After 469 pages, I had this somewhat epiphany that went something like “Arielle, remember when you used to blog about the random thoughts that popped into your head before you moved to Spain?” Admittedly, not having 24 hour internet access and having to pay a drink price at café just to use their wifi, has kind of disconnected me from the online world. Yes, it’s true. I manage to check my email still just about everyday and mostly the same for my Facebook. I try to blog after I travel. But up to date devices such as Twitter (and yes, ladies and gentlemen thanks to Undercurrent, the social media think-tank, aka my former employer that introduced me to the blogosphere/social media world from a business perspective, I had Twitter way before CNN or any other major media brand made it extremely popular follow me at ariellep for updates when I return back to NYC) unfortunately, I don’t have the opportunity to use it that much here in Spain, nor do I have the desire to. I really enjoyed being in New York, walking down the street and seeing something funny and putting a comment through a text message to have it update my Twitter feed. But that luxury is no longer there thanks to Verizon not being able to service an affordable international plan through my LG touch screen phone (you would think something decently technologically advanced would have such capabilities), but these days I guess the only way people get things done is through a Blackberry, right?

Well to that I say, damn the masses and after reading Candace Bushnell’s One Fifth Avenue after one of my nostalgic moments where I started to think, “hey, maybe I do miss New York,” and rushed to Casa del Libro where I remembered seeing the book on sale in English, I realized that I simply don’t. I do not miss New York. Although once and always considered a suburban Jersey girl, after a year at New York University, New York has become home. It is my home. It’s a part of me and gives me the same feeling that every student feels when they return home to see their parents in their hometown, extremely excited at first to have a great home cooked meal and family attention, only a week later to find out, OMG I am ready to move back into my little dorm and reclaim my freedom. I think my return to New York will be somewhat like that. I’ll be so excited to be back in the hustle and bustle, and then after about a week and the reality of senior year facing me, I’ll be ready to fly back over to Europe, back to my little room I am renting in this old house in Sevilla, Spain.

I guess the pursuit of happiness never really ends, and it is somewhat bothersome that it’s penned so clearly in American capitalism and symbolism. Although I am not a continuous Bushnell reader, what she did do with quite grace was point out the ridiculousness of New York society, money, wealth, and how everyone moving to New York has this goal to “make it” in the big city. I was there almost 2 years ago, a 17 year old senior high school graduate, who just had to move to New York and attend New York University to make her dreams of becoming a writer and magazine editor come true. And I started blazing that path and accomplished a lot, but right when you think you have it all planned out, a fast ball hits you in the chest. After losing my wind and coughing up what seemed to be a refreshing revelation, I realized that I probably will not be living in New York after next year. I also realize that I could be taking that back with the proper job opportunity presenting itself, because New York has this thing where it sucks in any type of humble or peaceful mentality you arrive with and spits back out this hungry monster that wants to ball all types of potential success into the quickest route possible. Bushnell points that out so vividly, and I encourage all aspiring New York socialites or future professionals to read her book and realize what you are getting into. Admittedly, I didn’t see the light until I moved to Spain because even in London, I was obsessed with getting back to New York and spent the majority of my winter break there instead of in Jersey. Not saying that will change when I return, because I really do like having my space as a young woman, but now New York has just become a temporary skyline. It will always be there but never a permanent fixture in my brain. I like being in Sevilla and being able to repeat the same pair of jeans 3 times in a week or having to hang my laundry on clothing lines because we don’t use dryers. Also, I love washing dishes without a dishwasher, and that I could literally sit in my cozy bedroom and read six novels consecutively in a week, manage my homework, travel, and learn from so many people just because you have made a point to learn and speak their language. New York doesn’t have that; it is the most relevant microcosm of America and our consumer heel in the ground style. I’m out of the bubble now and it will never be reconstructed. STICK ME IN A HOUSE IN BRASIL SOMEWHERE AND LET ME WRITE MY NOVELS! (after I manage to learn Portuguese lol)

Link to Candace Bushnell’s website

Much love,

Ari

I think Santorini was the trip of “you only get to do this once in a lifetime.” It seemed like every crazy activity my friend Tammy and I got ourselves into was extremely exhilarating or just plain crazy.

1. We decided to walk up an active volcanoe, in flip flops, and with solely two bottles of water. WHEW!!!!!  I thought it was going to be over, I must be out of shape because there were definitely some older people doing the same hike and moving at a great pace hahaha. Nevertheless it was amazing and we got some great pics.

