So, finally access to a computer. Nor for long though so this is going to be brief, there are people waiting to use the internet as well so I don't want to monopolize the computer.
I have been in Istanbul and Edirne both in Turkey. Turkey was amazing and I have lots of really good stories that I can't really do justice in this short time. Maybe I will have to continue blogging once I return home to finish. Not the least of which included flagging a bus down from the side of the highway. This was not unusual though, apparently this is the way people usually board buses in Turkey outside of main cities... who knew.
I was also in Plovdiv, Bulgaria for two days and I am now in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Plovdiv was awesome and Rachael and I recieved and incredibly warm welcom from everyone in Bulgaria. Actually during our whole trip everyone has been incredibly friendly and helpful and more than happy to help us on our way. Even when we don't ask for directions people offer to help us on our way, and we've even had someone walk with us 10 minutes to show us an out of the way address we wanted to find.
Plovdiv was amazing, albeit a little beat up. The sidewalks and roads were incredibly uneven to the point where I tripped multiple times over several minutes. Most of the houses in the downtown area were well maintained though. That being said, there were also lots of soviet/yugolav era buildings that are so ugly and eyesore like they are almost beautiful.
I haven't had the chance to see much of sofia but so far it has impressed me, though it is rather unconvential. The whole town kind of looks like a low income area in north america. Everything is quite beat up and at points decrepit.
Next locations on the agenda include Skopje (pronounced skopie), the macedonian capital. We are departing at 4pm this afternoon on a bus and will be staying there this evening and tomorrow morning before we head to Lake Orhid. Lake Orhid is meant to be the most beautiful place in Macedonia so we are going to take the opportunity to relax and unwind before we tackle Albania. We also need to do laundry pretty badly... travelling hits clothes pretty hard.
Also, Albania is going to be quite and experience as far as I understand. According to our guide book the government has not seen fit to establish any kind of central bus station anywhere, so buses just drop you off in the city. The location changes depending on what bus company you are with. There are also apparently a lot of rivarly between bus companies so sometimes to have to cede the primo locations to rivals and vice versa. This makes me think that catching buses in Albania will be a very Where's Waldo type of experience but the country sounds amazing and has tonnes of stuff to offer so I'm sure it will be fun.
Hopefully I will have access to a computer in Lake orhid, but if not you will all just have to sit tight until I reconnect with techonology.
Adele
P.S.
I'm not sure that's how you spell orhid, so don't worry if it doesn't appear when you google it...
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
Novelty
So, Rachael and I have safetly arrived in Istanbul. Amidst torrential downpour yesterday that turned the streets into rivers, we found our hostel. It is in an excellent location, right in the old city between the aya-sophia and the blue mosque. I'm not really sure what either of these things are, but will find out soon as soon we are going to look around and explore.
Arriving at the airport went very smoothly, aside from we had to purchase a rip-off visa... It was 60USD for a sticker in our passport. It was actually a sticker, and they didn't check anything. I'm sure Turkey will be worth it though, it has already impressed me. We made it to our hostel without incident, using the metro system, which was very easy to navigate, setteled in and then ventured out in search of food. We, being both obviously non-Turkish got a fair bit of attention. It seemed to work in our favour this time though. We ended up picking a rather fancy restaurant (not that fancy, but it wasn't street meat) and got quite a few free thing from our server. This included free apple tea and peach liqueur (both very good). If this is what blonde hair gets me, I'm sure I can deal with it. I think it's mainly just the novelty factor, I didn't see a single person yesterday with naturally blonde hair, and got a lot of Germany shouts
We are hoping to head to the largest undercover market in the world today, so I'm sure many more stories will come of that.
Arriving at the airport went very smoothly, aside from we had to purchase a rip-off visa... It was 60USD for a sticker in our passport. It was actually a sticker, and they didn't check anything. I'm sure Turkey will be worth it though, it has already impressed me. We made it to our hostel without incident, using the metro system, which was very easy to navigate, setteled in and then ventured out in search of food. We, being both obviously non-Turkish got a fair bit of attention. It seemed to work in our favour this time though. We ended up picking a rather fancy restaurant (not that fancy, but it wasn't street meat) and got quite a few free thing from our server. This included free apple tea and peach liqueur (both very good). If this is what blonde hair gets me, I'm sure I can deal with it. I think it's mainly just the novelty factor, I didn't see a single person yesterday with naturally blonde hair, and got a lot of Germany shouts
We are hoping to head to the largest undercover market in the world today, so I'm sure many more stories will come of that.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
ISTANBUL!!
