So we began the day in Barcelona and we ended the night in Rome. No big deal. 

Well, the trip to Rome from Barcelona was the worse airport/flight experience I have been through. It was horrible.  It was really hot in Barcelona when we headed out, which made the airport really warm, actually, it was boiling. The Barcelona airport is full of ceiling height windows. So the sun was blaring in through the glass. There was no air conditioning. I was dying. So not only did we have the heat to worry about, we knew that we were about to fly on Ryanair flight. Gross. 

We were waiting in line to board the flight, when I began to feel nauseous and my eyes started to see black dots. Oh uh. I knew what this meant. I was about to pass out in the middle of the airport. Lucas being the savior that he is ran off and got me ice. So we were sharing the ice while waiting in line. I would hold against Danny’s neck who was about to die and then Lucas would hold it against my neck. All three of us were dying, and we thought if we could sit down on the plane there we would feel better because there would be air.

We were wrong. Wayyyy wrong.

The plane was freaking on fire also. No air conditioning. We weren’t the only ones complaining about it now. Everyone was boiling. Danny asked for flight attendant if the air conditioning was on. She said they weren’t allowed to put on the air conditioning when they were not in flight. I’ll I have to say is bullshit to that Ryanair, bullshit. Danny then asked for a cup of ice since our first cup melted.

The airplane finally took off and the air conditioning was on, which helped…not that much. It was pretty much the worse flight ever. Afterwards, Danny told everyone that he was pretty sure that the plane was flying backwards…. Whoops!

When the plane landed, we all were exhausted, but we had to keep on truckin along. We went out to the buses to get a bus to the hostel. Stood outside for like 40 minutes only to find out we needed a ticket… The bus driver told us this. We thought he would have waited for us. Of course, he didn’t… So kind. So we waited an extra 30 minutes for the next. We were on that bus for about an hour to an hour and a half. Ick, I know.

After getting off the bus we managed to find our way to our hostel, check in, and go find a place to eat dindin. We went right next door. We had pasta and bruschetta. YUM! So good. After dinner, we decided to walk around and find some place to eat gelato. 

We found this awesome gelato place. Lucas and I got some, but Danny didn’t have any Euros on him. You could tell he wanted some because they had his favorite kind: rum raisin. Lucas and I both offered to buy him some, but for some odd reason he refused… 

So we moved on. Just walking around the city at night. It was a long day so we headed back to the hostel after awhile.

This is how Danny fell asleep:

Haha. Mummified.

So all in all, we had a long day filled with travels and airplane experiences we will never forget. We were on our 5th city during our Spring Break and had a few days to explore it.

Stay tuned!  

Danny, Lucas, and I only spent one night here but for all of us, it probably is one of the most memorable nights of our entire study abroad trip.

We woke up in Zermatt, checked out of our hotel , spent three more hours on the train back to Geneva, and then spent a few hours at the airport playing James Bond.

This is where Prince left us and it was just Danny, Lucas, and I. Aka perfection. 

We hopped on the plane and to prepare ourselves for our night in Barcelona, Danny and I practiced our Spanish…it was pretty bad. We spent the whole plane ride talking in Spanish, Lucas became a little lost in the conversation because he had never learned Spanish…sucks for him.

Anyway, we landed and asked tourist information how to get to our hostel.  She told us what bus we needed and what stop we needed to get off on. We were set. 

We got on the bus. Content and happy.  But then I started to panic. I didn’t know when the bus stop would occur… I didn’t know how long we were supposed to be on the bus for. In Madrid, we were only on the bus for 30 minutes. The Spanish that Danny and I practiced did not help us out at all on that bus. We didn’t understand what was being said or what was appearing on the little screen. I kept looking at the map as if that would do anything.  Lucas, being the smarty pants that he is, figured out how the little screen was working and figured out when we needed to get off.

We finally got off Paralelo. We were on that bus for like an hour…standing up with all our bags. But we couldn’t stop there. We had to then make our way to our hostel. We started walking in the direction we thought we were supposed to be going. Make bag was ridiculous heavy so I was not a happy camper. We were walking for a little bit when we decided we needed to ask someone for directions.  