2. I swam in hot springs (Tammy wasn’t trying to get her hair wet lol). Our boat pulled up about 40 meters from the hot springs, so we had to literally jump off the boat into really cold water that was definitely deeper than i expected and swim 40 meters after the cold temperature shock to get to the beginning of the hot springs. Once we got there, it was definitely really cool. It wasn’t exactly hot, but it was pretty warm and must’ve been great for my skin. But then swimming back to the boat and going through another cold water temperature shock wasn’t that fun. But in all, it was worth it. I can now tell my kids, I swam in hot springs next to a volcanoe in Santorini!

3. Tammy has had this fantasy about riding a donkey since we got to Greece. I honestly wasn’t to keen on it because frankly I think donkeys are gross. But I said hey, “only once in a lifetime!” and decided to ride up a super steep mountain with a group of tourists on a donkey. I thought my life was going to end. Between the donkeys half trying to compete with each other and our crazy old Greek ride leaders trying to speed things up, I thought that I was going to get thrown off the donkey over the edge of the cliff. Yes, I was truly scared, but again it was worth it. So yes, I have offically ridden a donkey up a mountain in Greece hahaha

For the rest of the trip, we had a great time, met great people, and ate more GREAT GREEK FOOD!!! This is probably it for my travels other than when Ash and Bryson come to Spain. I’ll be finishing up my semester in the next 3 weeks and preparing for my summer plans (which still aren’t concrete mmmm hahaha). The traveling has been great though while it has lasted! -Ari-

Tammy and Ari

Funny enough, Mykonos has probably been the most memorable consecutive 4 days I have EVER had in my life. It was filled with the type of memories I would tell my grandchildren and reminded me so much of the story my Aunt Candace told me about her and my mom in Jamaica. For one, we arrived in Mykonos at the port and had a man from our hotel “Paradise Resort” waiting for us to bring us back to the “resort.” So we get in the van and then make one more stop at another port where a group of eight rowdy Austrailian guys got in our van. So the first thing I was thinking was…is this really a “resort” that we are going to? Because not for nothing, they looked more like the tent camping type with their backpacks and dirty hiker boots and clothes. Little did we know, they were way more dressed for what we were about to experience. We pull up to Paradise “Resort” and go to the reception desk but I still didn’t see this “hotel” building that I expected our rooms to be in. Well, Paradise “resort” is actually a camping site composed of cement cabins and tents with iron beds inside of them. The funny thing was I thought of my mom and sister as soon as I rolled up and opened the door to our cement cabin with our two iron beds on each wall and was about to SCREAM. We won’t even go there about the bathrooms, I think you get the idea. But as me and my other friends always say, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. And for 20 euros a night for the cabin and a free breakfast, we got what we paid for…granted we had better luck in Spain when we paid the same price, but you live and you learn, and realize that the best vacations have nothing to do with your sleeping accommodations.

Since we got to Mykonos in the early afternoon, we chilled on the beach at our “resort” even though it was a little windy, but with the mountains off in the distance and the Mediterranean seas various colors along with the little white cement houses up in the cliffs, it was definitely a place for us to reflect on our entire abroad experience. That night, we froze. The blanket they gave us for our beds kept sliding off in the middle of the night and it was so bad that Tammy and I would literally be looking at each other in the middle of the darkness, half asleep and probably thinking the same thing, damn this “resort.” But we got smarter after the first night and asked for another blanket and slept just fine the following night. The interesting part began after our first night though. We woke up early in the morning and headed into Mykonos town where there are a ton of small streets and shops. We walked through the entire place in almost 2 hours, but in the process sat down for drinks and met this awesome Greek waiter that gave us the run down about the entire island. His name was Yiannis and he is originally from Athens. He moved to Mykonos 3 years ago to get away from the city life and see more of nature as he put it. This man told me he makes 3,000 EUROS, which is like 4,000 dollars a month. I was like huuuuuhhhhhhhhh!!! To serve drinks??????????????????????  His rent for an entire house here is 330 euros which he splits with a roommate, and then I told him that he better stop before I move to Mykonos and never return to New York. Nevertheless, we had great conversations about life and made arrangements to meet up later on. Since Tammy and I are known as the “old ladies” of our friends, we never came back into town to meet him later because we really didn’t feel like partying, but ended up going to hang out with him the following day. Yiannis did recommend we get dinner at a place close to the bar he worked at which had small little white tables facing the sea in direct view of the sunset. The food of course was incredible because all Greek food is incredible, but the view was just spectacular, which made the food 20 times better.

