Mi Vida en España...

Sunday morning, we woke up and had some toast with butter and honey then I got all packed up to go back home to Madrid. Grace and Dan dropped me off at the metro stop. Once I was on the metro I realized I didn’t know the name of the stop I needed to get off at but luckily for me, the old man sitting across from me was more than helpful. 

While I was on the metro, I realized that I think I left my iPhone charger at her place. This wouldn’t be too bad except it has the adapter that I need to use on my computer charger so that is something I’ll have to conquer soon enough. I got to the airport and was able to get some playing cards and the chocolate milk drink that Grace and Dan recommended. I also got a chicken Cesar salad which was surprisingly good for airport food. I really was just trying to spend my final kroner before going home. 

The entire trip was really nice. Copenhagen seems like such a perfect town. Everything about it is so different but it just seems to work for them and it’s really cool. For example, there are bikes everywhere because the government is trying to make it more green. So if you want to buy a car, you have to pay a 200% tax on the car. This is something that would never work back home but it works there. It was just so clean and beautiful. I really loved the city. 

What I loved even more than the city was being able to hang out with Grace. She has been one of my best friends since we were in middle school and we don’t get to talk much during the semester, but when we do get to talk or hang out, it is always just like how it always is. She is someone that I know I can always turn to and I really value her as a friend so it was great to be able to spend so much time with her. Tak Grace. 

5.13.12

Saturday morning I woke up and really had to pee so I went to the bathroom and when I was leaving the bathroom, Grace heard me and she was up and ready to start her day. I was still sleepy but it was like 930am so I figured I’d start mine too. 

We went to the bakery to get some breakfast, most specifically some rye bread which Grace knows that I love. We had some delicious toast with butter and honey creme along with our pastries that we bought. The Danes really like their carbohydrates. 

Saturday’s weather was not nearly as nice as Friday’s. So luckily for me, we did the majority of the sightseeing the day before. We relaxed inside for a bit after breakfast, then we went to the glass market to meet up with a few friends from her class. When we got to the market, we could only find one of her friends so we waited around for the other one but she was no where to be found. By this time, it was starting to drizzle, so it was cold, rainy and incredibly windy. Not a great combination, especially when you’re coming from 90F Madrid weather. Additionally, I woke up with my foot hurting me for some unknown reason. Because of these two things, I ha no issue just going back to Grace’s apartment. We spent the majority of the day sitting around her apartment talking. For lunch/dinner, we made homemade pizzas which were quite yummy. We were talking for so long that we barely realized that we had had two bottles of wine and were sitting in the dark. Around midnight, we went out to meet Dan and his roommate Stefan for a drink at a bar. 

After being at the bar for a little bit, Grace did not feel very well so we decided to take her home. We had a little issue finding a bus that was running at that time, but after receiving help from Stefan, we got on a train to go back to Valby. 

Once we got back, we had some more toast with butter and honey then we all went to bed. 

5.12.12

Friday morning I woke up at 6am to make sure that I got to the airport in time to catch my 8am flight to Copenhagen. I had made plans with Grace (at 2am the night before) to meet her outside the metro station at the city center. I got to the airport and to Copenhagen with no troubles. This was the first time that I did not check any bags so that simplified things. I probably could have not check bags all the way through but oh well. 

While I was on the plane, I passed out for the majority of the flight because I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. 

When I arrived to Copenhagen, I realized that I never looked up the exchange rate for the dollar to the kroner. I had read the night before that the metro costs about 30kroner. So I went to the ATM to take out some money and just went with 200kroner (which I later found out is close to $40). I went up the information booth to ask how I should get to the city center via metro and she told me that the bus would be the best way. Since that was not what Grace and I planned, I ignored her opinion. I kept walking through the airport a little more and saw a place where I could buy metro passes, so I got on line to get one from the attendant working. It was a good idea that I went to a real person and not a machine because I probably would have bought the wrong thing. Luckily, I had taken screen shots of all the instructions that Grace had given me the night before. I literally just slid my iPhone through the little whole in the glass and let her read what instructions she had given me. I got a pass for 145kroner, which would last me my entire trip. 