Danny, being the rock star he is, wanted to use his Spanish that he was practicing. He goes up to this lady yelling ‘Perdon’ in Spanish and the woman was terrified.  She didn’t realize that he was only asking for directions rather than going to mug him. Oops.  She told some sort of direction. She kept getting confused with right and left. So we weren’t really sure which way she meant. Even so, we started walking straight for 10 blocks. We got to the tenth block and had to ask for more directions. Danny and his ‘perdon’ too funny! The people he asked this time looked it up on their smart phones. And told we had a lot more blocks to go and then turn right. That first lady was a liar, but whatevs. 

So we walk down the street. I’m like dying with my bag. Boo. But, I trucked on. We get confused again about where we are supposed to go. We approach this guy and ask him directions to the hostel. He is an American living in Barcelona so he stopped us while talking and plainly asked ‘American?’ Yes, yes we are. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.  He actually was heading in the same direction we were. Thank God! He led us to the street our hostel was on; we thanked him, and then he was on his way.

We got to our hostel, Hostel One, and was bombarded by friendliness. They were in the middle of dinner, the rest of the guests. Apparently, at this hostel the different guests make a home cooked dish from their respective country.  Before we could do anything, or pay for the hostel, the man who worked there took us into the kitchen gave us a Spanish omelet along with this meat/bean sauce (I actually don’t have a clue what it was). He sat us down, gave us three forks, and told us to eat. We were so overwhelmed. SO not knowing what to do with ourselves, we ate it. And it was good. Yum. Delicioso.

After finishing, and having the time to calm ourselves down, we paid for our hostel and headed upstairs.  We were sharing a room with another boy. They were nice enough beds. So settled our stuff and went out to find a restaurant to really eat at. 

We ended up walking for awhile, in a big circle basically. We ended up here.

It had okay food. But they had cheap bottles of wine so I ain’t complainin. :)

We had one of the most interesting nights here. It was a roller coaster of emotions. We were laughing and then crying and then laughing again. I’m blaming it on the wine. Interesting conversations were had. 

We stayed in the restaurant drinking until like midnight or one in the morning. We grabbed our bottle of wine and made your way back to the hostel.  While walking back, I was carrying the wine, and my drunk ass just had to trip. Great news though! I saved the wine. I fell and held the bottle up and Danny was ecstatic. SO I was helped up by and we made it back to the hostel. Safely. No worries :)

We looked good didn’t we? Haha

Anyway, we were up for awhile because Lucas wasn’t feeling well. Woops. Finally, we went to bed around 3:00 am.

We got up around 10:00 am because we had to check out right around then.  We packed up our stuff and made our way to find the bus stop and a place to eat breakfast.  

We were successful on both accounts. We headed to the airport-it took an hour, but we were able to sit this time. I passed out. Apparently, Lucas had to put his hand against my head because it kept on falling off his shoulder. I had no idea. Woops.

That was our night in Barcelona. One of the most memorable nights of my entire London experience.  

Next, we’re off to Roma, Italy. No big deal.  

Switzerland, Day 3!

Our last day in Zermatt…so sad…

We all woke up early, Lucas extremely early though so he could go ski on the Italy side of the Matterhorn, no big deal right? He took my camera so I’ll post some of the pictures he took in afterwards.

Danny and I put on our skiing gear and headed down for breakfast.  

Every morning this was our breakfast. So much cheese and bread…yum!

We got on the bus that would take us to the same mountain base that we were at yesterday.  We broke off from Prince who was meeting Lucas to take photos of the Matterhorn. Danny and I, on the other hand, headed back up to the Wolli slopes.  

We were up there forever. I think we were there until forever. I got pretty good at it. I kept on falling though, but besides that falling I thought I was doing a good enough job for it being only my second day!  Danny improved also. He didn’t even run into a fence, I mean he ran into a wall of ice twice you know. He’s trying.  He also believed he skied backwards. I told him that no, he didn’t ski backwards; he slid down the backwards. He was in denial…

Anyway…

That little spec is me! Holla.  Look at me ski down that hill! I’m so proud of myself.

So I was falling down a lot. Even not whilst skiing I fell down. Kaboom.

I was on the magic carpet heading up the hill when Danny wanted a picture of me:

Right after this picture was taken, I was standing still. Not moving other than the fact that the magic carpet thing was bringing me up the hill. I turned back around and then all of a sudden I was on the ground. Literally, I have no idea how that happened. I was just on the snow having fallen off the magic carpet. Danny was flabbergasted.  I just watched him move past me on the magic carpet as I tried to get myself up from the snowy ground.  It was a sad sight to see. It should have been captured on video to be sent into Funniest Home Videos or to put up on video, so I could have been a Youtube sensation.