I have done away with all concrete modes of access to the internet. This most likely means that entries will be much shorter but I will try to let you all know in what area of the world I am about twice a week. Since this is the most awful keyboard this will be very short. Hopefully they have nicer keyboards in Turkey...
I have emptied my room in Grenoble and am currently touring Lyon with Rachael (my excellent friend and travel buddy for the next month) and tomorrow we are headed off to Istanbul from the St-Expery airport. We will be there for the next three days and then decide where to go next on the fly. We are planning tour of the balkans. be ready to pull out the atlas, you might not know where these countries are.
Look forward to the next update from Istanbul
-Adele
I have emptied my room in Grenoble and am currently touring Lyon with Rachael (my excellent friend and travel buddy for the next month) and tomorrow we are headed off to Istanbul from the St-Expery airport. We will be there for the next three days and then decide where to go next on the fly. We are planning tour of the balkans. be ready to pull out the atlas, you might not know where these countries are.
Look forward to the next update from Istanbul
-Adele
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Fete du travail
This morning everything was looking up, I woke up early, got my butt in gear and set off to campus for a productive day of studying. On they way there I stopped at the bakery and purchased a delicious baked good to sustain me until lunch time. Called the sportif, it is the love child of a whole wheat bun and a scone. Shaped like a ball, it's made with whole wheat flour, and has sultana's and hazelnuts. A meal in it's own right, I imagine it would be perfect for hiking and all other sport-type activities. Now, as I was standing in line for the bakery I noticed a sign advertising that the bakery would be open on May 1st and 8th. I thought to myself, "so what" and continued on my way without giving it a second thought. About halfway to campus I began connecting the dots, there was a disproportionate number of families on the bike path and I had not seen a single tram. I decided it must be some kind of holiday, and I began to question whether or not the library on campus would be open, but decided that because of the proximity to exam period it must be. Arrived on campus, it could have been a ghost town. By this point I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the library would not be open, but decided to check anyways. Indeed, it was not, as it turns out neither was anything else.
As yesterday's lunch was rice made with vegetable stock, and dinner was chickpeas with 2 apples and 2 kiwi's, my food situation was in a pretty sorry state. Both of the major grocery stores that are normally open were closed (along with everything else). I had nearly given up when I arrived downtown and found even Monoprix (open on sunday's from 8-12pm!) was closed. Much to my surprise the St-Claire market was open and the Uniprix (corner store) was also open all morning (wow!). A word of advice, if you want to do anything on a national holiday you can pretty much forget it, and if you need food you had better go out before 12pm, otherwise you will hard pressed to find anything other than coffee.
Most shocking of all is that the tram doesn't run at all today. The main mode of transportation downtown just flat out doesn't run today. Too bad if you depend on it to get around... though I guess since nothing is open you theoretically don't need to go anywhere. Anyhow I have since discovered that is the fete du travail today (labour day). After I had hiked up to my room, rather defeated I noticed an unreasonable amount of noise coming up from the city. I was rather upset because I figured I had missed some kind of parade... but it didn't take me long to figure out it was a protest. Seems that it's actually a tradition, on labour day the french protest unemployment, salaries and anything else they feel is unjust that related to work. This year it also seems that things are particularly charged because of the upcoming elections in early may.
So I am currently being treated a concert with lots of screaming fans as the sound from the city rises to my mountain top abode. Oh what a life, should I mention it's no less than 20 degrees today? No wonder I find it hard to study. Because of this, you should scroll down as I have also written a long overdue blog about a portion of my trip to Morocco that I hope you'll enjoy. At least my procrastination is paying off in some way.
As yesterday's lunch was rice made with vegetable stock, and dinner was chickpeas with 2 apples and 2 kiwi's, my food situation was in a pretty sorry state. Both of the major grocery stores that are normally open were closed (along with everything else). I had nearly given up when I arrived downtown and found even Monoprix (open on sunday's from 8-12pm!) was closed. Much to my surprise the St-Claire market was open and the Uniprix (corner store) was also open all morning (wow!). A word of advice, if you want to do anything on a national holiday you can pretty much forget it, and if you need food you had better go out before 12pm, otherwise you will hard pressed to find anything other than coffee.
