Are you David?

Location: Florence, Italy

Florence was LOVELY yesterday. The temperature was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. It was great. I started the day late (after I finally caught up on all my sleep) and went to a cafeteria only to find... (drum roll please) a TURKEY sandwich!! I hadn't had turkey since before I left so I was so excited, and even though it was just a little sandwich with only cheese and turkey and it was €4 I was still so excited to eat turkey that I bought it. After this I got my first of many bowls of Gelato (Mango and Papaya today) and then I walked around and saw the Duomo and then walked down to a really interesting old outdoor museum. There were about 20 statues around and most of them were absolutely beautiful. The museum surrounded this big plaza in the center and then ran down the side towards the river.

All of the statues were authentic except for the one of David that I took the picture of. The actual statue of David is inside a museum a couple of blocks from my hostel and this one is located where the old David statue used to stand. A bunch of students recreated it and I think some people were genuinely confused as to whether they were looking at the real thing or not. Another statue that I took a picture of was another recreation (the close up on the warrior looking guy holding a dead guy). Except, this statue was created in like 640 AD which was amazing to me that a recreation of another statue still happened early enough to be it's own statue. Crazy!!

Also, everyone in most of these statues is naked. Well, let me rephrase that. Every statue in the ENTIRE city, the people are naked. I mean, these people are not modest in the slightest. And there are lots of statues with very obvious hints to homosexuality. Just right out in the middle of squares. Very vulgar things, but very interesting.

After this I walked down a long corridor (where I saw the smoking statue) and down to the river past another big museum. The river was so pretty and was lined with all of these Mediterranean Tuscan houses and the sun was setting and it was just perfect. I walked across the old bridge and over to a more residential area of town where there were a lot of really pretty lofts and churches. After this, I meandered my way back to where I came from and past a bunch of black market purse sellers.

Once I was back at my hostel, a girl in my room, Rain from China, was going to o up to the top of this Garden to watch the sunset so I said lets go, we got a bottle of wine and headed up. Unfortunately, we were a little late, so we're going to try again today, but we did sit up there and people watch and drink our little bottle. After this, we came back to the hostel, where the guy who owns the place was just getting off work so he asked if we wanted to go get some food, which of course we did, so we all walked back across the river to a cute little restaurant by the church with the violinist. We sat down at 8 and didn't leave until almost 11:30. I had the most amazing Gnocchi with a Radish and Gorgonzola sauce (it was incredible) and then we drank a ton of wine and had chocolate cake and just sat there and talked about (of course, get three drunk people from different countries together and what do you start talkin about) solving all of the worlds problems, the war in Iraq, communism... all very light topics for a first time dinner together ;)

Once we left, we went down to a couple different clubs and had a couple drinks before retiring relatively early (relative to Spain that is) at about 1:30.

Today, obviously, I have spent most of my day uploading pictures. It literally has taken me a couple of hours so be grateful. I'm gonna head out now and get some food... I think the word of the day is Pizza.

XOXO

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The bird flies away to Italy

Location: Florence, Italy

Yikes, today was rough. After my near mugging incident I was a little shaken up so I drank a little too much vino for dinner and things only went downhill from there. We went to the clubs again, which was great fun. Things start to get clear again at about 5:30 when me and one of the boys were walking back to my hostel to get my backpack but we sort of got lost and then somehow, randomly, 3 of the other guys found us wandering the streets and directed us back where we were supposed to be going. I got my backpack, caught the metro to the bus station, took the 2 hour bus ride to the airport and then the 2 hour flight to Rome. From there, I got on a bus to the metro station, metro to the train station and then took a slow speed (so it was free) train to Florence which took about 3 hours. I slept for most of the traveling because I hadn't slept last night, but it was a rough morning to say the least.

Florence is beautiful!! It's warmer than Barcelona by a little bit and I'm already in love with the city. Plus, the people here speak Italian and I could listen to it for hours and I have no idea what they're saying at all. Even when they're yelling at eachother (which seems to happen quite often) it just sounds so pretty :) I'm glad I will be here for a long time. I haven't had any good food yet because I haven't been hungry yet today, but I think I'll be hitting that up in the next hour or so. Nothing else really to report. Hopefully my weekend will be exciting. Gid, Shaun and Greg from Australia are meeting me here tomorrow and staying for a couple days and then Andre from Brazil is coming in town on Tuesday so I'll be kept busy with old friends (Ha!).

