Travel Break Part 2: Amsterdam and Brugge!

I think it’s about time that I update this thing! Sorry for the major cliff-hanger after part 1 of travel break. When I got back I had a 15 page history research paper due (not an easy task when the only 15 page paper I’ve ever written has been a lab report!), another paper due and a test all in the same week!  Plus, the internet has been down in my host family’s home for the past two weeks, so my online time is pretty much limited to when I’m at school. Anyways, enough excuses. Just a warning, this post might lack detail and be boring to read for a few reasons:

1. My family was with me, and since they are the primary readers of this blog, I feel entitled to slack a little bit since they could experience Europe themselves.
2. I got home two weeks ago, so the days are a bit of a blur now.
3. It’s the end of the semester. Like my homework, anything that requires concentration for more than 15 minutes just seems way too difficult of a task and I’m getting lazy. Plus, I think being abroad is an automatic diagnosis for ADD.

Anyways, back to travel break. I got back into Copenhagen around 9:00 pm on Saturday night and basically ran towards the Palace Hotel, dragging my suitcase with me through the city because I was so excited to see my family! My parents barely recognized me when I walked through the door, because I’ve changed so much since being abroad. Ha. Just kidding, I look exactly the same (except I’m in dire need of a haircut –which my mom felt the need to remind me of every day). My parents, sister, aunt and uncle all came to visit and it was so nice to just relax and have dinner with my family, something that I’ve missed a lot!

On Easter Sunday, my family was invited to Smorum to have lunch with my host family. To be honest, I was a little nervous about this. All I could think about was how awkward it was going to be if for some reason either family ended up not liking the other and we just sat in silence! It was also a strange feeling to be the common ground between two sets of total strangers from different parts of the world! I knew my worrying was for no reason though. We had a great lunch and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves. Plus, it gave my real parents a little ease of mind knowing that I was staying with a good family.  It was really fun listening to my family ask my host family all different questions about Danish culture and society and comparing it to the United States. I felt so cultured knowing about both sides, for once! The food was delicious as well and I could have eaten the entire dessert bowl (I will definitely need to get the recipe before I leave) myself if such a thing as manners didn’t exist.  I also think my parents were impressed (and surprised) at the ease at which I use the public transportation system every day. It was a total role reversal, being the one telling my parents what to do for once!  

Unfortunately, the few days my family stayed in Copenhagen were fairly similar to the weather conditions in Spain the past week, so I think they got a little jipped and didn’t get to experience Copenhagen for how nice it really is. I also noticed that my sense of cold, wind, and rain has totally changed –it is not cold unless it is below freezing, the wind is only a breeze if it’s less than 20 mph and rain should not stop any tourist activities, or be an excuse to use the metro. We took a tour through the Rosenborg Castle and saw the crown jewels (London’s are way better. Steph was not impressed), and also climbed to the top of the round tower for a pretty neat view of the city that probably would have been cooler had it not been raining and cloudy. I have to admit –it was so nice to eat real meals again too, instead of “grocery store lunches.” And although the Lenin Hostel was great, it was nice to sleep in a bed that didn’t feel like it was made of newspaper.  

On Tuesday, we headed to Amsterdam! Amsterdam is gorgeous, which I was not expecting at all because of its reputation (yes, we took a family stroll through the red-light district after dinner). There are so many canals running through the whole city and the buildings have a very distinct design to them. A lot of them are slanted in all different directions too and some even look like they could fall over any minute! It is also a haven for bicyclists. I thought Copenhagen was pretty big into the bike craze, but Amsterdam is insane! Everyone bikes. There are barely any cars on the streets and there are huge parking garages completely dedicated to housing bikes. It’s awesome…and also really scary if you don’t watch out! There were a few close calls, but all present members of the Esposito-Franeta clan survived Amsterdam without any collisions.

We did a lot of walking in Amsterdam and just took in all of the awesome sites, but my favorite was definitely the Anne Frank house. You wouldn’t believe how long the line is for it, every day of the week. It’s pretty mind boggling if you think about it. I doubt Anne Frank ever thought there would be hundreds of people waiting to just walk through the apartment she lived in just from reading her diary. Anyways, it was pretty sad but so interesting, especially after learning so much about it in my class.

