Maybe more of a "saga" than a "blog post"

3/10-18/13

Hello, internet world!  So, as most of you are probably aware of, I was lucky enough to spend the week before last in Madrid and Paris with Duane.  It was an amazing, intense, crazy and exhausting week.  And it was SUCH a gift.  One of the most memorable weeks of my life.  But it has, as I knew it would, taken me quite a while to sit down and even start to try to blog about it.  Pictures are coming.  Lots of pictures.

The week did not start out like we thought it would, when I got a text message from Duane at about 3:30 in the morning the day he was supposed to arrive saying that he was stuck in Miami.  His flight had been cancelled due to the latest Iberia strike.  Iberia is (was?) a Spanish airline that recently merged with British Airways and must have some kind of deal with American Airlines (Duane's tickets were actually with American, but a couple of the flights were "operated by Iberia").  Anyway, they're always on strike because I don't think they were doing so hot as a company, and now they've been getting the short end of the stick(s) since the merger.  So they're on strike.  Like, all the time.  Their tickets are cheap, but now I know it's because you've got about a 50% chance that any Iberia flight you have will actually take off.  (Read: DON'T BUY TICKETS WITH IBERIA.  If you can help it at all.)

So after some tears (what can I say, my hopes and excitement had come to a head and then took a sudden jump off a cliff) and a quick 5am trip to the bus station to change my ticket, we seemed to be back in business.  He was able to get his ticket changed and was due to arrive 8 or 8:30am on Sunday instead.  And that part worked out just fine.  I was actually able to get to the airport before him this way, so I was waiting after he got off the plane and got his luggage.  To anyone who has not experienced this, it is really, REALLY exciting to be in a foreign country where you are used to not seeing familiar faces (or to seeing faces that have only recently become familiar), and to suddenly see one of your favorite faces in the world appear in front of you.  It's like magic.  (Confession: airplane travel in general still seems like magic to me... Let's call that "childish wonder" instead of "being slightly simple-minded", shall we?)

A friend had recommended a hostel to me that turned out to be in great location; right between the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol.  Hah!  Oh, we ended up spending so much more time than we meant to here (this is me, using foreshadowing-- poorly).  We didn't try to tackle too much that first day; even though it was only about 10am by the time we got to the room, Duane was exhausted, and I was pretty tired myself.  Those 7 hour bus rides to Madrid just aren't comfortable, even when you don't end up next to someone who takes up all of their seat and half of yours.  So we ventured out to the Mercado de San Miguel, which is right al lado de la plaza mayor (next to it) and got breakfast; some tortilla española and café con leche.  I love that market, and it was kind of nice to be there when it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder traffic like on Saturdays.  We walked around in the plaza a bit, of course, and then we took our first siesta jeje.

 These people can be funny... but if you take a picture with them, they are going to ask you for money.

After napping for a couple hours, we trekked off towards the Paseo del Prado to visit the Reina Sofía art museum.  This is a contemporary art museum, which isn't exactly my cup of tea, and I'm not so sure it's Duane's either.  But, it is free on Sundays, and also houses Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" (as well as a bunch of his other work), so those are reasons enough to go for a quick visit on a Sunday afternoon.  On our way over, we stopped at a Starbucks (because they have those in Madrid! :D) because Duane needed coffee.  I've never been so excited for a frappuccino in my life. (I can't help it... I miss things like that.  Starbucks, Moe's and Chipotle, sushi in general, Chickfila... ugh, the list goes on... And don't even get me started on Publix.  The funny thing is, I hardly ever go to these places when I'm home.  Well, except for Publix, obviously, and maybe Starbucks.  But it's just the fact that they're not even available to me now that makes me want them.  So bad.)

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

Cool graffiti sighting #1 in the courtyard in front of the museum.

And that was pretty much it for the first day.  We went out for tapas that night (like ya do), and I took Duane to a place I'd been wanting to go to since November when I visited with Roxy.  We chatted with the bartender; turned out he'd lived in the States for a while, and was originally from Germany.  It was fun.  Sure is cool to actually go out with the person you're dating ;)

 :-) ^^ taken by said bartender.  He also gave us free shots; Duane tried some Galician aguardiente, but I don't think it was a big hit. hehe.

Walking back through the plaza that night.

The next day was (supposed) to be our last full day in Madrid.  We were up early eating chocolate & churros for breakfast, and then were on our way to the royal palace:

One of the few days in Madrid where the sun broke through!

 And yes, I brought my little gnome, Cornelius. hehe.  That's nothing compared to what Duane brought to take pictures with... you'll see that later.

