The World According to Alexis

            I’m writing this on my last day in Scotland, a Tuesday if you’re curious, and my friend decided that we absolutely had to go to the Tesco in Greenock, just so she could say that she went to a supermarket that is so quintessentially British. At the beginning of our short excursion we did not have particularly high expectations of Tesco; we thought it would be just like any ordinary American supermarket but with different brands. Once we walked into Tesco though, we realized just how extraordinary it truly was. Tesco, as my friend Emily said, is like Narnia. You walk in curious, but not overly hopeful, only to be completely amazed by what you find inside. Those average, automatic doors hid a wonderland of aisles as far as the eye can see. There were groceries, a deli section, oh, and don’t let me forget the clothes that take up the entire second floor. One of the first things we saw was Tesco’s escalators (not the step kind, the gradual incline t...

              Day three was the very best day, if by best you mean weirdest. We caught a freakishly early bus to Glasgow (8:45) so I could visit Glasgow Cathedral for one of my classes. After Emily and Sidney dragged me away from taking two hundred photos of stained glass¹, we went back to the bus station to purchase Megabus tickets for Edinburgh (The Megabus is supposedly this great deal because it only has one stop and is 10 pounds for a round trip). We couldn’t connect to the internet long enough to purchase tickets and after hearing that yes we could purchase tickets on the Megabus and no we couldn’t purchase tickets on the Megabus, we were irritated and confused and decided to ditch the Megabus idea after an hour. We caught the Citylink bus around 12:15 and bought our tickets round trip, knowing that we would only have four hours in Edinburgh before going back to Glasgow to catch the last McGill bus to Greenock (I don’t know how my brain did not ...

          After being lulled into a false of security on the first day and thinking that we had a handle on public transportation, we decided to go to Edinburgh for the day. We never got to Edinburgh. We missed a train and several buses in Greenock before realizing that Edinburgh was not going to happen. Sidney, Emily, and I had originally planned to wander around Greenock on our last day in Scotland because we usually wander in the area around port on the last day, but since it seemed like the Fates were telling us it was a bad idea, wandering became our plan B. Aimless wandering is something of a skill, I think, because you have to find a way to see everything without going in too many circles. After reaching expert level in this activity and achieving sore feet, we made our way back to the ship.           There’s a board on Deck 5 by the gangway in which anyone can write down recommendations for places to visit, or not visit if it w...

Unlike the men who sang “I’m Gonna Be,” The Proclaimers, I would not like to walk 1000 miles, no matter who is at the end of them. I understand that traveling to new places and going to all the tourist attractions requires a lot of walking and, for the most part, I’m alright with that. This does not change the fact that I only have one pair of feet, and they get tired eventually. Compared to the ports I’ve visited so far on this trip, Scotland has actually involved the least amount of walking. So I don’t know why I got tired so much faster here than in Portugal and Spain. Maybe the walking all added up subconsciously and made me tire more quickly? Or, maybe it was the blister the size of Texas on the bottom of my right foot in between two toes. Either way, my aching feet annoyed me enough that at one point on day three of Scotland, in Edinburgh, I was about ready to cut off my own feet and chuck them down the Royal Mile. I’m sure my mother will be glad later on to hear that I did not ...

      I know you all want to read about my exciting adventures while I'm in port in fabulous places. But it's not all fabulosity on the SAS voyage. We do actually have classes. This is the longest stretch of classes, 4 days between Spain and Scotland. Below are my musings from these 4 days. July 1st, Day 1:        Today was the USA v. Belgium World Cup game in the knockout round. I missed the USA game in Portugal, so I was very excited to watch the game with other SAS students in the Student Union. I love soccer and have played it for most of my life, so there was no way I was going to miss this game, especially since they shut down the intranet/internet in order to broadcast the game. Also, the first 200 people to arrive would get free popcorn—a great incentive. The two friends I went with? Not exactly soccer fans, and the promise of popcorn was the only reason they showed up to the game. We were there early enough for popcorn, but not everyone was...

             Napping was not all we did, but it certainly took up a good chunk of the day. Today I participated in another field program: we went to La Rioja for winery tours and wine tasting. We had to meet at the bus at 8:30am. 8:30! This is too early to expect college students to be energetic. The bus ride to La Rioja was an hour and a half both ways, so it is understandable that after three days in Spain we were all a little tired and bus rides are the perfect time for sleeping. We stopped at Cune/C.V.N.E. first and were led on a tour. As nice as it was to hear about the process of making wine and seeing barrels full of it, the very best part of this tour was seeing the wine cemetery. The cemetery is full of bottles of wine that Cune cannot sell for reasons I could not hear at the back of the group. Wine needs to be kept in a colder, humid temperature, so the entire wine cemetery is covered in mold. It was so fascinating. We got to walk all the w...

            Today I went with a field program to Hondarribia and San Sebastian. We visited Hondarribia first, an older town with some slightly medieval-like buildings. These buildings, and more of the painted balcony buildings, fed into my obsession. Many pictures were taken. At one point we stopped at a balcony at the edge of the town and could see part of France! Unfortunately, as one of the Life Long Learners stated, seeing a country does not mean you have visited a country. As this is true, a trip to France remains on my bucket list.             Next we visited San Sebastian, a hot spot for SAS students. While walking by the beach and through the shops we must have run into four groups of students, at least. Many of them stayed in town for a night or two because they wanted to frequent the beaches of San Sebastian before we get into the colder countries. Apparently seeing monuments, museum...

Today was our first day in Spain and at first glance I was much more excited for docking here than Portugal. While Lisbon was our first port, and I just wanted to get off the ship for the sake of exploring, the area of Spain we are visiting, Basque Country, just has so much greenery that I pretty much fell in love at first glance. I don’t know what it is about a multitude of green trees, hills, and grass is, but Bilbao and the surrounding areas have them, and I just can’t get enough of them.             I had my second field lab today—for Great Monuments—and thankfully instead of going straight to the Guggenheim Museum we went on a hiking tour of Bilbao first. We got to see both the older and newer parts of Bilbao and it was during this tour that I learned I also have an obsession with the buildings of Bilbao. This obsession is not quite as strong as the one I have for the painted buildings of Lisbon, Portugal, but it comes prett...