and i'm feeling really tired. the thing is, spain and italy were both in the same time zone, and spain is actually far west of "normal," so that meant that it got dark really late there, like 10pm. and the thing is, people in spain eat when it gets dark, so that meant: yup, a 10pm dinner!
i couldn't handle that. eating that late and then going to bed soon after was just weird. so the last few days, i said "fuck this" and ate when i felt like it. the problem was, though, most restaurants we found didn't even open until 8pm!
anyways, i got really sad in the middle of the night. i went to be last night at 9:00 and woke up at 2am and had insomnia. and like i said, i got sad. i'm bad to my normal, mundane life, and i realized that my "normal life" doesn't amount to much. it's actually kind of worthless, devoid of any excitement, and that just depressed me.
while i was in europe for those two weeks, i got about 600 comment spams. this is getting fucking ridiculous. i spent over an hour this afternoon closing comment sections on my individual posts. i wish movabletype had a way of doing them all in one blast, but instead, i went from entry to entry and did them one by one. *snore*
anyways, i'm headed home soon. i'm terribly sleepy, and i know i *shouldn't* sleep, but i just want to go home and lie down. sigh.
towards the end of the trip, the girl who i was most annoyed at turned out to be not so bad. i don't know how i started tolerating her, but i think it happened sometime around when she cut up a watermelon and (knowing that i was a lazy eater) picked out only the pieces without seeds and gave them to me. that was sweet.
but on the flip side, i started getting annoyed at another person, which was sort of irritating because it sucks to travel with people who peeve you, you know?
also, i overpacked. i was told to bring one nice outfit, and i never busted that out. so that meant one pair of pants, an undershirt, a buttondown, and an entire pair of shoes (space-filling!) didn't get used. damn. my suitcase could have been a whole lot lighter.
and one thing i learned from this trip is that it's much better to travel with good friends than random people. i mean, random people *might* be cool, but in my case, there were quite a lot of people who weren't. and it took me a while to warm up to them and open up; people kept on telling me that i was finally expressing myself a week or more into the trip.
anyways, it's time to go home. i'll see you guys later!
well, i'm back. it was a hell of a 3-flight commute: seville to madrid, madrid to london, and london to sf. damn, i'm fucking tired.
so let's see... after barcelona, we took a flight to madrid, and the bummer was that due to scheduling and other circumstances, we didn't get to explore the city at all. we took a day trip to toledo, this boring walled city, and the next day, we took another day trip to segovia before driving down to granada/alhambra.
the day trips were done by driving with this couple in their 50's, and even though the guy was "familiar" with driving in spain, we got lost everywhere we went. for example, on the drive back from toledo, it took us two hours to find out apartment in madrid, driving through the backalleys of the city, and getting stuck behind this garbage truck that stopped every 10 feet. arrgh. we got back at 2am.
so we spent two nights in alhambra/granada, and the only thing to see there was this cathedral (not another church!) and this big castle. rather boring.
and then, we went to cordoba, which only offered yet another church to see, and by the time we got into seville, it was around 6pm. and seeing as the next day was the 24-hour commute back to the states, we chose to sleep early over exploring seville. sigh.
to sum it up, spain was sort of a bummer. because we were under the mercy of the 50's couple, we only saw what they had planned out (these small towns, which were rather boring) instead of exploring the main cities (madrid and seville).
and the food! it wasn't too good. i tried paella in toledo, and it was filled with hard-shelled crustaceans which i didn't eat, and the rice... they ruined the rice by not cooking it enough!
i did, however, find this "sopa castenella" (garlic soup) that was yummy. i had it four times straight. they put pieces of garlic in it (obviously), this soggy bread chunk stuff, and sometimes a whole egg drop. i loved it.
in segovia, they had these roman aqueducts which supposedly still functioned. that was sort of impressive. and for dinner, we had roasted meats, and i got this whole leg of baby lamb, which was hard to tackle, and didn't taste all that good.
anyways, i'm back now, i'm terribliy jetlagged, and i feel like shit. i noticed last night on the scale that i had lost about 10 pounds, which no doubt was attributed to not eating much the whole vacation.
anyways, if i could go back, i'd do florence again. but not much else. my favorite memory? the loner dinner i had sitting in the hotel room with a whole eggplant pizza and a coke to myself, watching the olympics. yeah, not very impressive, huh?
anyways... i'm here at work now, and i just want to go home. but i'll write more later.