Las Islas

My last trip: Balearic Islands (Spain): Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca

our intention: small group backpacking through the islands.
what happened: 8 people urban camping/being homeless for 6 days, this is our story.

June 13th, 2008-Day 1
6/8th of our group went to a Radiohead concert on the 12th and didn't return until late that night, so getting up on the 13th at 5am sucked, especially because I was in charge of the troops, mom status. Anywho, we rallied the troops and made it to the bus station by 630am or whatever time it was and fell right back asleep on our 5 hour journey to a town south of Barcelona named: Valencia... rad city. We spent the afternoon hangin out in the cool park and picnic-ing and all that, until catching another bus at 9pm to a city 2 hrs south of Valencia called: Dénia. This night was interesting, basically we just needed to find a place to sleep for a few hours until our boat left for the first island: Ibiza. (Still following me?) If you didn't know already... Urban Camping=WAY TOO HARD with 8 people. Three troopers ended up on the beach illegaly and the other 5 of us found a sketchy little spot, on unoccupied land in between 2 houses in the middle of a bush. literally. Adam and Josh had found this place and when they came back to get us they tried not to freak us out too much but did mention that we might have some neighbors, aka bums sharing the bush or the next one over. well, paranoid as ever, I didn't sleep much and clutched my passport and wallet in my hand all night.

Flag on top of the Valencian castle. Just showin some love to my favorite country ever =)

That's my friend Elyssa.. This is a really cool, oversized slide park, for adults! Super fun way to pass the time!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this already, but Europe really knows how to build parks for kiddies. I'm the queen of the playground, claro.

Arts and Sciences Museum in Valencia, really neat building!

Urban Camping. Sitting around on the sidewalk with all of our stuff while Adam and Josh searched for a "campsite." I'm sure no one suspected anything..

And that is where we ended up in Dénia the 1st night, middle of a bush

June 14th, 2008-Day 2
Waking up to sun and a wet sleeping bag isn't the most pleasant thing, UNTIL you make it to the beach and get to see this:

and this is me enjoying it:

Continuing on with day 2... We still had about 3 hours until our boat left so we got some much needed coffee and 8 lack of sleep zombies made it to our oversized and horribly utilized boat just in time....Boat ride was about 5 hours to Ibiza, we attempted to sleep a little, since we were 2 nights behind really, but only got a small nap. Here is our boat:

Unfortunately, once the island came into view, my camera's life ended. It was a sad moment, but I realized it is time to move on, just like my latest venture in life is slowly approaching it's own end. (So from here on out, these fotos are stolen from Deja, Adam and Ross) Back to cool things: Ibiza is a rad city. We contemplated doing the clubbing thing, if you don't already know about Ibiza's reputation, go look it up. So we took a bus to the other side of the city, less populated and city-like and again, the sun was setting so Josh and Adam had to hurridly (word?) find a place to sleep. This time, we got lucky, real lucky. We also got to do some rock climbing to get there... 18 years of living in Grass Valley and river hiking has repaid itself. Looky:


So we ended up camping on the top of an abandoned concrete house. Notice the pool of still fresh water, a mosquitos dream, right? so jokingly, over a bottle of tequila and some wine, the 8 of us had a silly bet of who would have the most bites in the morning..

June 15th, 2008- Day 3
Some people didn't think much of it. However, I woke up the next morning very groggily hearing Deja, Alex and Adam saying things like, man in the iron mask (like the movie with Leo-love) and elephant man. Then I decided to open my eyes......

campsite

And poor little Deja won the bet:

THANK GOD she was laughing not crying, because, for 5 hours I couldn't NOT laugh, know what I mean? The swelling went down that day and she looks more beautiful then ever, but it sure gave us one hell of an ab workout. So, finally, we got a day to relax instead of waiting around to move to a new place. We ended up camping that night on top of that house, right? Turns out we had an incredible ocean view.. so we hiked back down for another sunrise, then made our way to the beach below and spent a lovely day in the sun, where we all got pretty toasty (now people believe me when I tell them I'm a native american). So the beach was beautiful:



And that is 4 of us on a little zodiac put-put boat.. we rented one and went deep sea diving, just kidding but we nervously "cove" dived out in the sea. It was incredible and the mediterranean was blue-er then blue. Here are some fotos of us on the boat. Adam and I were both going for the wet dog look:

Hey mom and dad!

