Spring Break

Spring Break was great! This will be a super quickie rundown of all 11 days.

Thursday (april 14)

6pm. Bus to San Sebastian! In one station where we stopped I was going to use the bathroom and I put in my 20 cents to open the door and…it was jammed. So I was out 20 cents and I had to get back on the bus. :\

Friday

6:40am. Emily picked me up at the Sanse bus station and we walked along the river back to her apartment to take a nap before beginning our festivities. San Sebastian was a lot of pretty views from hilltops and beautiful blue ocean and sitting in nature-y places to chat. San Sebastian is a lot calmer than Granada, just less people out and about. It was nice. I liked it a lot. :)

Saturday

11:55pm. We got on a bus to Barcelona, and were told the rules of the bus ride: Basically you can do whatever you want, get up and move, eat, go to sleep, etc., except smoke or take off your shoes. What? The Spanish have a really weird not-okay-ness with barefootedness. One teensy aspect of Spain I will not particularly miss…

Sunday

Palm Sunday! Also, day one of Barcelona! We made friends with the metro and then saw lots of pretty things, including a park with a hedge labyrinth in it (fun!), the Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, and the Mediterranean Sea (although only from afar today). We went out for dinner to the Travel Bar (suggested by our hostel) and ordered the “cheapies” meal—buy a drink and get chili con carne for free! It was still more expensive than granadino free tapas everywhere with every drink anyway, but it was decent, and we had a funny conversation with our obviously English waitress to explain to her what tinto de verano is. Then we went home and turned in for the night pretty soon after a little game of hearts with Hannah and her friend Rebecca…yep we were in the same hostel…not a coincidence but still fun :)

Monday

More famous sights (a castle and an olympic stadium for example, nbd) and actually being by the sea in Barcelona. We saw the cruise ship port which made me think of my parents’ obsession…everyone else feel free to give them a hard time about leaving on a cruise less than a week after I get home ;) Anyway, we made ourselves grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner with the cheap bread we’d bought in San Sebastian and the cheese we’d bought today at the market and the olive oil in the hostel’s kitchen as a butter substitute.

And then we used our last metro pass to go to the bus station for a very uncomfortable overnight bus to Alicante…

Tuesday

4:30am. We got in to the Alicante bus station where our wonderful friend Jordan was waiting for us to lead us to some couches where we could crash for a few more hours before our much-looked-forward-to Beach Day. Unfortunately, when we woke up again, it was cloudy, and stayed that way all day…but we were determined to enjoy a day next to the ocean, and somehow I got sunburned even though I didn’t actually see the sun for hardly more than an hour all day. There was also a castle to see in Alicante, so we did that between beach-bumming sessions.

After a bit of turrón (a very alicantino almond-and-honey dessert) and a bit of a really weird sci-fi movie, Emily and I were headed back to the bus station for another overnight to Granada. We had a lovely 23 hours in Alicante. :)

Wednesday

My hometown! There’s a bunch of funny stories that go with this day that are better told in person I think, so ask me when I get home! By the end of the day though, we were e.x.h.a.u.s.t.e.d. So we slept for 13 hours.

Thursday

We had chocolate at every meal today, from the breakfast pastries (at 1pm) to the mid-afternoon ice cream, to the crepes for dinner, and the daily dose of Mr. Choc (tasty off-brand Twix from the Sanse grocery store) when we got back to our sleeping quarters. Of perhaps more importance, we went to the Alhambra and the Carmen de los Martires and had lots of nice plaza-sitting. I have decided after this week of spanish travel that Granada has the best plazas (and so many!)

Friday

Slept in a little then got croissants for breakfast then hopped on a bus to Sevilla! Sadness=rain in the south of spain during spring break. Oh well……

Once in Sevilla we got a vegetable sandwich for lunch (haha) and then had some nice damp wanderings with Jordan to the cathedral, the Maria Luisa Park, and the Plaza de España—that last one was (is) one of my favorite things I’ve been to yet in Spain.

When Ali and Merijke got in, we went for some super-yum meat-free tapas! I guess the weather maybe was just trying to remind us that it was Good Friday…not really a sunshiney kind of day, you know?

Saturday

We went to a grocery store to gather supplies for dinner tonight for roughly 80 cents apiece: scrambled eggs with onions and red pepper and cheese, and bread, and wine. …and Mr. Choc for dessert :)

We did some more wandering and playing on playgrounds until the free walking tour of the city which was full of fun little stories and rain. Also we caught a glimpse of the only Semana Santa procession that hadn’t been cancelled since we’d been there, so that was nifty. (The procession floats are so old and ornate that if it even looks like it’s going to rain they pretty much just go ahead and cancel the procession.)

We chilled on the [covered] terrace awhile after dinner till it got dark and then we went to bed! My last hostel night for…a little bit. (I’m going to Madrid and Toledo this upcoming weekend!)

Sunday

Happy Easter!! We went to the cathedral where we saw parts of another procession (the sun came out today!) and listened to the Liturgy of the Hours sung in Latin and then attended mass. So pretty and nice. :)

We got some celebratory ice cream (esp because Ali had given it up for Lent) and then went back to the hostel to pack up and head out. My friends off to Italy and me back home to Granada. I finished my Lenten goal of reading the Catechism during the bus ride, after a nice little conversation with the guy next to me who is from the Canary Islands and is hoping to get a teaching job in the States next year.

Getting home, it was nice to know I didn’t have to live out of a backpack anymore. Also, I was really looking forward to comida on Monday after over a week of eating on a college-kid travel-budget.

Now, I’m back into the swing of things. I have started one of my papers that’s due in 2 weeks. What? haha… Just a month or so ish left here. So weird!

Well, it’s my bedtime. Goodnight and thanks for reading!!