Most shocking of all is that the tram doesn't run at all today. The main mode of transportation downtown just flat out doesn't run today. Too bad if you depend on it to get around... though I guess since nothing is open you theoretically don't need to go anywhere. Anyhow I have since discovered that is the fete du travail today (labour day). After I had hiked up to my room, rather defeated I noticed an unreasonable amount of noise coming up from the city. I was rather upset because I figured I had missed some kind of parade... but it didn't take me long to figure out it was a protest. Seems that it's actually a tradition, on labour day the french protest unemployment, salaries and anything else they feel is unjust that related to work. This year it also seems that things are particularly charged because of the upcoming elections in early may.
So I am currently being treated a concert with lots of screaming fans as the sound from the city rises to my mountain top abode. Oh what a life, should I mention it's no less than 20 degrees today? No wonder I find it hard to study. Because of this, you should scroll down as I have also written a long overdue blog about a portion of my trip to Morocco that I hope you'll enjoy. At least my procrastination is paying off in some way.
Little enterprising...hasslers?
So,memory test for me. What did I do in Morocco nearly 3 weeks ago? I'm going to start from the beginning which will hopefully help me...
Note: $1.17 CAD=10 MAD (Moroccan dirhams), you can also divide the cost in dirhams
The journey to Marrakesh from Girona passed without event, while I experienced my first Ryan Air flight. It was quite something. We were re-routed multiple times while attempting to check in because we are not EU nationals and needed special stamps etc. The plane had no assigned seating so it was more or less a free for all and the plane was coined 'Fisher-Price' by S. She wasn't very convinced of its ability to get us to Marrakesh safely. Everything when smoothly, though we missed out on the majority of the flight announcements because we don't understand Arabic and the French was pretty unclear...
Arrived at the airport we passed through customs with nothing more than a cursory glance at our passports and were on our way. Told that we should take a cab from Al-Massira airport to downtown Marrakesh, out we went to the taxi stand. We approached a cab driver and asked how much a ride would be, he replied 200 dirhams, we scoffed. NO WAY . We replied that we had been told it should be 50, maximum 60 dirhams and that was all we were paying. The driver laughed, ok he said, no problem. I guess he assumed we were green tourists. We would have had to ignore the sign with the official rates that were posted (they said between 50-60 MAD) and had no idea about the cost of life to fall for his line. This tactic must work quite often though, one of the girls who was staying in our hostel room paid the 200 dirhams without question.
Thank goodness for our lonely planet morocco guidebook. It helped us so much, and saved us a significant amount of money. Knowing that the daily income of the average Moroccan is $3.25/ day, circa 2005, (keeping in mind that this figure probably applied to the countryside, as people in Marrakesh appeared to be rather rich), really helped us keep tips in perspective. Now, I'm rather used the the whole tipping idea, but I was surprised by how differently it functioned in Morocco. We had porters/bellhops show us our room and not even linger for a tip, gone before we even noticed, however a simple thing like direction will cost you 5-10MAD. Now, our hostel was in the Medina which is basically the old city quarter. The streets there are incredibly similar to a labyrinth with dead ends, weird roads that turn around on themselves and no landmarks to orient yourself. Houses are everywhere so all street are very narrow and it was more common to see a cart pulled by a donkey and motorbikes in most of the streets than cars. Furthermore, the streets often didn't have names and when they did their names were often in Arabic. When we stumbled upon a French street name, it often didn't appear on our map, and vice versa. We couldn't find the main streets indicated on our map to save our lives. I can honestly say that I don't think having a map helped us on a single occasion.
Armed with very detailed directions from our hostel we were certain we would find our hostel without incident... oh the optimism. When we were dropped off by the taxi, carrying our large backpacking bags were were immediately accosted by an older man with a cart who offered to carry our bags to our hostel for 20 dirhams. We declined, and after much insistence on his part we set off alone. It became evident pretty quickly that we were not going to be finding our hostel anytime soon, so when a boy who was about 12 approached us and told us he would take us to our hostel we didn't put up much of a fuss... He walked ahead of us the entire time and met up with his buddies along the way, they all chatted briefly (in Arabic so we had no idea what they were saying) and invariably they would disappear down some side street. In retrospect I'm certain our guide took us in circles for a while, but what do I know. In any case, we were getting pretty skeptical of his ability to find our hostel when he took a sharp turn under and archway which lead into a cave like area off the beaten path. S and I looked at each other "what have we gotten ourselves into" we both thought, we decided that we didn't have much to loose though and followed him. Turns out he did know where he was going as we arrived less than a minute later.