*Side note: I was falling and tripping so much during this trip. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I was headed up the stairs to our hotel room and I tripped and rammed my face into Danny’s calf. Thank goodness his calf was there or else I would have smashed my cheek bone into the marble stair and that would not have been good at all. I like my face…

Well, finally, Lucas and Prince met up with us on the Wolli slope.  We wanted to see these massive igloos and to try skiing on a different slope.  So that’s what we did. We headed back down to the bus where it took us to a different part of the mountain. Now, remember when I said that I was terrified of the chairlifts and gondolas? Well, it was time to face my fears. This is how I handled it.

And all Lucas could do was laugh…I was having a breakdown and all that boy could do was laugh. What a supportive boyfriend. Oh and then Danny had the tact to do this:

These boys really now how reassure someone that they aren’t going to die. 

All in all though, I survived the gondola ride. Only to find out that I had to ski down a hill which wasn’t a baby hill at all to get to another gondola to get to the igloos. 

Lord, I was a mess. 

This was me prepping myself for that hill. I was pretty much panicking the entire second half of the day, if you couldn’t tell.  Lucas had to ski in front of me because I was terrified that I was going to fly off the side of the mountain.  Well, him skiing in front of me didn’t really work out well seeing as I flew past him and managed to turn myself around. I somehow managed to make it down to the gondola.

Only to find out when I did get to the bottom that it was a chairlift!  The ones where your feet dangle.  Panic ensued. I wasn’t prepared for this. A gondola I could handle not a chairlift.  There was no turning back though.  Lucas talked me through the shuffling up to the chair and then sitting. Success. The bar came down and the chairlift took off. I screamed. SO loud. I’m surprised an avalanche didn’t occur because of that. I pulled myself together. It was fine. I just kept my chin up and avoided looking down. Of course, all of a sudden the chairlift stops. Done. I was done. I started bawling.  Of course, the chairlift would stop when I was on it because I wasn’t panicking enough already. Just my luck, right? Lucas was laughing, again. So supportive that boy is.  I was crying, Lucas was laughing, and what was Danny doing? His breathing exercises. He told Lucas to shut up and stop apologizing because he was doing his breathing exercises.  The chairlift finally started up again. Almost the worst experience of my life.  

BUT WE SURVIVED! We can breathe..normally. 

We made it up the mountain only to have to go back down it…ridiculous, I know.

So Lucas promises us that this is a beginner’s slope, an easy one…Yeah, right.

This is where Danny ran into the the ice wall…twice.

Skiing became a whole lot harder. It went from slick, icy snow, something I was familiar with to thick, fluffy snow with bigger hills. I wasn’t anywhere near my comfort zone. I was having a difficult time, but there was no turning back. I had to continue down the mountain. Even if it was taking it one step at a time. Literally, I had to side step down most of the hills because I was so scared. 

Danny got fed up at one point, took his skis off, and slid down the mountain saying: “Hey, look I’m skiing!” He was basically sliding down the hill with only his boots on. 

There was one moment when I was busy trying to make my way down the mountain when I see Danny at the bottom of a hill. He flew down the hill. He says he was skiing…he wasn’t. He went straight down the hill. I miss what happened at the end of the hill, but I was told by Lucas that Danny face planted. Danny went down the one hill, saw the next hill and deemed it too steep, and tried to stop. He was going to fast and wasn’t going to stop before the next hill, so Danny thought the best thing to do was to face plant. Apparently he skidded for a few seconds on his stomach and then laid still. Lucas thought he was dead. Then slowly Danny lifts his head up. He survived. 

Oh and by the way, here are those damn igloos…

Yeah, I went through all that hardship for those. We didn’t know how to get near them and by the time we go to this point we weren’t halfway down yet.  We had a lot more to go.  

So we start back down the mountain.  I fell down. A lot. I was sitting in the snow when Lucas decided to show us what we needed to do to help us improve our skiing. He was down the hill in front of me and I could not get up. Danny came over to me and I was like “who the fuck is going to help me up now?” I was not a happy camper.

Lucas made it back up the hill and helped me up. After that we were flying down the hill, in a good way.  I did manage to get stuck in snow that was 6 ft deep though. I literally disappeared. Lucas was confused. He stepped in the snow and he sunk into it. It was pretty hilarious.  

