Skiing at Luz Ardiden, in the French Pyrenees

Wow. What a GREAT weekend. So great, in fact, that it's taken me a few days to recuperate from the greatness and get back to normal Bilbao life and school and blogging. On Friday night, a group of six friends - myself and Cade (the Texans), Stephanie (another Texan who goes to UT), Dane (from Boston), Francois (the Belgian), and Lina (from Sweden), all set out with our ski jackets and bags for the French Pyreness. It was about a 4 hour bus ride from Bilbao, but it couldn't have been a more perfect weekend. And I actually went skiing without falling on my ass (well, not too many times...)

We took a tour-bus-type thing with a bunch of Spaniards up and back. When we got there late Friday night, we checked into our cute little 6-person apartment. It was so tiny, but it was so cozy! Cade and I slept in the bedroom, Dane and Francois slept on the futon in the living room and Lina and Stephanie slept in the other bedroom. We had our own kitchen, our own bathroom and our own balcony which overlooked a breathtaking view of the snow-capped French Pyrenees mountains. It was so picturesque!

The next morning, we woke up early and headed out to ski! The only thing was, as expected, the three Texans were the only ones who didn't bring ski pants. I thought they'd rent them like in the States, but apparently not. So we had to go buy ski pants that morning (59 euro!) and then we all went to rent our ski equipment. After that, we left for the slopes.

I've never seen a better ski resort than this one. The mountains were gorgeous, and even though I'm not advanced enough to do any deathly slopes, the routes I went down were incredible. The six of us skied pretty much all day (at times the girls separating from the ambitious boys who wanted to go do the blacks - my boyfriend included...). We had packed food for sandwiches the night before so we didn't have to spend money there for food, so that was definitely an added plus. When the ski resort closed at 5, we took our bus back to the apartment, where we nurtured our achey sunburned faces the best we could. None of us thought to bring sunscreen, and by the time we got back to the apartment after a day's worth of skiing in a beautiful-no-cloud-in-the-sky-day, our poor faces were scorched. But we had so much fun that night - we all walked the French grocery store, bought dinner (spaghetti, meat sauce and cucumbers) and breakfast (cereal bars, fruit and croissants), and walked back home to make our delicious supper.
However, I think Cade had too much sun that day, because when we were out buying groceries, he had this migraine and kept saying his head was pounding. He wasn't saying his sentences clearly, and didn't seem to understand what was going on around him. He seemed drunk without drinking anything. It scared me to death because I've never seen him like that before, but he just went to sleep and stayed asleep when we got home. The next morning, he seemed fine.

That next morning, we went skiing for our second day, and had a blast. We took PLENTY of pictures, but just know that some of the pictures on the website aren't mine and I took them from Lina and Stephanie off Facebook because they had some great group shots. Also, the crazy-awesome group shot of all six of us on the slopes was done by Dane, whose self-timing skills on the camera still amaze me. He actually set the timer and made it back in the picture before it shot it - all on his skis! That's probably why it seems that everybody in the picture is laughing so hard - we were laughing because Dane had just made it into the group when the camera flashed. Great stuff!

But anyway, as the guys went on to the blacks (the hardest slopes), the girls stayed together and did the greens and blues. We left at 3pm, returned all our equipment and headed back home to Bilbao. We got back around 8, and were so exhausted and sore that all we could do was sleep once we got back to our apartment.

We had SO MUCH FUN this weekend! I hope y'all did too. :)

-Bana

P.S. We just wanted to say THANK YOU for everyone who has been posting on this blog. We absolutely love to see your comments, and it's so nice to hear from all of you back home. Please keep it up. :)

Paris and Disneyland Paris

So, late Sunday night we arrived back in Bilbao after our much-anticipated weekend getaway to Paris. The trip, overall, was fun. However, I’d just be following suit with the normal cliché if I said that Paris was absolutely an unforgettable and romantic place. That’s what everybody says about Paris and I just didn’t get that vibe while we were there. We came back to Spain grateful to be back in a place where a) they spoke a language we knew, and b) it wasn’t absolute chaos, which we quickly found Paris to be. I’m a little scared that I’m going to sound a little unappreciative in the following paragraphs, and I hope it doesn’t come off as too negative. I’m just trying to describe our most accurate first impression of Paris.

Our mode of transportation to and from Paris was Europe’s high speed train, and it’s quite an understatement to say this thing is fast. No, this thing is FAST. We saw southern French countryside (much like northern Spanish countryside where we live – beautiful) fly by, but after the first hour or so, it really got boring. The trip timed in at around 5 hours, which is a lot when you’re just sitting there trying to entertain yourself with a deck of cards and Lonely Planet’s French phrase dictionary (highly recommended, if I do say so myself).

Paris, or what we saw of it, was pretty, but I’d say it was more of the clichè you-have-to-see-it-at-least-once kind of pretty. Aside from the occasional graffiti (quite the European norm, at least from what I’ve seen so far), Paris mostly seemed like everything the movies made it out to be. Nothing more, nothing less. Nevertheless, we took some really good pictures.

