help me, ronda

Apparently there's a song called Help Me, Rhonda and as I'm fresh out of wit that is what this post shall be called. A while ago (apologies for the time delay) I spent the day in a town called Ronda with my friend Erica and her parents. I was supposed to go when Tim Tom and Jood were here but a particularly pleasant bout of food poisoning stopped us. I happily tagged along a week later on another family outing and it was well worth it because Ronda is stunning. Many people list it as one of their favorite locations in Andalucia and it's easy to see why. A quaint, white-washed town, there is a massive gorge in the middle of the center with incredible views of the countryside. Ronda is also very famous for bullfighting, many of the most famous bullfighters in Spain have trained at the Ronda bullring. We wandered around the town, took lots of pictures and took a great tour of the bullring. You even got to wander through the ring from where the bull starts its day to where it ends it...and when I say "it" I mean it's life. The bull doesn't win, I learned that the hard way.

View in Ronda

Ronda

Toro

The Ronda bridge

Ronda

Ronda

Pretty little streets

White-washed houses

Church in Ronda

Ronda

Zig-zag down the mountain

Bridge

Panorama, so high tech

Bullring

Where the bulls come out

Vamos!

istanbul: part 3

More often than not, my favorite part of any trip is the food. I love to try new foods, I eat a lot (maybe I ate 11.5 tacos for dinner as a 10 year old...) and I'll eat anything in the world except scallops. I don't like them, I've tried, sorry. Since food is so unique to each culture I like to taste the traditional foods and understand what they mean to each community.

I didn't know what to expect before we went to Turkey. Since it's a middle-eastern country Islamic country I grouped it with other Mediterranean cuisines and guessed there would be lots of hummus, olives, grape leaves and pita. On the one hand I was right, but Turkey is also known for kebabs, köfte (grilled meatballs), and baklava, which quickly became one of my favorite desserts. The diet is a lot simpler than in Spain, consisting mainly of bread, meat and potatoes with many Greek influences. Or maybe the Turkish influenced the Greeks, I'm not sure, but their food is similar. Turkey is also known for its tea and coffee, which are served strong in short glasses. The tea was lovely, but the coffee has a grainy texture that takes a bit of getting used to. However, Istanbul (unlike Malaga) has Starbucks, so we made a few stops there for a taste of home.

I give you a week of eating in Istanbul...

Turkish desserts

Kadaif: phyllo pastry nests filled with nuts

Baklava, I love you.

Turkish coffee

A cloud of bread

Spicy red pepper dip

Red lentil soup

Turkish pizza, winner.

Street corn

Cappuccino

Lunch in Asia

Meatballs

Irmek, a Turkish dessert and our new friend!

Apple tea

Street cart pretzels

Hummus

gooooooooool!

It's no surprise that the Spaniards love love love their soccer/football/fútbol, whatever you want to call it. Their love for the sport is deep seeded, hereditary, passionate and after winning the World Cup this summer, stronger than ever. I myself am a huge sports fan so I love the intensity and pride that accompanies the sport. In Spain there are a number of leagues and levels to professional football, but the highest is La Liga. The most well known and most successful teams in La Liga are Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, homes to some of the best footballers in the world. There are 20 teams total in La Liga, including Malaga. Unfortunately, Malaga is not having a very good season thus far and is currently ranked 16/20. Despite their lack of success, the fans are not deterred.

My friends and I went to the game against Levante (currently in last place) on Sunday and the entire stadium was packed. Home games are played at Estadio La Rosaleda, about a 25 minute walk from the center of the city. The stadium holds 28,963 people (Wikipedia, whattup), so it's not a huge facility but it was crowded and bleeding blue and white for the game. Proudly sporting Malaga colors and garb we made our way to the stadium excited for a day of futbol. While at home our football games are packed with men and women, my three girlfriends and I stood out like sore thumbs inside the stadium. The only other girls I saw at the game were with their novios (boyfriends) and glared at us when we started shouting and getting into the game. Sorry we're spirited! Happily, Malaga won 1-0 and we got to witness everyone going crazy when they scored. GOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!! There most spirited and loudest section of fans (where we obviously want to sit at our next game) is full of British (of course) ex-pats and retirees who sang Malaga fight songs throughout the entire game. We're going to do some research, figure out how to get tickets for that section and teach ourselves the chants and songs so that next time we can be just as into it as they were. Just our luck, it started to rain 15 minutes into the game, but, superfans that we are, we stuck out all 90 minutes. It has rained about four times in my time here, and of course it rains when we have to be outside. Even though we looked like drowned rats by the end, it was a great afternoon.

