Heya everybody,
Sorry it took so long for me to get this thing started but I've been living the live of a vagabond traveler for the last two weeks and I'm just starting to get settled in. This thing turned out pretty long so if your looking for a more concise and probably more visually appealing summary, just check out the photos attached.
First on the agenda was London. Now I'll say this to qualify; London was amazing and too much fun. However, in hindsight a trip to Portugal or somewhere cheaper might have been smarter than starting in one of the most expensive places in Europe for my FIRST time in Europe (Largely because I was more liable to make mistakes). We started off the trip with a huge mistake taking a cab to our hostel. I'm not sure what lead us to do this, maybe it was the deliriousness of no sleep for like two days but either way we blew it. Costed like 30 pound each which is almost double in dollars. But anywho the rest of the day we got settled into our hostel and got ready to go out. Which leads me to why I liked London the most, the night life is WAY too much fun. Tons great clubs and bars. First night, a couple of interesting incidents aside, we made our way to tiger tiger and piccadilly institute. Mostly met other travelers but either way it was a lot of fun. The next day we hit the city hard and saw all the innercity london site seeing like the abbey, big ben, buckingham palace etc. We took a trip on the London eye which was cool, however, my one complaint would be it was raining pretty much the entire trip...except for at night which is probably why I liked the night so much. Next day we did camden town to its fullest and made our way through regency park. Really cool clothes in those markets, it was very hard not to go buck wild and hold my purchasing for Spain. We also headed through the London Bridge area and all the shopping markets around there. It's all starting to blur but I know we went to the West End one night Truffalagan square another. All and all it was a great trip and I think I'll enjoy even more when I'm older and have the pocketbook for it.
Next on the list was Amsterdam. Our flight was a little delayed so we came in too late to go out and ended up just hitting up a couple of bars and checking out what the fabled coffee shops were actually like. The whole feel of the place is just awesome and the locals are completely friendly with tourists. Lots of english speakers. I feel like in a place where 80% of the people walking around at any given time are tourists you kind of have to be. The first day we set out and ate at this place in Vondel Park called Cafe Vertigo. It was delicious and probably the best meal in Amsterdam. After that we headed to a famous coffee shop called dampkring which was featured in I think Ocean's 12. The decor is really awesome and the music was cooler. I offered the waitress 5 euro for the playlist and she wouldn't give it to me so you know its good. Next we went to the Van Goh Museum which I wasn't allowed to take pictures of but was really a gem. For someone as troubled as Van Goh was his pictures generally were some of the most vividly beautiful paintings I have ever seen, and definitely the most interesting from the ones I've seen in even in my travels since. That night we hit up some bars and some clubs and did the usual college nightlife scene. There wasn't as many people as in London because it was during the week but the music was probably 10x better especially in the clubs. I think it's really cool how hip amsterdam is, you can really tell it's something the whole city works at. Everything just seems to be 10 steps ahead there, like their setting trends we won't catch on to for at least a half a year later. The exception is their lack of awnings when it consistently rains in the summer.... The next day we had a bit of a late start but eventually made it out to the red light district and checked out down town amsterdam along with all the monuments and the royal palace. All very striking. Also checked out the sex museum which multiple people in our hostel had recommended. I almost completely forgot to talk about the hostel. The one in London was pretty bad, but we stayed at the flying pig in Amsterdam and it was AWESOME. Really cool people from all over, their was a bar open all night and it was pretty popping at any given time before 4 am. That night we did the club thing again went to a place called Prime. Tried to go into Escape but failed because it was University of Amsterdam night and you needed to be a student to get in. The next day was interesting because the two friends I've been on these travels with, Sean and Mike, had to go to Rotterdam because my flight was full by the time they attempted to get it. So I was alone. Probably ended up being one of the most fun days of my whole pretrip. I headed to a coffeeshop called smokey's that I'd seen the night before. As I was planning my day with my map I started chatting it up with the bartender who happened to be from Spain. She came from Valencia and has been living in Amsterdam for about a year. Eventually I managed to get her to agree to show me the spots that she'd discovered in her year here once she was off work, so I set off hit a canal tour up got lunch and came back later that evening. For the rest of the day I hung out with her and eventually a couple of her friends from work, all locals, and saw the city tell around 11 or 12 going to cool coffee shops like EZ living (They had sports center on, I was literally amazed!) We went to a couple jazz clubs got dinner at a sandwich place called Van Dobins which was a really authentic delicious dutch deli that Sean told me to go to. Didn't disappoint. After that I hung out at the Hostel Bar with the friends I'd met during the week until I had to catch my flight at 4am. Overall unbelievable trip and I can't wait to go back. Love the people love the city love the feel.
I was only in Madrid for two days and two nights making it the quickest of the trips aside from Toledo. We went to a couple museums which were honestly pretty boring and I didn't really go out too heavily. I'm definitely not as into the kind of art that is just really good paintings of old rich people who hired painters to paint them. Although some of the representations of New Testament scenes or old Greek Mythology are really cool. The coolest part of madrid was seeing the royal castle next to one of the oldest yet most rebuilt cathedrals in Spain. I opted for the Spanglish tour to get better (three degrees, English Spanish and Spanglish....which was really 85% Spanish) So I didn't really follow all the names but the structures were truly breathtaking, just colossal creations and the bits of history behind them that I caught were great compliments. The rest of my trip was spent basically meeting the people in my program because this was the start of the actual ISA trip and not my pre-trip. We checked out a lot of cheap authentic Tapas bars with lots of Sangria and hangovers to back up the copious amounts of sugar in those things.
After Madrid we had a one day stop in Toledo and it was by far the best sight seeing of my entire trip thus far. One of the most beautiful quaint little cities I've ever seen or heard of. I didn't even realize this kind of place still existed in modern times. The alleys, a cathedral that rivaled the one in Madrid, everything about it. We started the trip off with an amazing panoramic view that my attached pictures will never do justice. You could literally see the whole city from the mountain where our bus stopped. Everyone should visit this place once in their life. The city just had so much heart and even more history.
Anyway I think I've bored you all long enough so I'm going to call it quits on this one. Hopefully the next one won't be quite as lengthy as it will be all about Barce. Today was my first day so soon you'll have pics of the pad and the housemates as well as my barce adventures. America I love you but I must say it looks like this is going to be one amazing semester.
Sorry for typos and the pics are on fb.