Walking through the palace was impressive, as always (whoa... I can say that about a European country's royal palace... that's weird), and it was cool to watch Duane seeing it for the first time.  While looking at our tourist map of the center, he noticed that there was a temple on the map not far from the palace and wanted to go there.  I was fine with the idea cause it's a pretty cool Egyptian temple, and I hadn't been back to see it since the EF Tour I went on when I was 17.  We checked out the gardens around the palace and then headed over there, which was Duane's first experience with all the walking we were about to do on this trip hehe.  Dunno that he was entirely prepared for that.  I tend to feel like I never exercise in Lugo because it's been raining so much since December/January, but I must still manage to do a fair bit of walking.  That's good to know I guess... though, I should probably still cut back on my bread and wine intake... Ah, but I digress!

 :D

^^ I love this one.

Apparently, you can actually go inside this temple... just not on Mondays, as luck would have it :-/

We did a lot of walking around after that.  Strolling, going into some shops... And finally we found a place to eat lunch, where we both tried paella in Spain for the first time :-)  Here's some stuff we saw:

Hey man, whatcha lookin' at?

More impressive graffiti.

Pretty flores.

The Puerta del Sol, without any sol :(

That evening we went to the Prado, which I sadly don't have any pictures of.  We went at about 6pm and it was getting dark... but it was also free!  Of course we had to go.  Although we didn't have time to see it all.  We did our best.  We may have actually walked through it all.  But it's a lot of paintings.  And after that we went out for tapas again and called it a night.  In the morning we woke up and explored more of the Calle Mayor, stopping to have breakfast that included champagne:

So delicious and classy!  This was supposed to be in celebration of our going to Paris that day... but with the hindsight I have now, I'll say it was just in celebration of our being together ;)

While walking through the Puerta del Sol, Duane got to see not 1, but 2! Spanish protests.  Oh, Spain.

 And of course we had to check out the oso and madroño (strawberry treee).

I'm not entirely sure about the story of this statue... something about bears used to live in this area, and then the strawberry tree because of some old controversy with the city council where the citizens ended up owning trees/fruit trees... o algo así.  I'm sure it's more intricate than that.

And then that was gonna be it for Madrid till the next Saturday.  We were off to Paris.  We got to the airport early, went through security, got Duane's bag checked, and were waiting/dozing.  We even stood up and got in the line to board the plane.  And then the flight got cancelled.  The most frustrating thing about this occurrence/obstacle was that the Ryanair workers at the gate wouldn't/couldn't tell us why.  They thought it was due to weather in Paris.  We were instructed to go get our luggage and go back to the Ryanair office to be told what to do.  So, we did.  And they had all of one poor little person working at that desk, waiting to deal with a mile long line of customers (this is where you had to come for parts of your check-in too).  We waited in the line for about an hour, frustrated and with Duane completely shocked that he'd had two cancelled flights now.  We never did make it to the front of that line; between texts I was receiving from my mother (who was looking at the Ryanair website as well as the arrivals for the Paris airport) and my interrogations of a couple people who had already been to the counter, I discovered that basically we were waiting in line to change our flight, and the next possible one left at 6am the next day (Wednesday).  But, with all the people in the line before us, we were probably not going to make it on that flight.  So I got on the Ryanair website with my phone (thank you, international data!) and switched our tickets in about 2 minutes.  We called the hostel we'd been at, and the guy who worked there took pity on us and let us come back for half price for the night.  We still weren't in the highest of spirits when we got back on the metro with all our luggage, but things were manageable, and we stopped at McDonald's on our way back to give ourselves an extra boost.

It was a little sad knowing that we were already supposed to be in Paris at this point (and I think Duane was already starting to wonder if he was cursed when it came to airplanes), but we decided to make the most of the time we had left in Madrid.  And at least we were together; this was a lot better than having a flight cancelled and still being on opposite sides of an ocean.  We knew we were going to have to leave for the airport at like 2:30 or 3 in the morning, so we decided to spend the afternoon napping and then go to a flamenco show that night.  I love watching flamenco, I wish it wasn't just something you can find in the Southern and touristy parts of Spain, and it's always nice to kick back with some tapas and wine.  And Duane loved it too!  I was glad he enjoyed it.  There's just usually such incredible energy between and coming from the performers.  It's very cool to watch.