We finally made it down to the train station that would take us down the mountain. I was down by this time. Danny took one of my skis and I had the other. I plopped myself down on the train and was ready for a warm shower. 

I survived the day! Phew. 

We headed back to the hotel. I needed to change. I was frozen, literally. My sweater was caked with snow and ice. Oops. 

I needed a glass of wine after that.

Yep, a glass of wine was necessary or I would’ve lost my mind…

…too late. I’m already crazy. 

My food was delicious though. It was cheesy bread with ham, pineapple and a fried egg. 

Yummmmmmm! It was quite delicious.

We headed back to the hotel. I just wanted to pass out. Our flight was leaving in the afternoon and we had to be at the train station at like 11:00. I needed sleep! 

I will never forget this trip. I experienced something that I never though I would before. I mean, how many people can say that the first time they went skiing was in the Swiss Alps? 

It was a fantastic ‘part 1’ of spring break! Yeah, remember this is just the first half of spring break…there’s still more to come!

XOXO

First day of skiing in the Swiss Alps.

No big deal.

SWITZERLAND DAY TWO.

We started the day early, Lucas especially. He woke up early so that he could go skiing on the big, intense slopes.  He’s been skiing for over 12 years compared to Danny, Prince, and myself who’s never been skiing before. So while Lucas went off to ski the Matterhorn, Danny, Prince, and myself woke up and went off to find a place to rent ski pants because apparently it’s a little Podunk to ski in jeans. 

We successfully found pants:

The picture is blurry because Danny was working those ski pants like it was no ones business.  We are so smooth though. We managed to weasel a pair of gloves for each of us without paying. Holla!

Finished our errands in like 20 minutes, and now we just had to wait for Lucas to get back from his skiing adventures.  

Danny and I decided to take a swim in the hotel’s pools.  I havent swam in forever and it was awesome. The water was warm and relaxing.  

We are fabulous, aren’t we?

Oh my gosh, it was so funny to watch Danny swim.  He can’t. He was swimming towards me and basically sank. He was doggy paddling his little heart out and then sunk like a submarine. I could not stop laughing. 

After swimming we got ourselves ready for skiing the baby slopes. Woot.

Our booties look good. You know. 

Slash the shoes are so difficult to walk in. Like, they are incredibly awkward. Also, I am uncoordinated. I had to carry all this skiing equipment shit and walk with those boots on. It was a pain in the ass. 

Anyway, we got on this bus that took us to the bottom of the mountain. We then had to take this metro cart thing that took us to the slopes.  It was like a monorail that went through the middle of the mountain. 

It was a weird riding experience. I didn’t like it. I kept my eyes closed.  

We got to the top, but we still had more to go. We had to go on a gondola. Now, I am terrified of gondolas and chairlifts. I was getting anxious because I thought that the one itty bitty cord was going to snap. I know the chances of that happening were slim, but still. There was a possibility. A problem that I was going to have to face since I was skiing. I made it safely down the gondola to Wolly’s park.

Wolli was this goat/sheep mascot of the baby slopes. I’ll post some pictures in another slot to show how ridiculous it was skiing up there.

So the first day of skiing I only fell twice, and that was at the beginning when I first put my skis on. It was a lot like ice skating or rollerblading but with a lot longer shoe to work with.  First goal of the afternoon was to perfect the pizzas and fries. You wouldn’t think that would be too difficult, but it was.  We slid down this basically flat surface trying to point our skis in and spread them apart. As we got down there was this magic carpet thing that would take us back up the hill.

That’s Danny. He ran into a fence, twice…

After awhile I wanted to try a bigger hill so we moved over to this hill right next to were we were skiing. I just went for it.  I went straight down. I couldn’t stop. I thought  I was going to die; there was a fence at the bottom with a medium size drop off on the other side of it.  I was screaming ‘LUCAS!’ all the way down.  Pizzas and fries went out of my brain. I managed to make myself turn thought, finally, before I jumped off the mini cliff to my doom. It was terrifying. Lord. I literally thought I was going to die. After that little experience, we decided on another hill that was right next to that one which wasn’t as steep. I liked that one a lot more.

I got pretty good at skiing, I mean, as much as one could be at the end of 4 hours.   Danny, on the other hand, didn’t have the same amount of luck that I had.  He still hadn’t accomplished the pizza/fries concept.  He was determined though. And Prince….well, he gave up after 15 minutes of trying. Oh well, sometimes people aren’t made for something.  