A quick fun fact about Amsterdam: they are known for their cheeses, apparently. There are cheese shops all over (with so many free samples….it’s a study abroad students heaven) with all these interesting flavors and varieties of cheeses. My mom bought a pesto cheese that I hope is still unopened when I get home (hint, hint). They are also known for Stroop Waffles, which are basically just wafers coated in maple syrup and sugar that would put Aunt Jemima to shame. We also wandered across a few outdoor flea markets in the city, which are my favorite and a lot of fun to browse through, even though most of the stuff there is pretty much just going to build up dust in your closet. We also took a tour through the Gassan Diamond company headquarters in the city (apparently Amsterdam is also known for Gassan diamonds). Some of these diamonds were incredible, and it was really interesting to hear how they are made and learn about all of the different cuts and styles.

We also took a trip to the flower fields in Keukenhoff, Holland which is just a short drive outside of Amsterdam. We rented bikes for a few hours to take us on a route through the fields and along the coast. I realized where I get my horrific map reading skills (which have drastically improved though) from because no one in my family could interpret the map they gave us and after taking multiple wrong turns, we decided to just create our own route. We still saw the majority of the flowers though, which were so pretty! They had tulips in so many different colors and they had just bloomed, so they looked gorgeous…and smelled really good too. It was so fun riding our bikes around too. I know my Dad was totally embarrassed to be seen on that contraption (they looked like the bikes the Wicked Witch rides in the Wizard of Oz) riding at our slow pace every time we got passed by the intense road bikers that my Dad usually is one of. There was also this random old couple that was riding around that kept yelling at us in Dutch (they speak Dutch in the Netherlands!) that also provided some entertainment. After the bike ride, we walked through the gardens which were also beautiful. We probably took enough family pictures there to provide us with a lifetime’s supply of Christmas cards.

On Friday, we headed to Brugge, Belgium for the day. We left really early in the morning, but due to a train accident on the track we needed to take, we had to make three transfers and it ended up taking four hours to get to Brugge. Lucky for us, we didn’t realize that we were sitting in the first class car (they are only labeled with little numbers outside of the car: 1 or 2…very easy to miss!) and when the train worker came around to check tickets, he let us stay. Somehow, we managed to sit first class on the way home too. My Dad asked one of the train workers a question about which stop to get off of and they suggested we just sit in the first class cabin since all of the second class seats were full and it was dangerous to stand. It’s all about connections, clearly.

Anyways, Brugge is a quaint little town in Belgium. It is probably one of the prettiest towns I have ever been to. The architecture is amazing and it was a really nice place to just walk through. There isn’t really a whole lot to see or do though –we hit all of the “tourist spots” in about a half an hour. However, the trip was made worthwhile in the lone fact that Brugge is located in Belgium, and who hasn’t heard of Belgian chocolate (I really think my Mom planned this trip just for the chocolate…she was on a mission!)? There are “chocolatiers” all over the place –I counted at least nine on one street! This was honestly the best chocolate I have ever tasted in my whole life, and like the cheese shops in Amsterdam, all of the chocolate shops gave out free samples. I literally ate myself sick in chocolate, but it was totally worth it –being in Europe, I have become totally addicted to it. Sadly, (or maybe to some it might be impressive) my sugar binge did not end there. I figured I would never be in Belgium again, or at least not for a very long time, so I felt required to indulge in a Belgian waffle. It was a little crispier than expected, but delicious none the less…and even cured my stomach-ache, for the time being. Since Brugge is a pretty small place, and we (okay, I) had eaten to our heart’s delight, we headed back a little early and broke the cardinal Esposito family trip rule: you must stay in a place for longer than it takes to travel there and back combined.

