Sardines

I just ate sardines. And they were actually really good.

Let me start from the beginning. This weekend I went to Ireland on Thursday night and came back to Spain on Saturday night. That was the best decision ever. Don’t get me wrong, Dublin was amazing and I had a lot of fun there. One of my best friends from school even came for Friday night so that was great to see her. The city was cool and reminded me a lot of the U.S. – probably because it is way more Americanized than any city I’ve seen in Spain. But the shopping was great and I even started liking Guinness by the end of it.

That all being said, I am definitely a Spain girl. I will say Spain trumps Ireland any day. I like the people in Spain, even though they are sometimes rude to foreigners; it seems to me that they have much more soul here. This realization may be due to the fact that I came back to Carnaval, a huge celebration in preparation of Lent. As my host mom’s brother put it, “everyone needs to get their craziness out so they can focus in the coming weeks.” He is very religious and very smart. Anyway, Carnaval definitely lived up to the expectations I had, and Toledo doesn’t even celebrate it as much as other cities in Spain.

After a few traveling errors, I was back in time to see all the costumes and bands of Carnaval. My bus got back to Toledo at 10:45pm and I was up in Zocodover, dressed and ready to go by 11:30pm. I really don’t even know how to describe the city and the people. Everyone was wearing costumes, kind of like Halloween, but way more intense. There were a lot of group costumes and a lot of very elaborate and funny costumes. I have never seen anything like it. There was a band playing and people were so happy and were dancing around the whole plaza. The best part of all of it was the atmosphere and how happy everyone was. It was so much fun just to look around at everyone.

Anyway, that was last night and I woke up at 11:45am this morning, which was a miracle for me. I think that is the latest I have slept in since I have been here, but I really needed it to catch up from all the traveling. I met up with my friends for lunch and it was such a beautiful day today. I love Toledo so much, especially on days like today; it’s going to be hard to leave.

Anyway, after lunch we stopped for an ice cream cone in the Plaza and sat and enjoyed the sun. We realized that tonight was the “entierro” or funeral for the end of Carnaval. We decided we should go. So we met back up in Zocodover and some how managed to find it after following the noise of the fireworks. We missed the actual “entierro” which is the dumping of tons of sardines into the river, but we caught the end of the firework show, which was incredible and really fun to see. Afterwords, a band was playing and they were handing out free grilled sardines. I have never had sardines before, but figured, why not try them… We stood in line for a while and finally got our sardines. They were surprisingly better than I thought they would be. The only problem was that there were lots of tiny bones so it was hard to eat them. A great experience nonetheless.

As luck would have it, I got home and what was waiting for me, but a sardine sandwich! This one did not have bones and was even more delicious! It really just tastes like fish. It was yummy.

So, yet again another great weekend, sardines and all. I can’t believe I really only have three weeks left here and four until I am back home. I’m ready to come home and see everyone, but I definitely want to come back to Europe some day.