I love those last two photos.  Instagram can be really neat ^_^

I don't want to get too blow-by-blow with all our flight failures, or they will take over this post.  Basically, we had a great time at dinner and the show, and got back to our hostel happy & ready to leave.  Turned out our flight for Wednesday got cancelled too.  All Ryanair flights to Paris till Friday (the day of our return flight to Madrid) had been cancelled.  There was scrambling, frustration, a great many phone calls made at 2am, and finally we seemed to decide that the only way to still get to Paris was to take a bus that left from Madrid at 8pm Wednesday (it was about 3am on Wednesday at this point).  The bus ride would be about 16-17 hours, and we would arrive in Paris at 1pm on Thursday.  Meaning we would get to stay for slightly over 24 hours.  But it was better than nothing, right?  I fell asleep in defeat not long after this decision.  Duane, however, had not given up, and was searching the internet for cheap tickets with other airlines while I slept.  He woke me up at 4am letting me know we had to be gone by 5 because we had a flight to catch at 8:30am.  He saved the day.

The only problem we encountered that morning was that the metro, apparently, is not a 24 hour service.  It doesn't run from 1:30am to 6am.  Fortunately, we met these nice police officers who told us how to get to the airport.

We had to walk to the Plaza de Cibeles to catch the bus/shuttle, which was actually OK.  We probably wouldn't have seen this landmark otherwise.

Air Europa!  Thank you for actually taking us to Paris!  Unlike Ryanair.

We got to the Orly airport in Paris at about 10:30am.  Success!  It was a little (ok, a lot) more intimidating/embarrassing being in Paris and not speaking French than I/we thought it would be.  This became painfully apparent in the airport.  Fortunately, after this, we didn't really have to interact with that many more French people hehe.  Ooh, and I have to tell you: so the city was still snow covered the day we got there, and while we were landing, get this, there were bunny rabbits frolicking all around the runways in the snow.  Too stinking cute.  We took a bus into the city, and having found out where our hostel was from a lady at the airport, took the metro from Montparnasse to Belleville.  Man, was it COLD there!  I mentioned that it was snow covered, right?  Also ice and slush covered.  And, periodically, we'd hear a crash/fwump as ice and snow cascaded off the buildings on either side of the street.  Exciting! hehe.

 Montparnasse.

 Snow covered park on the way to the hostel.

 Some more cool graffiti that we (Duane) found on our way back from lunch.

By the time we got to the hostel, dumped all our stuff, and took a quick nap (keep in mind Duane was struggling through jet lag this whole week), it was about 3pm when we set out to get food.  We were in a very ethnic area of Paris, apparently.  Lots of Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine.  But we were in France (finally)!  And we wanted French food.  We finally found a larger and more touristy cafe that was still serving food (3pm is a great lunchtime in Spain!  But in Paris, we found that everything was open about 12-3pm for lunch, closed, and then opened again at 5 or 6 for dinner).  We actually spoke to each other and the waiter in Spanish that whole time because it felt more comfortable than English (especially after meeting some not-so-nice people at the airport), which is funny, because we never speak to each other in Spanish.  The rest of that evening was spent trying to aprovechar by heading over to Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter, and visiting the Louvre.

 The view from where we got out of the metro, near the Hotel de Ville.

 Hehe.  One of many snow balls ;)

It was already so scenic!

Eep!! "Duane!  Duane, that building coming up, is that what I think it is??!"

"Ahhhh, it is!!!" (my reaction to seeing Notre Dame approaching.  Minus some jumping and squealing. hehe)

Charlemagne. (and his pigeons)

 Next time I'm getting on one of those boats.  I don't care how touristy it is.

 Kind of fell in love with this building.  I even bought a miniature of it (although the absinthe helped make that happen... story to come later).

:-) <3

We went over the bridge to the other bank (honestly can't tell you which one is the Left Bank and which is the Right... I don't know how you're supposed to be oriented for the right ones to be "Left" and "Right") and had a peak at a bit of the Latin Quarter, and also found what is probably a gorgeous garden in the summer, and which was still very pretty in the winter:

Then we crossed back over the the other bank and began walking to the Louvre (with a lot of stops for pictures and snow balls along the way hehe):

 And I took pictures every single time we walked by the cathedral.

...because it never got any less pretty.

How romantic is this?? Answer: Too romantic.

And then we got to the Louvre!  And boy, is it massive.  Even though it was open till 9:45pm this night, we couldn't have hoped to see it all without allotting at least one full day.  Sadly, we didn't have that kind of time, but it was still very exciting just to go inside.  And we made sure we saw the Mona Lisa, because how can you not.  I'd say the museum itself was actually a lot prettier than a lot of the artwork... and least in my opinion.

