Mazie

Steps: 43,594. London. Weather: Relatively warm, sunny.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY AND TASAHRA🥳🥳🥳!!!!!

11:45 Wake up (there was a SEVERE lack of sleep going on so this was acceptable) 12:55 Leave Faith’s dorm and walk to the West End Theater so she can see Paddington the musical! (She reported it a 9.7/10 and said I would love it). 1:00 I set off on my own adventure

• Wandered a little market
• Saw some marathon people who had just finished the race (I had no idea it was London Marathon day!)
• Went BACK to Joy Bao Bao for another Bao bun because it just sounded really good
• Selfridges department store for the Jellycat Fish and Chips experience. I didn’t actually buy anything but spent over an hour there fake shopping, watching other people place their orders for fuzzy takeout Jellycat food, and generally growing my admiration for the brand.
• Call mommy for her birthday!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
• Walk Hyde park
• Wander the Notting Hill area
• Realize I need to head back
• Walk back the entire length of Hyde park again- should’ve checked out a bike or something because this took a really long time
• Buckingham Palace! There was still marathon infrastructure all around, but it was cool to see.
• Attempt to take the Underground back to Bankside (took me two tries to enter the station and two tries to get on the right train) 9:10 Back to Faith’s dorm! Mac&cheese for dinner. Met one of Faith’s acquaintances, Yaniv, in the kitchen 10:00 Met up with Yaniv for a nighttime walk to Blackfriars Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral. 11:00 Back. Edamame and sleep tea 12:00 Sleep

Steps: 24,463 BCN —> London Weather: Pleasant, warm enough, sunny

• 12:00AM Final movie in the living room with Natalie 😢. We attempted to watch Players but both got so tired that we fell asleep on the couch and then retired to our rooms.
• 2:00AM Brush and floss my teeth to wake myself up a bit
• 2:30AM Begin packing
• 3:00AM Mini freak out session because my suitcase won’t close and I’m realizing I have way more stuff than I thought I did.
• 4:30AM After a lot of thinking through and rearranging (and taking full advantage of the space in my backpack), I manage to zip my suitcase.
• 5:00AM Goodnight!
• 8:15 Good morning!
• 9:00 Finished getting ready and packing. Natalie comes in and we have a last moment sitting on my bed together.
• 9:15 Cristina comes in and we enjoy each other’s company for one last time.
• 9:30 Final, tearful goodbye with Cristina. She assures me that “no es un adios, es un hasta luego” and that my keys would be right there waiting for me the next time I came to visit. Natalie walks me to my metro stop where we have an even more tragic and tearful goodbye and a lot of commuters stare at us. I really didn’t want her to walk away…🥺
• 10:00 Board the L7 for the last time. I didn’t realize this would be my last time feeling and breathing in the Barcelona air. Switch to the L5 at Provenca. Switch to the L9S at Collserolla. Get off at the Airport T1.
• 11:15 Arrive at the airport. It is SO freaking hot and I am wearing like five sweaters to save room in my suitcase.
• 11:40 Check my bag, through security!
• 11:50 Head to Boldu for one last Praline Bolduman donut.
• 11:55 Passport and immigration control to access gate D. This took a bit longer than I had anticipated…. I ended up being fine on time but for the sake of my own stress I probably should’ve skipped the donut excursion.
• 12:05 At my gate!
• 12:25 Board the plane
• 12:55 Take off! The lady sitting next to me lowkey stole my window seat by spilling water on it and trading, so I had the middle.
• 2:30 Land in London-Gatwick!!! Here officially begins my solo Europe adventure :)
• 3:00 Baggage claim, figure out Thameslink train to the London Bridge station, where Faith and Murat pick me up and drive me to her dorm.
• 4:00 “Move in” to Faith’s room!
• 5:30 We leave for a tour of Central London/LSE/Big Ben
• 6:30 Nerds Gummy Clusters (the American ones are better), Primark to try and find an all black clubbing outfit.
• 8:30 Chicken bao bun for dinner from Joy Bao Bao. Wander back to Bankside (Faith’s dorm). 9:45 Quick change and get ready
• 10:15 Take the Central/District train to the E1 club. Meet Murat there and he gives me a funny cat hat that makes me very popular.
• 11:15 In the club! This club is so different from all the Barcelona clubs, and I like it so much more! LOUD music (earplugs 100% necessary the entire time), DJ beats with heavy bass, dark warehouse vibes with flashing lights. It was actually a pretty good time until I started falling asleep while standing up- literally (I had my eyes closed and let myself go until I started toppling to one side and woke myself up).
• 3:15 Leave. Faith and I call an Uber back, which is so worth avoiding the hour long freezing cold walk.
• 4:00 Back to Faith’s dorm, asleep immediately.

