Una vida en España: Ibiza Island and Rome & Toledo with Mom and Aunt Tracy

With 4 of the top 10 clubs worldwide, Ibiza Island is known as the Party Capital of the world. Unfortunately the party season starts sometime in July and ends in September… luckily for us students our party season is this entire semester so we were able to accomodate even though many of the businesses, clubs, and restaurants weren’t open. We stayed at really nice hostel that was much more like a hotel and because it wasn’t the tourism season, it seemed like we had the island to ourselves. We had planned to go to Ibiza this weekend because it is the holiday “Carnaval” in Spain, which may look similar to Halloween in America. It is a week-long festival celebrating the last week before the 40 days before Semana Santa (Easter) or something like that. You can be sure that as the locals were wrapped up in jackets we were in our swimsuits on the beach. I took a lot of pictures, but with my luck they’re not loading on to my computer, along with a good chunk of my pictures from Rome…so these are borrowed

We returned from Ibiza Island on Sunday and I had until Thursday to try to catch up on homework and prepare for Mom and Aunt Tracy. They would be staying at hotel Carlos V near the school, which turned out to be really nice. Chelsea’s family was also coming the same day so me and her skipped our classes on Thursday, got up at 5:00am, missed the first train to Madrid, made the 7:30 train and met our families at the Madrid airport. A lot of other students were meeting their families, friends, boyfriends, etc. this day too because the U of M was on spring break so it was a popular travel week.

The three of us would be staying in Madrid for the night and taking off to Rome for the weekend early in the morning. After searching for our hotel shuttle for 45 min, we found it and settled in at a hotel in Madrid near the airport. After getting situated, we decided to find the big red double decker tourism bus since we were only going to be in Madrid for the day and I wanted them to see as much as possible. The bus had 21 stops around the city and we could get on and off at different ones throughout the day until 7pm. We stopped to tour the Palacio Real de Madrid. I’ve been there three times now and I still love going through it, it’s one of my favorite places to tour. Afterward we bought some souvenirs for 7 hours and then got back on the bus. We also stopped at the Gardens of Retiro Park, which is a giant park similar to central park in NY. We took pictures and then got back on the bus to finish touring the city. We got off around the Plaza del Sol to do some shopping and find something to eat. I introduced them to my favorite Spanish dishes: Tortilla Española, Paella, and Croquetas. After dinner, we picked up a bottle of wine (which will become our nightly routine for the rest of the trip), and took a cab back to the hotel so we could sleep before our early flight to Italy in the morning. Even though I had been traveling for the past several weekends, it would be the first time I would be actually be leaving Spain.

Our hotel shuttle was waiting for us at 4:30am so I slept on the 2 ½ hour plane ride and most of the taxi ride to our hotel in Rome. There are hotels all over in Italy, usually a very small family owned type of thing, not like the chain hotels in the U.S. Our hotel had 10 rooms and was located on a small street full of delicious places to eat and off of one of the main shopping streets. It had a “lift”, not an elevator, windows with shutters that opened to the cobblestone street below, and we had to leave our key at the desk whenever we left. We thought that this might be because so many tourists get pick pocketed and the hotel doesn’t want to lose its key that way.

We would only be in Rome for the weekend so we started our tours right away after getting situated in the hotel. It took about an hour to find a source of transportation to get us to the plaza we needed to meet out guide. There was a strike going on that didn’t allow the buses to run and closed down the metro, meaning all taxis were full. Eventually we snagged one, but it still would have been faster to walk because of how bad their traffic situation was. Before the first tour, we ate lunch at an Italian restaurant and obviously ordered Pasta, which was delicious. Mom had booked a 3 hour tour of the Vatican City for Friday and another 3 hour tour on Saturday of the Colosseum and the areas around it. It sounds like a long time, but it was more or less a private tour with only us and 2-5 other people both days. Everything was really interesting and we liked out flaming gay tour guide. The Vatican City is now the wealthiest country in the world because of all of its treasures. There is an incredible amount of historical items and art pieces located in the city. We were told that if a person were to spend 1 minute at each item, they would be in the Vatican City for 17 years.

It was a really cool experience to be able to stand in the same room in the Sistene Chapel (which we weren't allowed to take pictures in) as the cardinals make the decision for the next pope. It was fun to hear about Michelangelo and the little bits of humor that he painted into his biblical masterpieces that would not be discovered until years later. The tour was 3 hours but with pictures, souvenirs, and our self-guided tour of the St. Peter's Basilica, we were there for about 7 and still had plans to come back the next day.