Pyramid pictures!  A must.

A sculpture I really liked next to a humorous no flash photography sign.

Impressive ceiling #1

 Impressive ceiling #2

With the Mona Lisa!  I was super excited about it, and I have to disagree with anyone who says it's anticlimactic in person.

 My beau <3  Duane almost fell asleep the one time we sat down in this museum, pobre. hehe.

I thought this was kinda neat, the way you can see the view outside as well as some of the paintings.

I think we were able to stay at the Louvre for about 2 hours before it became apparent Duane was about to drop where he was standing, and we were both starving.  Of course, this place was so big that we ended up spending another 15-20 minutes seeing art just in the course of trying to find the Sortie (exit).  We walked back up to the Latin Quarter for dinner, and on the way saw some pretty nighttime stuff:

We also saw a group of teenagers pelting the people on the tourist boat with snow balls under one of the bridges haha.  And I knowwww I've posted a lot of pictures of Notre Dame already, but check it out at night!

 Oh, yeah!  This year is its 850th anniversary, too.  Good year to go to Paris :)

With this night we decided we would eat out while we were in Paris.  Maybe it wasn't as economical as buying food at little grocery stores, but ohmygoodnessss was it more delicious.

The first of many crepes I ate in Paris.

And after this, it was all we could do to get back to the hostel and collapse (although we did see some twinkle lights on the buildings on the way back to our metro stop; that was another exciting thing hehe).

Thursday: Our only full day in Paris.  Thursday morning we were up early (again) because we had to check out of the hostel; we wouldn't be able to check in to the hotel till 2 or 2:30, so we had breakfast (well, we had croissants) and left our luggage at the hostel for now.  We had decided to go inside Notre Dame that morning before going back to getting our luggage and heading to the hotel in Montmartre (the hotel that we were supposed to have been staying in since Tuesday night... sigh)

And I'm so glad we did!  We didn't get to go up into the bell towers or down into the crypts because they opened later in the day, but still.  The inside of that cathedral was definitely worth seeing.

 Impressive doors.

 So many eyes.

I am in lovvvve with this picture ^^

Rose windows <3

And some other gorgeous stained glass windows.  The sun was coming up behind the cathedral while we were there, so they looked great in the light.

Then it was time to go to Montmartre!  I was really excited about this.  Lots of friends had told me that it was one of the prettiest parts of Paris-- and now I know they were right!  Plus it was nice to get to a place where we didn't have to pay to rent towels :p  The hotel ended up being in between Montmartre and Barbès; Barbès is apparently the area most populated by African immigrants.  I've got to say it was pretty strange walking by six shops that only sold weaves after spending so much time in Galicia, the Land of White People. haha.  We were basically right at the base of the hill that most of (all of? not positive) Montmartre is perched upon, so after we dropped off our luggage we started trekking up said hill.  Sooo many steps.  This was one of our first views, coming up a side street:

And then this!

First view of the Sacre Coeur basilica ^_^

We wandered around till we found a place that was open for lunch (apparently, Paris never gets snow so late in the winter, so everyone lost their heads when it happened and a bunch of places closed, even though it really wasn't that bad... or so our waitress told us), and we found a pretty charming place indeed.

I think it was called "La Maison Rose"... which means The Pink House. hehe.

Sunny window sill.

Where we indulged in more fantastic French food... and hot Irish coffees :D

French onion soup

Fancy Irish coffee

And crepes for dessert, obviously.

We went to check out the basilica after this, and found some cute little market squares/areas along the way.  Also a bunch of shops, some of which we ducked into, and another little church that we went inside.

It was nice to have sunshine this day :-)

Sacre Coeur.  For some reason, we couldn't take pictures inside.  This was my favorite one I snapped while outside.

And this is what you can see while standing in front of the basilica.

By this time, we could go check in to our room at the hotel; so, we did that followed by a short break before our date with the Eiffel Tour at 4:30.  The journey to the tower was a whole other adventure, with us barely leaving in time, and then getting stuck (stuck! in a tunnel!) on the metro for about 10 minutes, then getting off a stop earlier than planned so that we could run (yes, literally run) to the tower.  See, I'd bought us tickets online to go all the way to the top because everyone told me the lines were killer (like, spend-half-a-day-just-waiting killer), and the website had been very adamant about arriving on time or they wouldn't let you up.  Anyway, it turned out to not matter; the top of the tower was closed due to ice.  I'm still glad we had tickets though, because the line was unbelievable.

