So in December, thanks to the holidays, shifts and vacation days I could not take before, I didn't work at all.
Since December 1st until January 7th I had vacations. So that was very nice.
I spent most of it in Barcelona with a close friend that was visiting, and it was pretty awesome. However, I did a couple of trips worth mentioning.
First, during the first week, we all went to Andorra. Not sure if I mentioned before, but Andorra is this little country on the Pirinees, quite isolated, where people go to ski in winter mostly. Other seasons it has amazing trails and mountains, but in winter it's like a huge ski resort. So we went to spend some time there.
The place was nice and we had fun, but the previous time I had visited was in summer and it was soo much better, because of the lack of people. Andorra is pretty tiny and in the middle of huge mountains, so the cities, the streets, the roads, etc, are rather small. The main road has one lane in plenty of sections. The towns are narrow and steep. So, the moment it's a bit overcrowded, massive lines are formed everywhere and it's really hard to move, to park, to do anything really...
The place we were staying in was really good, and what we visited was nice, but as a driver the feeling I got was that for most of the trip I was stuck in the car or having to keep controlling the gears and waiting for cars to move, in steep narrow roads. It was a bit stressful.
We did manage to ski, and this time I tried skis. The snowboard last time was a bit frustrating, I didn't manage to control it at all, so this time I tried the skis, with no class or anything just to see how it was. After the experience I can say that it's harder to brake, which means it's more dangerous, but at the same time it was easier to grasp some basics and I managed to go down with them as I wanted, so that was really good. I have to say though that the boots were horrible and hurt a lot, but oh well. Actually after this trip I went back to another mountain and finally managed to control better the snowboard, and I think using skis also helped to understand better how to move around snow in general.
The tracks were pretty amazing, and the mountains looked really pretty, but also it was not that cold nor there was a lot of snow, which is normal for the time of the year.
Apart from skiing we visited the towns, went to caldea (the local spa, very nice ) and enjoyed our time there, it's just that we spent a lot of it on the car.
Special mention to the trip back, which was nightmarish thanks to stupid Spanish border control just allowing one lane to go out, which means a big big traffic jam before reaching that point, for kilometers and kilometers.
So, after Andorra, which was more like a family trip, I went to Amsterdam (which was not).
I've been to Amsterdam 2 times before this one. The first one was with my high school and it was a...mind-opening trip, let's say. It was really awesome and we had tons of fun. Also, the high school banned trips to Amsterdam afterwards, a clear sign of a good trip :p . After this one, I went back there with some Erasmus people while I was in Sweden, and at that time it felt weird and not as fun, but it was ok.
Anyway Amsterdam always felt really beautiful, really friendly and with a special magic atmosphere of freedom somehow, so when deciding what to visit someone proposed this city and I loved the idea.
It was my third time and I was not disappointed. The streets and channels, the little houses that cannot be made very tall, the Christmas lights, the atmosphere, it was beautiful. We just walked around without visiting anything special, and just enjoying the city, and it was pretty awesome. We were staying in a very centric and cosy place, and we ate and drank and just relaxed, without hurries. It was really cold though, but its normal for these dates too.
One of the nights we went out with a local friend and it was one of the best nights I've had in a long time. We first spend time at his place, then a little walk on the red light district (he lives there so we just walked around his house), and then went to a weird club that had an underground area, dark and foggy and with threatening electronic music...the visuals were like something out of Silent Hill, and the music was electronic but dark and heavy and thick. It was spectacular and we had a lot of fun. We left late, and just then it started snowing, adding to this eerie feeling that was great
It was so good that we'd definitely like to go back (but when it's warmer please).
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