Well hey, Happy New Year! Long time, no talk. What’s up with that?
I guess let’s just jump right into things. Christmas away from the family was a bit sad, but we improvised. On Christmas Eve, Leslie and I went to a teacher’s mom’s house from Leslie’s school, where a big group of family and friends got together to have a big feast. It was really nice and homey, and everybody welcomed us like family. The house was BEAUTIFUL, and covered practically head to toe (or roof to ground?) in granite. Even the kitchen floor, the open space outside of the kitchen, the stairs, and part of the bathtub were made out of granite. It must be pretty cheap here, because the entire cathedral in Santiago de Compostela is made out of granite as well. During our dinner, Santa Claus came and gave the little kids gifts, and he even had something for us Americans! We got little necklaces with Celtic symbols on them.
After dinner, we caught a ride back to Ferrol with a couple who were at the Christmas dinner, and we stopped and had a drink at the bar that they own a few blocks from our apartment. About halfway through our time at his bar, the topic of the smoking ban came up. [Side note: the smoking ban went into effect starting January 2nd, and it was a HUGE deal. An incredible amount of people in Spain smoke, and there has been a great deal of controversy over the past couple months regarding the ban. On a whole though, more people support the ban than not, even a lot of smokers.] So anyway, this guy we were talking to gets all heated up about the smoking ban (we had realized pretty early on in the night that he was slightly crazy) and he starts ranting on about how people should be able to smoke in his bar and how pretty soon people won’t be allowed to smoke in their cars and eventually the police will be using telescopes to look in our windows to make sure we’re not smoking in our own houses. Like I said, crazy. Then, he tells us that it’s America’s fault that there’s a smoking ban in Spain. I’m still not entirely sure how he arrived at that conclusion, but he very vehemently argued this point. Later on, he pointed to this Spanish comic book he had on display above the bar and asked us if we had ever heard of it. Of course we hadn’t, and that set him off on a rant about how Americans don’t care about anybody else’s culture and blah blah blah. When he finally took a breath, I said, Seriously? And what exactly are we doing here, in your country? Apparently, we are the exceptions. Whatever. Despite his constant insisting that we come back to his bar sometime, needless to say we will not be returning.
Christmas day was no big event. Leslie and I tried to use up all the perishable items in the fridge for a big Christmas feast, though it ended up being quite pathetic and very random. Leslie then left that afternoon to meet her mom in Madrid, so I spent the rest of Christmas alone. The next night, I flew down to Malaga to meet Leslie and her mom, aunt, and uncle.
The first day there we drove down to Gibraltar, a city that lies at the very southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula and that is actually part of Great Britain, not Spain. Listening to the people there talk was fascinating in itself. Because it’s a British territory, everybody speaks a heavily accented English, but because of its proximity to Spain everybody also naturally speaks Spanish, so they are constantly switching back and forth between the two languages, creating Llanito, an Andalusian Spanish-based creole language. Very strange stuff.
On top of that, the city is a really interesting place. We spent most of our time there exploring the Rock of Gibraltar and seeing all sorts of crazy stuff. Being on top of the rock gives you a really amazing view of where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea, and once we got high enough we were even able to see Africa. During our “guided tour” up the rock, our van driver, Maximillian, gave us a great history of Gibraltar and how it came to be under British rule, which I won’t get into now because I’m sure you don’t really care. Also, this post is going to be long enough the way it is so I’m mostly going to be doing the Cliffnotes version of everything. |
| Rock of Gibraltar |
By far, the best thing about Gibraltar is the group of monkeys that lives on the rock. They are the only group of alive in all of Europe, and they are treated with such reverence that if they get sick or injured they are taken to a human hospital. There is a local legend in Gibraltar that city will remain under British rule only as long as the monkey population remains. During our tour up the rock, we got to stop and “interact” with them, which was probably my favorite part of my whole Christmas/New Years vacation. They would climb on our shoulders and pull our hair and run around our feet looking for food. If we heard a loud thump while we were driving up the mountain, we knew it was from one of the monos jumping on top of the van. Apart from playing with the monkeys, we also got to explore some really cool caves with magnificent stalactites and stalagmites, and we walked through a long tunnel inside the top of the rock with cannons and such that used to be used for protecting the city against invaders.