Here is the update the world has been waiting on the edge of its seat for! The Azores Islands!!!!! I am going to stay true to the bullet point trip log form because it’s more fun to write this way and I’m less likely to ramble on about like the wind for five paragraphs :) Also, before I let the bullets flow, let me just say that it is AMAZING here and I love it so much and I so see myself living here and I am so inspired and renewed and joyous every time I look outside and Chris and Pavel and Stephanie YOU ARE THE BEST. Fyi, it is Day 2 right now (oop, now its Day 3) but I am starting this log on Thursday because Thursday was a fun day and I want to write about it and I didn’t sleep that night so my Friday was basically my Thursday too!

Thursday, April 14th

• 9:00 Wake up
• 9:35 Leave the house
• 9:41 Metro –> Get off at Povenca
• 9:51 Walk to Learnlife. Do internship! Second-to-last-day. Had no idea I was supposed to be leading Adri’s Math for Science and Business until I walked in two minutes before class started…
• 5:00 Bye Learnlife! Walk over to Parc de la Ciutadella. Stop to buy chocolates and olive oil for my Azores hosts. Speeeeeedwalk for real
• 5:45 Arrive at Ciutadella 15 minutes late. This was a program activity and it was really fun! We walked around, had a little picnic in the park, rented rowboats and had an aesthetic paddle around the pond, and then Natalie, Ari, and I got Acai and a Golfeado from a place nearby.
• 8:00 Last Cristina dinner for a while! We had gnocchi, spring rolls, bread, salad, and a kiwi. Then Natalie and I had our usual post dinner hallway talk
• 9:30 Look at my homework. (Not me having two final assignments due before midnight and not having started EITHER ONE)
• 10:30 Shower
• 11:00 Chill
• 11:20 Start Photo Project Assignment, which is actually way less work than I was expecting THANK GOODNESS. Also say my goodbyes to Natalie :(

(We switch over to Friday, April 15th)