XOXO

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There's nothing quite like singing in the streets

Location: Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain

Well, participation went well. Turns out I was in the company of 9 Irish guys who were on basically a winter break binge trip. We went to the clubs last night and the night before and both nights, I wasn't in bed until after 7 AM. It's been very fun, but I'm getting a tad tired. My 9 Irish body guards have definitely been nice because Barcelona is a pretty scary place. I actually caught a guy undoing my purse trying to steal my phone today on my way to dinner. The boys were telling me that 2 of them got mugged by a group of like 5 prostitutes who like surrounded them and then started just grabbing for wallets. One of the other guys got €40 taken out of his pocket too. I guess I've been lucky that I only had one encounter and I caught him... Ha Ha!! Don't mess with me.

Barcelona the city is absolutely beautiful. It's really a strange place and everything seems out of place individually but it all comes together nicely. There are statues everywhere. Any entrance to a building, small square, statues. And not like normal carved statues, but like really strange things. Like a lobster on top of a bus stop; a huge freaking lobster with this big grin on its face. So random. The architecture of the entire city is also extremely unique. Every building is different and it's very interesting. All of Gaudi's buildings are incredible, of course. I didn't really know how important this guy is, but I'm a HUGE fan now. All of his work is so modern and different. Each building is completely different from the one before.

The Sagrada Familia is the most famous. It's this huge church that he started building somewhere in the 1880 range and it's still not done. He died in the 20's but the building is still being built according to his plans. It is absolutely breathtaking and my pictures are not even going to kind of do this place justice. It has 8 towers built so far, with 4 more coming each for one of the 12 apostles. Then, there is going to be a huge tower in the middle that's Jesus' tower. Only one façade of the church was built before he died and it's darker and a little more traditional. It has the most amazing carvings of the birth of Jesus and all these happy people and it's wonderful. You can't fit the thing in a picture and there's no clear division so it was really hard to frame a picture of this. The other side of the church is much more modern and is more recent. All of the characters on this side are crying or screaming and it's dedicated to Jesus' death. It's horrible and beautiful all at the same time. The inside of the church is mostly empty, but you can see where they're doing a lot of work on the ceiling and the columns. There is also a lot of scaffolding where the middle bell towers are going to be located. The place is amazing.

I spent a decent amount of time there today. I also did another bus tour... I know it's pathetic, but I'm addicted. I started by going up to the Parc de Montjuic which is this amazing park that overlooks the whole city. It's gorgeous. Then we went down by Port Vell and Port Olympico, which is where we were at the clubs last night. Then we went to Plaza Catalunya which is basically just this huge plaza with shops and restaurants all around. There is also the most pigeons I've ever seen in my life in the middle. From here we went up through Gràcia which is an old town that used to be separated from Barcelona (which was an old Roman city with a wall surrounding it and everything). Here we went up to Parc Guell which is where a bunch more of Gaudi's work is. It's some sort of old English neighborhood where he lived for a certain amount of time. At this point, it was getting pretty dark, so we headed quickly to go look at the Futbol stadium which is absolutely HUGE. It holds just under 100,000 people and I was sad that I didn't get to go see a game :(

Today, I had to get up early and move hostels because they screwed up my reservations some how. I didn't do much though as a result of last nights activities. I just went to the church and walked around the Gothic section of town and down to the beach. I also just screwed up my train reservation (when I looked at the schedule I assumed it was a daily train, but in the winter, they don't run on Friday or Saturday for maintenance) so I was somewhat confused as to how I was going to get to Florence. I just found a Ryan Air flight though for €50 so I'm booked. It leaves at 8:20 in the morning. YIKES!! Looks like someone is not going to bed tonight!! Ha!!

Ok well, off for now. I'll be in Italy tomorrow if all goes as planned.

XOXO

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"Are you a REAL American?" - Joe the Pole

Location: Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain

Another day of solid travel...

Today started early because i had to catch the bus to Málaga at 8:20. I hiked to the bus stop and caught the bus (which came about 15 minutes late - an important detail later). We began the 2.5 hour bus ride to Málaga which was actually, amazing. With the sun rising first over Africa and then over the mountains west of town... the views were breathtaking. Even this far south, the sun still rises so slowly... so i feel like you get to watch it for like 2 hours instead of 15 minutes. And in the reflection of the Mediterranean? I was really lucky.

