Sofia Somewhere

After my Asturias weekend I mostly planned on staying home and saving up for Morocco, but then my cousin Maya messaged me that she would be in Madrid, so I decided to head for one night to meet up with her. Maya had just finished her shows in Sweden, and was currently performing at the Teatro Real in Madrid (then off to San Sebastian and Pamplona). I took the afternoon bus and arrived in Madrid at around 7pm. Maya was still performing, so I walkd along Gran Vía and did some window shopping, then met Maya near the theatre at around 8:30. We started the night off with some drinks in a café near Plaza Sol and caught up. We nearly lost track of time (we had plans to watch a flamenco show), but we transferred to a restaurant, and had some dinner before heading to the tablao . A tablao , which is derived from  tablado (in the South, speakers tend to drop consonants between vowels), literally means "floorboard," and is the term used for a place where flamenco shows are perfo...

To continue our Asturias weekend, we spent Sunday exploring Oviedo. The capital of Asturias, Oviedo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its many Pre-Romanesque architectural buildings (mostly churches). The city truly is beautiful, and despite the rain, made for a lovely stroll. We walked through Campo de San Francisco , a huge beautiful park, which though green, had bare trees. I can imagine how pretty it must look in the spring. With our umbrellas! As I mentioned before, we were all part of the same student organization during our university days. The organization was called University of the Philippines Círculo Hispánico, or UPCH for short. So we attempted a picture making the letters. :) UPCH We continued through the park, and at this point we began to start noticing the many sculptures of Oviedo. We saw this one below, and several more in the park. After exiting the park, I remembered that there was a Woody Allen statue, and a quick search said...

The last weekend of February rolled around and it was time for my next adventure: a trip to Asturias with some university friends. I took the 3pm bus from Valladolid and arrived in Oviedo around the same time as Lia and Nice who were coming from Huelva (via Madrid). I met them at the train station at around 7pm, and we made our way towards the Airbnb. Our Airbnb was about a 25 minute walk from the bus station, which is normally not so bad, but it was raining steadily and our feet were getting wetter and wetter by the minute, so we really just couldn't wait to get there. Since there would be five of us, we sprang for and Airbnb so we could have a cozy and relaxing weekend. We stayed in this Airbnb ; including the service and cleaning fee, it was a total of €188 for 3 nights, which, divided amongst the five of us, came out to €12,50/night. Not a bad deal. The apartment was cozy and welcoming, and we really got to settle in, and relax. We had the whole place to ourselves (two bedroo...