Surprise Sardinia!

Hola guys! Today we're gonna talk about Sardinia, which is surprising because it is completely out of order. Madrid, Toledo, and Florence are in the works, but the pictures are not ready yet so I figured that surprise something is better than nothing. So, without further ado I give you Sardinia:

We selected the Italian island of Sardinia to visit in celebration of Kaitlyn Nolan's birthday. Kaitlyn was my roommate for the first 2 years of college and remains, as we say in Spain, my media naranja (literally: half orange. In practice: other half). Marie and Erica met us there. For the more visual learners, here are the players:

From L to R, Marie, Kaitlyn, Erica, and some random stranger

We got off to a bit of a rocky start. We had booked a villa on the beach (cheaper than it sounds) but 24 hours before arriving we found out that the property is actually closed for renovations. Expedia had let us pay regardless, so after some brutal phone calls on the part of Kaityn's daddy, we got refunded and did not have to pay the cancellation fee that they wanted to charge. Luckily, we were able to book a hostal for 3 nights in Cagliari, which is the same town the airport is in. The reception was nice and the rooms were much better than we expected. We had booked an 8 person room (that was all there was left) but they put us in a 4 person instead. Kaitlyn, Erica, and I were in one room with a random woman and Marie was in a room down the hall, cuz of the short notice. This is more or less what it looked like/what we did there:

Kaitlyn, in our window

The room! Kaitlyn and I slept upstair and we stuck Erica downstairs because she snores

Me! and the view

The plaza below our window, plus a rooftop garden (what i'm pointing at)

Many of you know that I am a raptor in my spare time....

Marie's room, trying to fix the bathroom doow

The Birthday Girl!!!

Us! If you need a refresher, we are Marie, Erica, Self, and Kaitlyn

The city itself was beautiful, when it wasn't raining. It poured both mornings but cleared up around afternoon and we were able to go hiking around an old fort area and the main port:

This is also the plaza below the hostal

No idea what this building is

Marie and Me!

2 lighthouses

Old fort-type thing

Hiking to the fort

Tower with drawbridge!! scroll down for more...

So Spiky!!!

From the stairs of the tower

We had coffee on this street

This one's for you Momma!

Lunch!

Erica and Kaitlyn at the birthday lunch

Patio where we had coffee

Birthday dinner!

The main port

So there you have my Italian adventure. Well, one of them. I have quite the week coming up, finals start in 11 days and I have a few presentations to give. I'll be back at this every spare minute, I promise! For those of you who are counting, I will be home in 34 days. This is kind of bittersweet, but I'll be poorer than a rock in a few weeks so it's probably best that I come back. On that cheerful note,

Hasta Luego!

Better Blogger (Morocco, part 4)

Hi guys! This week I am a better blogger, but I know I still have a long way to go. With any luck I'll be posting once a week in the coming months because I'm doing ALOT of travelling. We can talk about that later though, because today, as promised, we are wrapping up Morocco. I believe I left you in the mountains...

When we descended from on high, we ended up in an absolutely beautiful little city called Chefchaouen (pronounced Chef-chow-en). It's built in much the same way as Granada, into the side of a mountain. Granada's on the Sierra Nevada, but Chefchaouen is on the Rif Mountains. They say that the city gets alot of tourism, but from the way we got stared at I don't think they get nearly enough. I know that my short hair throws them off sometimes, but I got as much attention as that baby panda in the Madrid zoo (and we all know that I'm not nearly as cute). I have hundreds of pictures from this city because I was just about as impressed with it as it was with me:

The city as a whole, from a place where we hiked on the mountain

L to R, Elsa, Miguel, Margaret, Alex, Me, and Oscar above the city

A pretty street on the way to our hostal. They do the blue/white too

This is where our hike began

That arch is just as low as it looks. Miguel has issues with it.

This is the river that keeps the city going. That building thing there is the Maroqui equivalent of a washing machine

Again from the hike, looking down on a field of cacti

Us! L to R, Colleen (our guide), Katie, Kathy, Me, Elsa, and Nick

Another view of the river area. That patio is the Maroqui equivalent of a dryer.

This is the destination of our hike. You can only really see Kathy, Miguel, and Alex in this one.

The entire Moroccan laundromat

That's from our hostal. The door next to the cool chest-thing is mine!

Another thing we thought was interesting about not only Chefchaouen, but all the cities, is that they do very interesting things with doors. Alot of them were really tiny so what we liked to do was take pictures with Miguel in front of these doors cuz he's wicked tall. After a while he got bored so most of the doors are solo, but they're still pretty cool:

This is the only picture I have of Miguel with a door

The door as a whole is way too big, but the little door in it is way too small...

I was taller than this door

This is the house of a local artist. The entire outside is painted with murals

So before we left Chefchaouen for Spain (via Ceuta), we all had dinner at a real restaurant. We had to split into 2 tables because we were 14 people in total but only one table got in the picture:

L to R, Laura, Shanie, Miguel, Alex, Oscar, Random Guy, Elsa, and Colleen

Ok, now for some random stuff that I just have pictures of and think is interesting. First up we have the Jedi. The traditional dress of Moroccan men looks like this:

Also, Morocco uses different currency. It's called the Diram and one USD is worth about 8 diram. A Euro is worth 11 diram, so we were very rich people over there. This is what Dirams looks like:

Ballin'

So, even though I know it breaks your heart, we have to leave Morocco now because we have class on Monday. We left via Ceuta, which is a Spanish city on the coast of North Africa. You must go through border control and passpost checks and all that fun stuff in order to enter the city. We were originally worried because the guards at the border weren't letting many people pass. When we got up there they let all 14 of us through with no problem once they saw our US passports. Most important thing I learned while I was in Morocco: I'm not proud to be American, but I'm really glad that I am.

This is what Ceuta looks like. Yes, this is a billboard but we couldn't really snap pictures while we were being processed through security.

That's the rock of Gibraltar. We could see it better going from Ceuta to Algeciras than from Algeciras to Tangiers.

For daddy: They have wind power in Morocco

So thanks for bearing with me through 4 pages of Morocco. I will update you on my further travels when I have time. This week is semana santa so we don't have any classes, which means that i'll be doing alot of travelling. On Sunday I go to Nerja, on Wednesday to Marbella, and on Thursday to Sardinia! Three beaches, one week. Wish me luck!

Hasta luego!

Sara