Before we had left the town that day, we met a bike and quad shop owner, who said he would rent us some quads the following day if we wanted to explore Mykonos in a less conventional route. He had my imagination racing with every movie of young students riding through the mountains and seeing the coastline on little streets in the mountains before he even finished his sentence. We had actually gotten the quad/motor bike idea at our “resort” but the worker there didn’t speak English well and told us that it would be 15 euro per hour but you had to rent it for 24 hours. So I was like wait you’re gonna charge us 360 EURO to rent a darn motor bike for a day????? And because I started speaking really fast (because that’s naturally what you do when you are baffled) the guy just nodded so Tammy and I walked off laughing and squashed that dream. But the guy who owned the quad shop in Mykonos town told us he would give it to us for 15 euro a day, and hearing that price difference made our dream come back to reality. The guy’s name was Manos, typical old Greek guy, but he has lived on the island his entire life. He told us where the best bars were and where we could see some authentic Greek dancing. We were of course excited and the next day we returned to the town to pick up our motorquads early since we unfortunately missed the last boat to Delos, the ancient archeological site/island close to Mykonos. We had been going to town by the bus that runs from our cabin site to the town and the Greek bus driver was not exactly my cup of tea. He was SO rude when I simply asked him when the last bus back to the resort was, so I wrote him off and Tammy and I gave the bus (that looked like it’d been alive since the 60s) the nickname of the “truck that is disguised as a bus” and the “bus driver that never got a chance to drive his truck.” Moving on….his spontaneous coffee break made us miss our boat to Delos, but God has everything happen for a reason and it gave us more time to explore Mykonos on our quads. We decided to be adventurous and not take a map. So when we stopped at the first gorgeous site on the side of a little mountain road to take pictures and turned our motorquads off, we realized that Manos never showed us how to turn our motorquads back on. We had officially made it 5 miles out of the town (Mykonos is only but so big) so imagine being in the most rural area where people don’t speak English and only Greek and then us trying to explain to them that we need to call the owner of our motorquads to tell him to come and get us. We at the time assumed that he gave us messed up quads and didn’t realize that we never asked how to turn them back on, so we took the opportunity since we were still at a pretty site to eat lunch and wait for him to come and get us.  So as we ate he eventually rolled up on his motorbike and laughed saying “wow you grew to miss me that quickly” we then looked at him and were like “did you just give us messed up quads?” clearly we were not amused, but then we ended up being the silly ones because as we showed him how it wouldn’t “start” he calmly came over checked the gas, saw it was fine, and then pulled down the engine pump, pressed a button and then it started. So we all laughed and then he told us where the gas station was again, since we somehow missed it after he told us the first time as we were driving. And then we were off again, exploring Mykonos with our quads, helmets, and gorgeous mountainous view of the Mediterranean sea’s coast. We still couldn’t find the gas station and since we were stopping trying to figure out where we were/my quad turned off again and had to figure out how Manos restarted it the last time. When we looked up and there were two old greek guys, with the movie stereotype of four teeth looking at us, clearly seeing we were tourists. Of course, they also spoke no English, which made it 10 times more fun as Tammy tried to explain that we were looking for a gas station. Eventually the old man said he would come and show us, so he jumped on Tammy’s quad and she rode on the back. We joined a line of motor bike riders and rode one mile up the road to the gas station, clearly seeing how we passed it thanks to the limited English of Manos, even though he is one of the better speakers we met. So then we got gas and the old man jumped on the back of my quad and we rode him back to where we found him sitting. In Greek (like I could understand that) he asked me where I was a from, and eventually I figured out as he started listing countries what he was asking me, so I replied New York (which is the only place they seem to know in the U.S.) and he said “oh New York, New York!” and then proceeded to laugh and scream “MYKONOS!!!!!!” As we rode on the street back to his post, I couldn’t help but crack up because it was literally something out of a movie.

After we dropped him off, Tammy and I continued on our no map adventure and found a secluded beach off some road to stop and chill/write post cards. The view was just breathtaking, so we stayed for hours, dunked our feet in the water, and then went back into town to meet up with the waiter Yiannis after he got off work. After another amazing conversation about life, his advice, and his captivation with our hair and why we would perm it (that could be another blog post in itself), we returned back to our resort on our quads watching the sunset during the 20 minute ride. Later that night, we went to Oniro Bar and Restaurant, which overlooks Mykonos town and the old bay. It had a gorgeous view! Probably the best way to end our Mykonos experience. We woke up the following morning and latched our suitcases on the back of our quads (see the videos) and then rode into town to catch our boat to Santorini. Mykonos will definitely go down in my college history and stories to everyone I talk to!!!!