Because of all the running, we didn't really have time to savor the tower as we approached it, so we did that on the way back (when we walked through the Trocadéro gardens).  But it was still absolutely breathtaking.  I mean, that thing is huge.  And it seems dumb to say that, of course it is, but it is really just enormous.  And standing under it, looking up, remembering how old it is... it's a pretty cool and humbling feeling.

Walking underneath...

View from the second floor, looking back the way we came.  Modern downtown Paris in the background.

Our first glimpse of the Arc de Triomphe! Can you spot it?

My travel buddy :-)
(it was windy up there)

Heh. Ant village.

Looking up from the first floor.

Perspective/clouds.

I realize now this picture makes it look crooked... it wasn't.

Hehe... so this is what Duane took pictures with (as opposed to my gnome).  Some of them came out pretty hilariously.  Right after I took this one, a line of tourists wanting pictures with him started forming. hehe.

Nice view of the beginnings of a sunset from the Esplanade du Trocadéro.

Another favorite :-)

What happened after this... oooh! Oh, yeah!  We went to a bookshop :-D  A really cool bookshop, called Shakespeare and Company.  It was over near the Latin Quarter, so we headed over there before finding a place to have dinner that night.  It was one of my favorite stops :-) (a lot of things in Paris were my favorite, can you tell? hehe)

...por que no.

After hanging out here and strolling through the quarter some more, we found a place to eat dinner.  And tonight was the night Duane had decided we needed to try snails, darn it, because we were in France.  We also drank something like a whole bottle of wine to celebrate our last night there.  Dinner that night was a lot of fun; the food and wine were delicious, the waiter was hilarious, and we were sitting next to a nice German couple who also didn't speak French. hehe. 

Picture taken by said nice couple.

Snails!  They were OK, I guess.

Our waiter, demonstrating something about a bow & arrow...

 Cheers :-)

Creme brulee!  SO GOOD.

We were in such a good mood when the meal ended, we decided we should go out out (to a/some bar(s)) while we were still in Paris.  This led to us making friends with a bar tender called Geoffroy (Jeffrey), meeting another group of Americans who we hung out with and who gave us some cool ideas for things to do on our last day, trying absinthe for the first time (it tastes like fizzy black licorice!  I thought it was delicious, although I think I could tell it was powerful... we only had a bit.  And sadly, I can't show you pictures, which would be cool because it really was bright green, because Duane has them and he still hasn't put his pictures on facebook so I can steal them... [pointed look at Duane]), and of course the horse mask made an appearance (which led to us meeting a bride and groom to-be who were out having a joint bachelor/bachelorette party and learning how to congratulate them in French [félicitations, and of course you don't pronounce the "s" because it's French]).

 Jeffrey!

 A couple of our new/temporary American amigos.  There's a version of this picture with the horse mask, too.  Naturally.

Happy times :-)

Friday, our last day there, had 3 highlights/main excursions.  The first thing we did, after waking up early, yet again, and checking out, was to go see the Arc de Triomphe.  Because the line to go up in it was so long, we spent some time just walking around the Champs-Élysées area, which was really pretty and lined with lots of expensive and impressive shops.  We eventually found a little cafe to have a petit déjeuner there, too.

Impressive.  And whaddaya know, there's the tower again :p

Claro que we needed a picture in front of this famous thing, too.

Walking around...

Cool cafe that was all windows.

Then we took the advice of our friends from the night before and headed to the "love lock bridge" (Pont des Arts) near the Louvre.  Basically, this is a place people (mostly couples) put a lock with their names on it, and then throw the key into the river.  The only way your love will end is if someone finds the keys and unlocks your lock, hence why the keys go in the river.  I'd heard about this before our trip, but we hadn't bought a lock, so we weren't going to worry about it.  But the Americans we met told us you could buy a lock on the bridge so we went for it, and picked the prettiest spot we could find that was still available (this bridge is covered!).

Saw a bit of the Tuileries gardens on the way.

Our little lock :-)  I made a note of where it is.  Maybe someday we'll go back and find it hehe.

The view from where we put it on the bridge; that's the tip of the Ile de la Cité.

:D

So that was cool.  We still had/wanted to do some souvenir shopping, so from the Louvre we walked to the Boulevard Hausmann.  This actually proved to be a much greater distance than we'd anticipated, but it was cool to see more of the city on the way.  And I got one last crepe ;-)

Mmm... bananas and nutella.  It was gigantic and only cost 3 euros <3 love.