• 12:25 I was a little late to submit the photo project assignment, but not too bad (Well… maybe a bit bad because it was a group project)!
• 12:30 Packing stage 1: Set everything out on my bed
• 1:00 Brush teeth, pajamas. Then cozy up and work on my Psych Written Final for a bit. I was so tired and all I wanted to do was stay in my bed and go to sleep…
• 2:00 Pajamas back off, packing stage 2: Put things in my backpack. I packed incredibly strategically to be able to fit: 5 days of clothes, girl scout cookies, host gifts, an umbrella, a cinnamon roll, my school stuff, and all my other random stuff
• 2:35 Walk out of the house and completely miss the bus I was going to take.
• 3:07 Wait a reeeaaally long time at the bus stop for the next bus that Google Maps was really not sure was even going to come. But it did!
• 3:35 Changed to the N17 Airport bus. My timing was so perfect
• 4:05 Arrive at the airport. Go through security, find my gate, work on my assignment more, blah blah blah.
• 5:30 Board the plane
• 6:00 Take off! I had the window seat and actually slept pretty well.
• 7:20 Land in Lisbon. Had to wait almost a half hour for the jet bridge.
• 7:30 Find my next gate, eat my cinnamon roll, board the plane
• 8:15 Take off! Had the window seat again and slept even better this time!
• 9:45 Land in the Azores! Specifically, at the Ponta Delgada airport on the São Miguel Island (largest of the 9 island archipelago).
• 10:15 Chris, Pavel, and Faith graciously pick me up at the airport. Faith and I scream and are reunited. It’s a beautiful moment :)
• 10:30 We drive into Ponta Delgada and I get to know my new local heroes a bit better. Chris is from the U.S. and Pavel is from Bulgaria and they met when Chris was in Bulgaria and fell in love and moved to the Azores. They got married and have been living here happily ever after for 2 years with Chris’s sister Stephanie. They renovate old ruins into modern homes for a living on the island. Chris is one of those people that you immediately like: easy going, funny uncle vibes, can make a story out of virtually anything, and Pavel is very sweet and funny as well. As far as how I got so lucky to meet- and stay with- these lovely people, it is thanks to Faith’s mom. Before the Azores, Chris lived in Minnesota for 20 years and met Faith’s mom and dad working at the Stages Theater Company. When Faith’s mom told him that her daughter was studying in London for the year, he said he would be happy to have her visit the islands and bring a friend! And boom, that was me!
• 11:00 Welcome breakfast at a local café in the capital (Ponta Delgada). Chris and Pavel knew everyone in the cafe- of course- and had lots of entertaining stories to tell Faith and I. We all got bacon, eggs, and toast, and it was actually really satisfying.
• 12:30 Chris and Pavel head off and Faith and I, armored with loads of tips and recommendations from them, headed off to explore the capital.
• 1:00 Walk along the harbor. Examine a giant cruise ship and a really beautiful golden church.
• 2:00 Walk up this really old tower that feels like its going to crumble underneath our feet and enjoy the view from the top.
• 2:30 Buy apples and water from a local grocery store. Figure out what to do next, then ATM stop.
• 3:00 Military museum! We kept stumbling across new exhibits and passageways just after we thought we’d explored it all. Personally the underground tunnels were the coolest part, but there were also some pretty nice views from the roof.
• 4:30 Walk over to the Botanical Gardens and we are blown away! We thought we were entering a nice city park. But no. We were stepping into an enchanted jungle world of moss covered bridges and flowers and caves, plopped right in the middle of the city. We frolicked and took a lot of pictures :)
• 6:00 Garden closes. We could’ve stayed longer. Illegally hop the fence to leave, then walk over to another botanical gardens a few blocks away. Just our luck- they were also closing
• 6:15 Walk to a mall for dinner.
• 6:30 Decide on this fast food Italian pasta place for dinner- we ate in the mall food court!
• 7:00 Run to the grocery store downstairs to buy provisions (breakfast) for the week. I bought: 2 apples, yogurt, and these english muffin bread things that looked really good.
• 7:30 Meet Chris back at the food court and drive back to his house in Fenais de Ajuda (Fin-aysh de A-joo-duh). It’s a solid 40-50 minute drive into the interior of the island. Their house is gorgeous, with the backside and giant balcony overlooking the ocean. And they renovated it themselves!
• 8:30 Settle in, give everyone their gifts, chat with Faith, do some homework, etc.
• 11:30 I am continually falling asleep as Faith and I are laying in bed and talking.

Well, from 9AM Thursday morning to 11:30PM Friday night, that was my epic mega day. I slept better than I maybe ever have on a plane and ended up on a tiny little patch of land in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. I am so excited for my time on the island and forever indebted to Faith and her mom and especially Chris and Pavel themselves for making it happen! And being our drivers, tour guides, and day trip planners. Without them I might not have even know these islands, where I now want to move one day, existed. Special shout out to all of these special individuals for making me feel so at home here.

Today I embarked on an epic mission that I was not expecting to be so epic: Finishing the Salomon Run Barcelona 10k! When I signed up for this race on spring break in Croatia, I was craving a deeper involvement with the Barcelona community. I felt like I had been in the walking around and exploring random neighborhoods phase for too long and needed to do something real in the city. I needed my name written down somewhere.

The race definitely quenched that desire and I am very happy I did it! I even made a new friend at the starting line who is from Argentina and moved to Barcelona 10 months ago. As she was telling me about the mountain summit races she’s done in Argentina I joked that the stairs just beyond the start line would be no problem for her. I never considered my lack of Argentinian mountain training (or any training at all, actually) and how important that might actually be for the Montjuic MOUNTAIN course.

