portugal, san sebastian, and the beach.

as my time here dashes by right in front of my eye, let me wrap up telling you about my final trips...

Portugal 4.27 - 5.1

i remember i signed up for this trip through the program way back before i even arrived in spain, and it always was the one trip that seemed so far away. well it finally came and went, just as fast as everything else does here...the only thing slowing it down was the near 7 hour bus ride there (8 back). but it proved to be worth it, especially since i would have otherwise not of planned my own trip to portugal.

aifs hooked it up with four star hotels for all four nights, and for our first two we were located in a small beach city called sagres. our hotel was more of a resort if anything, with a huge pool and buffet - more than enough to please a bunch of rowdy students used to the confines and limitations of our spanish homestays! the first day, we went to the beach in sagres, which was gorgeous, and the beaches actually had white sand. after playing football on the beach and swimming, we returned to the buffet, danced to some live music, took a late night dip in the pool and headed to bed.

on saturday we met our tour guide who took us all around the southern coast of portugal and lagos. it proved to be a day full of epic views and beach post ups...

the most western point of continental europe

matt and i scalin the cliffs

sittin on the wall to a cliff fortress on the cliffs

after our cruise on the cliffs, we headed into lagos which didn't disappoint. lagos was also gorgeous, especially with its distinct rocky, cliff formations. or "rock informations" as our semi-bilingual tour guide told us.

tropical paradise?

matt and i once again

we spent the rest of day soaking up all lagos had to offer: laying on the beach, and some good sea food - before heading back to sagres for our final night. the next morning we took the hour or two drive up to the capital city of portugal: Lisboa, or Lisbon. once again we were treated to a nice hotel right on the beach. we were disappointed because it was a bit cold however (ya, we get spoiled). we didnt have anything planned on sunday since it was a travel day, so we just relaxed and enjoyed our hotel.

the next morning we met our tour guide for our last full day. we headed into the downtown center of lisbon and stopped to take a few pictures...

brotherly love?

lauren and i in lisboa

after the bus took as around and showed us some of the historical sites, we elected to go to portugal's famed oceanrium, which is the second largest in the world (second to tokyo, mind you). unfortunately it was a bit of a dissapointment, but they did have a giant tank with some neat sharks and some other random sea creatures - get outta town, right? from there we all returned to the hotel in order to enjoy the beach. some kids reserved some surf lessons, but being as i quit surfing, lauren and i decided to boogyboard. the waves were suprisingly big, and it was a fun 'sesh.'

renaissance men don't surf

the next morning, tuesday i believe, we packed up our stuff and embarked on our loooong bus ride back to Granada...but continuing our on-the-go traveling lifestyle, we turned around two days later and headed to northern Spain and more specifically, San Sebastian.

San Sebastian 5.3 - 5.6

before you start wondering where the pictures are, im just gonna cut to the chase n tell ya, my camera was stolen on the beach here. yup. my second camera in spain to bite the dust (the first was dropped in a moroccon mosque). here, i pulled up a pic on the net of san sebastian, and for informative purposes, its the pic of the very beach where my backpack was stolen.

yup. if you look in the bottom left part of the image, you will see the exact location where i fell asleep and had the backpack stolen. although, im obviously bitter, i really was extremely blessed. i had placed my wallet and phone into my shoes instead of the pack, and all i had in the pack was some cheap sunglasses and an old swimsuit along with my camera. the day before i had not only my ipod, passport, and wallet, but also all of lauren's valuables as well. i definitely miss my camera, but it could of been alot worse. at least it was hassle free. (see you get optimistic about these things when it happens over n over...read: stolen phone, broken camera, lost credit card, etc...ha).

the other bad part about the weekend is that it didn't look at all like it does in the picture. it was fairly cloudy and breezy the whole time. a little disappointing when you go on vacation to go to the beach and its not sunny. but dont you think that a stolen backpack and some clouds werent gonna stop us from having a good time on a world renowned beach, haha. actually, we explored the city, ate some good meals, and even hiked to the top of the mountain that you can also see in that picture, which had some excellent views of the city. all in all, it was a fun trip despite the weather and mishaps, so we'll call it a success. oh ya, and since our flight was actually out of the city of Biblbao, we stopped at the eccentric and famous art museum the Guggenheim before heading home. it was pretty neat.

