yes, i am still alive. and due for a long update on my european life! so im going to start with this past weekend in austria, then go back to spain and finally to florence. so here we go...


on thursday mary and i almost missed our flight to salzburg because i cant read military time and i was incredibly tired from writing an essay over the past two days (an essay which my entire grade in the class is made up of, so yah i was a bit stressed). i saw that our flight left at 13:40 and got into salzburg at 14:40 which is interesting because of the hour difference between england and continental europe - so thats the same time. i knew something wasnt adding up. then it hit me and i freaked. once i was able to breathe again i scrambled for my phone, called mary and told her we had to leave, since it was a little before noon. luckily we made it with 10 minutes to spare! yep, we know how its done. i would just like to tell you that i found amazingly cheap flights online to austria when we were in spain - £20 round trip (£10 each way, and there werent any taxes on flights, winner!). so yes, we arrived in the alps at sunset and we fell in love with the place, although we were kind of worried about the whole not-speaking-the-german thing. we hopped on the train to vienna that night and got in around 11, went to our hostel (the wombat - if you go to vienna, stay here), then went out for dinner and we both had our first wiener schnitzels! neato! which were nothing like we thought they would be, but whatever, we were emmersing ourselves into the culture.

friday morning we woke up and took the subway and tram systems to get to the huge cemetary in town. something about people in vienna - they like to be burried nicely. so theres this HUGE cemetary (along with other smaller ones around the city, well theyre not small, but compared to this one...) which you definitely need a map to navigate around in. we looked at a map to find where composers (ehrengraber) are buried, then got to that general area and wandered around for about an hour. by this time mary and i were cranky in our own ways, but luckily right before we had given up hope we found the section and took pictures with beethoven, strauss, liechtenstein, schubert, and brahms' graves. we got back onto the tram to ring road (a road that goes around the center of the city) and walked part of it, including past the winter palace, various museums, and parliament. we had lunch (a poor excuse for a lunch) at the cafe central - "Cafe Central is one of the most famous coffeehouses in Vienna. It was originally opened in 1876 and during its heyday was a meeting point for writers, politicians, and intellectuals. Viktor Adler, Theodor Herzl, Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin are just some of the names that used this cafe at the start of the century. Adolf Hitler used to come into the cafe and try to sell his paintings before he was rejected by the art school." that evening we went to the schonbrunn palace (a nice baroque palace) to check out the gardens (although it was dark when we got there; gardens are boring when you cant see them), grab dinner and go to a mozart and strauss touristy concert. in front of the palace there is a big christmas tree(!) set up and around it there are little stalls for the christmas market! people were setting up, but that didnt stop me from taking part in christmas shopping! yay christmas. so the thing we went to that night was made up of an 8 piece orchestra and during some pieces two opera singers would sing (the man was horrible) and during a few other pieces two dancers woud come on stage (they were horrible, especially the guy who didnt spot. who does that?? the choreography was bad too, just like their form). in the end i wish it was just something that focused on the music alone, but oh well.

saturday morning we woke up and took the early train to salzburg. the three hour journey was awesome becasue we went through the austrian countryside which is beautiful. when we got into salzburg i instantly liked it more than vienna - salzburg is tucked away in the alps, its clean, and unlike vienna it doesnt feel tired or overused in a way. its so cute! ive now decided that if i were to study anywhere else in europe, it would be salzburg. so we went to our hostel which has lots of annoying middle school boys who think theyre awesome (im guessing they were on a field trip) then walked around the old town (so cool!). then we took the sound of music tour!! which consisted of cruising around in a bus with the soundtrack playing and checking out where they filmed the movie. sometimes we would stop and get out to take pictures (like where the gazebo is set up now, the palace on the lake which they used for the interior of the house and the back to use the lake). we also went up into the lakes and mountains district (so pretty!) to see some of the shots they took of the mountains and the church that they used the interior for the wedding scene (although it looks like its part of the abbey in the movie...tricky). after that we went and had dinner then watched the sound of music at our hostel (the show it there every night at 8:00)! sunday morning we caught our flight back to london, and then i took a very long nap, watched some greys anatomy (you cant stop this obsession), and went to bed.