ANYWAY, after skiing we headed back down the little train thing to the bottom of the mountain.  MY FEET WERE KILLING ME! I have a high tolerance to pain, but, man my feet were not happy campers. I was about to cry. And then this woman kept shoving her stroller into everyone on the metro thing because she just couldn’t wait to get on the next one. Biatch to the max.  

We had time to spare before we were going to our complimentary dinner from the hotel that night.  Lucas and I decided to walk around Zermatt and look at souvenirs.  

We found a chocolate store. Filled with different Swiss chocolates. Yum!

So much chocolate. We bought these corn flake balls covered with chocolate and then a sheet of chocolate with peanuts in it. YUM!

We headed back to the hotel, sneaked into Danny and Prince’s room and curled up in their beds. Danny didn’t wake up right away, it took him awhile. Prince, on the other hand, quickly woke up and just stared Lucas down. I thought Lucas was going to be punched in the face. It was too funny.  We then got ready for dinner and had time to spare so we played some more James Bond (the card game) until it was time to head down. 

Now, I have to admit that this was the most awkward dinner experience ever.  We had no clue how awkward this dinner was going to be. It was a Chinese Fondue, I think. Well, we had no idea what that was.  When we first arrived at the restaurant they brought us to this secluded part of the restaurant.

There was a glass partition separating us from the other guests…come on.

Then after we sat down there was a discrepancy between us and the waitress. She told us we had to pay for the meal, but we kept telling her that it was included in the hotel package we were paying for. That took about 15 minutes of trying to explain to her the situation. She refused to believe us. Lucas had to go to the front desk and tell them to tell her that we didn’t have to pay because the meal was included in our hotel fee. After that the lady got the hint and relaized her mistake…Her bad. 

So then they explained that there was a buffet and we could go get the stuff. Well, going back to the fact that we didn’t know what to do. We went up to the buffet and was just bewildered.  There was raw meat every where. We were just like do we eat the meat raw? What do we do? And old Asian people kept cutting in front of us. We looked around for some reassurance as to what we should do but all the other non-Asians were just as confused as we were…

Well, so we put some stuff on our plates and headed back to the ‘VIP’ section or the outcast section, you can decide what to call it.  Danny and I both picked up shrimp. Now, to us the shrimp looked a little weird. It wasn’t pink like it usually is. It was a grey/white color.  Danny tried the shrimp first. He kept saying it was slippery. So I then tried mine. And oh my Lord! It was so slimy. It was gross. I started complaining. Danny continued to eat two more. Complaining all the while.  

The waiter came back with this fondue pot:

It was filled with hot oil. AND NOW IT MAKES SENSE! The raw meat. You put the raw meat. Which means that Danny and I willingly ate raw shrimp. Sick. Like that’s not right, at all. So then we just cooked raw meat and ate it. Let’s just say I didn’t have a big appetite after eating that raw shrimp.

But that’s not all. We had dessert. Dessert was lemon sorbet in vodka. No joke, when we got the sorbet, there were two shots of vodka in the bowl.

And this was my reaction to it:

Two shots of vodka…

So after dinner, we wanted to go find a bar, but it being Sunday nothing was open.  We went back to the hotel. We were supposed to play James Bond, but as soon as I laid down on the bed I passed out. Done for the night.

All in all, it was a day of new experiences: skiing and Chinese fondue. A day no one could forget.

This had to be the most exhausting day I have ever had in my existence.  

So we landed in Geneva, Switzerland around 8:00/8:30 PM. See this wouldn’t be so bad if we had a hostel to stay in for the night. No, our asses thought that sleeping in the airport to save money would be the best decision.  We were in the Geneva airport  from 8:00 PM until 5:00 AM… 

9 HOURS IS TOO MUCH TIME IN AN AIRPORT!

Anyway, everything was closed. No one was around. We couldn’t get any information about the train we were supposed to take.  So we sat down at these tables in the train station part of the airport. It was freezing. We began to play card games.  Man, James Bond is a great card game to play and so is Presidents.  So we were playing cards for about 3 and 1/2 hours before these two police officers came up to us to tell us that we had to leave because of the train station being closed.  I started to panic. I didn’t want have to go outside and sleep in the freezing cold.  Luckily, the actual airport was still open and so we sat the remainder of our time there which was a lot warmer anyway. 