And then... as we pulled into the bus station I realized that it was 10:50 and my train was set to leave at 11 AND it was 2 blocks away AND I didn't have a reservation yet. I ran to the station... begged the conductor to let me on and for the first time on my trip... I missed my train. But, as luck would have it... In Málaga, the train station is attached to a shopping mall, so I spent my 3 hours shopping and eating. First, I got a little chair massage at one of those sleazy mall kiosk things, but it was totally worth the €2 I paid. Then, I went and got 2 cups of coffee and read the newspaper. Or, at least, what I could read. I picked 3 articles which were about American things, so that I at least could guess some of the context. My first article was about Mitt Romney and some business about Michigan and car making. I wasn't too interested so I moved on quickly (It was my warm-up). Second article was much more interesting: Basketball (of course I pick sports). It was about this kid who is playing basketball for UNC-Asheville who is 7'7" and weighs 370 pounds!!! (Yes, I had to do the conversions in my phone... 2.36 meters didn't sound that tall). Apparently, he's actually pretty good for a giant. Last article was my favorite and it was about the comeback of American Gladiator. I remember Andrea telling me something about this show coming back and I was really excited, but apparently it has started (before my return... the nerve) and is entertaining quite a large crowd of viewers. There was a picture of some of the new gladiators. HA!! Some things haven't changed since the early 90's I guess.

This took me about 2 hours to read. So naturally, when I had finished, I got a sandwich and headed for my platform. The next 7.25 hours were spent on a train. First from Málaga to Madrid and then Madrid to Barcelona. The first ride was quite lovely. There were hours upon hours of rolling hills filled with olive trees and grape vines. Millions of trees producing two of my favorite things (oh, yes and olives are now one of my favorite foods after eating my weight in them in San Ambrosio). I watched two movies in Spanish. The first was called Eragon and it was American and about a boy with a dragon and it had subtitles (in Spanish, but still it helped me to read along) and the people were talking in Spanish too. The movie was ok, but I'm sure I missed huge chunks of the story line in translation. The second movie was a Spanish film in Spanish with no subtitles and I had no chance. I think it was an indy film because it was quite weird and I think supposed to be funny but I'm not sure. I gave up watching it about a half an hour into it. I also managed to read about 300 pages in my new epic novel that my Australian friend, Gid gave me in Madrid. It's a very interesting book called The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters and it is quite entertaining. It's almost 1000 pages so it looks quite impressive, but it hasn't been bad so far. Don't judge me if it ends poorly though, I'm only about half way through.

Once I arrived in Barcelona, I walked to my hostel quite quickly and here I am!! It's a really nice place and I think I'm pretty centrally located, but I'll let you know tomorrow. Oh, and of the 9 countries I've been to and the 14 hostels I've stayed in, I am officially in my first top-bunk. I was on such a good run. Oh well.

Kind of uneventful, I know, but I had to give you an easy read after all of that drama from the previous week. And the computer room has just been overtaken by about 8 boys with beer so I think I need to go participate.

XOXO

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"You came to Africa... alone?" -Abdul

Location: Tangier, Morocco, North Africa

Ok, well. The plan was to come to Tarifa and possibly meet some people who wanted to go to Morocco with me, BUT... there was no one staying at my hostel. So... I went alone.

EKK!!

I know... but I am safe and not kidnapped or anything sooo you don't have to be worried. And I am back on Spanish turf and feeling much better about things. Ok, so now everyone has gotten angry at Abbey for going to Morocco alone.... and we're all over it.

IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT!!

So, I get off the boat at about 2 PM (because it was raining this morning so I didn't want to go in the rain) and I literally almost turned around and got back on the boat. I was SOOOO scared. There were people EVERYWHERE!! "Do you want taxi?", "Private Tour Here!", "I drive you anywhere" (especially my favorite... "I drive you to my house 40 miles away, then charge you €300 to get back to port!"). I look around, and start walking towards a police man when a nice old guy starts talking to me in wonderful English. He asks me if I need help, that he is an official tourist guide, shows me his badge and I start to talk to him. He offers to take me around town and we negotiate a price and then I ask the police officer if this guy is legit and he says he is so I take a big breath and off we go. Just me and Abdul, my new 62 year old BFF Moroccan man.

