2 pastries a day keeps the doctor away.

Churros y chocolate. Cream-filled croissants. Flan. Nutella-filled donuts. Cola coa. Biscoches.

My goodness. The past 2 weeks any sort of healthy regime I’ve had has gone out the door. Check that, has been catapulted at 100 mph out the door. Not only have I not worked out aside from a lot of daily walking, but I’m pretty sure the term “portion control” cannot be translated into the Spanish lifestyle. La comida, or lunch, is always a 3 course meal which includes a lot of white bread, and then it is followed by a siesta: a time for napping or just resting that I probably take too much advantage of/abuse greatly with 2-3 hours naps. Dinner is usually tapas, which tend to be any sort of deep-fried appetizer, accompanied by a couple of beers. Gahhh! Today (Sunday) I ran up the 7 flights of stairs in our building. My goal is to run every day this week…but I have a feeling I’m going to be unbearably sore tomorrow.

Pretty Sevilla!

Over the weekend we went to Sevilla and Ronda, and I LOVED it! Not only was it about 10 degrees warmer than Granada, but they were just precious cities in general! We arrived in Sevilla Friday morning, and started out the visit by walking though los Reales Alcazares, which is basically a set of beautiful palaces. So so pretty.

We also visited la cathedral, which is just enormous and beautiful on its own. The view from the tower in the cathedral was breathtaking!

The rest of the day we had to explore Sevilla on our own, and then that night watched un espectaculo de flamenco, and my goodness, it was the most intense live performance I’ve ever seen! (Yes, it even rivaled the Spice Girls reunion concert where Scary Spice tied a man up and proceeded  to have her way with him on stage). Flamenco is so deng COOL! There was a lot of stepping and it reminded me a lot of tap, but MAN! The intensity between the guy and woman dancing was indescribable, really. I was literally in a trance the whole performance and had to keep telling myself to stop gawking and close my mouth. I’m signed up for a Flamenco performance and theory class here, and if I could even gain a small fraction of the abilities I witnessed that night, I will be SETTTT!

The next day, [after ANOTHER amazing hotel breakfast…ahhhhh too many pastries] we left for Ronda. The best way I can describe Ronda is like a cute little dream. We visited the oldest plaza de toros in Spain, and after going and hearing more details about the tradition, I am determined to go watch a bullfight. It will absolutely be disturbing and immoral to a certain extent, but I just can’t imagine not allowing myself to experience something that is so unique to Spain. We also took a walk by some gorgeous bridges, all which overhang cliffs. Pretty pretty pretty!!

Saturday night was superb. We had a plan to go out and do it like the real Spanish do, and that we did! We met up at 11 to go to tapas bars and found some winners!! Cheap drinks+large portions of food=happy drunken students. After the bares started closing we hit up a hilarious pub that played classics like “Livin' on a Prayer”, “Roxanne” and “Losing My Religion”. Hannah and I were reminiscing about Harris upon hearing songs like these :(  After a little social wine drinking in a plaza, we made our way to a discoteca called La Vogue (La Voh-Geh) and it was THE BESTTTTT! Literally it was just our group of 6 that was American, and everyone else was Spanish. They played Spanish pseudo-techno music, and we just danced our American hearts out. At one point me and Molly were dancing together when a group of good-looking Spanish men came up and talked to us, so we hung out with them for awhile before leaving at 5:30!! Yup, we met our goal of the night of staying up late. Next weekend’s goal: 6am. Hahaaa Sunday morning was a bit sad; I woke up at 11 to eat el desayuno of churros con chocolate, went back to sleep til 3 for la comida. Bah. Okay. This week, I'm gonna try to get off the path to morbid obesity that I'm currently on. Yay!