ALSO!

Chirigotas! I forgot to add these!

It seems like I just might never make it home.

Man the weather has been crazy! (And I also haven't posted for a while, oops)
More flooding basically everywhere except Cádiz, which is a a giant rock in he middle of the ocean, so if we flooded, EVERYONE floods. For some reason it has gotten really cold. My computer is telling me that it is 43 degrees out. 43 DEGREES IN SOUTHERN SPAIN! Evidently it has been snowing rather heavily in Barcelona, which I can only hope does not spread to Cádiz.
Moving on, we are leaving for Lisbon on thursday morning, which should be a lot of fun because I have heard that it is a really gorgeous city. And luckily enough, the weather forcast is calling for sun! YES!

So, some random things that I just remembered that I could share....

The Burning on the Momo God
(Quema de Dios Momo)

So on the wednesday of Carnaval, they had a big stage set up in the Plaza with musical performers and this big effigy of "Dios Momo", which Wikipedia so kindly told me is the Greek god of Satire. o one of the main points of Carnaval is to do all the stuff that you can't do all year, to get it out of your system, and then go back to being a good catholic. This is why it's followed by Semana Santa. Anyways, the burning of this "Dios"is to signify the beginning of the end of Carnaval, which means the end of all the fun. So they have a whole procession of events during this night which leads up to the burning of this statue. We were lucky enough to be pretty close so I got some decent pictures of it!






And I bet you don't see this very often. Yes, that's right Ham flavored chips. YUM

What I did today....

WELL, I doesn't happen very often, but I EXERCISED! Amazing. I mananged to motivate myself to run to the new part of town to meet people at the beach. Granted, it wasn't a marathon, but it's better than nothing. And the best part was going swimming after I got there and was all sweaty and hot. Glorious. Although, I will say, I still like freshwater better. BUT, the weather has been showing some sign of improvement, as in, we had sun for the majority of the day today! Amazing! I'm just hoping that it will continue, because that would be a mean joke of the weather if it continued to rain for the next three weeks. :( I'll be hoping....

A broader explanation of our trip to Sweden.

Stockholm is a very gorgeous city. Really. All of the architecture is very, I guess, classical European when you imagine it.

All of the buildings have these beautiful endcaps with big round spires and big doors. Really beautiful. And, one things that is very pretty is the fact that there are so many bridges in the city.



I never realized this, but Stockholm is built on I think 17 or 18 different islands, all connected by bridges. It has a very unique feel to it, as each island is a different neighborhood with a completely different feel to it. The big spire in this picture is the big cathedral in the middle of Stockholm, which we didn't get to go into, but it does make for a really pretty skyline.










We got to visit the outside of the royal palace, which was pretty impressive, as well as see the big governmental building, which I'm forgetting the name of at the moment. The snow I think is what makes everything look so special, almost timeless. Although I'm sure everything is gorgeous in the spring, because surprisingly, there are a lot of trees within the city center. Unlike Spain. :(





When we visited the Vasa Museet, a museum built entirely around a 15th(?) century warship of the Swedish Crown Fleet that they raised from the seabed in the harbor, we walked past this lovely building which is the Nordic Museum, and rightly so with this kind of architecture! It was huge, this picture only shows about a 3rd of it.











All of these museums were located on an island called Djurgården, which I think means animal park, or something like that. It used to be, back in the days of Royal rule, the Kings hunting grounds. It was however, covered with a foot of snow, so that made exploring it a little difficult. However, it was still very pretty, and it has this huge gate in the entrance with golden stags on each side. Pretty cool.



Miracle of all miracles, we found good pizza! I didn't think that we would have to go to Sweden to find it, but man, they have some tasty, and interesting, pizza. One of the things that we had never seen, but is actually really good, is egg. They just crack an egg right in the middle of the pizza and bake it. Super tasty.







What a trip!

We arrived!

And are still alive. So I left out a few steps that popped up at the last minute. We had to take a taxi, and we had to take metro in Barcelona, WHICH we almost got horribly lost on, but just got off at the right stop randomly. Stockholm is gorgeous and snowy! I'm glad that I packed the North Face, because it would be preeeety darn hard to walk around everywhere. Well, this is just a quick update, to say that I'm alive and everything. More news AND pictures to come once I get home!

Heading out for Sweden!

We leave tomorrow! And the weather, HOLYCOW! It poured all night, and all that is on the news today is flooding! And snow in Madrid, but that's not that interesting. Our adventure starts tomorrow at...

• 5:40am when we leave on a train for Sevilla
• take a taxi to the airport
  
• fly from Sevilla to Barcelona
  
• take a bus to Girona
  
• fly to Svatska
  
• take a shuttle to Stockholm
  
• meet Shane's friend
  
• take the Tonnelbonna
  
• and THEN we're there.

And remember, we have to do this all over again on the way back. :) Que pena.... I'm just glad that the rest of the trips are either already planned, NOT by me, or are just little short ones. So, I'll be off the grid until about Monday night or tuesday, so until then! Ciao!

Carnaval lights!

Mostly just photos.... :)