Last night

Tonight is my last night abroad--my flight leaves from Madrid at 11:00 local time tomorrow morning and arrives at Dulles at 2:00 PM Eastern time, for a total of 9 hours in the air. It will be exactly 8 weeks since I left JFK in New York.

Anyway, for what COULD be my last entry, although I'm not entirely sure about that, I just wanted to share some of my better and more interesting memories. I'll keep it short and sweet, so I have plenty of time for dinner and a night on the town in Madrid. These kinds of recaps are always flawed and incomplete, so this is by no means definitive, but here are some of my favorite things I saw and did on my trip in Italy, Spain, and Morocco.

Favorite things I saw:
5. The Duomo di Milano/the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona: I've seen sooooo many churches in the past two months, I had to include my favorite(s) on here. It's a tie.
4. Mar Bella--that is, the gay beach in Barcelona: This short stretch of beach was just too funny. It was distinctly different from the beaches stretching away on either side of it, and I can't help but appreciate that things like this can even exist at all.
3. Chelo making paella: Watching Chelo Vazquez make paella was very cool. I intend to learn to make paella, and she intends to teach me. And if watching it was one of my favorite things, don't even get me STARTED about eating it.
2. The Palio di Siena: Watching this event for the second year in a row, again on my first day in Italy, was as much as I could have hoped for. Last year´s palio may have been more intense, but this year I saw more of the preparation, and it was great.
1. Opera on the Spanish Steps: Perfect way to spend my last night in Italy. Perfect.

Favorite things I did:
5. My night tour of Rome with Riccardo, Barrett, Megan, and Ashley. Beautiful city, beautiful people--overall a great experience that I won't forget. It made me ever more intent on living in Italy ASAP.
4. Eating with the Moroccans: The owner of our hotel in Fez, Mohammed, invited us to eat, and it was amazing Moroccan food, three nights in a row. It was so great to avoid tourism and get an authentic taste of the country.
3. Swimming in Taormina: I believe I wrote about this... Anyhow, the water was incredible and diving off of the rocks was such a rush. Best place I've ever swam, ever.
2. Tapas and clubbing in Barcelona: Good beer, good food, and dancing are all things that I love, so that night was pretty much amazing.
1. Eating with the Vazquez family: Yes, this includes the paella, but so much more. Dinner is when they really showed their hospitality and made us feel welcome, and the food was all amazing.

And I can't leave out some of the STRANGEST things I saw or did:
5. Barcelona: What a weird place.
4. Drinking in front of the Vatican: Ok, I did it on purpose, because I don't quite love the church, but it DID feel pretty weird.
3. Finding an episode of Friends on TV in Marrakech (stranger because five minutes earlier I commented that that was all I wanted). They really do play it EVERYWHERE.
2. The bartering attempt that resulted in an impromptu lesson on the Fay-Bans (Fake Ray-Bans) industry permeating Italy. Very enlightening. I really should have bought them. I got the guy down to €8, but I didn't want to spend more than 5. Either way, the guy selling them was cool.
1. The McDonald's in Tangier playing an American Major League Soccer game (Colorado Rapids vs San Jose Earthquakes) with Arabic commentary. Seriously, what the hell.

So yeah, travel has been great, and fun, and sometimes very weird. But I don't want to get too down about going home, so here are a few things I'm looking forward to there as well:
5. Not living out of a bag. I can't wait to pull clothes out of drawers instead of a backpack.
4. Exercising again. I miss running, and I'm pretty sure I've lost weight (in a bad way).
3. Catching up on American TV shows. I'm behind on new episodes of Futurama and Friday Night Lights, and I think I'm going to start watching True Blood again. We'll see. Friends might warrant another run through the series from start to finish.
2. Teaching myself to cook. I'm going to try to replicate some of the things I ate here and become a master chef. Oh yeah.
1. Getting ready for the great American tradition of Halloween. Yes, America has culture, too.

Thank you for reading, everyone. It's been an honor to travel blog for you!