Picture the starting line with me for a second: You are standing at the base of Montjuic mountain staring up eight? Nine? flights of stairs. The gun sounds and you’re off, flying up the stairs like a champion and getting annoyed with the people already walking because they are blocking the entire stairs and forcing you to slow down. You make it up all eight or nine flights, shake out your legs, and are able to run again. Considering how high you’ve climbed, you’re feeling pretty good. You’re patting yourself on the back for choosing the stairs over the escalator in the metro.

And that’s when you see the long stretch of downhill in front of you, pretty steep. It appears a little suspicious, a little too early to be coasting down to a flat course and then the finish line, but you have hope. Well I should’ve expected the worst, because this hill dumps me out at the base of a fresh eight or nine flights of stairs, basically climbing back up everything I just climbed (jogged? bouncily walked?) like two minutes ago. So I do that and I think: All right, good joke, but we must be done with this now.

Of course not! The top of this new hill turns out to be the bottom of another hill, and so on and so forth for the next 9 kilometers. I couldn’t count the number of times we ran up a hill just to turn the corner and run down the equivalent number of stairs. Kilometer 6 was especially bad as the entire thing was one long, terrible incline. One of those that was just incline-ey enough to be taxing, and it just would’t stop. Usually during a race the competitive environment and cheering makes me feel like I am running faster than I usually would be, but this time I couldn’t have even tricked myself into thinking that. I was a helpless little snail wriggling my way up that hill. Honestly, as long as I was still moving, I was moving fast enough.

The last kilometer provided some relief… until the last stretch: You could hear the finish line up ahead, just after you mounted, descended, and re-climbed a final few flights of stairs. The best part, as usual, was cheering on the last few stragglers after I finished. They even had a Vertical Solomon challenge after the races finished where 32 participants raced up the initial flights of stairs over and over again until they narrowed it down to one winner. All in all it was a fun time and made me feel a small pocket of community in the middle of such a big city.

A few more…

A little study of waves and a staircase.

Smallest street in the world!

Jamie visits Klis Fortress.

• Picture 11: Quaint street just outside of the city center at dusk.
• Picture 12: Treats, including an eclair mommy went crazy over, at the Cookie Lab bakery.
• Picture 13: Taken from the Substructures of Diocletian’s Palace.
• Picture 14: Cuz why not?
• Picture 15: We not-so-sneakily-sneaked onto this ruins rooftop and there were really pretty flowers.
• Picture 16: Yeah, classy, I know
• Picture 17: Possibly my favorite phot of the entire trip in some strange way. I noticed these ladies taking a gelato selfie and the scene was just calling my camera.

Don’t worry, there are many more to come :) I have hundreds I could post… What I am going to include in this blog post (partly for my own sanity as I should really be going to bed right now) are some of my favorite photos from Split, our first destination. We arrived early Sunday morning and stayed for two nights, exploring mountains, farms, bakeries, gelato, shops, parks, and quaint streets. Split is really unique as it is constructed within ancient ruins (truly mind-bogglingly ancient), meaning people have been working and sleeping and chatting in these same buildings and on these same streets for well over a thousand years.

A little bit about the pictures…

• Pictures 1 and 2: Cheese burek from Bobis. We swear there had to be at least 762 Bobis locations in Split, but honestly they’re justified because it was insanely delicious.
• Picture 3: A really cool section of Diocletian’s Palace. For perspective, this is something you come across casually when walking down the street.
• Picture 4: Me posing by the harbor :)
• Picture 5: More ruins, aka the city.
• Picture 6: Isn’t this the most adorable kitty I’m in love
• Picture 7: Another cat. There were lots of them everywhere in Croatia!
• Picture 8: No explanation needed. Same goes for this website hehe
• Picture 9: Cool mural! You would never have been able to get this picture in the summer because there would be five hundred people posing and messing up your picture.
• Picture 10: The farthest reaches of Marjan Hill. This photo was snapped after we climbed a path that could’ve entered a “steepest path” competition and won, if such a thing existed.