no way, josé

last bit of time in madrid was lovely. i ended up going back to reina sofía on thursday, and discovered some new exhibits that i hadn't seen before. i also took this really sweet picture of the outdoor glass elevator set-up:

i also spent some time hanging out in the garden across from the palacio real, which is something i've wanted to do since ... last summer. it was so arty and in tune with the city, or whatever.

my last night in madrid i was going to go on a pub crawl, which was supposed to meet at the oso de madrid in sol. while i was awkwardly leaning on said monument, i asked the girl standing next to me if she was going on the crawl as well. she wasn't. she was waiting for her friend, who's mexican but went to school in san diego and who has lived in madrid for two years. the girl i met was named anouk and is dutch but speaks perfect english because, you know, she's dutch. they invited me to hang out with them, and we ended up going to this cute irish pub near sol, then going to meet alexa's (the one living in madrid) friend for his birthday celebration at this really cool underground-like bar. he's apparently a dj at some hot madrid club, so we ultimately went there (pachá, i believe) and got in for free, because we're so cool, and skipped the line. so hot. anouk and i ended up staying at the club, which had a giant techno floor, until about 4.30, when we decided it was more or less late enough to leave. after much confusion, we finally decided that i should just crash at her apartment because the metro wasn't running and cabs were our best bet. that meant a lovely walk of shame for me in the morning, though.

the next day she invited me to the pool outside her apartment, though, so i spent the day tanning and swimming and discussing american politics and culture with her and her dad, who ultimately made me dinner!

last night was the overnight train, which wasn't bad because it left at 11.00, so i pretty much went right to sleep. it got into lisbon obscenely early this morning, though - like 8.00. that's early, ok?

in portugal, people who smoke are not welcome in metro stations:

when we got to the hostel around 9.00, we were told that our rooms wouldn't be ready until about noon, so i layed down on these pillows and bean bags in the main lounge area. i fell asleep just as breakfast was starting, so pretty much everyone staying here got to see me sleeping, including our roommate. awk. our room is really cute and attic-y, and there's a low skylight that i was able to take a picture out of, but couldn't actually see anything from. this is what i'm pretty sure our view looks like, though:


after showerz, we went to lunch at this cute little café at the top of a hill (who knew lisbon was so hilly?) overlooking the city. afterwards, we walked to the old castelo and got to walk around all the turrets to see everything.

this is what lisbon looks like with me in front of it:

and this is what turrets look like with me between them:

and, in the rare event that you want to see lisbon without me attached, this is how beautiful it is:

after the castle we went to get fresh-squeezed orange juice at this little terrace bar also overlooking the city. there was a huge white tarp/sail overtop to block out some sun, and it was breezy and lovely. see?

so now i need to find something to do with my life. considering going out tonight, but it's a sunday so i'm not sure that anything will be going on. possibly a walking tour tomorrow,
or just walking about of my own accord, then hopefully staying up all night tomorrow night to ensure sleeping on the plane. we shall see!

adeus!!1!

bajo mis pies siento crecer madrid

ahh, madrid. where i feel free to douche around all day because i'll be back in the fall. i spend my days lounging in cafés and navigating areas of the city so that next semester i can be like, "don't worry guys, i got this." i'm just as in love with the city as i was before. i haven't really taken any pictures, but i do have this sweet one from our legitimate balcony:
yesterday i took the metro down to my host family's house, just to scope it out. i took a picture and then felt really creepy and left. but isn't it cute?

after that i walked to retiro to have a drink on a square man-made lake, then sautéed* on up to puerta del sol. deciding that there were way too many people there, i came back near the hostel to have lunch. after some lounging, charlotte and i went to this place for drinks and then ... back to my lunch restaurant for dinner, lolz.

my plan for today was to get up early and go to segovia, so i went to bed pretty early, but i had a lot of trouble sleeping and opted to ditch the bus trip for today. instead, i went and had a picnic lunch in retiro (it's really close to the hostel, ok?) and then walked down to museo reina sofía. i'm developing a love for surrealism, which may or may not be a function of actually being in spain. (i had a similar experience with expressionism in paris.) i watched un chien andalus again, which i find endlessly entertaining, and saw a lot of sweet dalí and miró works. by far the best part of the museum, though, was guernica. though i've seen it in books plenty of times, the full size adds so much to the experience. there were also extensive exhibits of his studies leading up to the final product, photographs of the process, and a separate photography series on the spanish civil war.

so now i'm back here for a bit before i go do ... something with my life. or not.

oh, and this is for you, ducky fam, in case any of you still read this:


*yes, i know.

