spring break!

its official, spring break was a success!!! its been over a week since ive been back and im still feeling great from our trips.

Thurs - Sat morning. Brussels.

we get into brussels and immediately hit the town for some siteseeing. our main goal in brussels: beer, waffels, and chocolate! we got all three and also learned that mussels are the national dish of brussels which is one of my favorites. we went and did some siteseing and saw the manekin pis which is a famous statue of a boy peeing. this was the image of brussels and im pretty sure not even the locals know why! it has been the target of many pranks, one of my favorite stories was one where the french "kidnapped" the statue. in order to restore peace the king of france knighted the statue. as a result the french soldiers are required to "greet" the statue whenever they pass by it.

we had a good but short trip to brussels and enjoyed the city but had a bit of trouble with the language barrier as people wernt quite as willing to help as they had been in past cities but we made the best of it! on friday night, me and a girl went to an amazing concert at this botanical garden venue that had over 6 different stages. the band was called gaslight anthem, they were a really fun punk band from new jersey...how funny in brussels! sat we made our way to the train station and hopped on a train to amsterdam...the train ride would be very relaxing, or so we though...!

Sat morning- Wends afternoon. Amsterdam.

within about 15 minutes of our train ride to amsterdam one of the 4 girls i was traveling with realized she had left her bag on the previous train. EVERYTHING was in it, passport, all her money, iPhone, etc. as you can imagine she was hysterical, she was sure she would be ending her trip in the next few days and have to head back to valencia. miraculously, a few days later someone contacted her on facebook letting her know that they had found her bag and would be sending it to her....with ALL the contents. see people are good!

with all that going on, i almost missed how absolutely beautiful the countryside leading into amsterdam was. i definately want to come back one day in the summer and visit these small towns. there were windmills, and houses so quaint and small (but nice!) that i was convinced elves/hobits were living in them!

our first night in amsterdam was a blast! we stayed at the flying pig which was rated in the top 10 party hostels of the world so you can imagine how much sleep we got. we only stayed there one night and then moved over to a nicer hostel called the winston where we had a 4 person private room that was absolutely beautiful, but right in the middle of the red light distrect which made for some interesting people watching. we got lunch at a cafe called jardim and had a great meal.

unfortunately the weather was a lil dreary. siteseeing was a little difficult since it was so cold and rainy so we decided to get a canal boat pass (which was covered and heated!) to get around to the van gogh, the rieksmuseam the hangingn flower gardens and through some of the other districts. The van gogh museum was my favorite and they were having an exhibit of all the evening and night paintings of van gouh and surat called "colors of night" which all lead up to the starry night painting. i really enjoyed the cohesiveness of the theme and loved seeing more surat which i always saw when i went to chicago, the day in the park painting.

i saw some amazing music while in amsterdam as well. for some reason some of the girls were having a bit of difficulty getting up to go out while we were in amsterdam but i quickly made friends at the hostal bar and headed out on sunday night to a dubstep show. it was unlike anything i had everseen before. one super euro kid spun electronic music while two rasta men freestyled reggea to the electro, the result was amazing! the next night i went to a drum and base club that was next to our hostel called "kingdom" it was again something i hadnt really seen before and really enjoyed hearing some new music. wenday came and we said goodby to amsterdam and a girl on our trip that had to go home early because she had gotten sick, so we were down to 3 but off to berlin!

wends-sun. berlin!.

!!! berlin is amazing. period. it was hands down my favorite part of spring break and probablly my favorite place i've been while over here. we got in around 11 at night and checked into an amazing hostal called the circus. ironically we ran into some fellow fsu valencia students who were checking out the next day and hung out with them for the evening. we were pretty beat so just decided to stay around the hostel. we drank some "das boots" and watched them do some kareoke in the hostel bar while making fun of the FL Gators. boys! the next day we woke up bery early for an amazing hostel breakfeast (yogurt, fruit, cereal, mozarella, tomatoes, breads, jam, cheese, meats, etc) and headed out on a free walking tour of the city . we saw a bunch of sites and it was a great way to see the city and our guide gave us a bunch of good suggestions for food, nightlife, etc. my favorite site was the berlin wall mostly because of the stories he told us about peoples crazy escape stories. we also saw the hotel that michal jackson hung his baby over the balcony...how cultural!

that night we got some traditional food that was very hearty and filling but good for that kind of cold rainy weather. we then set out to find a bar that our guide had recommended called "dr. pong" we eventually got escorted in by a homeless man who knew exactly where it was. there was no sign and the windows were covered. when we got in we were in heaven! it was a bar with one ping pong table lit by a single flouresent light, the rest of the bar was dim. the way it worked was you rented a paddle for 5 euro (which you get back), then when a game starts everyone walks around the table and gets a hit at the ball. if you miss your out. you end up having to run around the table when there was only a few people left and it got quite challenging, some of the people took it really sereously!! but we had a blast there and ended up going again the next night, along with a reggae show.

the other amazing place we accidently stumbled upon was a place called techsys (i think thats how its spelled). its a 8 or 9 story building that houses a bunch of "squat artists" although some of them are actually quite famous, i actually bought a couple prints by a guy named tim roelofs who had some of his prints turned into clothes by versace. the place is covered in grafiti. the backyard of the building is exactly like jimbos and after wandering around it a little and peeping into some of the other buildings that backed up to it we realized that we had been there the night before but indoors at one of the clubs. we decided to come back again that night and went to one of the clubs at the top of the art building that overlooked the city. the club was very cool and im pretty sure some of the people there thought they were vampires. that was our last night there and our plane left at 6am so we didnt even bother getting a hostel for that night since we needed to leave for the airport by 4 anyways. so we got our stuff out of storage at the hostel and said by to our friends we had made that night at the  "circus" and headed for the airport.

Sun. Palma Majorca.

we got into palma majorca at 8. we planned to have an 8 hour layover here to recoup before heading back to valencia, plus it was like a free plane ticket! when we landed we got a cab over to the beach. we stopped by a little corner store and got some toast crackers, cream cheese, anchovies, and a beer  and made tapas under little tiki huts surrounded by mountains and crystal clear water. there were a lot of boats out and it was almost warm enough to go swimming. it was the perfect end to a perfect trip!!!

getting back to valencia was quite a shock, the town had changed completely!! there were about 5x as many people everywhere with tents and stages all set up for fallas. as i type there is a parade going on outside! it is nonstop fallas mode over here, probablly why it took so long to get this post up! my parents visited for a couple days and we got to get some great food, especially the pallea at the beach! i also traveled to lisbon this past weekend which was amazing, and i'll be putting a post up about that trip in a day or so. pictures and video from spring break coming soon!!!