ok so spain...where did i leave off?....
ah yes, so we got up really really early to go to granada. when we got there our hostel didnt have our room ready, so we walked around the town for an hour. after we came back and put our stuff in our room, we started to wander in the general direction of the alhambra. we ended up stopping at an moroccan restaurant which was freaking amazing. probably the best meal in spain that i had at that point. we then took a taxi up to the alhambra and walked around there for a few hours. the alhambra was the best part of the trip and really made all the other lame spainish stuff worth it, it was sooo cool! ill put up my pictures tomorrow so you can see how amazing it is :) that night we went to a flamanco show in a cave! which was neat as well, and they had good sangria which made it better.

friday was lame because we couldnt book a hostel in madrid (not that we really wanted to go back there, but oh well), so we booked another hostel in granada for the night up in the hills overlooking the city. when we got there they said there wasnt any room at the inn (haha i feel like im telling the story of baby jesus), so mary and i had to stay in the barn in the back (weird, mary is actually my friend, not jesus' mom). oh wait, no. they called their friends at another place and hooked us up. this place was in the same residential area up in the hills (lots of white houses with blue doors) but it looked out to the alhambra, which was sweet. we decided not to go into the city anymore because it was peaceful up there which is soemthing we hadnt experienced in a while. i even took a nap. something you should know: you know youre in spain when the city is under construction and cranes dot the skyline. its nice too, because they have chain link fences up to protect you from the construction, but things can come flying through that at you. yay shrapnel! the spanish really think things through, dont they uncle frank? anyways, that night we hung out with other kids at the hostel, went to a cafe in the area and had a bunch of sangria and dessert.

the next morning we took the 6 hour train to madrid then took a taxi to our hostel. oh wait, theres a story here. so we booked this hostel the day before in granada because it said it was a few minutes away from teh airport and it was cheap. so after our 50 euro cab ride out to the middle of nowhere (or rather, the town of daganzo) we realized that the hostel lied. and we were mad. we told the old lady who owned the place that their website lied, and she said that the airport is close, its only 30 minutes away. liar! not close! no matter how hard we tried, spain didnt like us. and we're not too fond of it either anymore. once we cooled down i took a nap. of course i was woken up by a circus. seriously. there was a circus set up for teh weekend outside of our hostel. lame. that night mary and i werent happy campers, so we went to the burger place a few blockes down (we reached our breaking point, all we wanted were burgers. tapas? no thank you). we woke up around 5 to take an expensive taxi to the airport and thankfully fly back to our beloved london - a multicultural city where you can get anything and enjoy so much, all while you speak the language and engage with nice londoners.

monday and tuesday should have been spent recovering, but i wrote that essay i told you about before. then wednesday i went to class. adn thursday mary and i went to austria!

ok so florence. before i had mentioned that weitzel was going to write up where we went, which she so nicely did, so im just going to copy that directly into my blog now


you stayed on via dei conti. lol. heads up. (which is 2 blocks from the duomo)
we went to the restaurant the first night called i ghibellini on via degli
albizi
the bar, Rex, is on via fiesolana
vivoli the gelateria is on via isole delle stinche
the good shopping i.e. zara and the market where i bought scarves is on via
roma
sasche is on via porta rossa
the san lorenzo market is err in san lorenzo.. several streets- near santa
maria novella
mercato centrale where we ate lunch that day doesnt have an address either i
dont think- its called piazza mercato centrale
festival del gelato (!) is on via del corso
chiaroscuro is too- tho we didnt go there, anyone who goes to florence
should go
moyo is on via dei benci, right near the arno/ponte delle grazie
the place we went on sat night for dinner should not be mentioned.. horrible
err and the stanford center is in piazza santa maria sopr'arno! woo!
dinner sunday was at gilli where we also grabbed dessert the other night


phew! ok im going to put pictures up tomorrow hopefully (wireless at school has been rather sketch lately, something about a powersugre messing it up a week ago). im off to paris on wednesday!