We drive through the Modern town which is just a normal looking street with shops and McDonald's and normal looking people. Of course, we don't stop there and we continue up to Old Town. We get out of the car and walk around here, looking at the central mosque (which it happened to be one of the 5 daily times of prayer so I got to watch all of the boys doing their thing - Abdul explains to me that the women have to pray separately so that's why we don't see any). From here we walk to the Kasbah which is an old Sultan's palace. It has a beautiful garden and the ceilings and walls are carved out of plaster and Mohogany. Out the back, there is a stunning view of Tarifa and the place where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean - in the middle of the Straight of Gibraltar.

From here, we walked back out to he main square to see the Catholic church and the Protestant church. Abdul tells me that Morocco is the most religiously tolerant country and I somewhat believe him when he tells me that there are 10 catholic churches, 1 protestant church, 7 Jewish synagogues and 27 Muslim mosques in Tangier alone. Here we see what he called the workers shop. It is where men who are looking for work in their specific trade, come and find work. Example (I also took a picture so when I am able to post them, you will see) a painter wants work, so he comes to this square and puts a bucket with paintbrushes on the sidewalk and then just sits back. If anyone is interested in his work, they will go to his bucket and negotiate a deal. Similarly, plumbers, electricians, woodworkers, anything would be set up here. It was very interesting.

After this we headed to the market. Today (Monday) is market day in Tangier so everyone comes in from the burbs and brings in their crops and clothes and such and sells them in these open air markets. Here we see so much. There is the largest assortment of olives I have ever seen in my entire life. Chickens everywhere, hanging from strings on the ceiling in every store. There are huge veggie stands that go sooo far back. Abdul takes me to a spice store where of course I have to buy something. I get some wonderful red spice that smelled fantastic and I'm sure tasted great as well. I got some sweet curry which is just a milder version of its Indian cousin. I also picked up some rock that smelled delicious and is used to make a lot of Moroccan perfume. I decided I could put it in my bag to make it smell nice :)

After this, I was treated to a lovely personal show of Persian rugs. We went to his amazing store which had jewelry, brass, fake Prada, EVERYTHING. It was 3 stories tall and at the very top was this huge warehouse of rugs. The guy sat my on a pillow and made me some hibiscus mint tea and showed me rug after rug after rug. He knew I had no intention to buy and he still taught me everything about the different types of rugs and what they were made out of. It was beautiful!!

To finish my trip, Abdul took me to an authentic Moroccan restaurant where I was treated to a 3 course meal with a chickpea and noodle soup (that had cinnamon in it, it was fantastic). Then I had this fried chicken onion thing. Think Trudy's stuffed avocado but sweeter and with powdered sugar and cinnamon on top and onions. OMG it was sooo good. Then my last course was couscous with chicken on it which, of course, was fantastic. I had a wonderful mint tea to finish my meal and we were off for the port to catch my boat back. On the way, he took me by a shop with wedding dresses and told me about his daughter who was getting married in 3 months. He was so excited about it and was telling me about how women in their culture have a wedding that lasts 7 days long so they have to have a different dress for each day. The dresses were so beautiful and in each shop, you could see the little men sitting their weaving their own silk fabric and sewing these clothes together. It was fantastic.

Finally, it was time to head back. I went to the port, said farewell to my new friend (after all, he did invite me to come to his daughter's wedding if I am in town in March) and set out for my boat. Getting there, was much harder than I thought it would be. There was no order to getting on the boat at all. People were literally plowing each other over to be the first to get on. All the cars that were getting on were lined up and the police were searching them all checking to make sure there weren't any drugs or stowaways. They literally were popping glove compartments open and checking underneath the cars to make sure that no people were underneath. It was crazy. Finally, we got on and headed back to Europe. Once I got here, I felt so much better knowing that everything was safe. I didn't really ever feel threatened in Morocco but I did feel like everyone was staring at me the whole time I was there. It really was a wonderful place though and worth a trip. Plus I got like 5 passport stamps!! They stamp you for walking like 100 feet.

Anyways, off to bed. It's been a long day and I have a long day of travel ahead of me.