That same day, we took a night boat from Ibiza to Mallorca, which was amazing because we got a solid 5 hours of sleep INSIDE and gave our faces a safe break from the open air buggies.

June 16th, 2008-Day 4
Yet again, another amazing sunrise as we stepped off the boat in Palma de Mallorca:

This was just another day of exploring really, because we didn't really have an intentions of staying in Mallorca. It is the biggest of the 3 islands, and more big-city then the others too... we were trying to avoid big-city due to the sketchy "campsite" in Dénia (remember or are you already lost?) Anyways, Palma turned out to be a really cool city. Big, but really cool still. I took a nap on a park bench. Went to an open-air market, got some green SEEDLESS (hard thing to find in Spain) and a mango that cost 5 euro which was pretty delicious and we spent some time doing this because it was a beautiful day and we were tired of lugging all of our home around, sabes?..

So, our final boat ride left the city of Alcúdia, Mallorca at 5pm and we finally arrived in Ciutadella, Menorca a las 7:40pm. Here we had some minor complications that worked out just fine. Starting the night we were leaving Ibiza, Alex hadn't been feeling so well. So in Mallorca she stayed near the bus station and napped in a park as we explored. Then we took a bus from Palma de Mallorca to the other side of the island: Alcúdia where we had a few more hours to waste as well, so we got a weird American-Mexican meal at some place where everything on the menu had an American State attached to the end: Nachos South Dakota, and things like that. Well unfortunately for Alex she had been literally having the worst diarrhea of her life and was starting to get a fever in about 88 degree weather, so while we finally found her some shade, we were able to find an internet cafe, go purchase our last boat tickets, and email our dad's because we had all missed Father's day that Sunday. After an hour-ish at the beach, we collected our things, boarded the boat and 2.40 hours later landed in Menorca, like I already told you. Our plan was to catch a bus at 7.45 (the last bus) for a town called: San Tomás where 2 of our other friends had been camping for 4 nights, instead of traveling through the islands like us. We lost 2 people along the way so the 6 of us were on a mission to find Ross and Marc. Well Alex was starting to get really sick, so we booked her a hotel (which turned out to be a good thing, she slept for 2 days straight, her fever broke twice and she had a bathroom all to herself). We missed the last bus at 7.45 so we alternatively took a bus to a differente town that started with an F and from there took a taxi to San Tomas where Ross and Marc were waiting for us. Then, as the sun was going down, they took us on an 1.5 hike through the mountains to their perfect campsite. They kept explaining to us how awesome this beach was (beach camping without tents= perfectly legal in menorca) because it was pretty much their private beach minus a few hikers throughout the day and yadiyadi. Finally, an hour and a half later, tired as hell and sweating like a beast, we arrived to our final destination. But at night time, we really could only see the cove by moonlight:


June 17th, 2008-Day 5
And so happily we all threw down our things and went night swimming in the beautiful waters. Then in the morning we woke to a surprise of how beautiful really, our cove was:



That day was nice and relaxing finally, a day without travel.. We snorkled and rock climbed and rock jumped and swam out to the deep depths of the Mediterranean. No one got sun burned too bad, we are all just a little crispy now. We spent one more night there with a campfire and all. Here is our campsite and fire:

June 18th, 2008-Day 6
We packed up shop, hiked back into the town of San Tomás, had our first cup of coffee in a few days and caught a bus to another town called: Mahón where we were to fly back to Barcelona. We tripped around, ate some lunchy and stumbled upon a gin distillery where you could take shots and taste all their flavors (chamomille, cinammon, peppermint, chocolate, coffee, etc...) for FREEEE so we did that. Looky: (That's Alex in the glasses with her tongue out, she was feeling better by the last day thank goodness.. Sebastian is the one with the gnarly beard, he is Adam's friend from home and on the other side is Hillary and then Me of course)




Lastly, Deja took a "parents" foto for me since, (if you remember) my camera's life was over. So here's me with a view of the Mahón port in Menorca.