So we played card games instead of trying to get some sleep. We are so smart… We played James Bond until about 3:00 AM. Whenever I play that card game with Danny it becomes for aggressive.  Like, Danny and I go to town with that game.  Arguing and flying cards. It becomes too much fun. Anyway, I was freezing. I only brought with me my rain jacket and I had a sweater on underneath that. It was soooo cold. I could only think about how cold the next three days were gong to be.  But then, I was going skiing. What was I expecting?

Around 3:00 AM we started to at least get some sleep.  Not a very good hour and a half rest, but you work with what you got.  

So at 4:45 we made our way back down to the train station to figure out what platform we had to go to for our train.  Our 3 HOUR long train. We are just non stop traveling. We get on the train in Geneva and three hours later we end up ion Zermatt, Switzerland.  During that train ride, I was completely disoriented.  I was wearing gloves and I took them off. I fell asleep and woke up later to being really confused as to wear my gloves were.  I just stared at my hands wondering where my gloves were and how they weren’t on my hands anymore. I was sitting next to Lucas and asked him if I had gloves on and when he answered no I asked him if I took them off….. I couldn’t figure it out myself because my gloves were no longer on my hands and I had to have taken them off. I guess that is what happens when one is going off of a total of 4 hours of sleep in a span of 48 hours….wah wah.

So it’s understandable why were were so exhausted when we finally made it to Zermatt. We walked to our hotel, a Best Western. Woot! An actual hotel. I was excited for this because I was so used to my horrible bed at Regent’s and then the beds in the hostels. 

That’s the view from my hotel room. No joke. It’s gorgeous.  I ain’t hatin. 

And then Danny collapsed on to the bed.  He wasn’t there long though.  There was time to sleep. We had business to attend to. We had to find our way to this certain ski rental place. We ended getting lost which is a little ridiculous seeing as how Zermatt isn’t that big of a city and can walk from one end of the town to the other side in about 20 minutes. As we were walking around we made sure to get our Uh-Oh Oreo cookie picture. 

Adorable, right?

Anyway, we got our skis, poles, helmets and all that good stuff. Lucas and Danny were making fun of me hardcore.  Why? Because I couldn’t carry all my skiing equipment normally.  So I put my helmet on my head and attempted to carry my skis, poles, boots, and socks.  I looked like a fool.  Danny told me I looked mentally  handicapped walking with my ski helmet on.  I didn’t feel embarrassed because of the helmet though because kept on hitting my head with my skis.  I couldn’t stop laughing. I think Danny was more embarrassed then I was because of the helmet.  

After getting our skis we crashed.  We headed back to the hotel and before I did anything else I needed to shower. I hadn’t showered for almost 48 hours. GROSS! When I got out of the shower everyone was passed out.  I laid my head down on that massive pillow and fell asleep forever at least it felt like forever.

We finally started our day at around 7:00 PM.  We went down to the front desk to ask where should eat dinner. The woman recommended Walliskanne. We ordered cheese fondue for an appetizer.

YUM!

After this delicious dinner (it was expensive, even though the Swiss Franc is almost equivalent to the US dollar, things are not cheap there) we went to this bar called the T-Bar.

‘

‘

The bar was, well, let’s say interesting… They played weird music; I want to say it was Swiss folk music mixed in with techno.  When we were just chillin there, we looked over and spotted this young man, in his mid to late 20s being fondled by 3 middle aged woman. These woman were all over him. One woman even grabbed his crotch while he was sitting down.  That’s how you make a move apparently in Switzerland.  Just grab life by the hand. 

After awhile we headed back to the hotel and got ready for bed. I needed all the rest if I was going to ski for the first time the next day!

I left you all off on March 8th, the day before I left for spring break. (That awkward moment when that was over a month ago….my b.)

Anyway, so we went to the Retro that night for Lucas’s surprise birthday party.  We got back from the Retro a little before midnight and we were leaving by 3:00 am.  Time crunch.  

Everything was going well. We were all packed, and were headed to print out all our boarding passes.  I started printing them all out. I kept telling Danny that I was missing a boarding pass.  He kept on telling me that no, he sent me all that he had.  

That awkward moment when we forgot to book our returning flight to London from Rome….

Oops.