We bleed blue and white.

Vamos Malaga!!

cumples and cuervas

This past Friday was my 23^rd birthday, so we decided to celebrate with a little fiesta. I was coerced into going out the night before by two bad influences (I’m looking at you, Gina and Erica), which turned out to be a really fun evening, and then spent the day on Friday recuperating and preparing for the nighttime festivities. And yes, I normally work on Fridays…

We decided to pay homage to my homeland by hosting a college themed party, which mainly consisted of beer pong and other traditional drinking games, as well as lots of random people and a disgusting mess the next morning. Very college, I think. I felt like I was back at Penn, waking up in the morning filled with fear of the destruction awaiting me outside my bedroom door. My friends got me a cake that had the candles “2111” on it, because finding a “3” candle proved to be very difficult. At first I was really confused and thought they didn’t know what year it was but applaud their creativity and ability to dodge another Spanish curveball. It was a pretty great party, it was very international, which is a change from my usual Philadelphia celebrations, and the neighbors didn’t complain! I was concerned that the wannabe Spanish Von Trapp family (they have really terrible family sing-a-longs) that lives across the hall would complain because there were a lot of people at my apartment but thankfully, we were in the clear. Although I missed my family and friends back home, I had a wonderful celebration with new friends. Twenty-three is off to a good start.

Pretty sign from my roommate

Ladies before the party

After a detour to Spanish Oktoberfest on Saturday night where I enjoyed every sip of my non-Spanish mug of beer, three friends and I got up early on Sunday morning to head off to Nerja, a nearby beach town. Now that we’re beginning to settle into Malaga, it’s time to begin exploring the surrounding areas. Nerja is absolutely stunning, it’s one of the prettiest beaches I’ve been to. There are beautiful cliffs, clear water and amazing views of the Mediterranean. Add that to the fact that it’s an hour-and-twenty-minute bus ride from my apartment and once again, my life is a joke. After grabbing some tapas we spent the afternoon on the beach enjoying the sun and basking in the ridiculousless that is our lives, and we even went in the frigid ocean water! I’d swum here before but two of my friends hadn’t, so we made a pact and sprinted into the ocean where we promptly lost all feeling in our bodies and developed goose bumps that lasted nearly an hour. But you have to swim in the Mediterranean if you’re there.

Once we regained feeling in our extremities we headed off to the Cuevas de Nerja (Nerja Caves) to do some light spelunking. There’s not actually any spelunking involved, sadly, but the caves are unbelievable. They date back to the Neolithic Period and are some of the most renowned caves in Europe. They’re also HUGE. At first you descend into a small cave, so I was originally questioning whether or not this was worth the eight euro fifty, but once you turn the corner and see the main attraction, every cent is immediately worth it. The large cave that you get to explore is massive; we walked up and down different sets of stairs in order to see it all. The walls are made up of areas that resemble drip sand castles, church organ pipes, and weird creepy things out of a scary movie or from Lost. I initially associate caves with Lost and the Man in Black, but this cave puts that one to shame. Our cab driver told us that the large tourist area of the cave is actually the smallest section, and there are two even larger caves closed to the public. There are also music and dance festivals down in the cave, something that I would love to see and am researching when they are on.

One of the best parts of visiting Nerja was getting to cross it off my list of Lugares a visitar (Places to visit) in my notebook this morning! Excuse the large number of pictures, the caves are so cool and it’s difficult to do them justice without visual aids.

Malaga at night

Nerja

Nerja panorama! Fancy.

Nerja

Nerja

Iglesia

Nerja

Cave! To put in perspective how big it is, the lights on the far side of the cave are on a staircase, and the little dots are people.

Sandcastles in the Sand

Descent into the cave

Cuerva

Really creepy ceiling

Adios, Nerja