OK OK OK here is a PARTIALLY edited version of Amsterdam:

Ok, Amsterdam...CRAZY.

Claire and I got in Thursday night after an hour and a half plane delay. We ended up paying 40 euros for our taxi bc we didnt know about the train system etc and were pretty pissed. Then we got to our hotel which ended up being in an AWESOME location. It was pretty small and crappy, but for the weekend we were there, it was awesome. We just went to a bar the first night and went to sleep early.

Then, Friday afternoon, Annie got in and we went to lunch then wandered around for a little while. Then we went to the Heineken Experience museum which was a really cheesy touristy thing to do but it was fun! There were all these funny virtual reality "rides" and bars where we got free beer and then at the end we got a cool Hieneken free gift.  Later that night, we went to some bars where we ended up having a really good time. There was this guy that came up to me and kept telling me how he thought I was the most beautiful girl blah blah blah and offered to take me to this bar for some free drinks. As Im about to shake my head "no", Annie, is like "Sure! We´d love to go!" So we went. He took us to this bar called Bar Cuba where he bought us all drinks. He was rediculously hitting on me and trying to hold my hand etc...such a cheeseball...AND he was like mid 40s...sick. When he found out we were all three from texas, he kept being like, "wow, you are all three just so pretty, I just couldnt choose" We were all like, "Its alright buddy. You DONT have a choice" So annie goes into the packed bar to go to the bathroom and comes back about fifteen minutes later claiming to be really tired and not feeling well, and although we hadnt discussed it before, we were hoping she was just acting, so we played along. When we finally said bye to Del, who kept telling me he spend 1.2 million dollars on his apartment there in Amsterdam (cool Del, like I care) I whispered to Annie "We are going to another bar, right"? Her answer..."Obviously!" It was a great ploy on her part, to get away from creepo. The rest of the night was really fun after that.

Then Saturday. Queen´s Day. This day is basically like St. Patricks Day in Dublin but everyone wears orange and does more drugs, or more legal drugs at least. It was SOO FUN. We met up with Claire´s friend, Tyler in the morning who is studying in London for the semester. He brought two friends with him, Annti (pronounced Auntie) from Finland, and David (pronounced Day-vid haha) from London. We walked around with them for a while and then decided to start drinking. So from about 1:30 on, we decided to drink all day. We just wandered around and rode some carnival rides which was really fun. Then we got showered and ready to go out for the night. We started at this Mexican food place and moved on to this Rasta themed bar. There we requested so many songs and had sucha  great time. It has become somewhat of a tradition that Claire goes and requests Montell Jordan "this is how we do it" at EVERY bar we go to. We get so pumped when they have it. After many hours of drinking and me stealing a ceramic penis used as a saltshaker (its going to look so great in our new apt!) we decided to go see what Amsterdam is all about. By this, I mean, we went to The Red Light District. Yes.

Prostitution is a really big carreer in Amsterdam and we saw so many hookers in their little rented windows with red lights and little space for "doing their job". We actually saw a few guys going into the little rooms and shutting the curtains behind them. SICK! But Hey! when in Amsterdam, no?

Then that night we ended up sneaking everyone into our hotel room that barely had room for 2 and there were SIX of us. It was rediculous. The guy working the hotel totally knew what was up but whatev...you do what you gotta do. 

Then Sunday we went to the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum. The Anne Frank house was a really cool/sad thing to see...just a small apartment where her family hid out for two years. There was her real diaries there and loose leaf papers with her handwriting. I mean, she was just a little girl when all this was happening but she gave the world such an insight to what it was like during the holocaust. It was definitely worth going to. Then the Van Gogh museum was first of all, SO FREAKING CROWDED. It was very cool seeing so much of his work, but it was so PACKED full of people because of Queens day. After the museums we were all pretty tired and just got some food and went to the hotel to hang out. Annie, Tyler, Annti, and David left that night so Claire and I had another night in Amsterdam where we decided to just relax in the room and watch MTV! oh how I miss it!

Monday we finally left the beautiful city of Amsterdam. Ironically, the flag of Amsterdam is white with a big thick red stripe through the middle. In this red stripe there are three large X´s representing 6 swords crossing. Yeah right they are swords...nothing spells out the lifestyle of Amsterdam more than XXX.

OK...SO much has gone on this past week...and its all been SO fun!!!

Lets start with last Wednesday. I went to lunch with my friend Pilar and I found this AMAZING new mexican burrito place that was so cheap and SO good...its always great discovering really cheap restaurants. Then I wandered around this area called the Born Quarter all afternoon. This area is my favorite in all of Barcelona because there is SO much to it. Its full of little cozy, eclectic cafes, vintage stores, and tons of really cool boutiques. I love just wandering this area and finding new places to shop and really original gifts for my friends and family. I really had a great afternoon of shopping AND every single person that I chatted with in the stores complimented me on my spanish! YESS! I AM learning something here!!

Then I went to dinner with Karla (Elenas college roomate and teammate at Olemiss) at this great restaurant called Tragaluz. It had a great atmosphere and really good food...mmm! It was so nice catching up with Karla and talking about all of our good times at Olemiss! After dinner Karla and I met up with her sisters and some other friends staying wtih them in their hotel (The Hotel Arts in Barcelona...maybe the most INCREDIBLE hotel I have EVER ever EVER seen) and decided to go out. We went to this strip of bars down by the beach and had a BLAST!! We danced all night and laughed a ton! Then Karla and I got to call Alyssa for her 27th birthday!  A favorite quote from the night was when, after getting offered "2 for 1" drinks from the bouncer, Karla goes "What?? Seven for ZERO! awesome!" Love her! We had such a fun night!