"but i counted me!"

i was kind enough to separate this entry full of actual words and meaning from that one about non-flying pigeons, but i think the series is worth looking at, if only to appreciate my plight.

ok so europes. when we last saw our hero, she was reenacting favorite scenes from the sound of music. when i was done humiliating myself, we left for vienna. not gonna lie, the city was pretty unimpressive. i mean it was clean and pretty and all, but quite boring. i think a large part of this was due to our really bad tour guide when we went on the bike tour. one really awesome thing about vienna, though, was that our room had a private balcony. now, some might call it a fire escape, but with a chair to jump up on and some maneuvering over the slanted five-foot window, it was definitely a balcony to watch the world go by. check out the sweet view:

our first night i went to the hostel bar with our roommate rachel and then we hung out on the balcony for several hours and took what we thought were really arty pictures, but those are in her posession so you cannot see them.

at one point we went to the top of st stephans dom, where i got to take my token picture of me and the city. see?!?!


it's an artistic series.

oh one cool thing on our tour: apparently there is one statue of a man riding on a horse that is rearing backwards in the entire world that is perfectly balanced without any sort of additional support to the horse besides his legs. this is it:


across the plaza from this statue is another almost identical one, but the artist (along with the rest of the world) couldn't figure out how in the hell he made the first one balance, and spent the rest of his life trying to recreate it. he eventually went crazy and killed himself. also, i don't know his name.

then we got to take another overnight train to venice! significantly less comfortable than our previous train, this one was a six-bed converted to a four-bed. how did they do that?, you may wonder. well! the girl and her mother who got the bottom bunks got exceptional room as the middle bunks were folded up, and then charlotte and i were snugly tucked into the top bunks. see?!

they were nice in the morning, though, and helped us to convert the beds to seats. oh and they also spoke perfect english, lolz europe.

upon exiting the 50-degree train that housed roughly 10% of japan's teen population, we entered venice, ninety degrees and humid. mmmm. i really remember liking venice a lot the last time i was there, thinking that the canals were so cute and such. i was clearly remembering a different city, because this is pretty much what i saw this time around:


BILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

our hostel was pretty sweet, though, because it was out of the main part of town, in this little piazza that's "popular among students." we predominately hung out around there, sitting in cafés and wasting our lives away. the next morning we left for florence, where we met up with my dad and brother, yayyyy.

my first order of business was to make michael take this ridiculous picture with me in front of the campanile:


WE ARE SO COOL.

we went to the accademia, where we had to wait in exactly zero lines, because i'm amazing and we got tickets beforehand. i'd seen the david before, but that didn't make it any less awesome to see again. it's so massive, and perfect. i want to be an artist.

afterwards, we hung around florence for a while, then drove up to the top of a hill to look at the city, because that's how i roll. this is florence from the top of a hill:

that night we went to lucca, an adorable medieval city about an hour outside of rome, and there was an elton john concert happening? that was weird. we had dinner there (which sucked, btw, how does that happen, italy?), and then headed home to pass out. the next day we were off to rome, and on the way stopped in san gimignano and siena, both similar cities to lucca, small and stone and medieval and tuscan and hilly. this is what michael and i would look like if there were a picture taken from san gimignano, and then two different pictures of us were taken at different times in our lives and disproportionately pasted on top of the landscape:

... or are we really there? YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.

the next day in rome was hardcore sightseeing. when we stopped for a break amidst the ruins, i reenacted the pietà:

that's heavenly light pouring over me. we went to the colisseum, forum, trajan's column, pantheon, somehow back to trajan's column, the trevi fountain, back to the colisseum to get on the metro, and then took the train to the vatican. charlotte and dad couldn't go in because they were not modestly dressed, but michael and i did.

the sun was shining through the front windows onto the altar in the most celestial of ways. this was it:

... apparently i uploaded the one with him in it. but you get the idea.

later i bought him this white panama hat that he had been LUSTING after. this is him trying to be suave:


and this is me rocking the hat WAY better. or something.


that night we went up to the rooftop bar in the guys' hotel and watched the sun set for a few hours and had some wine - it was so pretty. i like being high up, and buildings in rome are short.