Costa del Almeria 5.12-5.13

just this past weekend we had our very last trip with the program to the coast. there isn't much to say other than that we had a nice hotel for the night, amazing weather, i got a pretty decent tan, and last but not least...we went to a bumpin karoke bar that night...

geroge michael "faith"

...and that pretty much puts you right up to date with everything going on here in spain. as of now, we have a little over a week left here in Granada filled with finals, goodbyes, and some last late nights.

we just finished planning our two weeks of travel after the program finishes and here's the intenerary:

France: Lyon (1 Day), French Riviera - Nice, Cannes, etc (3 days)
Italy: Cinque Terre (3 Days), Rome (3 Days), and finishing in Venice (2 Days).

we fly from venice to the madrid on june 6th late at night, and then my flight back to the states is june 7th from madrid to atlanta, and atlanta to colorado. it's gonna be a whirlwind of a few weeks. definitely the epitome of "bitter sweet" as we soak up rays on some of the world's finest beaches, but then having to say goodbye to all the people and places that have grown to be my home for the past 5 months. its been a whirlwind. i won't be updating this until i return home, in which ill give u a quick synopsis on france and italy, and maybe a final recap on this whole experience. but i can already tell you now, that it's been the best 5 months of my life.

enjoy. leave comments as usual. and i hope to hear from yall soon.

love, pete

switzerland

wow. this post is loooong overdue. im sorry to all my faithful readers out there for my blogging neglegence. since my trip to switzerland i have been on-the-go non stop until now, where I now have 2.5 full weeks in granada without traveling. so with that being said, i should be able to get up my portugal blog and my san sebastian one up as well (although i have no pics from san sebastian because my camera was stolen with my packpack on the beach). anyways, dont worry about that...switzerland was absolutely gorgeous.

April 20 - 23

lauren and i took the overnight bus from granada to madrid on the 19th, and snagged are flight from madrid to geneva. from geneva we took the scenic train along lake geneva to the small city of leysin, where my friends alex, ricky, and tim are studying abroad. their school, or chateu, is at the base of a mountain and has gorgeous views of the evian mountains and the valleys below. on friday we just relaxed and had a great bbq at one of the nice overlooks by their pad.

posting up after the bbq

on friday we began our "crazy" day if you will. ricky and tim took the train into town early in the morning and rentned a car for 5 of us, because we wanted to head to interlaken for the day: the extreme sports capital of europe. we had called and reserved a time to do a 300ft canyon swing jump so we drove to interlaken, and grabbed some lunch before preparing for the jump. here's a couple nice shots of interlaken:

we met our guides at this hostal, and our crew of 6 and some other tourists all piled into a rickity van which took us up into the rocky peaks where we would encounter the canyon which we would soon plummet into:

here's alex and i all strapped in and ready to go...

i ended up going 7th or 8th of all the people, so most of the initial butterflies had left, being as the others who took the jump were still alive. this isnt a clip of me jumping, but here is a video of the same jump i did:



alright, now that you think im completely crazy, i will continue with some more pretty pics of switzerland. after the jump we grabbed some excellent thai food to go and ate it at sunset on the lake. heres lauren and i grubbin, as well as a gorgeous sunset pic:


on sunday we still had the rental car and decided to cruise around. our first stop was the city of montreaux which rests right on lake geneva. one of the prettiest parts of the city is this chateau de chillon...


after montreaux, we took the car over to france, and specifically the city of evian. we finally returned back to leysin to enjoy a final sunset. heres the view from leysin to the evian mountains in france, which we had visited earlier. oh, and our rental car as well...

im sorry, that was so brief but i just wanted to get those pics and such up. i hope you enjoyed it. any more questions, leave in the comment box. alright love ya all, and expect a nice post on portugal here soon as well! pete.

spring break: netherlands and sweden

March 28 - April 9

now this is a daunting task…trying to fill you in on ten days of straight traveling…but here goes it, im sure ill miss some stuff, but oh wells, ten days is a long time…

im not going to lie, the wind was taken out of my sails before I even started traveling. A few days before leaving I happened to frequent one of my regular music websites only to find out that the concert Ryan and I had virtually planned the entire trip around was cancelled. Granted we had booked a hostel in the city of Utrecht for the night of the concert, it turned out not too be too big of a hassle, and I am getting my money back…it just was a big blow to the morale of the trip nonetheless.