The fun was just about to begin though, because all of his buddies he had been talking to earlier were also waiting at the door for us. Our guide asked us for a tip and because he had indeed brought us to our hostel I had no problem paying. I withdrew a 20 dirham bill and offered it to him (remembering this was how much the old man had told us his services would be), and thus began the drama. He looked at the bill, and said 'what is this, 20 dirhams is nothing to me', his buddies proceeded to chime in that their friend had offered us a good service and was worth far more than 2 euros (this turns out to be a very common thing, comparing dirhams to euros when asking for money). S replied that it was 20 more dirhams than he had at before and he should be happy, the boys got increasingly aggressive demanding at least 50 dirhams, and even went as far as to say that we might as well keep the bill because it is worth nothing to them. They were quite intimidating, but S and I refused to back down, after all they were 12 year old boys. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the door to the hostel opened (it was a huge wooden door with no windows that could only be opened from the inside when you knocked loud enough) and we literally ran inside, rather shaken by the pre-teen hasslers.
We both felt incredibly guilty, after all giving them an additional 30dirhams would have been no skin off our backs. We then remembered that the average moroccan makes $3.25 per day, and realized we had been (unsuccessfully) scammed. This made us a little wary, but we decided to set off in search of Djemma-el-Fnaa, the main square which was only 5 minutes walking away from our hostel. We soon became hopelessly lost but whenever we pulled out our map we were jumped on by enterprising would be guides. This was rather unpleasant so we just stopped pulling out our map all together and wandered around ssuming that we would find our way back eventually. We were probably wandering for about 2 hours and near the end we were becoming rather worried... we had seen nothing that even resembled a main square. With no idea where we were and with no road signs to orient ourselves we were 100% lost. However, being the resourceful travelers were are, we decided to follow the cars and people as they all seemed to be headed in the same direction and we assumed that eventually we would end up near somewhere major. Impeccable logic if I do say so, about 15minutes we landed right in Djemma-el-fnaa. What a sight.
Djemma el-fnaa (pronounced Gemm eff na) is a huge square, that is surrounded by merchants selling souvenirs and the souks (specialized areas selling specific wares). During the day the center is empty, but every night hundreds of men set up collapsible tents and benches and tables and it become a huge open air food court. Or rather a glorified bunch of street food vendors. Now, by the time we had located this square it was about 9pm and we were starved so we sat down at the first stall we came across. We might have been worried but there were lots of other white tourists so we decided it must be safe. Dinner started with the most delicious spiced olives I have ever had, then we had the traditional flat bread (delicious again) and little bowl of crushed tomato and spice to dip it in (resembling salsa but not quite). The main course was tajine (moroccan stew) and vegetable couscous. It was all incredibly delicious and very reasonable. We paid 70 dirhams for both of our 3 course meals, not bad. We then stumbled upon a street vendor who was selling sweets from a cart. For 30 dirhams you could fill up a little box. They were delectable, made with honey, sesame and coconut.We assumed they would last at least several days... not the case. They very night we set out to buy some more, telling ourselves we wouldn't be returning to morocco for a long time.
Now, well nourished and sleepy all we wanted to do was return to our hostel. A bit of an issue when you don't know how you got to where you currently are. Now, I did have directions that detailed how to get to our hostel from Djemma-el Fnaa but were we unable to find the cafe that was the starting point. We circled the square at least twice, being hassled the whole while looking for cafe Argana. Just as we were about to give up, we happened to look up and notice a huge white canvas, that said cafe Argana was undergoing construction but used to be there. Things were smooth sailing after that and we made it back safe, sound and full to our hostel. We were rather angry about this obvious lack of updating on the hotel's part, that is until we learned that the cafe had been bombed in 2009 and several tourists had been killed. Perspective changes everything doesn't it.
With any luck tomorrow will be the second installment of my Morocco adventures, I figure I had better get writing before I have such a backlog of adventures I am unable to ever catch up.
