If in doubt...eat churros

Madrid After about a month of being tour guides for friends and family, (see our previous post if you want to see what we got up to) we decided that we needed a weekend to ourselves to relax and catch up with some friends. What better place to do this than the fashion capital of Spain, which also happens to be a short 50 minute plane ride from Granada? Or so we thought... It's well known that we don't have the best luck with planes, but this was taken to a whole new level. We won't bore you with the details, but we ended up with a nice 7 hour delay - a great start to our relaxing weekend away. When we finally arrived at the Airbnb and met our friends it was around midnight (and by the time we'd caught up it was almost 3am!) and we were exhausted, so settled down for the night, or morning.  In the morning, we decided to sample our favourite Spanish breakfast dish -churros and hot chocolate. After looking at the queue for the "best churros in Madrid"...

Food glorious food Where to go to satisfy all your needs Although we're in Spain and you probably all think we eat paella 24/7, we don't. We're human and can't survive off a tomato based diet for 4 months, so here's a guide for people who are driven by their stomachs... In the centre Sibarius - Although appearing very upmarket upon first glance, this Japanese restaurant is surprisingly affordable, and incredibly delicious. They have a selection of salads, meats, fish and a sushi menu after 8pm which is well worth the wait. You can tell all their ingredients are fresh and well prepared, and they're accommodating to English speakers and fussy eaters alike. We recommend the goats cheese and mango starter, it's amazing! Alhambra café - One word. Churros. For the ultimate churros experience, we wholeheartedly recommend this cafe. The hot chocolate is to die for! It's located in the central Plaza Bib-Rambla, just round the corner from the cathed...

THE FIVE "W"s The Alhambra and Generalife Who? Everyone. Whether you're interested in history or not, it's still worth a visit for the amazing views over the city and of the Sierra mountains.   What? The Alhambra, meaning “the red one” in arabic, is a palace-fortress with a complicated history that Jeremy Kyle wouldn’t even be able to handle. It has been home to Nasrids, Sultans and the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. Generalife, a simple but spectacular structure, was the summer house that the last Nasrid family used to reside in during the hottest months of the year and has some of the nicest gardens ever. Despite being close to the Alhambra, it was considered to be outside of the city, so visitors would take a horse and carriage over. Lazy buggars.   Where? It's quite a steep uphill walk to the Alhambra from the centre and takes around 15 minutes. However, if the weather...

Ooops is an understatement... When we first arrived in Granada we were super eager to book flights home for Christmas. Oh how it back fired. During the induction week, our faculty director informed everyone that we would be fine booking flights home for one of the last days in term because teachers never schedule exams then. LOL. Wrong. Anyways, as we're super eager beavers we booked super cheap flights home for Christmas on the last day of term and to come back to Granada on the 7th January. We eventually found out that we didn't have exams until the 23rd January so we decided to change our flight back to the 14th January instead. Luckily we only paid around 30 euros for return flights and there was no price differences to change the return leg, only a small admin fee. Fab, no problem with that. However... Just last week we changed teacher for one of our modules, and in the first lecture she proceeded to tell us (with a smug look upon her face) that our exam was the...

Tech and its technicalities  About a month after we moved to Spain, my new laptop packed in. I bought the laptop a week before we came here because I didn't trust my old one not to cause me problems whilst I was abroad. How wrong was I.  The screen became super fuzzy, with black lines flashing up everywhere. At first I thought I would be able to cope to till Christmas to get it sorted but after a few more days it became completely un-useable. Luckily I have 3 years warranty on the laptop so I wasn't too worried about getting it fixed, it was more the timeline...  The laptop would only be in the UK 3 days before my parents came out to visit so I stressed to the laptop company how important is was that it was repaired by then. The engineer visit was scheduled the day before my parents were due to fly out. Come 3.30pm the engineer rang to say he would be a few hours late. The hours passed by then I received another phone call saying the parts shop was shut so they woul...

Top Tips One of the things I was looking forward to most about my Year Abroad was all the travelling I'd be doing: I even wrote a (slightly optimistic) list of everywhere I wanted to visit. Having not been to much of mainland Spain (or Italy) before, this is definitely the perfect opportunity to visit new cities, take in the culture and be a tourist, all whilst practising my language skills, of course... However, everyone knows that travel can be tricky and very expensive if you're not careful, so I have compiled a few hints and tips from what I have learnt so far. 1) Be a tourist in your own city. It's great to want to travel all around the country, or even  continent, that you're staying in, but it's so important to experience the beautiful city you're living in too! You obviously chose it for a reason: be it the food, history, or even nightlife, so explore it. This is even more important if your friends and family are coming to visit you because you wan...

If you're reading this instead of studying the differences between 'por' and 'para' or swotting up on your subjunctive triggers, this is the post for you.  Whether you're getting ready to go and live in a country for a semester or a year, it's very easy to want to have perfect grammar to impress the locals. Let's face it though, in reality no one talks like they're writing an essay on global warming. There are far more important things that will help you get by and communicate in a foreign country. Read on preparation tips... We'll start with the activity you're going to spend about 80% of your time doing: eating and drinking. When in a restaurant in England, it's common to be really polite and use "please" and "thank you" like it's going out of fashion. This isn't the case at all in Spain, as we quickly learned. Of course, no one is rude to the waiters, but you won't hear a "Please may I have......

Swan Lake Last Sunday we went to a performance of Swan Lake, "El Lago de los Cisnes" by the Russian Classical Ballet school. I've been desperate to see a live performance for years, so this was a dream come true. I'm now trying to persuade my mum to go see The Nutcracker - it won't take much. One thing I don't quite understand though is Spanish etiquette in theatres. My first encounter of this was in London this summer when I went to see Mamma Mia! There was a Spanish family sat next to me (I was earwigging) and they were munching on popcorn all way through the production. How not okay. It was really frustrating and to be frank, I thought they were really rude for doing that. However, after going to see Swan Lake I realised that having popcorn is  the equivalent to us guys at home having an ice-cream in the interval. So we thought "when in Rome" and decided to have some ourselves. It was gross, it was just plain popcorn; we even didn't get...

Our Adventures... Gibraltar - 29/09/18 Here we go again on another organised trip, and this time it was actually super organised.  Once in La Línea, a small Spanish town on the border, we prepared ourselves for security. Out come the passports and the serious faces. And what for? Nothing would be the answer. A door in the border control building was simply left open and in when went. Safe, right? We then got to walk across Gibraltar Airport runway as it is built horizontally across the peninsula. SO cool.   T he Rock was amazing and we did so many steps climbing up it. Our legs are really beginning to hate us. When we got close to the top we had to pay in order to go through the nature reserves and to get into any tourist attractions, such as the monuments and museums.  Before, we set off for the trip we had done plenty of research about the famous monkeys of Gibraltar and we were both a little anxious of being near so many, but we knew shouldn't miss ...