You got the goods?

Here it is, Thanksgiving in Barcelona and what am I feasting on? Turkey? Sweet potato casserole? Bacon green bean bundles? No, peanut butter. I've been searching for it pretty much the entire semester and the other day I finally hit the jackpot. A huge jar, mine for only 3 euro. Then I was so excited about it that I told my friend Ashley in class, so naturally she wanted in, as did another girl who couldn't help but over-hear our excitement. So I've now become the peanut butter dealer.

I'm missing all of my friends, family, and mom's cooking (especially Mamma Broussard's cooking) a lot today, but lucky for us API is the best study abroad program out there and they are having a Thanksgiving dinner for us tonight! So we'll see if these spaniards can handle the pressure of beating a Broussard holiday meal, but I don't know.

Our final API excursion was this past weekend and it was the big kahuna, Paris! We left Barcelona Friday mid-morning and then returned Sunday evening, but it just was not enough time to see everything. Friday we checked into our hotel and then went straight to the Louvre for a guided tour, they know the way to my heart, and we hit all of the hot spots - Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and the Coronation of Napoleon. We could have spent all weekend plus probably a month and not have seen everything there is to see in the Louvre. We were free to do whatever we wanted for the night so a group of us decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower and see it all lit up. But let me tell you, that monument is such a tease. You see it sparkling and shining and "oh oh! there it is!" and because it is so huge you think it will be a short jump and a skip away, but no. It took us quite some time, but we made it eventually, and of course, it didn't disappoint.

Hey Mona

The next day API had a bus tour for us. Now I'm all for most tours and guides - bike, audio, real live human being, but bus tours I don't think I can endorse. I wish we had just walked around to all of the sites instead of just seeing them through a window as we passed by, but we saw most everything and got to take about a million pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower. This was also the trip of solo shots because who doesn't want a solo shot for the rest of their life in front of the Eiffel Tower? I had my first french crepe for lunch, delish, and then we spent the next few hours searching for macaroons. Paris is known for them so they should be pretty easy to find, right? Wrong again. The only ones we could find were at McDonald's. So we headed to Eiffel Tower for round 2 and this time to go up to the top. From the base you could only buy tickets to the second floor, so it wasn't all the way up, but my fear of heights and I decided it was high enough for me. The sun had just set so it was beautiful and you could see for miles. That night we went to the Champs Elysees to walk through the Christmas market that was set up with booths selling anything and everything, even the elusive macaroons!

 The first, but definitely not the last of the solo shots

 Hunchback of Notre Dame, get it?

 Inside Notre Dame

 View from the Eiffel Tower!

 MACAROONS AT LAST

Kate really wanted to go to Versailles, so the next day we hopped on the train and had arrived after about 45 minutes. If you are under 26 and a resident of the E.U. then you get in free to Versailles AND a free audio guide. Thanks to our visas, that included us. I really can't even explain Versailles. We only saw a fraction of it, but every inch was so magnificent and luxurious. The gardens were stunning and I can only imagine how beautiful they are in the spring when everything is blooming. Versailles took up pretty much our whole last day, but it was definitely worth it. Then everyone met back up at the hotel, headed for the airport, and flew back to home sweet Barcelona.

 The Hall of Mirrors

I've traveled a lot the past months (holy smokes has it really been months already?!), but this weekend I'll be staying put in Barcelona and I couldn't be more excited. I can't believe how fast this semester is flying by and the weekends I have left to soak up Barcelona are dwindling all too quickly.

Being that it is Thanksgiving, I have never been more thankful for my family and friends both across the Atlantic and here in Barcelona as well as this experience and... peanut butter. I had really missed peanut butter.

Happy turkey day everybody! Stuff your face for me! And mom, let's have a Thanksgiving round 2 when I get back, vale? Vale :)

AmsterDAM THAT WAS A GREAT WEEKEND!

First off, title cred to Ashley Alman, who is much more creative than I.