Note: $1.17 CAD=10 MAD (Moroccan dirhams), you can also divide the cost in dirhams
The journey to Marrakesh from Girona passed without event, while I experienced my first Ryan Air flight. It was quite something. We were re-routed multiple times while attempting to check in because we are not EU nationals and needed special stamps etc. The plane had no assigned seating so it was more or less a free for all and the plane was coined 'Fisher-Price' by S. She wasn't very convinced of its ability to get us to Marrakesh safely. Everything when smoothly, though we missed out on the majority of the flight announcements because we don't understand Arabic and the French was pretty unclear...
Arrived at the airport we passed through customs with nothing more than a cursory glance at our passports and were on our way. Told that we should take a cab from Al-Massira airport to downtown Marrakesh, out we went to the taxi stand. We approached a cab driver and asked how much a ride would be, he replied 200 dirhams, we scoffed. NO WAY . We replied that we had been told it should be 50, maximum 60 dirhams and that was all we were paying. The driver laughed, ok he said, no problem. I guess he assumed we were green tourists. We would have had to ignore the sign with the official rates that were posted (they said between 50-60 MAD) and had no idea about the cost of life to fall for his line. This tactic must work quite often though, one of the girls who was staying in our hostel room paid the 200 dirhams without question.
Thank goodness for our lonely planet morocco guidebook. It helped us so much, and saved us a significant amount of money. Knowing that the daily income of the average Moroccan is $3.25/ day, circa 2005, (keeping in mind that this figure probably applied to the countryside, as people in Marrakesh appeared to be rather rich), really helped us keep tips in perspective. Now, I'm rather used the the whole tipping idea, but I was surprised by how differently it functioned in Morocco. We had porters/bellhops show us our room and not even linger for a tip, gone before we even noticed, however a simple thing like direction will cost you 5-10MAD. Now, our hostel was in the Medina which is basically the old city quarter. The streets there are incredibly similar to a labyrinth with dead ends, weird roads that turn around on themselves and no landmarks to orient yourself. Houses are everywhere so all street are very narrow and it was more common to see a cart pulled by a donkey and motorbikes in most of the streets than cars. Furthermore, the streets often didn't have names and when they did their names were often in Arabic. When we stumbled upon a French street name, it often didn't appear on our map, and vice versa. We couldn't find the main streets indicated on our map to save our lives. I can honestly say that I don't think having a map helped us on a single occasion.
Armed with very detailed directions from our hostel we were certain we would find our hostel without incident... oh the optimism. When we were dropped off by the taxi, carrying our large backpacking bags were were immediately accosted by an older man with a cart who offered to carry our bags to our hostel for 20 dirhams. We declined, and after much insistence on his part we set off alone. It became evident pretty quickly that we were not going to be finding our hostel anytime soon, so when a boy who was about 12 approached us and told us he would take us to our hostel we didn't put up much of a fuss... He walked ahead of us the entire time and met up with his buddies along the way, they all chatted briefly (in Arabic so we had no idea what they were saying) and invariably they would disappear down some side street. In retrospect I'm certain our guide took us in circles for a while, but what do I know. In any case, we were getting pretty skeptical of his ability to find our hostel when he took a sharp turn under and archway which lead into a cave like area off the beaten path. S and I looked at each other "what have we gotten ourselves into" we both thought, we decided that we didn't have much to loose though and followed him. Turns out he did know where he was going as we arrived less than a minute later.
The fun was just about to begin though, because all of his buddies he had been talking to earlier were also waiting at the door for us. Our guide asked us for a tip and because he had indeed brought us to our hostel I had no problem paying. I withdrew a 20 dirham bill and offered it to him (remembering this was how much the old man had told us his services would be), and thus began the drama. He looked at the bill, and said 'what is this, 20 dirhams is nothing to me', his buddies proceeded to chime in that their friend had offered us a good service and was worth far more than 2 euros (this turns out to be a very common thing, comparing dirhams to euros when asking for money). S replied that it was 20 more dirhams than he had at before and he should be happy, the boys got increasingly aggressive demanding at least 50 dirhams, and even went as far as to say that we might as well keep the bill because it is worth nothing to them. They were quite intimidating, but S and I refused to back down, after all they were 12 year old boys. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the door to the hostel opened (it was a huge wooden door with no windows that could only be opened from the inside when you knocked loud enough) and we literally ran inside, rather shaken by the pre-teen hasslers.
