Sangria, Beaches, and Sculpture
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2008
1
35
36
Trip End
Aug 01, 2008
Paris,
Île-de-France,
France
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Pub Crawl on 7/27 was a blast. Andrew, Pradeep, and I met some cool people, including three people from Wisconsin (Joe, Chris, and Courtney) who were over in Spain studying Spanish. Sadly I didn't grab their contact info, but we had a blast dancing and I have to thank Chris for introducing me to one of the best shots ever. Not sure what was in it, but i had gummy berry candy at the bottom! We also met Lisa and Brad from South Africa, who both kicked ass and spent the next night hanging out with us as well. The crawl traveled between 3 different bars, and using the 1st bar as the 4th location. There were some lame contests and I think I remember Andrew trying to limbo at one point. The Wisconsin folks also succeeded in getting people to line dance to some techno song. Weird, but very entertaining! Andrew even had everyone singing me "Happy Birthday" at Midnight.
I am not sure what time we went to bed, but I do know that due to all the dancing, I definitely woke up with a sore left knee the next day. I can say, however, that it was completely worth it! Oh, I should also mention that on the way to meet the pub crawl we did participate in the typical San Sebastian tradition of eating pintxos. These are like small, single bite tapas, that you move around from bar to bar eating. So good and something that should definitely come to the US!! One of the ways you pick a good pintxos place is to look at how messy the floor is, since people toss the napkins and toothpicks on the floor. The messier the floor, the more popular the place, and therefore you know its good. Strange, but its true. I love the pintxos!!
Ok, moving on....
Birthday - 7/28/08
Unfortunately for us (Andrew, Pradeep, and me), it was cloudy and rained for some of the day. (not sure what it is and me being in San Sebastian on the one day of the month it rains!) Andrew, shockingly, decided that we needed to walk around the city and drink and eat pintxos, since it was too gross out to go to the beach or the sculpture garden. The day that followed may have been one where I laughed the most in my entire life! We spent a lot of time hanging out at the bar by our hostel and became friends with one of the bartenders, Borja, who was really cool! He and his co-worker Mikel even came out with us after they closed the bar at 1am. Borja was awesome and definitely helped to make the night. His English was also impressive, although I think we taught him some things! (For better or worse.) Lisa and Brad met up with us at Borja's bar by our hostel around 9pm and after hitting another bar and getting pizza for dinner, we settled at "our bar" until Borja got off work and would come out for drinks. We also brought along a sharpie and I wore my pub crawl shirt from Rome for people to write on. I can say that a lot of the writing did not stay on my shirt! I also remember at some point doing push-ups with Borja in the back of a bar and also having an entire beer spilled on my shorts that I then had to wear for the next twelve hours. (These are now sealed in my bag and may need to be burned! So gross!).
Everyone stumbled home sometime between 3:30-5am, with Borja making sure everyone got where they were going and Andrew and I grabbed our stuff from the hostel and headed to the train station. We then had to train to Hendaye (or something like that) and then wait another 2 hours for the TGV to Paris. Tired, somewhere between drunk and hungover, and both uncomfortable, we eventually made it to Paris around 3pm, and headed to the hostel where after much needed showers and a change of clothes we headed out to see Paris, which I will get to in another blog posting.
For now, at the risk of boring everyone, I am making a list of the evening's running jokes. At some point when I get home and have free internet (this hostel is expensive) I will elaborate:
- Pradeep can't find his hostel again, and spends and hour wandering around instead of a 5 minute walk home.
- Beer? (Rawr!)
- Bear? (Rawr!)
- thorizthos? thautheges?
- Andrew and his tattoos! (I tried to get him to get a piercing, but it didn't work)
- "Yeah, Boyfriends are a pain in the ass." - Andrew (He is clearly still bi-suited)
- Did you say beach? - I said sculpture.
- Did you say sculpture? - I said beach.
- Beach? Beach? Beach? Beach?
- Sculptures fix everything.
- Salt water will fix that...its a family recipe.
- Dirka, dirka, dirka
- Andrew's deformed comb on his bathing suit. (Yeah, it sounds wrong, but I kept pulling on it.)
- "Wait, you're not really cousins?!" - Pradeep to Andrew and I (we've been telling people we are cousins so its less confusing and clear that we are not a couple...it also explains how we fight like siblings!)
- "I am going to France to drink their cheese and eat their wine!" - Lisa
- Upon Borja pulling out some sort of cutter (like what is used for the end of a cigar) to defend himself against Andrew's massive size, Brad yells out "We can make him a Jew!"
- Borja tells us "You should see my eggs!"
- Borja asks Andrew how he picks his nose with suck big hands.
- "I will write a computer program to kick your ass!" - Pradeep to Andrew
- "Its like a submarine. I can't stop imagining it! I can't until after I shower!" - Brad
- Muffins? Do you want to eat my muffin? You like eating muffins, don't you?!
Things that got written on people (other than my shirt):
Andrew:
- Lisa's contact info (email, phone, name) all over his entire arm
- Brad's number with "XOXOXOXO" added
- some sort of cartoon dog on his knee
- the South African flag
- a height chart with names and height lines from me, Lisa, Brad, Pradeep, and Borja.
Me:
- XIV on my left wrist (Borja had XIII on his left wrist)
- Strength on my right wrist
- Hinjew (its what Pradeep and I would have if we had kids)
- Borja's cell (minus the country code which he didn't know.)
Pradeep:
- "Hinjew" on his wrist
- "Suck it up Princess" on the back of his neck
- " July 28, 2008 - San Sebastian" on his arm
Lisa ended up with contact info for Andrew all over her arms and Borja has my website on one side of his stomach, "pushover" on the other and "Hi Mum" on his bicep.