Great. I mean, of course that would happen. Of course we wouldn’t book the flight that would bring us back to London at the end of spring break.  There was no time for us to book the flight then or else we would miss our bus to Luton airport.

Oh well. As Ted and Marshall say in HIMYM: Future Jessica can handle it.  

Off we go!

We make our way to the bus stop.  We go up to the bus and are told that there is no room. So we sit and wait for the right bus.  We see a bus that says it’s going to Luton, but it doesn’t look like the bus we just saw so we stay seated. That bus leaves and we are still waiting.  We start to wonder where our bus is. We’ve been waiting for a long time and time is becoming scarce. I think it was Lucas who started to question if that was the bus we were supposed to get on…I start to panic.

We missed our bus to the airport because we were sitting on the ledge WAITING for the bus…

Idiots, we are.

Finally another bus arrives and we go up and try to get on.  Lord, was that bus driver too sassy and rude for my taste.  He wasn’t going to let us on the bus because it was sold out and past our time.  RUDE. He allowed us on the bus finally if we paid for a full ticket…again. SO basically we paid for two bus tickets.  Kill me.   Great way to start our spring break.

OH WAIT, we started the trip not having a return flight home. Missed bus. No flight home. The perfect way to start a trip.  

Anyway, we make it to the airport.  Get on the flight. Preparing ourselves for a ten hour layover in Madrid, Espana. We land, not gracefully, in Madrid and find the lockers to put our luggage in. 

Note: One locker for four bags doesn’t work. Here’s proof.

“Push it in, Danny! Push it in!”

We are too funny. 

We make our way to central Madrid, and try to navigate ourselves around the city.  I speak a little Spanish, not very well. Maneuvering around the city was a little difficult because we weren’t familiar with the language. However, we were still able to figure out the Uh-oh Oreo. 

We are so cute. Geesh.  

We attempt to make our way to Sol.  We got lost. And then became really hungry. We stopped and ate at a small restaurant.  I think the boys were a little disappointed by the sandwiches they got.  The sandwiches they got were mostly bread with one slice of meat on it. So sad.  I got a sandwich though with a Spanish omelet on it. A Spanish omelet has potatoes and onions and egg in it. It’s different, but it was still good.  

After eating we finally found where Puerto del Sol was.  This little square, area was filled with people in mascot suits. Like I saw a Mickey Mouse that wasn’t Mickey at all. He was such a poser.  People were dressed up as the smurfs and Spongebob just to get money. They freaked me out. Also, that Mickey was not following Disney etiquette; taking off there heads in front of anyone. I mean, COME ON. That would never happen in Disney World. 

My boys. Love them.

After Puerto del Sol, we walked a little further to Plaza Mayor.  We sat at one of the tables in the Plaza and just chilled there. The sun was out. It felt so nice coming from rainy and chilly London.  Being able to sit in the sun was so relaxing.  

Please ignore how gross I look. Remember I hadn’t showered since Thursday morning so I am not on my A game. Judge if you wish because I can’t stop you.

On our way back towards the airport we stopped by a gelato place. This stop, I think, started the gelato obsession for our entire trip. More on that later though.  Danny got this awesome lemonade slushie drink. It was sooooo good. Yum!

After wondering the city for the day, we head back to where the bus to the airport will pick us up. We had some time to spare before the bus would come to pick us up. So we chilled in this park across the street. Danny passed out…

Too cute.

We headed to the airport. Sat there for a few hours, exhausted.  We finally boarded the plane to head to our next destination: Geneva, Switzerland. 

Some side notes:

• It’s really difficult to keep up what day it is when travelling. I think this is worst I’ve done with keeping up with no meat on Fridays during Lent. 
• The people in Madrid rarely speak English. Good luck asking for directions.
• There are street performers everywhere in Madrid.  Some of them have this obnoxious noises and they try to scare you.  

when I told you all to prepare yourselves for my epic spring break and then never posted anything about it…

I promise I’ll let you all in on my traveling life soon. I’m just becoming swamped with a little thing called school. Who knew you had to write papers and do projects while attending university in a different country….

Oops.

that my life is pretty fantastic right now.

I have the best family in the entire world. ( Not biased or anything.)

I’m studying abroad in London and currently chilling in Madrid for the weekend. No big deal.

And

I have a fantastic boyfriend who I’m crazy about.

Life is good.

It’s okay if you’re jealous, I won’t judge you.

Xoxo