This past weekend Kate and I took a lovely little romantic get away to Brussels and Amsterdam. We landed in Brussels, got slapped in the face by the cold and surprising number of Italians traveling to Belgium, and eventually found our way from the airport to the bus station to the metro to our hotel.

Ok, when we first got to Brussels Kate and I looked at each other with just a "why the heck did we come to Brussels, this is so random" look, but thankfully we were more than pleasantly surprised. We also became foodies on this trip, starting with the most incredible lunch at a little pub restaurant. After lunch we walked around to all of the chocolate, lace, and touristy stores and then around the square with the Grand Palace. We kept seeing this statue of this little naked boy, Manneken Pis, peeing all over the place and we probably asked 5 different people hey, what's the deal with the peeing kid? but no one could tell us. Luckily my girl Sara Weir told me when we were skyping last night. As legend has it, a wealthy merchant was visiting and his son went missing so all of the local merchants and community helped find him and the dad said he would make a sculpture of his son doing whatever he was doing when he found him, which I guess involved his son who had stripped naked and was peeing somewhere? Nevertheless, the statues were everywhere.

At this point we were just wandering around the little streets but we wanted to get out of the cold and then we found... The Beer Cave. It was the coolest place. They had over 2,000 beers and the bartenders all knew so much about beer and there were people from all over the world just sippin on some brews. If ever you are in Brussels, I hope you too will stumble upon The Beer Cave.

The next day we took the train to Amsterdam and were so pumped to be there. It gets dark really early, so by the time we got there the sun had already set. Once we had dropped our bags off at our hotel, we went to this awesome indian restaurant. Apparently there are a lot of indian and indonesian immigrants in Amsterdam so we were told that they have some great indian restaurants, and they weren't kidding. We met up with some Barcelona API friends who had come for the weekend too and got to see Amsterdam at night, with all of the canals lit up.

The next day we had to check out of the hotel and head to the boat! When I was finding our hostels, there were a bunch of house boat hostel options and Kate and I couldn't resist. It was called the Avanti and with our bags stuffed in the corner, really only one person could be standing at a time. We met the captain and owner of the boat too and he told us that school groups will rent it out for a week for field trips at sea. What?! Where were my sailing field trips? Just kidding. But then every summer they take the boat on a 2 month trip wherever they want! Kate and I decided to write a traveler's food diary and travel all around the world on a house boat. Who needs grad and law school? We're gonna get ourselves a boat.

That day we went to Nemo, a science museum pretty much like The Science Place on crack and definitely meant mostly for kids, but we figured we're just kids at heart really. We went on a canal cruise after around sunset which was so beautiful (how romantic) and got to see a fraction of over 100 canals and 1000 bridges in Amsterdam. Thai food this night. YUM. And later the house boat rocked us to sleep.

We got up and went to the Anne Frank House on our last day, which was really moving. It was Otto Frank's wish that the house not be furnished as it had been so the rooms were empty but they had pictures of how it had been set up and the way the whole tour was done was really cool. Then we went to the Van Gogh Museum, which I just really really loved. I'm all about those sunflowers, you know.

So our flight was at 6. We had left our bags at the house boat so we had to get back to the boat, get our bags, get to the train station, figure out how to get to the airport, and then get through security. It was 3:30 when we left Van Gogh, and we didn't want to have to get a taxi so we stole a tram ride, sorry Amsterdam, but I guess our pay back was that it took forever. We finally got to our stop, and were power walking back when Kate's legs cramped up, diva, so I left my purse with her and ran the mile back to the boat, and you all know how much I love running... I strapped her backpack on my back, mine on the front and, looking something like a turtle with a beer belly, ran back. Come to find, the train runs every 15 minutes and only takes 10 minutes to get to the airport AND our flight didn't leave until 630, not 6 so we had plenty of time. Better safe than sorry I guess.

We met some of the coolest people, ate some of the best food, drank some of the best beer, and saw some beautiful cities. I can't tell you how many times we looked at each other and said "this can't be our life right now." I am more thankful every day for this experience. AmsterDAYYUM that weekend was unreal!

Occupy Amsterdam