XOXO

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Hangovers are just as unfortunate overseas

Location: Tarifa, Spain

Oh man. This morning was ROUGH!! I woke up about 11 and had some toast and drank a lot of water and Tylenol and laid down by the fire for a couple hours. Andrew came back from Málaga from dropping off Linda and Nicky and then drove me to Tarifa which was about an hour away.

Tarifa is this little town at the southern most tip of Spain that is the gateway to Africa. It is literally a 20 minute ferry ride to Tangier from here. This town was an old pirate town that made its fortune collecting a tax (tariff) from ships as they would pass through the straight or else shoot them down. Everything here revolves around pirates.

Today has been spent catching up on emails and blogging (as well as sleep) and so I haven't done much exploring of the town yet. Dinner tonight, however, was very interesting. Since I am slightly more confident in my ability to speak Spanish, I felt like I could go to a restaurant. I tried to order grilled tuna (because that is the specialty fish around these parts) but they didn't have any, so she suggested, that if I like fish, I should just get the fish of the day, which was a mild white fish. Ok, sure sounds great. I order a salad and some wine and make a meal of it. The salad, was wonderful, it had pineapple, peanuts, almonds, corn salsa and a really sweet and spicy honey mustard dressing. Then... the fish came. And... I should have known, but it was literally a fish. It was about a foot long and complete with a head, tail, eye balls, organs, everything. So... I ate it. There wasn't much meat, and I probably could have found more if I had felt inclined to dig a bit, but I didn't want to so I didn't find it. It came with some grilled potatoes which I assume were sharing the same space because they tasted quite fishy. Don't get me wrong, it was wonderful fish, and I enjoyed the experience, but I think I prefer my fishes filleted and head/tail-less.

Off to read and bed now, but tomorrow should be interesting!!

XOXO

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Ride... Ride... Ride... Ride...

Location: San Ambrosio, Spain

Get ready for quite a doozie!! I have a whole week to update about so this may get long, but i'll do my best to keep it abridged.

Sunday I arrived at the airport in Málaga to meet up with Andrew who was picking me up to take me to the riding holiday. We grabbed a quick sandwich and met the two others who would be on the trip with me. Linda and Nicky were a mother daughter combo from somewhere near Leeds, England who were taking a quick weeks vacation before Nicky headed back to school Monday. She goes to an ag college in England. They were wonderful to be with and I am so glad that they decided to come on the trip. Being alone the whole week may have been a tad boring.

Anyways, we drove the 2.5 hours to San Abrosio which is this little (tiny) town near Vejer de la Frontera which is somewhere in between Cadíz and Tarifa. We passed by Gibralter on the drive and looked at Morocco, which is literally... Right there. The house where we stayed at was a really cute little compound with 8 rooms for guests with a big living room/kitchen combo to lounge in as well as a house for the family who runs the place. Andrew and Rhiannon lived in the house with their son Jack and then Rhiannon's dad, Derek, lived in an apartment at the base of the hill. Andrew's sister, Rachel, had a house in another one of the small villages nearby and she was the main one in charge of the horses. She was also helped by José who was a local who helped feed and ride the horses. I think those are all the important players :) My room was one of the 8 for the guests, it was a nice room with a comfy bed and my own shower. Right outside my door was a courtyard with beautiful orange trees and these huge black rhinocerous beetles. Sunday night we had a wonderful dinner and went to bed early.

Monday, we got up and went to the horses at about 10. I rode Duende, who was a really sweet grey Andalucian gelding. Most of the horses here are Andalucian crosses. The area is actually called Andalucia and almost any purebred horse from around here is Andalucian. Anyways, the ride this day was mostly through the forests. We rode past some old guard towers where the soldiers used to sit in and look out to the ocean to see if people were coming to attack or just to come through the straight of Gibralter. The pace of the ride is very comfortable. It can be kind of "trail ride"-ish in parts, where we may be walking through the forest single file, but most of the ride is side by side. We trotted when we felt we wanted to trot, cantered when we would get to far behind and walked most of the time. We had quite a few organized canters and gallops where they had previously checked the ground to make sure it was safe for the horses to run through without hurting themselves. I had never felt a horse gallop so powerfully as Duende on that first day. If you had told me he could go any faster than what he was doing when we were cantering, I wouldn't have believed you. It was absolutely amazing. We settled for lunch at a really cute little restaurant near the forest and had some swordfish, Russian Salad (my new favorite thing) and Summer Wine (which was a little like Sangria, but must have had some lemonade in it or something).