The inside of the galleries we went to. SO FANCY.  And I've never seen such expensive merchandise... it was both thrilling and sickening to look at.

These galleries turned out to be right across the street from the Palais Garnier (opera house), so we got to see that too!  I'd been wanting to see this building ever since I saw the Phantom of the Opera movie... haha.

The galleries also had a McDonalds in them, where we stopped.  Which means Duane has been to McDonalds in 2 foreign countries, which he was pretty satisfied by haha.  And then it was time to go back to the hotel and start metro-ing our way towards the bus that would take us to the airport.  We were told it would be about 1 hour drive to get there (this was the budget airport...), but it ended up being more like 2 with traffic.  So it's a good thing we got to the bus early.  And, man, that was the tiniest airport either of us had ever been inside.  Really dinky... I think they were like 6 gates, tops.  'course this is kind of a nice change after how gigantic Barajas is... and we got on our plane just fine, made one of the last metro trains back in Madrid, and we were at home sweet hostel by about 1:45am.

Last horse mask picture in Paris.  Also, I think, one of the funniest. hehe.

Whew.  That's the bulk of the trip, right there.  If you are still reading, congratulations!  I hope it's been entertaining.  I'm almost done, I promise.  We didn't do much that Saturday; Duane was supposed to be leaving Sunday at 1:50pm, so mostly used that day to relax and catch up on some sleep.  We also ate more paella, drank some cheap beer with said paella, and wandered around the center some more.  That night we went out for a couple pints of Guiness to celebrate St. Patty's day early.  Then everything fell apart on Sunday (again).  Basically, from where we were staying, it took us about an hour to get to the airport by metro (the most economical option).  Taxis really rip you off for that trip, and even the shuttle we'd taken at 5:30am to make our flight to Paris was a lot more expensive than the metro, and not necessarily less time consuming.  We were going to get there 3 hours early, to be on the safe side, but despite this precaution, we didn't make it in time for his flight.  Because, a little before we were supposed to leave the hostel, it got moved up 2 hours.  We rushed.  We ran.  We panted.  We swore.  We made it to the airport a little over an hour before the flight left to find a check in line that stretched out of sight.  After much running around and desperate pleading on my part, we thought we'd found someone to help us get him on the plane.  But we missed the boarding.  Yadda yadda yadda... blood sweat and a few tears...  finally Duane was able to get Iberia to switch his ticket to a flight going to New York the next day, and then to Tampa.  But there was sooo much running around and waiting before this happened.  This was when I finally lost all my patience with Iberia. 

Wearily, we excepted the information lady's recommendation for a hostel in Barajas (closer to the airport); it was a little expensive, but they had a shuttle to and from the airport included in that price, so we could get back the next day and not have to mess with the metro.  And that hostel turned out to be very nice; maybe the nicest place we'd stayed so far.  We showered, napped, and then decided to go back into the city that afternoon.  Since the hostel was so far from everything except the airport, their shuttle service also drove you to the nearest (not that near) metro station, and if you called them, they picked you up at any hour from there, too.

So, we caught the metro and took it back to Sol, and spent some time trying to stay out of the rain in the shops there.  We also got some Ben & Jerry's ice cream, which, I realized, was the first time I'd had ice cream since last summer.  Which is crazy, because I love ice cream... though it's probably OK that there's less of it in my life now, though. heh.  Once it got to be like 6-7pm, we found an Irish pub to have St. Patty's Day Round 2 in.  And we had a really great night together; since we were done rushing around, it felt even more just like we were on a date, which was nice.  Plus we got a lot of silly free "Irish" hats with the Magner's & Guiness we ordered. haha.  What more could you ask for?

 Exhibit A.

And, praise the Lord, everything went fine with the airport & flight the next day!  We got some coffee together in the morning, I said goodbye to Duane, and then waited a few hours for my bus back to Lugo.  And, because this post didn't have enough pictures already, here's one from my bus ride back:

The mountains are always so pretty to look at!

It felt nice to get back to little old Lugo after such a whirlwind week.  I was worried Duane visiting would make me intensely homesick after he left... and while I think that might have happened a little bit, mostly I'm just so incredibly glad that he came to see me, and that we got to go on this trip together.  It was just amazing.  It's hard to capture in a blog post, as I'm sure is obvious, and I apologize for how long this one is.  And it's really only the highlights! hah. Yeah, it was an intense week.  But a really great one for aprovechar-ing my time in Europe ("aprovechar" is basically my word here; it more or less means "take advantage of" in Spanish), and Duane was about the best person I could have spent it with.


Whew. Fin.