On our last day in Amsterdam, we took a boat tour of the city, which was so nice…although a little rough for me because my stomach was still experiencing the post-Brugge effects. Afterwards, we spent the day walking around the city, window shopping and enjoying (finally) the nice weather. For our last dinner, we asked the hotel concierge for a place he recommended. I was really excited to hear that it was Italian, and my whole family had pretty high expectations –every other place they had recommended was awesome! This place though, ended up being one of the most bizarre dining experiences. First, they didn’t give us a menu until about 20 minutes after we sat down, so we weren’t sure if we were even going to get to order anything or just be served! Then, when the waitress finally came over to tell us about the menu and the specials, she only talked to my dad. She was literally kneeling down next to him, with her face about 6 inches away from his and didn’t look at anyone else at the table. It was so odd and I had to actively try to stop myself from laughing in the middle of it. Talk about an invasion of personal space! Our food came out about 2 hours later (they like to take their time in Europe, I realized). My dad and aunt both ordered lobster risotto, which we determined from looking at the table next to us, looked pretty darn good! When it came out though, there was a pile of risotto on the plate that was about the circumference of a tennis ball –I don’t even think it would fill a baby up. The waitress told us that there was a “problem in the kitchen,” but I think they just ran out of risotto, forgot to tell us and decided to split the dish into two! Then my pasta came out. It was close to 11:00 pm now, so my stomach was grumbling and ready to eat. My dish? Six tortellini. I think even the lady at Servo gives me a bigger scoop of pasta than that! Don’t get me wrong, this was excellent tortellini, but six was just not going to cut it! By this point though we were all just laughing and completely confused by the peculiarity of this restaurant and ready to get back to the hotel. So although our, “concluding dinner” did not go as expected, it was a pretty funny night and seemed to be fitting for the end to my travel break. Also, I realize that I spent probably 75% of this entry talking about food (what else is new?), but as my aunt even said herself, it is such a huge part of the European experience!

It’s almost May, which means that I have only three weeks left in my semester abroad. I can’t believe how quickly that came! I’ll try to update this in a few days so I don’t get too far behind before I leave for my final trip next weekend. I’m super excited, but I’m not going to tell you where I’m going because that will spoil the surprise and then you might not read! I will say though, that if I spent 75% of this blog talking about food, I’ll probably have to dedicate 99% for that entry…or so I’ve heard. Stay tuned! See everyone somewhat soon!

A Warm, Tropical Paradise: Travel break part 1.5 (BARCELONA!)

We set out Tuesday night for the next part of our Euro-trip: Barcelona. It's a good thing that we had an awesome time in Barcelona, because it sure was quite an experience getting there! Being penny pinchers, throughout the trip (and semester) we have been booking the most inexpensive flights and hostels we could find, which is how we ended up flying on RyanAir.  They might be cheap and my sense of security was questionable on board, but they should not be underestimated –they are a clever little airline and manage to compensate for money lost in airfare by gate-checking a majority of the passengers trying to carry on their luggage. Passengers are only allowed to carry on one thing (no extra handbag this time) and the bag must be a certain size and weigh no more than 10 kg. Most of the time, you can bypass these restrictions, but not on RyanAir. They will catch you. We knew it was going to be a tight squeeze for all of us. I ended up checking mine due to the large handle on my suitcase that would prevent it from fitting into the box they use to measure. Ryan Air: 1, Christine: 0. When we got to the check in counter, my friends put their bags on the scale for their fate to be determined. After seeing the weight, everyone frantically ripped open their suitcases in the middle of the airport, and started putting every article of clothing they could on themselves. Emily even bought the ultimate Madrid tourist bag in an airport shop that I ended up using as a carry on to hold any excess items. After several unsuccessful weigh in’s, we were all set! By this point, Caroline looked like she was about 9 months pregnant, with twins and Lexi, like she enjoyed those Danish pastries a little too much. She was wearing two belts, multiple shirts and a dress and had an umbrella hanging from her waist. I wore my purse on my back, underneath two jackets so that I could carry on the Madrid bag. Oh, and everybody had their jacket sleeves completely stuffed with clothes, which made walking difficult –and this was before security! It’s a good thing that RyanAir is a pretty unreliable airline and was delayed a good two hours, so we had plenty of time to make it to the gate at the other end of the airport. Our efforts paid off though, and we made it onto the plane (drenched in sweat) without anybody having to pay the dreadful 60 euros at the gate. When we immediately started stripping off the excess layers when we found our seats, we got a few funny looks from people and some applause from others. Well played, girls.