I went up to where the metro line was and it was just two lines and one did not seem to be running. I punched my ticket (incorrectly—which would later benefit me…oh the benefits of being a tourist) then tried to find someone who could verify which line was going to the city center. After striking out with a few people, a metro worker came up and I asked him. 

I got on the metro and took a window seat. Sometime along the way, a man sat down next to me and I was impressed by his intuition and got up to move for me when I started touching my bags. I later found out that this is common for the Danes. They don’t like having to ask people to move so they just move around a little bit and the person on the aisle is expected to interpret this and move for them. No words exchanged. Very interested. 

When I got off the metro, I realized that I was like 20 minutes early because my plane got in. I figured I’d find a coffee shop nearby where I could wait for Grace. That was unnecessary because Grace checked my flight and she got to the metro stop early so she was waiting for me when I arrived. 

We took the train to her apartment so I could drop off my bags. She realized that I punched it on the wrong side but she said that it wouldn’t be a big deal and that I might have gotten two free trips from it. 

Her apartment was so cute, it looked like it should have been out of an Urban Outfitters catalog. I also got to meet her roommate who was incredibly nice and hipster fresh. After I put my stuff down, we went to walk around a bit. 

We walked around quite a bit, I told Grace that I didn’t look anything up about Copenhagen so I wanted her to take me to her favorite places. We first visited some beautiful parks because the weather was so nice (minus the insanely strong wind that would occasionally attempt to knock us over). After walking around in the parks, we went into the city. While in the city, we went to the glass market and a bakery and got some dessert, then went to another park to eat them in. I got a dessert that had cake covered with chocolate, with creme on top of that and strawberries on top of that. Conclusion: it was delicious. 

After eating, we went to the round tower and walked by the big shopping street. By this time, it was close to the time that Grace had to go to a celebration for her program. I told her that I would wander around on the shopping street and meet her at the round tower when she thought she’d be done. After I went into a few stores, I realized that this might be a problem because I was getting too tempted to buy something. So I did what I normally do to seek refuge in a foreign land, I went to McDonald’s. I always feel comfortable going to an American chain because I know I can get something to eat for cheap and sit there for a good while. So I sat in McDonald’s and read my book on my iPhone while I waited for Grace to be done. 

I met her back at the round tower around 715pm and she called Dan to see if he wanted to join us as we walked around the city. Thanks to daylight savings, it stayed light out until like 10pm, so we got a lot of walking in. 

We walked by the harbor, where “the best restaurant in the world” is located. Then we went to Christiania,  which is an area that was an old military base that was retired then used as hippies to make a commune. It was the most bizarre place I think I’ve ever been. It still looks very much like a commune but it’s a place for people to go/live if they want to live a more outdoorsy lifestyle and smoke weed. They have a few rules for the place, one being that you cannot take any photos. Marijuana is not legal in Copenhagen but I think that if they do not cause any issues, the government doesn’t interfere with their lifestyle.

After we left there, we walked by the water, where the picturesque image of the little, colored houses along the water are always taken. We also went to where they have little trampolines by the water. This city has so many little random things like trampolines that it’s not wonder why it’s one of the happiest in the world. We also saw the opera house and the queen’s residence. The final place that we wanted to go to was to see the little mermaid. 

Unfortunately for us, when we finally did reach the little mermaid, there was a good of drunk people who were climbing over the poor mermaid. We decided to keep walking and try to go to the big hill. The lookout spot on the hill was closed but we decided that we had done a lot for the day. We walked back to the city center and went by the amusement park, Tivoli, which apparently was an influence for Walt Disney. After that, we headed back to graces apartment to have some dinner. 

We ate a delicious pasta with tomato sauce and zucchini. After we ate dinner, we were all fairly exhausted so we headed to bed. 

5.11.12

On Saturday morning, we didn’t really have many big plans for the day since we had already done most of the sightseeing around Paris. I wrote down some ideas of things to do, most of which involved shopping and more girly things. Luckily, Cooper didn’t really care what we did so we headed down to Avenue des Champs-élysées to find the multistory Louis Vuitton.