After meeting Ryan in Barcelona on Thursday 29, we snagged our direct flight to Amsterdam and managed to find our hostel from the train station. Despite our Christian hostels attempt to disclose it on any of their websites or in their directions, it was situated literally 30 walking steps from the infamous red light district – which proved to be quite the surprise once we dropped our packs off and went to get food! After snaggin some noodles, we hit the hay, for our full day to come. On Friday, we rented bikes and pretty much bombed around everything and anything in Amsterdam, a good chunck of that spent in vain, searching for quintessential Dutch rolling hills and tulip fields. We did still manage to see some sweet stuff, despite how foggy it was…

one of the few windmills in downtown Amsterdam

Ryan and the bikes relaxin on one of the famed dutch canals

on museum row, in front of the “IAmsterdam” sign

After our long day of bike riding we wanted nothing more but to crash and sleep, but unfortunately we hadn’t booked a hostel for that night since everything was booked. We killed some time and saw a horrible movie (music and lyrics), and wandered around some more. We even scoped the train station looking for any semi-appealing places to crash, but our best bet was a burger king. At around 1 am we decided to give hostel hunting one last shot. After trying nearly 4 places who all turned us away at the door, we happened upon our hostel from the night before who miraculously had some extra beds from kids who didn’t make their cerfew. Ryan and I, abliged, haha, I mean, hopped into bed and crashed hard!

Feeling refreshed and blessed, we headed back to the train station where we left our bags for the night and decided to go do a little day trip to the nearby city of Harlem, a quiet little town, that allowed for us to take our most cliché Dutch picture…

Ryan and I in Harlem

For our last full day Amsterdam we decided to check out some of the museums. We went to a pretty cool film museum, and went and saw a movie in English…well we thought it was in English, but by “in English” the lady meant there were no words, obviously. So after our silent film about the food industry, we grabbed some delicious Dutch apple pie, and headed over to the Anne Frank Museum which was really cool. Once again, we were exhausted and grabbed dinner and hit the hay.

On Monday we said goodbye to the ‘Dam and headed to Utrecht, the home of our cancelled concert. Both Ryan and I agreed, it was very bitter sweet…we didn’t know much about Utrecht other than that is where Arcade Fire was going to play. Despite bumming, we still headed to the city center and relaxed on benches and in the below ground canals.

here’s a shot I grabbed at sunset on the main Utrecht canal

Oh, one thing, our hostels for the entire trip…in the ‘Dam, Utrecht, and Stockholm were all huge 20 person rooms with bunk beds, but somehow, even being a light sleeper, I was conked out every night even with all the hustle and bustle of the other residences. Oh, I also forgot too tell you I got my cell phone stolen in my Christian Amsterdam hostel. Luckily it didn’t end up being a hassle since the phone had no minutes and it was a cheap phone. Outside of that, I have thankfully had pleasant hostel experiences, which is unique, from some stories I’ve heard.

Our stoke level was on the rise on Tuesday, as we boarded our train to Düsseldorf, Germany, where we were to rendezvous with Peter, and snag our flight to Sweden. For the whole latter half of the trip we flew Ryan Air, which although has rock bottom prices, it flies into out-of-the-way towns. This gave me and Ryan a little trouble upon arrival in Dusseldorf, when we found out we actually had to take a train an hour out of the city to the airport. We barely made our flight, but it was smooth sailing from there. That’s what you get though when you only have to pay 15 euro for flights! We landed in Sweden and took the bus into town, and walked to our hostel, which we’d letter realize was wonderfully located in downtown Stockholm. On top of that, the hostel was incredibly nice, decked out with lots of computers, free pasta, and even a sauna – all of which we took advantage of.