We arrived at our hostel at around 2:00 am, exhausted. All we could think about was falling asleep, even if in a crappy hostel. We were staying in the Lenin hostel (yes, as in Soviet Union, communist Lenin) and were welcomed by a nice picture of him immediately upon entering. Nothing gives off homey vibes like a big picture of Lenin in the foyer. The receptionist, who we nicknamed Strega Nona, did not speak English. We may have been half asleep, yet we somehow managed to check in completely in Spanish.  I guess we must have gotten good practice in Madrid. 

Unfortunately, the weather in Barcelona wasn’t ideal for spring break- cold and rainy until the day we left. All of us packed about one pair of jeans, and the rest of our wardrobe consisted of shorts, sundresses, and all of our cute spring outfits that hadn’t gotten any use in Denmark yet. We had been checking the weather daily for the week leading up to the trip, and even though all sites said 100% chance of showers, we were still convinced that it “never rains in Spain.” So, we were forced to tough it out. The first day, we did a bike tour through the city in the pouring rain. We were soaked from head to toe, and subsequently stunk up the hostel room with our damp clothes and wet Sperry’s. We also had the pleasure to take some refreshing cold showers at the Lenin hostel that turned off in the middle of shampooing (I literally showered with a dripping handheld faucet). Later that afternoon, we checked out Las Ramblas, which is a famous street in the city with lots of street vendors and a big outdoor market that sells great fruits and veggies, meat, fish, and chocolates –and cow tongues, hearts, and stomachs (how appetizing!). It wasn’t until a few days later (when the sun finally came out) that we realized the actual Las Ramblas was a lot bigger once all of the stands were set up! That night, we headed to one of the pubs in the city to watch some soccer matches  (Barcelona wasn’t playing, so we watched Madrid –huge rivalry!) and enjoy some Spanish sangria, which is delicious!

The second day in Barcelona was not any drier and we had to dodge in and out of shelter to hide from the rain showers. We were hoping to enjoy our lunch and have a picnic in the park, but the weather ruined this plan. The alternative? We ended up eating in the parking garage of an apartment complex. Later, we headed to Parque Guell, which is an amazing park designed by Antonio Guadi, who was a famous architect in Barcelona. Fun fact: Gaudi died by getting hit by a tram in Barcelona. I told you those things were dangerous! He also designed the church, Segrada Familia, Barcelona’s most visited tourist attraction, which we saw on the bike tour. Personally, I thought the park was way cooler. Most of his structures are wavy, and since you can’t put tile on a curved surface, he uses a lot of mosaic in his designs. Even though it was raining, we had a blast trekking to the top of the mountain and exploring the park.

As usual, this blog post would not be complete if I didn’t talk about the food for a little bit. Heading into our trip to Spain, I think it’s safe to say that all of us had the wrong idea about Spanish cuisine. Deep down, I think we all knew that Spanish and Mexican food are quite different from each other, but the only thing on our minds were tacos, burritos, and nachos. So, we found tacos, burritos, and nachos (I think they have a lot of Mexican restaurants there to cater to all of the Americans who come to Spain thinking that they will be eating Mexican food). We figured trying paella was pretty Spanish of us and I also got a few ham sandwiches for lunch, which is pretty popular in Spain apparently. I have to admit though, they made some pretty darn good burritos!

On our final day in Barcelona, the weather started to clear up a bit and we took advantage of the random periods of sunshine. We started the day with a tour of Gaudi’s Casa Batló, which was just a few blocks away from our hostel. It is such a cool building, and was totally worth the splurge! A family used to live there, and I think it would be a little strange for that to be your house but pretty neat too because it has the very typical Guadi-like designs throughout the house. I thought the coolest part of it was the stairwell. The house was a few stories high, and you could look all the way down as you were climbing. He also designed it so that when natural light hits the tiles, they appear different shades of blue as you climb towards the top. It’s pretty genius if you ask me!

We also took a walk along the water and checked out the port area of the city. It is absolutely beautiful – “a tropical paradise” as Kelly would say (although, it’s not exactly tropical…but close enough compared to Copenhagen!). It was so nice to see everyone outside eating ice cream and enjoying the weather. A few degrees warmer, and I would have put on my bathing suit and went for a swim! (The bathing suit never got used on the trip unfortunately…what a waste of luggage space!).

