Málaga

Last weekend was a holiday weekend in most of Spain for Father´s Day. So, Emily (my coworker) and I went to Málaga. We stayed at the Oasis Hostel which is another in a branch of hostels one of which I stayed at it Granada and loved. We took a six hour bus ride to get there, but the hostel was super modern and fun and had a great environment. We, however, had a crazy roommate at the hostel. He was an Englishman and came in the first night at 6 o´clock. Well, I guess that´s really morning, and he was swearing and talking to himself; he turned the lights on for about 20 minutes and was really angry and talking to himself about something he couldn´t find. Emily and I were both just laying there pretending to be sound asleep, but really I had to go to the bathroom super bad and was waiting for him to finally get in bed and fall asleep. The next morning we talked to our other roommate about the encounter and he was just as freaked out as us and was hoping he wouldn´t have to pull out the white knight act to save us females. Needless to say, we avoided that guy the rest of the weekend.
We got up early on Saturday and went to a nice beach outside of Málaga in a town called Fuengirola. We found out about this beach from my shoe saleswoman. Now, before this year, I never would have considered any one person my shoe salesperson, but I´ve already bought three pairs of shoes from her tiny little shop. They´ve got great shoes for cheap prices and the woman who runs it is from Uruguay and speaks amazing English. I know she´s an exceptional salewoman because she convinced me to buy this pair of shoes that I love but they weren´t even in my size. She explained to me how to take them home and stretch them out. It worked! She´s awesome. Anyways, she told us she lived in that area for 5 years so she knew right where to send us. We spent the whole day in the sun on the beach, and had an awesome lunch at one of the beachside restaurants.

It was fun to go to dinner that night and hang out with different people from the hostel. It´s always fun to meet cool people at the hostels. I´m hoping my trip to Italy next week will be pleasant where hostels are concerned. On Sunday, we went on a walking tour of the city which was good because without guidance we would have had absolutely no motivation to see the sights when the beach is so close by and tempting. Our tour guide, however, was a Canadian girl who´d been living in Málaga for two and a half years, yet somehow she was incapable of pronouncing anything in Spanish properly. She couldn´t even say the name of the city properly. How is that possible? How can you live in the same city two and a half years and not know what its called? Well, besides that the tour was fine as far as seeing the sights go. The cathedral (of course because we´re in Spain) was beautiful and the picture to the left is of the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater that was uncovered there. The Alcazaba is above the amphitheater and was a fortress for the Moorish castle that´s further up the hill.  We opted out of entering the main attractions because we wanted to sunbathe and sleep on the beach. But, the outsides were really awesome and the historical portion of town was really well kept. On, Monday we did a bit of light shopping before getting back on the bus for six hours. It's really not bad to take the buses in Spain because they're very affordable and they play movies. 



This is the last week of school before Semana Santa, aka Spring Break, when I will be spending 9 days in Italy traveling through Rome, Pisa, and Florence. I'm pretty sure I'll be going it alone, but I've got plans for keeping myself from going crazy inside of my own head for too long. I'll keep you updated on that trip. I've already got Rick Steve's audioguides downloaded to my iPod!

I Found You Miss New Bud-apest!

This past weekend, I went with Emily, who works with me at the school, and 13 of her friends to Hungary. It was a really short weekend, but we took advantage of the time we were there.  We all stayed in one large room in a hostel that was absolutely nasty. A teacher at school taught me the word ¨cutre¨ today and translated it means ¨cheap and nasty¨ which is the best description of this place, but for two nights and a total of 13€, I can handle just about anything.  We spent all morning Saturday walking around. We first went to the marketplace which was fun and had some breakfast there.  There was a church built into a cave in the side of the mountain which was pretty neat to see. It had been restored from its original after it was shut down during the Communist reign.  There was a trail leading up the mountain so we started walking because we heard there was a great view higher up. What I didn´t realize when we started was that we would, in fact, be climbing an entire mountain.  However strongly my gluteals burned, it was worth it because we got such an incredible view. After our morning hike, we strolled along the Danube toward the Buda Palace which is not like Buda Buda the fat guy, but in reference to when the city of Budapest used to be made up of the two separate cities of Buda and Pest. The Parliament building was amazing and we saw it from across the Danube.
 The architecture of the city was breathtaking and luckily gave more of the impression from the Imperial days than the communist ones. We didn´t go into many historical buildings because of the time constraint, but everything was so gorgeous from outside, we didn´t really care.  We ate a very Spanish lunch; meaning, we had lunch at about 3:30 and it lasted for about an hour and a half, but after walking for so many hours it was nice to relax and we found a some great sit down restaurants for cheap prices. It took awhile to get used to the currency because for example when I exchanged 60€, I got 15,000 forints. We ended up figuring about a 300-1 comparison which messes with your head for awhile.  The evening we spent at the Thermal Baths which was so much fun.  It consisted of something like 15 pools which are really giant hot tubs inside and out. One of them had jets that made a whirlpool, and we played in it like little kids for hours.  That was probably the most fun part! Again, being with Spaniards, we ate at a late time for dinner. I think we finished at about 12:30 at night of course. But, it was good to spend a lot of time over a meal because when you´re traveling alone, it´s a bit awkward to spend a lot of time eating. On Sunday, we had Hungarian style breakfasts which was sausage with scrambled eggs and cheese and loaded with onions. We spent some more time walking around and seeing churches and sculptures and the pretty things of the city.  Our flight was at four, and we hadn´t slept much over the weekend so it´s a good thing we didn´t take off much later or I might not have made it. 
It was a nice change to go on a trip with a bunch of people after a couple of solo trips. This weekend, Emily and I are going to Malaga in the south to soak up the sun so it´s going to be a good couple of weekends. Grampa is in the hospital so keep praying! Thanks!