On Wednesday Pete, Ryan, and I decided we just wanted to walk around and see as much of Stockholm as we could. The city is set up kind of like a star fish, where a bunch of mini peninsulas branch off from the downtown area. We first headed over to the old district, Gama Stan, which has, well old buildings, and The Royal Palace – one of the oldest buildings in all of Europe. Here’s a pic looking towards the old district…

Ryan, Pete, and I…but vice versa

From there we went to check out some of the many sweet museums in Stockholm. Our first stop was the Vassa museum, which was home to a salvaged sunken ship which was submerged for 333 years before being pulled up and restored. From there we went to this huge open air museum called Skansen, which had a mini zoo in it; and more importantly for Peter, a wolverine.

the wolverine comes out after a little provoking!

We finished the day out with a music museum where they had tons of instruments you could bang on! We hit up the sauna after and grabbed some pasta and called it a night.

On Thursday, we all bought ferry passes to head out to one of the thousands of archipelagos. Unfortunately, lots of them aren’t plausible to get to just for a day trip so we cruised to the capital of all the archipelagos, Voxholm, and explored. We were shocked at how dead the town was…hardly any shops or restaurants, and mainly just residential homes, which looked oh-so-cozy from the bitter cold we endued on the outside. We actually found a putt-putt course and decided to hit that up...

Definitely one of the hardest courses ive ever played no joke.

After some putt-putt we explored some of the coast, and happened upon a nice dock at sunset with some old boats and a nice view.

here’s the crew via self-timer

We said goodbye to Pete late that night because he had an early flight to Prague for the last leg of his trip. But Ryan and I still had two full days left in the Stockholm, so we decided Friday to make good use of our ferry passes and check out another archipelago…this time Sodra Grinda, which actually was even more desolate than Voxholm. We were actually a bit worried because by the time our ferry dropped us off, we had 6 hours on the archipelago before it would return to pick us up. But despite our hesitations, it worked out great. We just relaxed, and virtually circumnavigated the whole island, stopping to take in the scenery or play some music. Here’s a few pics…

skipping stones

exploring…

we hung out here for awhile

Ryan and I both agree that our ferry ride home was one of the best parts of the trip. We managed to get in the nose of the boat, where there were big glass windows and we popped on our ipods and just enjoyed the sunset as we weaved through the archipelagos on our way back to Stockholm…

Sunset

When we got back we felt pretty refreshed and wanted to go out still. We had heard about this ice bar, and when we found out it was close we headed on over. Living up to its name, the entire bar was made of ice, even the glasses you drank out of. You even got a full on poncho with gloves when you entered. We decided to ask the bartender for a pic…

Absolute Ice Bar Stockholm Sweden

For our last day in Stockholm Ryan and I decided to further explore an area called Soldermalm. We had a relaxing day chilling in parks, watching skaters and bikers, and just listening to music. We were planning on going to a sweet electronic show that night, so we killed some time and saw a movie – The Fountain – which I highly recommend to anyone out there. From there we cruised over to the venue and saw some sweet dj’s and electronic show. It was an excellent cap to our time there. Unfortunately, getting home wasn’t going to be quite as easy as hopping on a plane. We had to wait for our bus to the airport at 3:30am to catch our 7am flight to Frankfurt, Germany, in which we would then have a near 24 hour layover until our flight left the next morning at 6. Ryan and I dumped our bags and checked out a nearby city of Mainz…where we attended an Easter Mass in German. Ha! We then stumbled upon the giant Rhine river where there was a fair going on and we snagged some .5 meter brawts. Hey im not joking…

Ryan with his

We headed back to the airport and was lucky to have our friends Lauren and Clare flying into the airport as well to be on our same flight back to Granada. We all passed out, and Ryan and I parted ways, and I finally returned to Granada after a whirlwind of 10 days of traveling.