  We ended the day by hiking up to the top of Mount Montijuic. It is a beautiful area, and has a really pretty view of the city. I think Barcelona is such a cool city because you have all different types of terrain there. The city itself is so unique, and is surrounded by mountains on either side, but it also has a beautiful beach area down by the water. What more could you ask for? It’s also pretty interesting to me that no matter what city you travel to in Europe, they all have their own feel and are completely different. At the top of the mountain, we went on a mission to find the Olympic Stadium that was used in the 1992 Barcelona Games. We found a random track early on in our hike, and our first instinct was, “that’s it!” After looking a little closer though, I decided that it looked like an abandoned high school track and that it must have been a huge disappointment to make it all the way to the Olympics and have to run on track that even Neshaminy could trump. A little while later on our walk, we found the real Olympic arena. The area was huge and the decorations and fountains leading up to it are awesome. The stadium is still used today for a lot of concerts and sports events. We even came across a group of crazy tweens who were celebrating the one year anniversary of Justin Beiber performing in Barcelona. Wow. That night, we had a “grocery store” dinner, and ate it while watching the Magic Fountain of Montijuic. The Magic Fountain is an enormous fountain in front of the palace.

Every few nights, they have a water show complete with background music. . It wasn’t dark yet, so we didn’t get to see the water change colors, but it was still pretty cool…plus, it was free! We got a lot of funny looks from people as we ate and a group of girls was even laughing at us. We thought picnicking as we watched the show was totally normal, but I guess not in Spain! It was a great end to an amazing trip. Later, we even got a chance to meet up with some other Gettysburg friends who had just arrived in Barcelona that evening as a stop on their travel break.

I wish I could have stayed a little longer in Barcelona and explored the surrounding areas. I think it is my favorite city that I have been to so far. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend you go. My friends left early in the morning on Saturday to head to their next destination. I had a flight much later in the day back to Copenhagen to meet up with my family for the second week of travel break. I went for a run to kill some time before I had to get to the airport, and of course the weather was absolutely gorgeous!  As for now, I think I need to get back to writing my paper that I’ve been procrastinating on for the past month. I’ll update with the second week as soon as I can! Hope all is well in the States. I miss everyone!

Vamos a la Playa...Travel Break (Week One, Part One): MADRID

Hola amigos! Me llamo Cristina y soy de Espana! I spent last week in Spain and it was so much fun! I can’t believe week one of travel break is officially over. Which means that there is only a few weeks left of the semester (!!!) Traveling throughout Europe with my friends really was a memorable experience and will probably remain one of the highlights of this semester. Since I’ve been using my blog as basically my own public journal to remember this trip, I’m going to split travel break up into a few different posts for your own good. I am going to try my best to be concise though, because I'm still traveling right now and when I get home, I'll be buried in homework! We (myself, Mikaela, Kelly, Laura, Caroline, Lexi and Emily) left for Madrid on Saturday afternoon after spending the morning twiddling our thumbs in excitement. All of us packed in a carry on (props to Laura who fit it all in just a backpack) so we knew the trip was sure to be interesting just by the sheer fact that we could only take about a quarter of the things we actually wanted to take.

After taking multiple wrong turns, we finally found our hostel once we arrived in Madrid. The staircase leading up to the hostel looked like an abandoned construction site, but Hostel Barbiara turned out to not be too bad.  Madrid lived up to its reputation immediately –there was a party on the street every night, and we could hear every bit of it from our room directly above. Nevertheless, we got to an early start the next morning. We started our tour of the city at El Rastro, which is the largest outdoor market in Europe. It is also infamous for pick-pocketing. A few of us wore money bags under our shirts for extra security, which is why I look a few months pregnant in every picture. We figured not having our money stolen was worth the nerd alert. We all found some great deals at the market. I managed to barter a little bit with one vendor and got a new scarf for only 1.50 euros! I also bought a pair of earrings, but when I took them out a few days later, I realized they were actually the ugliest things I have ever seen. I had heard that they sell a lot of turquoise in Spain, so I guess the excitement of the day made me buy the first blue piece of jewelry I saw. Don’t ask to see them because I am too embarrassed to show them to you. Good thing they were cheap! We also explored a lot of other places throughout the city. It is a really cool city and is kind of reminiscent of New York City. We spent the afternoon in El Retiro Park, which is beautiful! There is a nice lake in the middle of it with people renting row boats and so many green spaces to just chill out and spend the day. We took advantage of the sun and tried to get some color on our translucent skin as we enjoyed a bottle of wine that cost less than a bottle of water.