the next morning we left early for naples because i needed some mozzarella, and went to ostia antica on the way. ostia was a port city that received most goods for rome before they continued up the tiber, but in the 1500s a massive flood re-routed the tiber and ostia became obsolete. tragic, right? it's pretty well-preserved, though, and we got to walk through a bunch of the buildings. here is a mosaic on the floor where the baths were:

not much happened in naples ... i went to the beach, ate a lot of mozzarella, drank a lot of wine. it was nice.

the day of the baby's baptism in naples, we went to this really awesome restaurant overlooking the ocean and mount vesuvius. there were roughly 4732894 courses to the meal (i only got through two), and there was a great sea breeze and mmmmm italies. there was also a giant steering wheel. this is me driving the restaurant, with panama hat:

for those of you that don't understand why i spent four days in the condo and didn't update or really internet at all, i show you this:


the view from the balcony.

and, in conclusion, i would just like to say:

HI MOM THIS IS FOR YOU

I REALLY WANTED THIS TO WORK OUT.















LOOK HOW HARD I TRIED.

let's talk about affirmative action

i wanted to upload pitchaz right now, but my camera batteries just died and charlotte used my emergency set a week ago, so you must all wait until i get my shit together.

in unrelated news, blowing off barcelona and valencia entirely and staying in naples a while longer. i figure if i really want to i can always go to barcelona next semester, and there is SO MUCH DELICIOUS MOZZARELLA HERE OK.

real updatez to come soon. for now, the beach.

rolling cigarettes is so european

took the overnight train to zurich earlier this week. the four-person room was just tall enough to stand up in. there was also no room for bags, but we only had one roommate so we made do. also our roommate was a german who spoke perfect english. his favorite tv show is the boondocks. he asked if black people say "-izzle" a lot.

but in the morning we got served breakfast and I GOT A BOX OF NESQUIK. this is me on my top bunk 'cause i'm five years old:


zurich was a really cute town. we stayed in "ziczac rock-hotel," and our room was called "lenny kravitz," though there was no indication in the decoration that this was so. it monsooned for pretty much the whole first day, but that night we wandered around the city.

MOM AND STEVE IF YOU READ THIS I THINK THIS MIGHT BE THE UBS HEADQUARTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!

also the city is on a lovely river called the limmat, which has the clearest blue-green water i have ever seen outside of the carribbean. there are also swans! you can kind of tell what color it is here, but it's even brighter during the day:

we didn't really do much else in zurich, except for go to a chocolate shop the next day where charlotte purchased her weight in confections and i got two mozzerella sandwiches because they were delicioussssss.

then we were off to munich. on our way to see the glockenspiel (which TOTALLY didn't spiel, by the way), we cut through a metro station to cross the street. and what did we find but ...

WOOLWORTH I HAD NO IDEA WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE.

we also found a jewelry store called "CHRIST," which featured a sign in the window that read "pure lust." munich wasn't nearly as entertaining as berlin, but had a few fun strips and such. and LOTS of h&ms. like, lots and lots.

the next day we went to dachau. that was even more deeply disturbing than i could have imagined. like so deeply so that i found it difficult to cry, you know? there was a short film, and a massive museum, and then the entire courtyard was open and all the old bunks were razed. in the center of the roll call field, was this sculpture:


it's so painful to look at, but i think it's really beautiful too.

i also felt compelled to photograph this, because it's the one thing i most closely associate with dachau. i tried to take a picture of the whole entrance with the door slightly opened, but the other tourists weren't having it.


the next day we made our way to salzburg, which was ridiculously adorable. i went to the top of this hill to see the old city castle, which was obscenely boring, but that had a FANTASTIC view of the city.


this australian kid named daniel described it as "disgustingly beautiful." check out those mountains.

later we went on the horrifically expensive and touristy but still amazing SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR ZOMG.

here follows a collection of reenactions, i assure you they're really good:


this is me being an awkward liesl in front of the gazebo!


I HAVE CONFIDENCE IN SUNSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE. (maria ran and danced down this promenade with her guitar case in one hand and suitcase in the other.)


the hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiills are aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.


ok this church was a major let-down in real life BUT I'M GOING TO GET MARRIED HERE JUST LIKE THE JULIE ANDREWS VERSION OF MARIA VON TRAPP. this is me practicing.

and then ... mirabell gardens for "do-re-mi"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!

see i'm totally jumping up and down the steps.

ok train leaves in like half an hour so we have to make our way to the station. TTYLZ.