Bilbao

I don't really feel very much like blogging but I did so much this weekend that I have to write a little. I'm currently sick. So excuse me if this post is a little confusing. I don't remember everything from the weekend at this moment.

I left Friday for Bilbao. Eleven hour bus ride. Terrible. Got into Bilbao around 8pm. Waited at the bus station for my friend Melissa, who was meeting me there. She is studying in Burgos so her bus ride was only like 4 hours. Jealous. But I don't have classes on Fridays so I guess it's okay.

From there we walked to our hostel and checked in, picked our beds, and went to get a quick tapas dinner. I just wanted sangria but they didn't have any :( We wandered a bit and then headed back to the hostel to get a good nights sleep so we were rested for the full day of exploring on Saturday.

Funny story though. When we got back, some jerk had taken Melissa's bed. I guess to be fair, her bed wasn't properly marked as hers, but we wrote a note and left it by the kid's bag and moved his stuff. Then we quickly tried to fall asleep to avoid confrontation and let the kid figure out the situation. Well, he and his friends got back and were VERY loud and obnoxious, repeatedly saying "hijo de puta" and bursting into laughter. They had to be like 26, yet acted like 12 year olds. I'm not gonna tell you when that phrase means. You can figure it out if you want, but it's not polite. Whatever, they only stayed that one night so we were happy to see them leave.

On Saturday, Melissa and I got started early. We walked around and found a nice park. We found ducks and wished we had bread to feed them. They were sleeping though and I chuckled because they were all sitting in a row, standing on one foot, with their heads tucked under their wings. It reminded me of the phrase, "ducks in a row." We visited a fine art museum. It was pretty awesome. I was able to use my knowledge of Greek Mythology and explain some paintings! Hooray for real life application of my college education! Now, to be slightly immature, there was a whole wing about women and one room about erotic women. There were some pretty funny things. I couldn't help but laugh. I only kind know who reads this blog so I'm just gonna say what I saw. There was a little metal figurine of two penises carrying a vulva on a platform, like the carts they carry royalty in. Then there was this big chest, and on one of the sides there was a tree with penises for leaves. Honestly, I could help but laugh.

Then from there we went to the Guggenhiem museum. It's what Bilbao is famous for. En route, we heard a commotion and followed the noise. Turns out it was a performance by the TV reality show Fama (Fame). It's a dancing competition. My host family and I watch it during dinner so I was really excited! I mean, if you know me, you probably know I have an obsession with celebrities. So we watched them for a while and I got to see the host, not like meet her, just see her. That was good enough for me. I was sure my host family would be jealous. (I don't think there were, after I told them). Then we went to the Guggenhiem (I'm just gonna call it the Goog from now on). It was nice, they provided audio guides with your entrance to the museum. So it was a little funny to see everybody walking around the museum with these things held up to their ears. But the whole museum was very interesting. Lots of contemporary art which I'm not really a fan of. But some other pretty cool stuff. There was even art outside. Even the building was a piece of art! We spent probably like 4 hours there and then my back started hurting really badly.

Then we walked around the city a little and we got really, really, really tired. So we took the Metro back to the hostel and took a little siesta, expect neither of us could sleep. My back hurt too much :( We decided to get some dinner. We walked toward some restaurants we had found earlier but found a nice "Italian" restaurant. Again, no sangria :( but some wonderful thin crust margarita pizza. Then we walked to a dessert place we found earlier in the day and got hot chocolates (mine was minty, hers was hazelnutty). Then I got some banana ice cream and she got a chocolatey frosted muffin. Headed back to the hostel and fell asleep immediately.

The next day we slept in a little and then we went to Mass! But we didn't know what time mass was so we just showed up and the next one was in Basque, a language commonly used in northern Spain. And it's NOTHING like Spanish. But the next one Spanish one wasn't for a few hours. So we stuck it out. Luckily, Catholic mass is pretty much the same all over the world we so we got by. It was cool because the church was huge and pretty modern looking but nobody was there! Then we saw people walking to the alter and going behind it. Turns out that there's a little chapel back there where they say normal, small, not holiday masses. But it was nice to go to Mass.

From there we headed to a few museums and ALL OF THEM WERE CLOSED! I was super mad. And tired of walking. We went to the bull fighting museum and it was closed. We went to another museum and couldn't find it. We went to the Athletic Club museum (soccer) and it was closed! Boo! Not cool. In retrospect, I would have gone to these museums on Saturday and the Goog on Sunday. Oh well. So we sat down and had a nice long lunch by the bull fighting place. A coffee, two courses, and dessert each and a bottle of wine to share for ten euros each! Awesome! But again, I had some paella and it came with shrimp head attached.... yuck. And my second course was some sort of beef that was literally swimming in grease. Good, just what I needed. But the wine was good, we mixed it with carbonated water and I liked it better than normal, dry wine. Then we had a nice little cup of ice cream.



More walking and walking and walking. Not fun. We were both really sore. So we found a movie theater and saw an indie American movie in Spanish. The Killer Inside Me. Seen it? Good, but confusing. I don't quite like to watch movies for the first time in Spanish. But I understood most of it.

But wait, before the movie we were waiting for the theater to open so we were sitting across the street on a little stoop and this old lady came by and mumbled some stuff in Spanish and motioned for us to follow her. We figured since she was old, we could follow her and if things went bad, we're two 20 year old girls... we could take her. So she lead us a block down the street to what appeared to be a retirement community. We think she told us to wait in the lounge instead of in the street. So we did. We waited and tried not to look like hoodlums and loiterers when more elderly people entered the building. After an uncomfortable twenty-ish minutes we headed to the theater. But it was definitely a sketchy situation. I felt like we were Hanzel and Gretel and that we were being led to a scary witch's candy house to be fattened and eaten. But no, we made it out alive.

After the movie we wandered to the bus station and waited for an hour to leave. My bus left a little later so I had to wait longer. Now comes the worst part of the weekend. The second eleven hour bus ride. It was hellish. I mistakenly thought that after multiple 7 hour trips to and from Mizzou, that I'd be fine. But this was an overnight ride. I thought I was gonna go crazy. THe trip to Bilbao had some good American movies dubbed in Spanish so that passed the time nicely but around 1am, they stopped playing movies and I was so uncomfortable. I could sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. I was so sore. It was TERRIBLE! We only stopped once around 4am. Around that time, I was going crazy. I kept checking the time. I thought we'd never return. The last 5 hours were terrible. I can't even accurately convey how terrible they were. My butt was so sore. Even two days later it's still sore! Never again will I ride a bus for that long, especially overnight. And I advise you to never do it either. Finally we reached Alicante at 8am and I had a few hours to nap before my class at 1pm. I've caught up on the sleep and hopefully the feeling fully returns to my tush soon..... so terrible. I haven't even decided yet if the awesomeness of the weekend with my best friend outweighs the awfulness of the bus ride.

And now, since I've been back, I've gotten sick. I NEED to get better by the time I leave for Madrid on Thursday night. I'm worried my fragile ear drums will rupture again if I'm still congested :( Keep your fingers crossed that I get better.

Another thing. A new kid moved into our apartment. He's from France. Now I don't feel like the outsider! I've been here for over a month already! Wow.

My birthday is on Saturday :) Kinda snuck up on me to be honest.

Abrazos!