Before dinner (they don’t eat until about 10 pm in Spain!), we went to a bull fight in the Plaza Toros de las Ventas. We were all really excited for it, and it was interesting to see what other cultures think of as entertainment. The first time the fighter killed the bull we were a little taken aback. It was gruesome, but everyone around us was cheering and acting like it was totally casual. Six bulls later, it was still a little disturbing to us, so we ended up guessing what time the bull would collapse because the show seemed to be on a pretty predictable schedule (about 20 minutes per bull).

The next day, we decided to take one of the free walking tours of Madrid offered by the hostel (somehow we got lucky and literally stumbled upon the group in the middle of the city). Our tour guide Harriet was pretty awesome (we oddly enough, saw her at the metro station in Barcelona a few days later and called out to her from across the platform…I highly doubt she remembered us, so we probably just seemed crazy), and we got to see all of the important sides of the city including the Plaza Mayor, Madrid Cathedral, Plaza de Cibeles, and the Palacio Real. My lucky streak ended soon after that though when a bird pooped on me in the middle of the tour.

The tour lasted about three hours, so we were pretty tired of walking afterwards, but were determined to see as much as we could in a limited amount of time. Our next stop was to ride the Teleferico cable car, which is basically a gondola ride that takes you to the top of a hill and supposedly gives you a really awesome view of the city. Being on a pretty tight budget, we decided to not buy the roundtrip ticket to the top. We figured that since a one-way option was provided, there had to be a way to walk back down. After we paid, we were handed a piece of receipt paper, so Laura, Lexi and I immediately walked to the trashcan and threw it away. Turns out our “receipt” was actually our ticket. We tried explaining this to the ticket collector, but our Spanish wasn’t sophisticated enough to get our point across. Again, being cheap college kids we marched right back to the trashcan, took off the lid, and literally started digging through it without even thinking about how ridiculous we must have appeared. When we finally looked up (with only 2 tickets found), both the rest of our group and the workers were all staring at us hysterically laughing. This went on for a good five minutes before the ticket guy just let us through. I think he just felt bad for how pathetic the situation was. Anyways, once we got on the cable car, we quickly realized that hiking down might not be such an easy task considering the lift took us over not only a river, but a highway as well. Apparently, this wasn’t a big enough obstacle for us though because once we reached the top (the view was a little disappointing) we figured the only way to make the trip worth it was to find our own way back down. It was only about 2 kilometers back to the start, but it took us a good two hours to get back down. We did a bit of off-roading and traversed through the woods for awhile, stopping every couple of minutes to take a funny picture or climb some of the trees. My unlucky streak continued when I tripped up a rise (it couldn’t even be called a hill), completely ate it and then proceeded to break out in hives from the hay. Somehow we managed to find a path over the river and highway, follow directions completely in Spanish and find a metro station to get us back into the main city. Now that is three euros wisely spent!

We were all completely spent and could barely walk another step by the time we got to a familiar place again. I’m pretty sure we had traversed a good 15 miles (seriously, though) by this point. We forced ourselves to take advantage of free admission into the Reina Sophia museum to get our cultural experience in for the day. I think we all tried our best to act interested, but I’m pretty sure our facial expressions made it pretty obvious that we were faking it. We dropped out one by one, and I think the longest survivors only lasted about 15 minutes. The night ended indulging in some traditional Spanish Paella (can’t say I’m a huge fan…I’ll stick with the potato omelets!).

The next day, we only had a few hours left in Madrid before heading to our next stop. We did some browsing through the shops along the Gran Via (the main street of Madrid) and had a nice picnic in El Retiro Park, where I was pooped on a second time by a bird. Of all the places he could have picked…what are the chances!? The weather began to turn for the worse at this point. We got stuck in the first of many rainstorms, so we took cover in the Prado museum (free entrance for students!) and even managed to last a little longer in this one!