It wasn’t of the epic nature that I had originally hoped, mainly because of the concert cancellation, but all in all, it was an amazing trip to the homeland and to Sweden.

Kbgdfnbgfednbdfk. Finished. Yessss! Leave comments n such as usual.

Oh, and before I bounce, here’s my schedule for the next few weeks or so…

April 19-21: Meeting friends in Switzerland
April 27 – May 1: Portugal with the program
May 3-6: Beaaaaach!

Ill hit you guys back up after Switzerland! Byeee. pete

morocco: tetuan, tanger, chef chouen

March 16-18:

once again, I blink my eyes and realize how fast time is going…every time I log on here to blog, I can’t believe how much ive done since I last posted. And thus is the case here, but im gonna try to chop it up into two posts, and just tell yall about morocco right now…

first off, my time in morocco was slightly tainted because not only did I break my camera half way through the first day, I also lost my credit card. Everything is worked out now, thanks to a few loving parents and a patient credit union employee, but at the time it was a bit difficult to look past. However, Morocco proved to be one of the most eye opening and “different” places id ever been.

a bunch of kids from our program and I all signed up through this program which does weekend tours to three cities in Morocco for a fairly reasonable, all inclusive price of 180 euros. We left straight from Granada on March 16 and headed to our ferry out of the Spanish port city which im currently drawing a blank on. The ferry is only a little over an hour to Africa, and we made it there by Friday evening, exchanged our euros for some durum spending money, and headed straight to our hotel in Tetuan. All of our meals for the trip were in our hotels and they turned out to be really good (its too sketchy too eat anything else off the streets). After breakfast we headed into downtown Tetuan, and like all of our city tours, we pretty much just walked around the cities which proved to be an excellent way to get a feel for things. We began walking through the main drag of town and the markets before I had my fateful encounter of peeking into a muslim mosque and dropping my camera. I did get some great pics that were later salvaged, so here they are, all from Tetuan…

the main drag

a mosque

market

man on the market strip; not happy with my photo

moroccan men chillin

i like this one

our nutty tour guide showin us some fine African merchandise

Well, that is it for all the pics I was able to take after my clumsy camera fiasco, but luckily I was accompanied with plenty of picture-snappin friends who I stole a few photos from to show you the rest of the cities we visited.

The middle city we saw was Tanger, and was actually the most disappointing, simply because it was a bigger, industrial city. We walked all around the market and actually bought a few trinkets (get stoked mom and ben), and then went on to check out a sweet view of the ocean. Here’s the pic…

Jamie, Rob, Me, and Lauren

our final city in Morocco was Chef Chouen, the less poverished of the three, although that’s a relative term when you are in Africa. Chef Chouen is a tiny little city further south and inland from the other two cities, and is known for its gorgeous location in the foothills of the mountains and for its abundance of blue painted doors.

one of the token blue doors

…and me in an alley

well, I feel as if that should give yall a bit of a peek into what Africa was like, definitely an opportunity I am glad I took advantage of since Granada is so close.

I hope to have up my spring break adventures (Netherlands and Sweden) here shortly as well, so until then, enjoy the pics, and leave some comments like usual, Id love to hear from you. Until then, take care.

Love. pete

ireland, london, y el sur de espana

wow, looking below at my Barcelona and Madrid post has once again solidified in my mind how fast my time has gone here in Europe. It almost feels a bit overwhelming to even attempt to fill you in all of the stuff ive done since uve last heard from me, but I am gonna go ahead and try. This will lean more to the picture side of things, so if u want to know more, just ask. Anyways, here begins a brief summary of my past month in Europe…

February 17-18: Ronda y Cadiz

(wow, this feels sooooo long ago)…way back when, our program took a day trip to the small city of Ronda, which if I recall correctly, isn’t more than a 2-3 hour drive to the west of Granada. Ronda, a beautiful city, essentially is recognized for two things: the giant gorge that divides the city in two and containing the oldest bull fighting ring in all of spain. Check um out:

el tojo

correo de torros

Although, it was technically just a day trip to Ronda with our program, a bunch of us decided to head down to the beach city of Cadiz for the night to enjoy one of Spain’s biggest festivals: Carnival. The entire city was packed through all hours of the night, and everyone adorned a wacky costume…think Halloween on steroids and red bull and you might have an idea what it was like. Here was my steezin’ outfit, as well as Drew’s:


