It is official. I am terrible at blogging! I have a heck of a time trying to keep up with this thing, so if anyone is reading this I apologize for the sporadic entries. Sin embargo, here is a recap of my spring break.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Sometimes good ideas only last so long. My traveling buddies and I found that our idea to just “rough it” and sleep outside (due to the lack of hostiles) escalated into a long, cold, frustrating 3 nights. Let’s not jump right into the exciting parts tho. We will start from the beginning. Sunday morning (March 16) we were meeting at the bus station for our trip to Madrid. I was running a bit late so I jogged most of the way, but still made it in plenty of time. I arrived thinking I was the last person. That was not the case. Kevin actually never came. We called him a few times and when he picked we had to inform him that we were on the bus leaving the station. “Kevin, where you at?” “ugh, still in bed” “really? Cause we are leaving on the bus.” whoops. We told him we would just meet up with him when he got to Madrid. After we made our way to our hostel and got settled in Kevin arrived a short bit later and we went to the big park in the middle of town and watched a big drum circle perform. I guess every Sunday night people will gather in this park and just have huge jam sessions with the all of the drums they bring. It was a pretty cool sight. Everyone there seemed to be having fun. After leaving the park we walked around the city for a while but everything was either closed or had no people in them, so we eventually headed back to the hostel to play cards. The next day we woke up, made breakfast, talked with a guy from New York, and then went to Puerta del Sol for a free walking tour. It was a fairly good tour. We went around and saw the Cathedral, the Royal Palace, the oldest restaurant in the world, etc. and eventually made our way to a little café for some tapas. Our tour guide said this place was the best because it was really cheap. Only 4 euros for tapas and a drink, what a deal. . As we sat waiting for our tapas we discussed how this tourguide made money. We figured it was from the tips at the end because the way these tours work is that you are supposed to “donate” what you think the tour should be worth. We knew that we didn’t have much money to donate so it was really confusing to us how he was able to only have this as his job. About at that time Kevin overheard the waitress tell Victor (our tourguide) in Spanish that the price was 2 euros a person. Shortly after that Victor came up to us and said that he had paid for everything, just so it was easier, and that we could pay him the 4 euros when we got outside. I don’t think he knew that we spoke Spanish. That was about the time we learned how he made the rest of his money. There were about 20 people in our group so if you do the math that is 40 euros in his pocket for doing nothing! Not too bad of a deal if you don’t mind cheating people. We decided to pay him the extra two euros and call that his “donation.” We left the tour shortly after that. That night we made spaghetti and it was delicious. I was in charge of the sauce and it was actually quite tasty. So tasty in fact that an Italian guy that was also at the hostel tried it and agreed that the sauce tasted wonderfully. That night we met a bunch of people in our hostile’s kitchen. We met people from Portugal, New York, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Michigan. Quite the group. It was a blast.
Next day, we caught our flight to Valencia and we were exhausted. In Valencia we found the beach and decided to nap for a while. While napping, I caught a bit much sun and turned a nice shade of pink. Whoops. After the nap we walked around saw the huge science museum, The City of the Arts and Sciences, and then made our way to the main plaza that night for the biggest fireworks show I have ever seen. It was a pretty crazy crowd too. People were just throwing fireworks everywhere and explosions were going off all around us. It blew my mind actually when I noticed that a lot of these explosions were coming from the hands of 8 year olds! Parents would just hand there small children firecrackers to throw and would just laugh when it almost blew up their childs feet. Unreal! When the fireworks ended the huge crowd started moving out and it was the biggest crowd I had ever seen. Things started to get a bit crazy though, people started throwing fireworks that would shoot and spin around into crowds of people! One of the fireworks shot and bounced off of a girl a foot in front of Jon and me! It was pretty insane! We got out of there and then went to find a café or somewhere to pass the time since we did not have a hostel. After a while we started getting pretty tired so we headed home (the beach) and tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately, the beach patrol was out and was not letting people sleep there, so we had to be sneaky found a nice hidden shadow to sleep in for the night. That was probably the longest, coldest, most frustrating night I have ever been through! Haha. It actually was a terrible time. We laid out there for 3 or 4 hours until 6am when the metros started running again and slept on it while we tried to get warm for the next 2 hours. When the sun came up we headed back to the beach where it was warm again and then slept a bit then. After we woke up we went to find food and to take part in the Fallas celebration. We stopped at a Burger King for some familiar food and while eating (the most delicious whopper ever) some huge explosions started erupting outside and soon after the entire street outside filled with smoke. It was crazy! The explosions was how they announced they were about to burn down the falla. There was soo much smoke tho. Burger King had automatic doors and people kept standing in front of it and thus allowing billows of smoke to enter the restaurant. I’m sure the workers were happy. After we ate we walked around and some some sites until the huge celebrations took place that night. We found the biggest falla in the middle of the city and ended up watching it burn in a crowd so jam packed that we could barely move! I have never been that squished in my life! It was a blast tho and luckily I had all of my valuables safeguarded so I had nothing to worry about. I still can’t believe the crowd of people. When the burning was over everyone tried to barge out and it was just a mess of humans pushing and shoving and screaming in 3 different languages. It was wild! We eventually made it out and then headed to the bus station to pick up our bags in the lockers so jon and I could head back to the train station to wait/sleep. Once we arrived at the train station we had to wait 5 hours before the train would leave and I had to wait 3 hours before I could buy my ticket. That time was spent trying to sleep, moving around to get warm, watching people vomit, and seeing the guards kick people to inform them to not sleep on the floor. Three hours later I found out that they all the trains were full for that day and there was no way for me to get to Madrid via train for 2 days. I decided to take the bus. I then parted with Jon and found Eric so that we could hopefully get a ride on a bus. Luckily, we did find seats but it was not as direct as we wanted. We had quite a few layovers but we eventually made it home. It was quite the trip!
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