We both felt incredibly guilty, after all giving them an additional 30dirhams would have been no skin off our backs. We then remembered that the average moroccan makes $3.25 per day, and realized we had been (unsuccessfully) scammed. This made us a little wary, but we decided to set off in search of Djemma-el-Fnaa, the main square which was only 5 minutes walking away from our hostel. We soon became hopelessly lost but whenever we pulled out our map we were jumped on by enterprising would be guides. This was rather unpleasant so we just stopped pulling out our map all together and wandered around ssuming that we would find our way back eventually. We were probably wandering for about 2 hours and near the end we were becoming rather worried... we had seen nothing that even resembled a main square. With no idea where we were and with no road signs to orient ourselves we were 100% lost. However, being the resourceful travelers were are, we decided to follow the cars and people as they all seemed to be headed in the same direction and we assumed that eventually we would end up near somewhere major. Impeccable logic if I do say so, about 15minutes we landed right in Djemma-el-fnaa. What a sight.
Djemma el-fnaa (pronounced Gemm eff na) is a huge square, that is surrounded by merchants selling souvenirs and the souks (specialized areas selling specific wares). During the day the center is empty, but every night hundreds of men set up collapsible tents and benches and tables and it become a huge open air food court. Or rather a glorified bunch of street food vendors. Now, by the time we had located this square it was about 9pm and we were starved so we sat down at the first stall we came across. We might have been worried but there were lots of other white tourists so we decided it must be safe. Dinner started with the most delicious spiced olives I have ever had, then we had the traditional flat bread (delicious again) and little bowl of crushed tomato and spice to dip it in (resembling salsa but not quite). The main course was tajine (moroccan stew) and vegetable couscous. It was all incredibly delicious and very reasonable. We paid 70 dirhams for both of our 3 course meals, not bad. We then stumbled upon a street vendor who was selling sweets from a cart. For 30 dirhams you could fill up a little box. They were delectable, made with honey, sesame and coconut.We assumed they would last at least several days... not the case. They very night we set out to buy some more, telling ourselves we wouldn't be returning to morocco for a long time.
Now, well nourished and sleepy all we wanted to do was return to our hostel. A bit of an issue when you don't know how you got to where you currently are. Now, I did have directions that detailed how to get to our hostel from Djemma-el Fnaa but were we unable to find the cafe that was the starting point. We circled the square at least twice, being hassled the whole while looking for cafe Argana. Just as we were about to give up, we happened to look up and notice a huge white canvas, that said cafe Argana was undergoing construction but used to be there. Things were smooth sailing after that and we made it back safe, sound and full to our hostel. We were rather angry about this obvious lack of updating on the hotel's part, that is until we learned that the cafe had been bombed in 2009 and several tourists had been killed. Perspective changes everything doesn't it.
With any luck tomorrow will be the second installment of my Morocco adventures, I figure I had better get writing before I have such a backlog of adventures I am unable to ever catch up.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Motivation required to study > my current motivation.
Perhaps you have all been wondering why my blog has been so inactive given that I am currently not doing anything. You may or may not be aware, but the main purpose of this exchange was not to travel, but to study. Not that this has really been reflected by my blog.
That being said, I do have to write exams for all my classes, for 4 of my content classes (Neuropharmacology, Psychology of Aging, Cognitive Psychology and Perception and Categorization) these exams are worth 100%. So for the past several days I have been doing quite a good job of studying and thus have not been blogging. Today, my motivation has been nearly zero to study and I have probably accomplished about 1 hour of productive studying over the 4ish hours I have been pseudo-studying. I finally just decided to give up the front and accept that today was not a day for studying. You can't win every day, right? It didn't really help that the weather has been beautiful which makes it super tempting to go outside.
I already made it down to the market today, and enjoyed tea at Grenoble's oldest cafe (established in 1739) in the sun. I also went to a bakery that specializes in north-American style cookies and had a delicious dark chocolate and candied ginger cookie. Definitely something worth trying if you want to spice up your normal cookie recipes. So I haven't done nothing, just nothing that will really help me succeed during exams.
