Basically I´m in love. My apartment is amazing. (And will be even more amazing once we have internet and I don't have to hunt for cafeterias with Wifi.)
This is the view from my room:
And the view from our terraza out onto the street I live on:
And Tudela... I was worried it wouldn´t have any shopping or bars or beautiful city streets and plazas. It may only have 35,000 people but Tudela feels so much bigger, like someone picked up a chunk of a bigger city and plopped it down here in the middle of the Ribera de Navarra. It´s small and quaint, there´s no Corte Ingles, and cars actually stop for you to cross the road (I thought that only happened in New Hampshire?). But I love it. There´s a Mango and a Stradivarius and a Bershka (which equals goodbye paycheck). I visited a church from the 12th century, and was given a free tour of it by an adorable old man missing about 75% of his teeth (Tudela has basically zero tourists so this poor guy spends his day waiting for anyone to walk by so he can tell them everything he knows about Tudela´s history). Tudela has one of the most beautiful cascos antiguos (historic neighborhoods) that I have ever seen. Every corner holds a hidden treasure. There´s ruins of an old castle at the top of a hill on the edge of the town, an old roman bridge over the Ebro River, a beautiful cathedral, parks, plazas, and a maze of old cobblestone streets.And there were three-year-olds running around the bar at 11 pm on a school night. Only in Spain. (Those 3-year-olds might be my students...).
Our first night I got
drinks with my roommate from Montreal, my roommate from Pamplona, a
woman from Tudela, and a man from France. We were all bilingual,
between French, Spanish and English, but no one but Shabri spoke all three so the conversation switched betweeen the three with one of us
always a little confused. At this rate I'll speak French as well as Spanish by the end of the year.
We ate lunch the first few days in
the cafeteria at the university here in Tudela. 5.50 euros gets you two
platos (either a huge plate of paella, fish,
spaguetti, etc.), a dessert, and a drink (water, soda, beer at no extra
cost). Dinners have included endless plates of chorizo and bread one night at a bar along one of the old cobblestone streets and pasta at an Italian restaurant last night.
I have a phone now (although
we're still waiting on WiFi. I'm dying!), I've done my first grocery
shopping, and cooked my first meal, made friends with a woman
from Tudela who offered to drive us to a store down the road so we
could buy all kinds of things for our apartment (hampers, trashcans,
hangers, etc.), I've done my first load of laundry, and hung it out
to dry on the clothesline in our terraza.
Slowly I'm starting to settle in.
I
can't believe I actually live here!
More pictures of this beautiful town to come next time I find Wifi.
Bershka was my weakness too... -rls
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