But I already miss my Lugano family sooo much :( When can we go back again????
We decided that we would do our second and final hike up Mt. San Salvatore would be our last Saturday (Apr 21). I was a little nervous about this hike because last time it was absolutely DREADFUL. But surprisingly it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was last time. Now that I knew where we were going and was more prepared (and not hungover), it was almost an enjoyable walk! We walked all the way back to the top of the mountain and this time we were able to go on the top terrace of the church!
[View from the top of Mt. San Salvatore]
[On our way up to the top!! Ignore my sweaty mess]
[Enjoying the view with Brinberg]
[My original travel group babes!]
[Throwin’ our signs :) SUCH A PRETTY VIEW behind us! ]
We hung out at the top of the mountain for awhile snapping pictures and enjoying each others company! Definitely a great thing to do on one of our last days in paradise!
[Lugano stashhhhh!]
[The grouppppp! Love you allllll!]
After we walked down the mountain, we stopped at a cute little restaurant that looked like an old barn or something and had a family lunch! We got wine, salad, bread and risotto so it was a fabulous meal! After lunch, we walked to next town where we got gelato (made the whole hike worth it!) and we caught a ferry home!
[Gelato was waiting for us at the end!!]
[Boat ride back to Lugano!]
Luckily we had beautiful weather the whole day and it didn’t start to rain until we got back to the Montarina! Great way to end the weekend :) That night we enjoyed our last Saturday night in the beautiful city of Lugano! I’m really going to miss this place!
[Me, Val, Lindsey and Sarah before going out!]
Panoramic view from the top of Mt. San Salvatore!
Not real! Don’t make me leave this placeeeee!
After getting back from our insane 10 day and all the people that traveled to Kenya finally came home, we all decided we had to live it up our last few days in Lugano! On Tuesday night, we all decided to play capture the flag which was a lot of fun (until everyone got super competitive… yikes!)
[TEAM 2!!!!!!]
[Trying to be tough….. but I failed, oops]
Most of the time is spent laying around and watching movies, even though we should be working on our huge final projects due on our last day here…
On Thursday we decided we have to go somewhere because it’s the last day we can use our Eurorail. We decided to head to Milan for a day because we had been there so many times (the train station) but had never been out exploring… The first thing we did when getting to Milan was go to the Chinese buffet. Let’s just say I was a very, VERY happy girl….
[Me and Abbie glowing after eating all the delicious Chinese food!!!!!]
The next stop was seeing the Duomo! That was pretty much the only sight to see in Milan so after that we just went shopping for a little.
[Me in front of the Duomo]
[Chinese buffet group in front of the Duomo]
We left around 4 PM so we had some time before dinner and we were a little sad to be leaving the Milan train station for the last time ever :( Bittersweet moment!
[Last time in the Milan train station :( ]
That night when we went out we decided that we should use our Eurorail one last time! So we pregamed on the train…. interesting idea? But it actually ended up being a lot of fun!
[Me and Jill waiting for the train]
[Hanging out on the train]
[I’m going to miss these guys :( ]
[video]
By the time we got to Barcelona it was night time so we decided to immediately start getting ready and I decided to trek to Walk to Wok which was SOOO necessary! In Barcelona we stayed in an apartment for 12 people and squeezed in 20… the more the merrier, right? Since there was so many people we hung out in the apartment before going to our first Barcelona club called Sutton! People in this town are insane and go out so late! By the time we got home, it was an ungodly hour and so we immediately went to sleep!
[Before going out on our first night!!]
[At the club!]
The next day we woke up about 12:30 PM… help. We tried to motivate ourselves to get up and go do stuff but that just did not end up happening… we casually laid around in bed ALL day. We finally pulled ourselves out of bed to try and get ready for the night again, such a struggle. But we did it and went out to a different club that night called Opium which was awesome again!
On Friday we did manage to get out of the house around 3 PM to go see La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell. They were both designed by Antoni Gaudi who is an amazing architect! We then made our way home to take yet another nap… we were just kind of tired. That night we went out again for our last time in Barcelona!
On Saturday we went out to the different little market stands on Las Ramblas to go shopping for cute little souvenirs! That night we didn’t want to go out because we were leaving the next morning at 3:45 AM to catch our flight, so as you can imagine sleep was minimal -_-
The next morning we safely made it back to Lugano! It was definitely a trip of a lifetime and I wouldn’t change anything about it. It was the perfect last 10 day and I can’t believe this is the final stretch to America… don’t want to think about this.
So you may be thinking, how on earth did we find ourselves going to Morocco?? When we first got to the hostel in Cádiz we saw posters for a day trip to Tangier in northern Morocco. We joked a little bit at first about going but then we really thought about it and realized how awesome would it be if we actually WENT to Morocco… Which is IN AFRICA!! A different continent?! That’s insanee! So we made plans to go! Aaahhh!
On Tuesday morning we got up early and made our way to the tourism office! WE were sooo excited for the day! We then hopped on a shuttle that drove us about an hour and a half to a port in Tarfia, Spain where we took a ferry to Tangier! The boat was about 45 minutes so it wasn’t bad at all!
The first thing we did when we were there was drive around with a guide and he told us different facts about the city of Tangier. He drove us to a place where we could go and ride camels! It was amazing and I couldn’t believe that I was actually doing it!
[Pure bliss!]
[Hiiiiii camels!]