P.S. Don't forget to scroll down and check out my entry about Barcelona (also written today)
That being said, I do have to write exams for all my classes, for 4 of my content classes (Neuropharmacology, Psychology of Aging, Cognitive Psychology and Perception and Categorization) these exams are worth 100%. So for the past several days I have been doing quite a good job of studying and thus have not been blogging. Today, my motivation has been nearly zero to study and I have probably accomplished about 1 hour of productive studying over the 4ish hours I have been pseudo-studying. I finally just decided to give up the front and accept that today was not a day for studying. You can't win every day, right? It didn't really help that the weather has been beautiful which makes it super tempting to go outside.
I already made it down to the market today, and enjoyed tea at Grenoble's oldest cafe (established in 1739) in the sun. I also went to a bakery that specializes in north-American style cookies and had a delicious dark chocolate and candied ginger cookie. Definitely something worth trying if you want to spice up your normal cookie recipes. So I haven't done nothing, just nothing that will really help me succeed during exams.
P.S. Don't forget to scroll down and check out my entry about Barcelona (also written today)
36 hours in Barcelona
Just the other day I was counting off how many countries I have visited since the beginning of my Exchange. I was including Spain, however although I have been to Spain I can't actually say that I have visited it. Many people have even told me that I wasn't in Spain, I was in Catalonia. As it turns out, in Barcelona people speak Spanish (I'm fairly sure it's the official language) but most people seem to speak Catalan as well. It was very confusing at first, because I originally though I was remembering my grade 9 spanish all wrong. Really, it was just that many of the signs are in Catalan. As far as I am able to tell Catalan is a mix of French and Spanish but with stronger Spanish influences, so at first glance it appears to be spanish. Then you realize you understand nothing (I chose to believe this was because people were speaking Catalan, it could simply be I'm not good at understanding spanish).
I digress, this is meant to be a travel blog so I had better start on what Barcelona was like. We arrived in Barcelona around 7pm and set off immediately for our hostel. It was in a very central location and was different from all other hostels I've been in as it was in an apartment building. We had to buzz up every time and usually we just had to say hello in english and they'd let us through. I once tried to practice my spanish, and replied "hola" in what must have been a good spanish accent because I received a stream of Spanish in return. I panicked and replied in English, and after that just said hello. The hostel itself was not particularly remarkable aside from that, it was quite small though and so it had a rather homey feeling. There were only 5 rooms and I'd estimate they had about 35beds in the whole hostel. I would have probably liked it better except for while I was making my bed the sheets I recieved felt oily. This sent my thoughts into a downwards spiral and when I was very itchy after my first night's sleep I was convinced that they had bedbugs. This was not the case at all, just me overreacting. Luckily I was so tired that I didn't really care and slept very well despite my imagined night time companions.
Since we had been told that in Spain, people don't eat until 10pm or later we set off sightseeing as soon as we were settled in and planned to get some food later. We were however quite hungry and at some quiche in a quite little cafe beside a huge medeival looking cathedral. The whole eating dinner at 10 wasn't the best idea as it turns out, on Easter Monday things start to close around 10pm. We ended up decided to eat healthy and had dessert for dinner. We selected a nice looking restaurant and mustered the courage to ask for a menu in spanish. This was apparently not necessary as our server replied in English. Once we decided we wanted to eat at this restaurant our server started to lead us to the back of the restaurant. As we wanted to eat outside to people-watch we asked our server if we could have a table outside. He jokingly replied (or so I though) "Of course, but it'll more expensive". We got outside, sat down and opened the menu and to our surprise realized he wasn't joking. The entire menu was actually about 1-2 euros more expensive per item. Our jaws dropped and we considered getting up and leaving, then we decided we would stay and chalk up the experience as a good story for our grandchildren. Though the idea still makes me angry we noticed this was a common theme. In Paris every drink on the menu was about 1euro50 more expensive if you drank it at a table versus at the bar. Which is pretty ridiculous considering it was a cafe and the bar had room for about 4 people.
The next we accomplished a whirlwind tour of Barcelona. Highlights included the Sagrada Familia which is very famous church by Gaudi, the Parc Guell (which showcased many of Gaudi's sculptures), la Ramblas, a huge all you can eat buffet (not particularly spanish but still cool), the port of Barcelona, shopping, delicious spanish tortilla (potatoes and eggs) and the Gothic quarter.