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| the Gibraltar Barbary Macaques |
The rest of the time in the south was a bit of a blur. One day we went to Malaga and saw La Alcazaba, which is an old castle that has such great defenses it has never been conquered in its long history (with all the conflict and invasions in Spain’s history, that’s a huge feat. I believe it’s the only castle in the country that had never been taken). We also went to the Picasso museum in Malaga, which was pretty small but still mind-blowing. Probably my second favorite part of the trip, his paintings up close are far more spectacular than any kind of digital duplicate; the textures he adds with big globs of paint add a great deal to the paintings.
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| La Alcazaba and some ancient ruins |
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| La Alcazaba |
Another day we went to Marabella, a little touristy town that’s on the beach where we mostly just walked around and popped in and out of shops. We eventually made it to the water, where I got to touch the Mediterranean Sea for the first time. After that we found a nice little restaurant and introduced Leslie’s family to paella. Then back to the hotel to pack, and I headed out the next day for Scotland!
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| Leslie and I eating paella, drinking wine, and being goobers. Pretty much sums up our time in Spain. |
So. SCOTLAND. It was… fantastic! Overall, definitely one of my favorite countries I’ve been to. The people there were some of the nicest I’ve ever met, and very reminiscent of all my homies back in the Midwest. My plane got into Edinburgh around 11:00pm or so, and when I finally got off the bus at the city center I had absolutely no idea where the hotel was to meet my friends, so I hesitantly asked the bus driver for directions. After explaining to me where I needed to go, he said, “but if you can wait 10 minutes, I’ve got to go check out and then I can give you a lift,” so I waited a few minutes, we got back on the bus, and he dropped me off around the corner from my hotel. The walk otherwise would have taken around 20 minutes so. Thank Steve! Though one of my Scottish friends said he’s never heard of a bus driver going off-course to take somebody somewhere, it still definitely set my opinion high for the Scots, and it didn’t waver once throughout the whole trip.
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| Our golden friend :) |
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| Not even half-way there yet. Why did I decide to do this again? |
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| Jessica's go-to face. |
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| View from the top. Sheena was terrified. |
That night was new years, so we ran back to the hotel, got ready, and headed out for Edinburgh’s famous Hogmany festival. It’s a huge street party with over 80,000 people (and roughly 20 outhouses). The festival was fantastic, though unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot of pictures from it. At one point we left the festival to go to a little pub and warm up, and in addition to drinking some famous Scottish whiskey, I also met a Scottish bloke who had briefly lived in none other than Sydney, Nebraska. Small world. The rest of the night was a bit chaotic. After standing in line for the bathroom for about 45 minutes and losing half our group, it was just about midnight. We watched the spectacular fireworks at midnight, and then we grabbed a few of our new friends and headed to Greyfriers Bobby’s pub, a famous pub named after the famous dog who reportedly guarded his human’s grave for 14 years after he died.
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| Happy New Year! |
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| posing with Greyfrier's Bobby |
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The next day was mostly spent recovering, and in the evening we headed out to meet a friend and see a few other sites in the city. We stopped and had some tea at The Elephant House – the café where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Aside from the pure magic of it being the birth place of Harry Potter, the café itself was adorable and decorated with all sorts of elephant art. After that we went on a free walking “ghost tour” that was put on by one of the local pubs, though I’m not really sure it warrants the right to be called an actual ghost tour. I guess I’m just glad it was free. (Though at the end, the guide told us this was his full-time job – yeah right – and said we should give him money. We didn’t.) For supper we went to a place called the Monster Mash, which specializes in sausage and mashed potatoes – a very typical local dish wish is absolutely delicious. Before going home, we stopped in a pub to try to find one of our friends, and instead we encountered a group of Scottish lads singing at the top of their lungs to some well known Scottish song and swaying back and forth. It was quite possibly the happiest thing I’ve ever seen.