After ALL of us took camel rides like 5 year olds; we took a little walk around the old medina which means “old city”. We walked through the market place where all of the sales men are VERY, VERY aggressive. It was kind of scary…
[Me and Kelly in one of the main squares]
We finally made it to a Moroccan restaurant for a traditional Moroccan meal which was delicious! We got a four course meal and Moroccan whiskey and it was fabulous!
The last part of the day we went to a carpet shop, a spice shop and a small souvenir store before hopping back on the boat to Spain! All of the carpets were gorgeous and hand made from naturally dyed yarns. At the spice shop, which is really a pharmacy, the man in charge was practically a mad scientist and showed us all the different spices he had and what they were used for. I got a little bag of saffron for my dad because he loves cooking and it’s so expensive in the States!
[Some of the carpets]
[The mad scientist!!!]
It ended up being a whirlwind of a day but SOOO worth it! On the way back we saw the sunset from the boat and it was gorgeous! I am so happy we decided to go because when else will I ever have the chance to randomly go to Africa?! This was definitely an experience of a lifetime!! It was then back to Spain!
[Some of us hanging out on the dock, watching the sunset!]
[Me and Linds!]
[Perfect :)]
After a good long nap on the train, we finally made it to Cádiz! When we first got there we were blown away by what a cute little beach town it was! After we checked into our hostel we got our beach stuff together and headed to a cute little beach about ten minutes away. We stayed at the beach for about three hours before meeting up with everyone else that was coming to Cádiz from Valencia, Barcelona & Paris! As a group, we went out to dinner before calling it a very early night because we were sooo exhausted.
The next day it was Suzanne’s birthday so we spent the whole day at the beach! It was awesome! The weather was perfect and the beach was beautiful. That night we got ready and went to a tapas place to celebrate, which was followed by a little bar hopping (in which I found the PERFECT strawberry daiquiri!)
[All the girls for Suzanne’s birthday!]
On Tuesday we went to Morocco!!! More to come on that!
[We are going to Morocco!!]
And on our last day in Cádiz, we went to some of the shops and got lunch before heading off to our final destination of BARCELONA! Always the best for last :)
On Saturday morning, we woke up early to head to Madrid.We were under the impression that we could just hop on the train and call it day since we have our Eurorail… BUT that wasn’t the case at allll. We came to the realization that we needed reservations and at 9:45 AM we came to our next realization that the next train we could take was at 2 PM… fabulous. So we sat in the McDonald’s until we were ready to go and headed on to Madrid! We were SO tired at this point… pretty sure I had 7 hours of sleep between two- three days. We met one of Kira’s family friends named Lindsay and she showed us Buen Retiro Park which is I think the biggest park in Madrid and also home to the only statue of the Devil in all of Spain (a statue of a fallen angel).
We then headed over to the Real Madrid stadium before we headed over to all the shops :)
For dinner we went to a tapas bar called El Tigre which was amazing! If you bought a drink they bring you FREE tapas! We got huge glasses of mojito and sangria! Yummmmm!
[Yum!! Free tapas!]
After El Tigre we headed to the huge seven story club in Madrid called Teatro Kapital! It was amazing! A little expensive to get in but it was definitely worth it. We danced for a while but when the sugar rush was over and the Red Bull no longer had any effect, exhaustion took over… at this point I couldn’t decide if I was actually drunk or I was just delusional because of the sleep exhaustion… this calls for a classic “Help Help!”.
When we finally got back from the club we had about an hour and a half of sleep before we had to head to the train station to leave for Cádiz. As you can imagine we passed outttttt on the train ride. I had heard lots of negative things about Madrid so I was a little nervous of what I was going to think of it but I actually really liked it! Maybe I didn’t spend enough time there?? Anyways it was off to the beach and sunshine for us!
I can’t believe that we just had our LAST 10 day break! It’s making me sad to even say that this is my last trip I have to write about :( We are now on the final stretch with only 8 days left… I’m dying right now, this can’t be over!!
On Thursday morning, we headed off to our first destination of Valencia! When we got there we started our trip right and got a huge platter of paella, sangria and tapas! I got seafood paella and it was delicious! And can you ever go wrong with a liter of sangria?! That night we checked out the nightlife of Valencia, and we were a little intimated because they go out out so late and stay out even later!
On Friday we got ourselves up and ready to go see the city. Unfortunately it was rainy and the weather wasn’t very good so we only saw a few things in the morning, but when it cleared up later in the afternoon we headed to the beach! It was a little windy but it was gorgeous!! At the beach we were able to see an Easter Parade which was so interesting because Easter is such a HUGE ordeal in Spain. We then headed back to our hostel for a little nap and got some dinner at Wok to Walk (SO DELICIOUS and NEEDS to come to America STAT). That night we went out again! And after about 2 1/2 hours of sleep….. we headed off to Madridddd!!
One fabulous thing I learned about Spain is that they have time called “siestas” which is NAP TIME… ummm hello, why isn’t this a thing in America?? I would absolutely THRIVE in Spain haha! So from 2- 5PM every day, all the stores and everything shut down. We also learned that since everyone goes out SO late (you don’t go to a club before 1- 1:30 AM and in Barcelona even 2 AM) and you stay out until the sun comes up (…literally), everyone takes naps from like 7-9/10 PM and then they go out to eat dinner late and then go out. We tried to keep up… but as you can imagine, it’s EXHAUSTING!
“While 32 of our friends and classmates are in Heaven trying to explain what a Hokie is, I stand here sure in the fact that I wouldn’t want to be anything else.” — (via cak91)