Our plane didn't leave Mahón until 23:55h so we hung out until nighttime in the city, watched a little of the Greece/Spain EuroCup game and finally boarded our plane around 00:30h, damn airlines always running late. And by 3am we were all in a bed again, sleeping without fear of buggies landing on our faces and giving us a make-over to look like the elephant man or the man in the iron mask.

So quick review, in chronological order, here are the cities we traveled through on the Islands:

Valencia
Dénia
Ibiza City (Eivissa as they spell it)
Cala St. Vicent
Palma de Mallorca
Alcúdia
Ciutadella
F-name city
San Tomás
Mahón

The End.
4 more nights and then, as Mason Jennings says, "And there's a feelin in my heart, I can't explain, I'm coming home, I'm coming home, yaaaaaa"

DANCE monkey DANCE

Os presento unos videos chulos que he encontrado esta mañana...

Italiano viejo bailando conmigo en Florencia:



Mi gemelo saltando en el parque de Montjuïc, Barcelona:


Emilia y Gato bailando como Britney Spears, creo...



Adán saltando en Viena, Austria

why you do dat?

BCN, porque?

¡Olá Portugal!

Hello! and welcome back to my blog.
Hannah and Sarah came to BARCELONA for cinco dias.
Then, I went to: Portugal: with Hannah and Sarah.

They flew into Barcelona from Italy and were a frazzled little crew. Sarah lost the only form of plastic she brought with her and Hannah's debit card got a hold put on it, OH and Hannah lost her camera in Rome.. So it didn't help that it was raining when they arrived into my city. Either way we had a great time and they were thankful that someone who knew the city could show them the good stuff to see, instead of going on group organized bar crawls. Plus the sun came out for 2 days, AND, well I'll make another blog for that or something.. we went to Primaver Sound Music Festival in Barcelona, and we saw: The Swell Season, Portishead, Cat Power and the Go Team! it rocked.

Lisbon, PORTUGAL:

I had heard only great things about this country so I was really excited to visit for a few days. Unfortunately we only had the chance to get to Lisbon (the capitol) and a small city 45 minutes outside called Sintra. When I make it back to Europe, more Portugal traveling is definitely on my list: Porto, Lagos, etc... It wasn't raining when we arrived, so we were stoked, and I was sweating in shorts so that was even more exciting, FINALLY DRESS SEASON! Ok here goes:

This is where our AeroBus dropped us off from the airport. This is also the entrance to a main street in the city center that just so happened to be the location of our hostel, the nicest/best/inexpensive combined with how awesome it was, hostel. We didn't know that so we still walked in a ten minute loop and realized we were there the whole time.

This is the Oldest cathedral in Lisbon, called: the Se I'm pretty sure. It had to be restored a little bit because during an earthquake or some natural disaster, all the marble on the walls fell off and was destroyed. I was waiting to get a really cool typical picture of the yellow tram car driving by in front of the church but I never got it.


Ok, the tile walls in Lisbon are something to note. Everywhere, every neighborhood, there are beautiful tile walls, some are just portions of the wall or bordering or a lot of the time the whole wall covered in beautiful tiles. I had no idea it was such a Portuguese thing, then I went into the touristy shops and everything either had tile on it or a rooster, I'm still trying to figure that one out. Ok, look:



Lisbon is a very small city... one of the barrios called: Barrio Alto resembled SF a lot.. lots of hill, trams, some old run down buildings, variety of people, you know all of that. Well due to its small size, we pretty much saw everything in a couple days leaving us ample time to relax, because as the girls were already getting exhausted with carrying huge packs around Europe, we decided... Portugal was going to be our vacation FROM vacation.. so on our descent from the Lisbo castle, we found a little gem.. a terrace overlooking the river, bridge and city, covered in couches and reclining chairs. PLUS, the beer was only 1.30E a glass,,, that's a steal. So we spent a bit of time napping in the sun and eating strawberries and fruit smoothies. It was... perfect. Here it is:



This is the view from the terrace...city of Lisbon and the golden gate bridge in the background, ja ja ja

Ok, this is a cannon that shoots over the castle walls, protecting the city. I just really liked the clouds

Entrance to the Lisbo castle. (I like saying Lisbo, sounds like...) Anyways, sort of a lame mote but still pretty cool... It just reminded me of the opening scene in Mulan when the Huns scale the walls and Shin Yu tells the guard to warn the Emperor that the Huns have invaded China then he burns the flag. Sabes?

Another view from the castle, Lisbon is a ciudad antigua




So we woke up on Monday morning, our 2nd day, and had a plan to walk around the city because the 1st day we just saw the castle and stayed in the neighborhood. Well during breakfast (free breakfast included with our reservation) we got talking to our roommate, a young Canadian, who was headed out to Sintra, a small town outside of Lisbon. We had planned to do that our last day, but instead, decided to go with Anthony for a fun day trip. Turned out to be the perfect day to go, because Sintra is just a gem, with a really awesome Moorish Castle and a Palace atop a HUGE mountainside. Luckily, Sintra has become very touristy and there were busses to take you to the top, instead of hiking your own way. Although we weren't stoked to pay the almost 20E they charged to go inside and see both the castle and the palace, we figured that we'd already come all the way out there, it would be a shame to not see them both. They didn't have student discount, which I still can't understand, because what the heck, senior citizens have retirement money right? and we have....student loans... to pay back. Either way, no student discount, but it was happy hour, so we got tickets to both the castle and palace for 13E! alright! There's not much else to say except it sorta looked like the great wall of china, and it had an INCREDIBLE view of Portugal, you could even see all the way to Lisbon... Some of the stairs made me nervous but in the end it was worth it. So enjoy these fotos:

The hike up to the Moorish Castle

The flag says: Sintra in Arabic


Hanner and I at da castle

This climb wasn't easy, I still can't understand how I jumped from a plane at 13,000 feet but had a hard time doin this... cool pic tho huh? Look at Portugal down below!

Our next destination after the castle: The Pena Palace.. took us a bit longer to make that climb



So here are the fotos of the Palace:

Our last night in Lisbon, we had a hankering for a meal that wasn't: Portuguese seafood, a ham and cheese sandwich or shwarma.. So we went wandering through the barrio called Baixa (pronounced like Caixa as in "Caixa Catalunya" or "La Caixa," and those are pronounced like: Ky-sha or for Baixa: By-sha, got it?) And finally, after exiting the slums and ghetto of the city just before dark, we stumbled upon none other then a restaurant called: MEXICAN FOOD (comida mexicana) generic enough but we weren't mistaken what they offered so of course, we were down. We also had learned how to say chili sauce (quería pira-pira) so we were stoked... Side note: Portuguese is similar to: Catalan, Spanish and French. It made me realize how bad I'd like to live in Europe again at some point in my life and conquer more then just Español.. so many languages are tan interconectados and was really cool to actually recognize the similarities. So the mexican restaurant was really cozy and warm and they had those glasses from Mexico with the blue rim around the top and the chairs too, I felt like I was home! Mexican food in Europe is always a little off, because everything is imported and they just don't understand the idea of flavor and spice, but surprisingly, the meal was alllllllright. Hannah and I shared fajitas and sarah got some chicken dish, but we successfully ordered chili sauce, and we left with burning tongues and locationally disoriented in the city.

So that's it for the Portugal blog. I still don't know what the importance of the rooster is, but I bought a patch with one, and maybe I'll know someday. Like I said earlier, I'd really like to see more of Portugal, it's such a beautiful country and I do really like the language, it's super-sexy.

Last trip: Balearic Islands: Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca...June 13th-18th

ok, bye!

¡Saúde!

you have to know...

this is why i'll be missing BCN:

C/Asturias9 =)