Then Thursday... Karla invited me to go with her and the group they were with on this Tapas Tour through the city. It was so fun and really great tapas. We went to four different restaurants and got to sample some amazing tapas and drink lots of good spanish wines. After the tour we met up with some more of my friends and went to a club called Catwalk. We danced a TON and Karla let me sleep over at her hotel! A REAL bed was SUCH a treat!

Friday I had lunch with Karla in the hotel then met up with Pilar and some of her friends at this restaurant/bar called the Champanería. Ok, this place is AWESOME. You have to order two items from the menu and you get an entire bottle of Cava (which is basically Spanish champagne). The food is really good and it all costs about FIVE euros. Its so cheap and awesome...but drinking bottles of cava during the day can be pretty rough! For dinner that night we went to this awesome restaurant called Blue Mandolay for my friend Laura´s birthday. Its a really cool Thai-ish restaurant but on the weekends they have a trapeze show! It was really awesome sitting there eating your thai noodles while watching this RIPPED lady doing a trapeze show and then she did an act with the long piece of cloth where you wrap yourself up in it and hang (OBVIOUSLY I dont know what its called haha) It was a really fun dinner with a great atmosphere! Funny story...Laura is kind of dating this Spanish guy named Miguel who is AWESOME. He speaks english really well but sometimes the translations dont really match up...So we are eating dinner when Annie starts smoking a cigarette...she offers everyone one and Miguel looks like he really wants one but is like "no its ok...I dont need one right now" but you can tell he really wants one. So a minute later, Annie kind of blows some smoke in his direction and he wafts the smoke towards him and goes "yess this is good...just...blow me." the table was kind of quiet for a while before, me, being REALLY mature, started CRACKING up...Miguel was like "what? what??" and we all just started dying laughing. Then, realizing what he said, he got really embarrassed. It was so funny and the rest of the night when anyone was making fun of him, he would say "Oh just BLOW ME" haha LOVE that guy!

 After dinner Claire and I went and met up with Nathan, Zeeshan, Hope, and Anaís at this irish pub where some cover singer was singing things like Oasis and Sweet home alabama...I felt like I was in Auburn again or something. THEN...this was so cool. Nathan claimed that there was this "Secret Bar" that he had been to that is basically like a 20s style Speakeasy. Bars here close at 3am but this bar supposedly OPENS at 3. So we are all pretty pumped to go to this bar but Nathan cant find it. We basically wandered the streets for 45 minutes and he FINALLY found it. We walk down this tiny PITCH BLACK sidestreet and cant see ANYTHING. We could just make out the silhouette of the bouncer to know where to go. When we walked up the bouncer kept shushing us and led us through this door. Once the outside door was closed the next door opened and it turned out to be this bar PACKED full of people with music going and it was AWESOME. We played pool and hung out with spaniards all night. We left around 5:30 am after having SUCH a great time. Nathan really pulled through on finding it!

Saturday I went to the beach all day with Claire and her friends from home that were visiting, Nick and Dan, and their friend Jackie. We had the BEST time...we just layed around talking and drinking wine on the beach all day. Nick and Dan were SO fun to hang out with. Later that night we all met up at Jackie´s apartment then went to this really fun bar called Princesa 23 where so many more of our friends were (Margaret, Laura, Miguel, Lauren, Pilar, Nicole, Jonathan, Annie, and Brittany)! I had a BLAST with everyone. It was Laura´s 21st birthday so everyone was partying. Most of the people had left by 2am so Annie, Laura, Miguel, and I went to the secret bar again and were absolutely rediculous. We tried to play pool and basically made fools of ourselves, we were so so sooooo bad.  Then, in my taxi ride home I FELL ASLEEP in the cab and woke up to the driver outside my door. haha I was just SOOOO tired from this crazy weekend. I mean, it WAS my last weekend in Barcelona! You have to live it up!

 Then Sunday was this Catalan holiday called Dia De Santa Jordí, which is basically a holiday about books and roses...kind of random I know. But the tradition is that the boy buys the girl a rose and in return she buys him a book. It is a really big holiday here so we walked around all day because there were TONS of rose vendors and TONS of book stands all over the city. We went to this huge outdoor festival that had booths full of honey, jewelry, claywork, food, wine, EVERYTHING. It was very cool seeing all the people of Barcelona out in the streets celebrating. There was also live music everywhere. After walking around with Claire, Margaret, and Lauren, we went and got food to go at La Rosa Negra and went over to Margaret´s to watch a movie. There was supposed to be a Barça game last night but it was cancelled due to rain so we didnt get to watch it. It was supposed to be in Sevilla but the field was LITERALLY a lake...it was rediculous! It will be rescheduled though. I have really started growing a love for the Barça football team. I know most of the players names and have a serious love in my heart for Ronaldinho. Watching the games are so fun because EVERYONE gets sooooooo into them which makes you get rowdy as well. I even have started calling it "football" now...not soccer. Im so euro.

So that was my weekend. It was such a blast hanging out with everyone. I know that these next two weeks are going to be the best ones here and I also KNOW that it is going to be EXTREMELY difficult to leave this city. But the thought of me touching down on US soil makes me REEEEEALY excited as well, so however bitter-sweet it is going to be, I just cant wait to see everyone at home!!! yay!

Have a grrrrrrrreat Monday! I get to go do laundry! woo hoo!