After a 6 hour bus trip from Sevilla to Madrid and an overnight sleepover in Madrid’s airport, I finally was off to Athens, Greece which would be the amazing entry port to my Greece experience. As I have found in many European cities, modernization has seemed to consume every corner leaving very few neighborhoods to spare. Of course, the city like atmosphere gave us our welcome between our bus and subway rides to our hostel and all the people who seemed to be in a rush to get nowhere (much like New York). Nevertheless, we found our hostel on a little street fairly close to the subway stop, entered the room and officially declared it our worst hostel experience in Europe (little did we know, Mykonos’ Paradise “Resort” would give that title a run for its money, more on that in my next blog post). The woman seemed like she had no idea we had a reservation, how much we were supposed to be charged, or when we were scheduled to arrive/leave. Secondly, there is one key for our 6 person bed room, for us to share with complete strangers. Supposedly the system is that the last person in the hostel leaves the key at the front desk and the first person to go back in to the hostel retrieves it…this must be a Greek system because every hostel we stayed at in Spain would never suggest such foolishness. To make matters worse, as my friend Tammy sat on the bottom bed of one of the bunk beds, a wooden board fell from the top bunk bed and hit her on the back of the neck (no worries, she’s fine), we weren’t exactly pleased. Then the random hip hop songs being blasted by other Americans in the morning trying to “show off” their American culture to our Greek receptionists…I was about ready to cuss some one out! But we toughed it out, it was only three nights and we were too excited to be in Greece to let anything or anyone ruin it. So the following day, we did our site seeing around Athens, visiting the amazing Acropolis, Ancient Agora, and Temple of Olympian Zeus. As you’ll see in the pictures, the history in Athens is absolutely amazing, and definitely something I recommend for anyone traveling to Europe.

Now I had to start a new paragraph for this because yes it’s that serious, GREEK FOOD IS DEEEEELLLLIIIICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok had to be dramatic, because for the first time in months I experienced great customer service and great food. The Spanish are far too lazy to deliver anything close to American customer service, so being in Greece was refreshing. I ate an awesome Greek omelet for my first breakfast with FRESH fetta cheese, tomatoes and sausages. For dinner, I had the tenderest lamb cutlets wrapped in ivy leaves with fetta cheese and mushrooms in the middle, delicious gravy of olive oil and something the chef wouldn’t reveal, potatoes and rice. I literally felt like I had to be rolled away from the table and Greeks have this custom of giving free dessert after every meal, so it’d be rude not to eat it when it’s given to you. Let’s just say, I was STUFFED by the time I backed away.

Our last day in Athens was fairly simple mostly because we just went to the ship port, picked up our tickets, ate another great meal, and then returned to our hostel. We were way too excited about leaving for the Greek islands because after you see all the ancient history in Athens, it’s just another city like New York. In all, I have to say site seeing around Athens was one of the highlights of my abroad experience, it’s something I’ll be able to tell my kids that I saw and hopefully one day they’ll get to revisit it and continue the traveling legacy.

Since Cordoba is literally 40 minutes from Sevilla, I figured I’d take a day and go see the famous Mesquita/Catedral (mosque/cathedral), the Synagogue (one of only three left in Spain) and its other historical monuments. Cordoba is a rather interesting town, it’s river looks like a reflection of sand, but it has a cute little streets and a beautiful royal garden…very old, just how I like Spain!

I think after seeing at least 50 cathedrals, I am over the awe factor. Cordoba’s mosque was really nice but the Alhambra in Granada was WAY better.

pics below, enjoy!

The university system in Spain is weird. We have a week break for Holy Week aka Semana Santa and another week break for Feria, a Spanish cultural festival. So for our first break for Holy Week, Tammy and I decided we would finally go to Valencia and its islands of Ibiza and Palma Mallorca off the east coast. Valencia was the one place that was recommended to me by all my friends that studied abroad in Spain and in my opionion it is my favorite city other than Sevilla (I still love my little town and am SO glad I moved).

The islands were relaxing of course, nice beaches, cool yachts, the usual…but Valencia was just great. The old buildings, the new futuristic aquarium and facilities, plus the awesome park African dance performance, I was in culture heaven.

I enjoyed myself though and if I had to pick one city other than Sevilla to check out, it would be Valencia hands down. Greece is next for our Feria break, pics of Ibiza, Palma Mallorca, and Valencia below!