February 22-26: Ireland (Galway)

I finally had my chance to check out another European country other than Spain with this weekend trip to Ireland. My friend Lauren has a friend from home who is studying abroad in Galway (situated on Ireland’s west coast, opposite of Dublin), so we flew into Shannon, and we were able to stay with him for free. Just as I imagined, Ireland was plush, green, and replete with stone walls and sheep. While we were there we took a day trip to the nearby Aran Islands, another day trip to the stunning Cliffs of Moher, and even got to catch an Ireland / England rugby match in a huge Irish pub. Granted I haven’t been to Scotland, I’d still like to think Ireland has the most to offer of any of those English speaking islands. Here’s some pics:

bikin around the aran islands

a nice representative pic of ireland on the islands

the ireland crew

scalin the cliffs at the islands (mom, i could hear you saying 'be careful peter')

the cliffs of moher

February 28 – March 4: England (London)

I was barely in Granada for more than a day, before I took right back off for the isles. (I should of just stayed up there, I know!). And as you may have noticed by my closing sentence about Ireland, I was hardly impressed with the England. I still had a lot of fun on the trip, because we were with a fun group of kids, but a combination of some travel difficulties, the pound (see expensive), and some unhelpful London-ers (including our supposedly competent and travel-savvy hostel assistants) resulted in a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth by the time I boarded my return flight home. It wasn’t all bad though, on our first full day (Friday, I do believe) we went and just walked all around the city. We saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, The London Eye, Buckingham Palace, The National Gallery, and Hyde Park. We capped the day off with a huge all you could eat Indian Buffet. The next day, three of us decided to do an expensive, albeit worth it, excursion to see the famed Stonehenge monument as well as the city of Bath…On Saturday, we spent our last day checking out more of the city, specifically the bankside south section of London. Here, we saw the Tate Modern museum, the Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London. We grabbed some Portugese food for our final meal, before just relaxing for our 6am flight out of England. Although the trip was a bit draining and frustrating, it was still a place that was good to see…once.

you havent been to london till uve done this obviously

a kiss for big ben

ridin the lions outside the national gallery

bird madness – drew, lauren, and rob

the stonehenge crew

a nice look at dem rocks

takin a dip at the roman baths in...bath

rob, drew, and i at the tower bridge

March 9 – 11: Gibraltar, Sevilla, y Cordoba

After my first full week in Granada in quite some time, our program took off on an excursion to see some of the most important places in the southern region of Spain. Our first stop was Gibraltar – the small colony of the UK, which marks the very bottom of Europe. The extremely small country is made up of the largely recognizable rock, a diverse mix of cultures, and of course: monkeys!!!

monkeyin around

this ones on my desktop currently

From Gibraltar we made our way back up into Spain and to the gorgeous city of Sevilla. Sevilla has just about everything within its confines including sprawling parks, a winding river, the third largest cathedral in the world, and the Alcazar (a huge Moorish and Catholic palace)…

a nice shot of sevilla from atop the giant catherdral

Our final stop before making it back to Granada was Cordoba – a city packed with winding narrow streets covered with beautiful flowers; and of course Cordoba is home to La Mezquita (mosque) – an intricate mixture of both Islamic and Christian architecture.

the famed flower-covered Cordoba alley

…exhale…

Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed that catch up on my Europe happenings, and like always, feel free to comment cuz I like hearing from you.

Oh, and before I go, here’s my busy, upcoming schedule…

March 16-18: Trip to Morocco, Africa.
March 23-25: Showing Pete and Ryan around Granada
March 26-29: Midterms
March 29 – April 8: Spring Break to Amsterdam and Sweden with Ryan.

Alrighty then, till next time, adios.