Outside of St.Peter's Basilica

Inside of St.Peter's Basilica

Crest of JPII

The Pieta (the most popular piece there)

Some babies

St. Peter's Basilica

The area in front of St. Peter's Basilica inside of the arms

We ate at a restaurant on the same street as our hotel. Our waiter, Andre, would not bring us our check when we asked for it and brought us more free food and shots instead, which was fine with us. The next day we ate a very filling breakfast at the hotel and headed out to our second tour at the Colosseum (sorry, none of my pictures will load!). The entire tour was outside and we lucked out with sunny weather! I literally knew nothing about Gladiators so everything our guide said was really interesting. He said that the battles at the Colosseum are responsible for the extinction of a lot of animals from Africa. He used an example that at one point 10,000 animals were killed in 150 days. It was interesting, but pretty disturbing at the same time in terms of how many people/animals were killed, how they were killed, and how they were treated prior to being killed.

After the tour, we struggled to find a bus to take us back to the Vatican City. We had snacks for lunch because there was still too much to see so we couldn’t stop. We spent another 29 hours at St. Peter's Basilica to make sure we had a sufficient amount of pictures (that I can't even load on my computer now :( ...)We also went down into the basement where the tombs of all of the past popes are. You were allowed to take pictures of everything except for Pope John Paul II’s tomb, which was guarded and obviously the most popular. That was one of my favorite parts because apparently Johnny boy is on his way to sainthood.

We spent quite a bit of time looking for another gift shop. So if you get something from one of us from the Vatican, know it wasn’t easy to get! Afterwards we were off to find the two other places that mom had really wanted to see: The Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain. We encountered a tiny riot on the way which caused our bus not to come so we had to find the metro. It would be the craziest metro mosh pit ride of our lives. We couldn’t see Tracy anymore after the crazy Italians piled in after some festival. Mom kept a close eye on me. She was convinced that there was a high possibility that I would be snatched when the doors opened at different stops. We made it out of there just a little frightened only to enter the a mob filled plaza where the Spanish Steps were. The steps were right in front of us, but we couldn’t see them because there were sooo many people. The youth of Rome should hang out somewhere that’s not a tourist attraction… Anyways the steps and the fountain in front of them were still very pretty during the night. We made our way through the crowds to the Trevi Fountain. Again, since it’s a more spectacular thing to see at night, it was packed with people. We through in our penny’s which is supposed to signify that you will return to Rome one day, took our pictures and went on our way.

Fountain in front of the Spanish Steps and a million people

...The Spanish Steps

The Trevi Fountain

Mom thought everyone was a pickpocketer, but this time she was right. The whole night there were these annoying middle eastern looking boys everywhere trying to make you buy roses and stupid toys. My mom had noticed two asian girls had been watching us and while we were trying to figure out where to go they had been conversing with the middle eastern boys. Mom noticed this and as were looking at the map they asked if they could “share our map” in other words be close enough to us to reach into our bags while the map covered it. Mom had done her research and knew exactly what was up. She snatched the map away from the chinos faster than you can say rice. We shopped a little bit more, but I was starving and really crabby so we went back to the hotel where there were restaurants. We all got different types of pasta, but had to pick up a pizza on the way home too..just to say that we’ve had pizza from Italy.

Rome was exhausting, but so much fun. I absolutely want to go back to Rome, but I think we would all agree that we've maxed out our hours spent at the Vatican City. We saw everything that we wanted to see and I was excited to bring them back to my home in Toledo. We landed in Madrid and I felt much more comfortable getting around with a language I can understand. To avoid bringing all of mom and Tracy’s luggage on the metro we planned to take a cab to the bus station. I’ve only gone to the bus station by metro so I couldn’t tell if the cab driver was going to the correct one. I only assumed that when I verified that we’re going to THE BUS STATION WITH THE BUSES THAT GO TO TOLEDO that he would bring us to that station. No. So we’re still working on tracking him down. Luckily the metro wasn’t busy and we eventually made it to the bus station and back to Toledo that evening. It was a full day of traveling.

In Toledo, we al stayed at the hotel Carlos V which is close to the main plaza, Zocodover, shopping, restaurants, the cathedral and my school. I stayed with them in the hotel and was able to show them everything that I wanted to in the 3 days that they were here: The cathedral, my school, my home, my scenic running route through the mountains (turned into a 3 hour picture taking stroll), and my bar (3 beers turned into lots of free chupitos from José as more of my friends and their families showed up and we ended up being there for a couple hours). Tracy’s Spanish phrases came back to her pretty quickly, but mom continued to say things like “me too, por favor”—Spanglish. With most of the restaurants here in Toledo you sit outside and there was no stopping Tracy from feeding the wild cats. It was hard to have school going on with papers and presentations while they were visiting, but it was still one of the best weeks that I’ve had here. They left Thursday morning for Paris and I had a presentation and then I would be off to Amsterdam for the weekend.

Tracy and I first night in Toledo