Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Me encanta espana! - not in order...(edited)

I liked Spain because I found everyone very friendly and willing to help. The weather was fantastic as well! Like 20 plus degrees! Its really like a teenager's country because almost everybody wakes up late...11am onwards. And you have your afternoon siesta...you have dinner at like 11pm and you go out and have fun until 4am then you go home. Even if you take pride in being an early bird blah blah just like me, seriously theres no point cos you'll just be wandering along the streets by yourself...with birds as your only company. Plus, nobody really seems to eat proper meals here...you just snack the whole day on tapas...churros...chips....

But it was a very cool experience for me in general because I finally got to see all the places that i used to see only as pictures in my Spanish coursebooks!


Barcelona- has so many things to do, but we didnt have enough time to do all!

Barceloneta- a really nice beachy area


Gaudi...(Just in case: Gaudi is the name of the person behind the art...its NOT a case of misspelling for 'gaudy')


Las Ramblas- the most happening street in Barcelona with buskers and many many shops. (The pair of twins are not buskers, dear)


Parc Guell- more of Gaudi's work

Really good paella!


La Sagrada Familia.

Actually, i should have more photos of Barcelona but because we met Jingyi, Alvin and Chianlin...it was only right that we handed power over to the 2 SLRS owned by chianlin and Alvin. The quality of photos are almost perfect i tell you. I doubt you can really see the difference here though...the following 3 photos were taken by chian's SLR i think!


Chian was using her SLR to take multi shots..im not sure if thats what you call it...but basically the camera snaps for like many many times at one go...so we were supposed to do different expressions every time. OBVIOUSLY i was the weakest link because i was trying to do things with my hands. Didnt occur to me that i could simple just do stuff with my face! haha.

Valencia- the hometown of my spanish teacher and where ili billy is studying now!!!

Madrid
Despite the superiority of the earlier 2 cities in terms of attractions, i would say i enjoyed Madrid the most. And thats because we got to know Zing, Wollymei, Pris and Liz! It was such a coincidence that 3 of us were in the same dorm as Wollymei and Zing at the hostel. Its very easy to spot Singaporens. Usually the singlish gives it away. Maccann and I are able to tell the subtle differences between Singaporeans and Malaysians...dont ask how...


4. This is Elbow Street- aptly named because the alley is shaped like one!

Zhiying (aka Zing), Lea (aka wollymei), me, Mac and Bingkai


(Picture above) Clockwise from top left:
1 and 2: This really famous tapas bar where they sell 1 small beer for 1.80 euros and they give you a free plate of tapas. The free tapas are usually a lot of bread and potatoes. If you want to eat the nicer ones, you have to order them!
ok on the first day when i arrived in madrid, i really found it terribly boring because we had not slept all night and the weather was so gloomy! So at this tapas bar right, we bumped into this old Spanish couple who said "Oh Madrid is so beautiful, ____, _____ (insert good adjectives)!" .
And i just instinctively muttered "yea like real" and Lea was next to me and heard it. She cracked up like mad...! But i really couldnt take it...the couple kept raving on and on about Madrid when all i had seen that day was probably some apparently famous park where the trees were shaped into brocollis and this statue of a bear picking some fruit!
3 & 4: This Jazz Bar which made all of us get into the mood for sleep seriously...

The Ham museum above

CHURROS with HOT CHOCOLATE. oh man, do you know, i saw this exact place being featured on samantha brown's 'passport to europe' on ch 16? when i arrived in spain, i kept going on and on about finding this particular place where the chocolate was so thick that even a spoon wouldnt sink when put on its surface. So i tried 2 different places i think before i found this real place where spoons dont sink. The churros are just like the murukus...

Lefties is a store that sells clothes from the ZARA label. All the leftovers from ZARA go to lefties...thats why they are much cheaper!

2 comments:

ili said...

omg! u must tell me where the place u went to! i watched it on samantha brown's show too!!!! i love her.. haha europe just seems nicer when she does it.

anyway.. im no billy! *rar* heeh

ili said...

by place i mean the non sinkable spoon on chocolate place.. cos the ones in valencia are all too watery!