Before I came to Paris, I had told myself that if I made my way out to France, I would go to Louis Vuitton and buy a coin purse or something very small. When we found the Louis Vuitton, we went inside but I couldn’t find a coin purse. I tried asking for help, but none of the sales people that I talked to were overly helpful. My guess is that my 100euro sale was probably not high on their list of things to do, so I walked away empty handed.

On the street, we went into a lot of random stores like Mercedes and some other car stores, we also went into both Nike and Adidas so Cooper could get his soccer fix. We were able to spend a good deal of time wandering around the Virgin Megastore, which is always a favorite past time of mine. I got really excited when I came across the Disney Store so I insisted that we go inside the store. While we were inside of it, we saw advertisements for Disneyland Paris and I made a comment about how it was probably really expensive. Cooper looked, it only cost 35euro! I am still kicking myself for not planning on going there!

I would have to say that my most exciting find on that street with the Banana Republic, which is something that I have been missing while in Europe. That is one of my favorite stores back home and getting emails from them about sales promotions is borderline torture for me.

After leaving Avenue des Champs-Elysées, we started wandering in the direction of the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais. We crossed over Pont Alexandre III to get to Les Invalides, where we saw people playing polo on their bikes and other people playing soccer in the grass. After walking around for a bit, we were both hungry so we decided to stop off and get some food. I let Cooper pick where we were to eat which was probably a bit of a mistake. We were looking at a restaurant when a waiter asked us if we’d like to eat there. We said yes then regretted it once we saw how pricey the menu was. Since there wasn’t much that we could do at that point, we ordered our food and our “free water”. I got a spaghetti with meat sauce which was pretty good but cost me like 12euros.

After eating, we started making our way back towards the Louvre because I thought that the Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton exhibit was around there. We walked passed the Musée d’Orsay and through the Jardin des Tuileries to get Les Arts Décoratifs, where the exhibit was.

I had looked it up the night before and it said that the exhibit was free for EU students. Once we got to the ticket counter, they wanted to charge me for my ticket, so I said that I was a student in Madrid. I made sure not to say that I was a study abroad student, so for all they know, I am a permanent resident going to school in Madrid. Tricked you, Paris!

The exhibit was really cool for me, especially because I do enjoy fashion. It was completely different from all the other museums that I have been to because it was so contemporary. Cooper actually said that he enjoyed it too which made me kind of happy. It was cool to see how the Louis Vuitton company was started (as a company that made trunks for transporting clothes) and what it had evolved into, then how Marc Jacobs has kind of changed things. I took a few photos from inside the exhibit before I got yelled at. Oh well.

After we finished looking in the Museum, we decided to start making our way back to the hotel. We were walking towards the direction of the metro station and we stopped off to take a few photos of the Paris Opera. When we got off the metro, we wandered around the park that was located right across the street from our hotel. By then, it was starting to rain though so we headed inside to relax for a little bit.

I ended up falling asleep and apparently Cooper wasn’t sure how to wake me up because we needed to go get dinner. He asked Kaitlyn for help and he decided that it probably wouldn’t be wise to throw something at me. He just settled on saying my name. So I woke up, not wanting to do anything but sleep but we headed out to get some food. We stopped at some sandwich shop and got some fancy sandwiches. I am kind of picky when it comes to sandwich so I just tried to order the most basic thing that they had. It wasn’t too bad, but it also wasn’t the greatest thing in the world. If only I would’ve just splurged for some desserts because those looked delicious! I still can’t believe that throughout the entire trip, I didn’t get any crepes or macaroons!

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and I asked the concierge for help about getting a cab in the morning to take me to the bus stop. The concierge called a few cab drivers and told me it would cost about 30 to 40euro to take a cab to the bus stop. That was way more than I wanted to spend so she showed me how to take the metro to get to where I wanted to go. Then I went upstairs and got ready for bed. Before going to bed, I told Cooper that if he woke up and I was still in the hotel, to throw a chair at me to wake me up because I probably would have missed my flight by that time.

4.14.12

Some photos from the Arc de Triomphe

4.13.12