Tuesday was similar, riding Duende again, we took a ride down to the beach today as well as going through the forests. We walked along the sand dunes towards a magnificent lighthouse that is still in operation. We walked to a tidal lake near the lighthouse that was no more than 3 feet deep in the middle and had a gallop through it which was fantastic. We were soaking wet and had sand all over our faces by the end of it but it was amazing. We went through it a couple of times before heading off to lunch on the beach. Here we ate these wonderfully fresh tuna sandwiches with a plate of chorizo and cheese. After lunch, we headed home and went hiking near our house. Me and one of the horse girls, Jackie, walked up to this old windmill by the house that is absolutely beautiful. It looks like a cartoon the colors are so vivid. It's this gorgeous green hill with a little white windmill on top and the perfectly blue sky behind it. I took some pictures that didn't do it justice, but, I tried. We also hiked to this old dove cote about 5 minutes from the barn which is the oldest dove cote in Europe. It was HUGE!! I'm not sure how many thousands of birds would fit in this thing, but there had to be thousands when it was completely full.

Wednesday I started the day out on Pecasa who was another very pretty grey Andalucian cross. When we were trying to get through one of the gates though, her bridle broke and I had to switch Cathy (one of the horse helper girls) while she took Pecasa back to the barn to get her fixed up with a new bridle. This is when I was introduced to Soraya who was a beautiful 5 year old dapple grey Andalucian mare. I was the first non-employee to ride her and I could tell Cathy was a little nervous with me on her. She was PERFECT. I fell in love instantly. The rides were a little quieter (she's not in as good of shape as the rest of the ponies) and so I tended to keep towards the back to keep her at a more reasonable pace. We did partake in the roller coaster though, which is a firebreak that you gallop down which goes down some hills, I may have been wary of on foot. Imagine that feeling when you are running down a hill and you can't stop, you just keep going faster and faster and your stride just keeps getting bigger and bigger? Ya... now picture that on a horse... it was incredible.

Thursday was quite a change of pace. We gave the horses a day off and headed into Jerez which is a town about an hour away about half the size of Tulsa. We had breakfast at a local restaurant and then went to a nice tack shop down the street. I have to admit, I got a little out of control - but it was so cheap!! I had to. I got a really nice new bridle and a pair of gloves for €30. Amazing. So after that we headed to the Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Ecuestre. Here, there are two different schools. One is dedicated to carriage driving and the other, classical Spanish riding and showing. We went to the carriage museum which had a lovely display of different passenger carriages and their harnesses. We then went into the barn to hang out with the ponies who were sooo pretty. They're all purebred Andalucians, mostly grey with a couple bay and a couple black. There was a preggers mare who was sooo sweet and most of the boys were stallions. We then walked over to the Riding school side where we watched some of the horses be warmed up and then went to the show at the school. It was very similar to a Lipizzaner show, but with local horses, and actually at their shcool. It was so wonderful. They did all kinds of leaps, kicks, dressage, it was beautiful. Then the carriage drivers came in and did a show which was amazing as well. After the show, we watched the ponies some more and then walked to eat some lunch. After lunch we went to this little sherry store. Now, what I didn't know is that Sherry is a region. Like Bordeaux, Champagne, Tuscany, etc... Sherry is just a wine from this particular region of Spain, right where we were. We learned all about the different varieties of Sherry, how long they age, how to tell them apart and then tasted about 5 different kinds. It was sooo interesting, and we were drinking them right out of the barrel!! After buying too many bottles of that, we walked back to our car and then drove out of town. On the way out we saw some Flamingo's grazing in a little tidal swampy thing. It was really neat because I wasn't expecting to see wild Flamingos in southern spain.

Friday was back to the saddle. This day I was on a solid black Andalucian/Quarter Horse cross gelding. His name was Lucero (because he had a huge white star on his face). Today was the infamous beach ride. We rode down the the beach and spent about 1.5 hours galloping back and forth and down and around, all over. It was absolutely amazing. The horses were all playing in the water and loving the opportunity to just let loose. We galloped so much up and down the tide that by the time we stopped. I had to ride up at a dune and look at the ground so I could get my grounding back. I was so dizzy from watching the water and I almost got sick. But... it was still amazing. We walked back towards the lighthouse and then back through the lake so the ponies could get a drink of water and then had some lunch and a little "Wobbly Chocolate" or Hot chocolate with Bailey's in it. YUM!!