There were also a few notable moments of general tourist confusion. S had heard that the Sagrada Familia is supposed to look like it's melting and has been created by termites, we looked at it and couldn't see this all, which was rather disappointing. Then later in the day we discovered that the Sagrada Familia has two sides and we were looking at the less famous/lesser known side. Luckily we had enough time the next day before our flight to Morocco to go and check it out again. We also thought we were on la Ramblas (a huge street with street entertainers etc. and a green park/strip in the middle instead of road) twice but in reality we were on another large major road. Luckily we found it eventually and it was pretty cool.
I digress, this is meant to be a travel blog so I had better start on what Barcelona was like. We arrived in Barcelona around 7pm and set off immediately for our hostel. It was in a very central location and was different from all other hostels I've been in as it was in an apartment building. We had to buzz up every time and usually we just had to say hello in english and they'd let us through. I once tried to practice my spanish, and replied "hola" in what must have been a good spanish accent because I received a stream of Spanish in return. I panicked and replied in English, and after that just said hello. The hostel itself was not particularly remarkable aside from that, it was quite small though and so it had a rather homey feeling. There were only 5 rooms and I'd estimate they had about 35beds in the whole hostel. I would have probably liked it better except for while I was making my bed the sheets I recieved felt oily. This sent my thoughts into a downwards spiral and when I was very itchy after my first night's sleep I was convinced that they had bedbugs. This was not the case at all, just me overreacting. Luckily I was so tired that I didn't really care and slept very well despite my imagined night time companions.
Since we had been told that in Spain, people don't eat until 10pm or later we set off sightseeing as soon as we were settled in and planned to get some food later. We were however quite hungry and at some quiche in a quite little cafe beside a huge medeival looking cathedral. The whole eating dinner at 10 wasn't the best idea as it turns out, on Easter Monday things start to close around 10pm. We ended up decided to eat healthy and had dessert for dinner. We selected a nice looking restaurant and mustered the courage to ask for a menu in spanish. This was apparently not necessary as our server replied in English. Once we decided we wanted to eat at this restaurant our server started to lead us to the back of the restaurant. As we wanted to eat outside to people-watch we asked our server if we could have a table outside. He jokingly replied (or so I though) "Of course, but it'll more expensive". We got outside, sat down and opened the menu and to our surprise realized he wasn't joking. The entire menu was actually about 1-2 euros more expensive per item. Our jaws dropped and we considered getting up and leaving, then we decided we would stay and chalk up the experience as a good story for our grandchildren. Though the idea still makes me angry we noticed this was a common theme. In Paris every drink on the menu was about 1euro50 more expensive if you drank it at a table versus at the bar. Which is pretty ridiculous considering it was a cafe and the bar had room for about 4 people.
The next we accomplished a whirlwind tour of Barcelona. Highlights included the Sagrada Familia which is very famous church by Gaudi, the Parc Guell (which showcased many of Gaudi's sculptures), la Ramblas, a huge all you can eat buffet (not particularly spanish but still cool), the port of Barcelona, shopping, delicious spanish tortilla (potatoes and eggs) and the Gothic quarter.
There were also a few notable moments of general tourist confusion. S had heard that the Sagrada Familia is supposed to look like it's melting and has been created by termites, we looked at it and couldn't see this all, which was rather disappointing. Then later in the day we discovered that the Sagrada Familia has two sides and we were looking at the less famous/lesser known side. Luckily we had enough time the next day before our flight to Morocco to go and check it out again. We also thought we were on la Ramblas (a huge street with street entertainers etc. and a green park/strip in the middle instead of road) twice but in reality we were on another large major road. Luckily we found it eventually and it was pretty cool.
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| Sagrada Familia side 1 |
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| Originally created by Gaudi, he did not start building it, nor did he finish. In actuality it is still being built, that's why you see so many cranes in the subsequent pictures |
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| Barcelona as seen from Parc Guell |
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| Barcelona again from Parc Guell, sadly it wasn't clear at all (maybe due to Smog??) but were the city ends its ocean |
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| Cool street lit up in the Gothic quarter |
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| I liked the shadow, there isn't really any deeper meaning to this one |
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| Bridge in the port |
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| Tiled benches in Parc Guell, there are also famous tiled lizard sculptures, however we didn't manage to find any of them |
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| Sagrada Familia, still side #1 |
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| The termite eaten side |
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| Gates at Parc Guell |
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