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| Our tour guide |
Hrrmmm…. Let’s see. The next day we didn’t do a whole lot. We walked around the city a bit more and walked up to the famous Edinburgh castle, though we didn’t pay the 12 pounds to go through. We also took a mini tour through a tartan factory (tartan is the fabric used to make those famous Scottish kilts) and though that was mostly a bore, they had one of those sections where you can dress up in Scottish attire and pose with your family – similar to the old western photos we dress up for at malls – so we sat and creepily watched an adorable family get all dressed up in kilts and garb.
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| Edinburgh Castle |
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| View of the city from Edinburgh Castle |
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| Inside the tartan factory -- kilts through the years. Quite funny. |
Around midday we headed to Glasgow where our friend Jek lives, who we met a few months ago in Ferrol when he was stationed at the shipyard doing some engineering stuff. Glasgow isn’t really a touristy town, so our 5 days there were mostly just to hang out and relax on holiday. The first night we hung out with Jek and his roommates and friends at the apartment, and the next day we headed out to explore a bit of the city. We went to Kelvingrove Art gallery, which was quite possibly the strangest art gallery/museum I have ever been to. The organ player in the foyer was playing “A Whole New World” from Aladdin, which made Sheena and I really giddy. The museum had everything from classical paintings to a modern-day vacuum cleaner on display. Jek’s grandmother had even contributed with a castle sculpture that was on display in the children’s section. On the other side there were some animals on display, and then in the next room there was a display on Westerns and cowboys – big surprise – including some stuff about Buffalo Bill. [“Buffalo Bill used to frequent a bar (Glurs) in my hometown!” “No way! Cool! Buffalo Bill was a real person?!” Yep.]
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| Information in the Cowboy/Western exhibit |
We walked around Glasgow University, which is sometimes called “Hogwarts” because of its resemblance to Hogwarts castle (hey, JK Rowling did spend a significant portion of her life in Scotland after all).
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| Entering Hogwarts! |
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| I bet this is where they play Quidditch |
I’m probably blending a few days together here, but at some point we walked around the Necropolis, this huge and beautiful ancient cemetery that lies on a hill next to St. Mungo’s (yep, Harry Potter) cathedral. Of course we went at night, and eventually it started raining, so it was a bit creepy.
Another day, Sheena, Jek, and I took a road trip up the coast to a small town called Oban. Though the city wasn’t all too special, the drive there was incredible, and Sheena and I sang Disney songs the whole way. We went up to McCaig’s tower, a small Colosseum-looking thing with a great view of the town and water, and on the way home we stopped at The Dovers Inn – the oldest pub/inn in Scotland.
[remember you can click on photos to enlarge them]
[remember you can click on photos to enlarge them]
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| Oban |
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| McCaig's Tower |
The food in Scotland was pretty good, though I don’t understand how they’re not all obese. EVERYTHING is breaded and fried there. We were walking through a park and I said I thought I saw somebody eating a deep-fat-fried bratwurst, and though Sheena laughed, Jek said very seriously, “Oh yeah, those are called…” and he later got one when we went out for fish and chips. His roommates also made us a typical Scottish breakfast one morning, complete with black pudding and all. Google black pudding if you don’t know what it is. I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to try haggis, which is apparently very tasty. Google haggis too.
The rest of our trip was spent hanging out with friends, drinking Whiskey Macs, and making fools of ourselves. I went to get my hair cut the last day there because I figured, hey, it’s probably better to get my hair cut in an English-speaking country rather than a Spanish-speaking country, right? Wrong. Turns out I would have fared better communication-wise in Spanish. The Scottish accent (particularly the Glaswegian accent) is TERRIBLE. Though my hair turned out fine, any time the hair dresser tried to ask me a question or say something I had to have her repeat it 3 or 4 times, and I would still not understand her.
Anyway, that was more or less my trip! This was definitely the short version, but I think you got the gist of it. We had a really great weekend here in Galician that I can’t wait to tell you all about, but it’s going to have to wait for next time because this post is already way too long. Hope everybody is having a fantastic new year and sticking to your resolutions! Check back in later this week for some links on the right to the photo albums from my entire trip, which I haven’t loaded up yet.
I leave you with a very fitting soundtrack for my adventures abroad:
Cheerio!
I leave you with a very fitting soundtrack for my adventures abroad:
Cheerio!
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