Saturday was my favorite day by far. I was back on Soraya, which was a surprise, because I had expected that they weren't going to let me get back on her after our first accidental encounter. Today included a trip to the old roman road, which is a road that goes along the side of the cliff on the Atlantic side of the straight of Gibralter. José informed me that Morocco was only 8 km from where we were standing at the top of the road. We had a couple more beautiful gallops and canters on the way down including the "corkscrew" which was a lot like the "roller coaster" except there were some pretty quick turns thrown in there. At one point, José said something to the extent of, last one to the light house buys drinks tonight... which i thought was rather strange because, not only had I not left the house the entire week (it's literally in the middle of nowhere) but José and I's conversations had never been personal; always about the horses, where we were going, what we were looking at... things like that. Before I knew it we were racing to the light house, which was about a half a mile away. Of course he won... He was riding a thoroughbred cross and I was on a really little Andalusian... i mean, he not only beat me, but he royally kicked my butt... he was a good 25 strides ahead of me when he got the light house. Anyways... so he says i have to buy him drinks, i laugh, think he's probably kidding and we ride for another 3 hours or so. When we got back to the barn... he said, what time will dinner be finished tonight... to which I replied, about 10, why? He said, I'll be by to pick you up at 10:30 if you still want to go... So now, I know the guy's serious, and of course, I hadn't been out in a week and was feeling a little confined anyways, so I agree and I go back home to eat some lunch.

So, he comes to get me at 10:30 and we head down to a bar on the beach. One thing I hadn't thought about at all... He was the ONLY person in the entire bar besides myself that spoke even a TINY bit of English. If I wanted to have a conversation with anyone but him, it was in Spanish. It actually turned into kind of a game... Him and his friends would try to explain something to me in Spanish, which naturally took me about 5 minutes to understand and then we would all laugh when I finally got the whole story. It was actually really fun because I started making jokes in Spanish, which... lame as they were... was really fun to do!! One of the guys thought it was really funny to talk really fast so I had no idea what was going on and I just sat there looking dumbfounded... then at the end he threw a "you're really beautiful would you like to go home with me" thinking that I wouldn't understand and I did and I was like "NO!!" out of no where which of course, everyone found extremely hilarious (I'm such a joker...) After a few more drinks, the bar closes. So, we get in the car and I thought we were driving back home, assuming that everything was closed. It was about 3:30. He asks if I want to go dancing (um... DUH) and so we drive about 20 minutes away to a larger town called Canil de la Frontera.

We walk up to this nice little calm looking club. The door was closed, there wasn't any noise coming out. The only indication it was even a club was the line/bouncer/sign above the door. That is, until you stepped inside. Then, it literally looks like a scene out of dirty dancing Havana nights. Think like any salsa/flamenco/rumba dancing scene you've ever seen with sweaty half dressed dark skinned people dancing like crazy. There were no seats, no stools, nothing even to lean on. It was just a HUGE dance floor with probably 200 sweaty Spaniards gettin' down (yes... i just said gettin' down). So, naturally, we dance, A TON. I dance with some of his friends, with him, with random guys. Everyone. A total free-for-all. Next thing I know, I'm drenched in sweat, quite tipsy and it's 6 in the morning. These people are STILL going. We head home shortly after that and I go to bed sometime close to dawn. All in all, a successful trip. Tomorrow I head to Tarifa where hopefully I can catch a ferry to Morocco. I'm not going to go unless I can find someone to go with me though, so hopefully I'll meet someone in the hostel.

XOXO

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Now playing: Dream - He Loves Me, He Loves You Not
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Wondering if we've spent our living days well

Location: Málaga, Spain

Tomorrow at 11 AM I'll be heading to a small town near here to ride for 8 days. I'm not sure if I am going to have access to the internet, so I just wanted to let you know that there may be no activity until January 13th. Hopefully, I'll talk to you soon, but if not, I'll talk to you in a week!!

XOXO

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Now playing: Dave Matthews Band - Lie in Our Graves
via FoxyTunes