2013 – Page 2 – SAMHOPEHANSEN

Southern Roots

“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.” – Kathryn Stockett, The Help Somehow, we survived quite a three-(or maybe four?)-day weekend here in BCN. As I am no longer accustomed to going to sleep at any sort of reasonable hour, I just finished watching The Help on my laptop. DespiteContinue reading “Southern Roots”

Today marks our two-month anniversary of moving abroad! I couldn’t have asked for a better travel partner, roommate, and friend. “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Montserrat, Roller Blades, & Festivales

Our second week of living in Gracía (a neighborhood in Barcelona) started off with a beach day at Bogatel with Cass and Ben. After several hours of quality sun, we metro’ed home and I made chicken salad for the first time ever; anyone who knows me well knows that my cooking repertoire is quite limitedContinue reading “Montserrat, Roller Blades, & Festivales”

Our First Week in Gracía

Now that the blog is all up to date on our backpacking adventures, I’ll attempt to recount the highlights of our first week being back in Barcelona at the beginning of August. Upon our return from Lisbon, Cass and I headed straight for our new home! We took the metro up from Plaza Cataluña toContinue reading “Our First Week in Gracía”

Part 8 (The End): Lisbon

Monday 7/29 – Though hungry and tired, hours later we arrived safely in Lisbon! From the airport, we took the metro to our hostel area, and proceeded to walk through what can only be described as the Warsaw ghetto of Lisbon – we finally found Johnie’s Place on the top of a mountain. Since weContinue reading “Part 8 (The End): Lisbon”

Part 7: Madrid

Thursday 7/25 – We safely arrived at Madrid’s Barajas International Airport. We took the familiar metro from Barajas towards Nuevos Ministerios, switched to Line 10 towards Tribunal, and then were supposed to switch to Line 1 towards Atocha but were surprised to find out that Line 1 was partially closed due to construction. At thisContinue reading “Part 7: Madrid”

Part 6: Rome

Monday 7/22 – Monday morning we left Florence and trained southward to our final destination on the Italian peninsula, Rome. Our train pulled up to Termini Station in the early afternoon and from there we walked to Hotel Independienza. Definitely a 1-2 star max “hotel” (I don’t understand why they can brand themselves as hotelsContinue reading “Part 6: Rome”

Part 5: Florence + Cinque Terre

Friday 7/ 19 – Where did we leave off? Well, we safely made our train from Venice to Florence! This particular train was operated by Trenitalia, and was the nicest train we had been on thus far. Upon arriving in Florence, we only had a short walk to our hostel; I tried to make aContinue reading “Part 5: Florence + Cinque Terre”

Part 4: Venice

7/18 – We managed to pull ourselves together in time to catch our train over to Venice. Upon our arrival to the Santa Lucia Station, we initially attempted to direct ourselves towards the new hostel using the directions we’d grabbed from their website. The only issue here was that the directions were from the mainlandContinue reading “Part 4: Venice”