from the other night, a supposed businessman who wouldn’t reveal his nature of business so clearly, we would assume drugs. He was at Buddha which is another reason why we went- to go find him, so Kayla calls him. At the bar, waiting for our drinks, he comes right up and blurts this, to which Kayla is slightly horrified because she remembers him as much younger and better looking and not as awkward and weird, ha. Just goes to prove what a couple drinks will do to you, huh. We decide to sit down for a little cause all of a sudden Kayla is super fucked and then just leave, being too high and dumb to interact at all in any sort of appropriate manner. I remember getting home and being upset I didn’t get to dance more, which is however probably good because I sure as hell know dancing like Elaine in Seinfeld is much worse than not dancing at all.
Oh and yes, during our epic fail at Buddha, allyson had an epic fail of her own. She graciously broke a chair at the Hamburgeuseria and fell straight on her ass, high as fuck. One of the funniest texts ive ever received and I think I laughed for 8 straight minutes when I read it. Only wish I had been there. Priceless.