The Eiffel Tower was enormous, and very beautiful apart from the annoying vultures trying to sell you the same crappy light-up Eiffel Tower. Their little toy that they try to throw on you is a little toy Eiffel Tower that blinks and changes colors, which is a deception at its best, as the tower doesn’t even ever turn into those colors. They try to get 1 or 2 euro for the pieces of crap, but basically will take anything for them if you’ve got the spare change. One guy even came up to Cade, held out the little toy and said “You buy bling bling?” We almost died laughing. Beware of them, and the infamous thieves with the roses. These men stalk lovestruck couples around the tower, trying to shove a rose into an unsuspecting girl’s face. A noob to the Parisian world, I naively took the rose. And, when he started tapping Cade’s shoulder, expecting some money for the rose he gave to me, we put the rose back in his hand, waved and left. I wonder how many people fall for that scam. All in all, the tower is a remarkable piece of architectural art that I think should be appreciated, but it’s sincerely hard when scammers infiltrate the place.

Next – Paris is MASSIVE! Bilbao is one of the three largest cities in Spain, but it’s still walkable in about an hour’s time. We mistakenly applied this logic to Paris and failed miserably. After checking into our hostel Thursday night after we arrived, we decided to take a stroll through the center of town and catch all the sites – Eiffel Tower, ND Cathedral, Louvre – all in one night on foot. We spent an hour just walking to the Eiffel Tower, and after we reveled in all its beauty (fighting off the vultures left and right, mind you), we were so exhausted that we just took a metro back to the hostel. Paris is not something you can see on foot, much less on foot in one night. So, we didn’t get to see the Notre Dame Cathedral or the Louvre (or Moulin Rouge, but it’s not like we have the money to see that anyway), but hopefully someday.

The first hostel we stayed at was more like a house with individually locking rooms. So cute and homey! The only thing about it was that it was so far away from the sites (yes, an hour to the Tower), but it was cheap and our breakfast (French bread, jam and coffee) was free. Above all, they spoke English. In other parts of the city (the metros and grocery stores), not knowing French was a slight setback, but several people knew at least a small amount of English so it wasn’t so bad.

On Friday morning, we woke up early and went to Disneyland Paris, as my wonderful boyfriend bought us two-day passes for Friday and Saturday. The only thing about Disneyland Paris is that it’s not actually in Paris. It’s about an hour out of Paris in the suburbs, and you have to take an RER train to and from the city to the park, which takes about an hour. Before we left Paris, we bought two tickets for what we thought was a train ride from Paris to Disneyland, but we were apparently very very wrong. Once we got to Disneyland, we tried to swipe our tickets to get out of the train station, but the machines kept saying they were invalid. Then, an RER official came up and looked at our tickets. He said they weren’t valid – we had bought two tickets for only within the Paris “zone” and hadn’t bought the right tickets to get all the way to Disneyland – and said we had to pay a 25€ fee each to get out of the train station. So, because we didn’t have the right tickets (and because I didn’t know enough French to argue with him or tell the guy off like I would do without hesitation in the states), we were out 50€. But seriously, there were NO signs in any of the train stations indicating that a train ticket within Paris was different than a ticket to Disneyland. Paris’ transportation system is tricky, and it seems like it’s out to get tourists, especially poor college tourists. In that regard, Spanish transportation is a hell of a lot easier to understand than France’s public transportation, even if you don’t know Spanish.

Despite the ridiculous fine, Disneyland was by far the best part of the trip. When we got there on Friday morning, it was snowing and obviously had been all night as the entire park was blanketed in white. It was absolutely beautiful, especially to two Texans who don’t get to see that too often (and not even since we’ve been living in Spain...) We had so much fun! There are two parks – Disneyland Studios and the regular Disneyland Park – and two days was just enough time to get the most out of both of them. Not only did we catch some really fun shows (in French and English), but there were some really exciting coasters and more classic slower rides like the obligatory “It’s a Small World” and “Peter Pan”. Not knowing French wasn’t a problem, as the park caters to its British crowd, who apparently go to the park in masse for their “holiday”.

We also pretty much starved ourselves on this trip, surviving on pb&j sandwiches, and then, when we ran out of bread, pb&j crackers. We had set out to save money in the beginning, but the real reason we had to live on such small rations was the stupid 50€ fine. So, we didn’t eat out the whole trip and came home longing for a hot meal, or at least something with substance that wasn’t pb&j! That’s why, when we finally got back to Bilbao, we welcomed ourselves home with two big Whoppers from the Burger King close to our dorm (hey, it’s not Spanish food, but it was MEAT!).

All in all, we had lots of fun, but Paris was more of a “romantic clichè” and way expensive. If you want to see true beauty, I think Spain is twice as pretty and half as expensive. And even though we couldn’t afford to try French food, I’d venture to say that Spanish food is better, too. :) And Spain is more of a simple beauty – not the hyped-up publicized beauty that Paris is. But I may just say this because I’ve already been spoiled with a month’s worth of living in the beautiful backdrop of northern Spain. Already, I’ve developed a bias. But that could depend on your point of view. That’s not to discourage you from visiting Paris, but it should encourage you to visit Spain. :)

Either way, we had a blast with our pb and j crackers, and had so much fun sprawling them out on the bed each night and chowing down. And we had a blast freezing our toes and fingers off in the 20-30 degree weather. We may not have much money, but we know how to have fun. And besides, it’s a story we’ll never forget. :)