SPAIN- briefly described

Well, I've been a pathetic blogger lately. But now, after being pestered repeatedly, I am resuming my blogging again. Actually, the real reason is that I want to postpone doing my homework, but we'll forget about that for now.

So I went to Spain. And it was great. It was everything a vacation should have been. Not only that, but a freak volcanic eruption lengthened our stay, making it an even better time.

I was travelling with two guys, Willem and Andrew. For those frequent followers of my blog, I went to London with Andrew too. We were planning on going to Valencia, Spain for a few days for the sake of getting away from the cloudy, gray, sad skies of Amsterdam. Originally, we were going to go from Thursday to Sunday, so we would skip classes on Thursday and Friday. Then...well, let's just say, we saved a lot of money on the flight by extending it a bit. We ended up planning on being gone from Wednesday morning to Monday morning.

Our flight there was great, and when we landed, we made it to our hostel perfectly. Oh, that hostel. If every hostel in the world were like it, there would be no reason to ever stay in a hotel again! It was brightly colored, had a well-stocked kitchen, and a great central room for meeting people.

Willem and Andrew were figuring some stuff out before exploring the city a bit, and I started chatting with a girl that was in the kitchen. Sooner or later, I asked where she was from, and she said, "Michigan". Well, I replied that I go to school in Michigan. She asked where, and I gave the basic reply, "Calvin College? It's a really small school; you probably haven't heard of it." Her eyes POPPED! SHE WENT TO CALVIN TOO! Her name was Alissa, and she had graduated in December, taken a class in Sevilla, and now was finishing up a long stretch of traveling in Spain. Needless to say, that was a crazy, crazy coincidence.

That day, we decided to go see the botanical gardens, which took us through the park in the center of the city. This park is sweet. It used to be the river, but after a serious flood in 1957, the river was diverted to run around the city instead. Well, that left a huge open space in the heart of the city center. The government, a dictatorship at that time, wanted to make the riverbed into a highway. It was a logical plan, but the people did not like it at all. Construction started. The work was done in the day, but at night, the people would sneak in and plant trees in the way of the work. Eventually, the government caught on.

We finally made it to the gardens, which were pretty cool. My favorite part was the cacti. Some of them were SO huge. It was crazy.

After that, we went back to the hostel, made food, and explored the city at night for a while.

The next day, we slept in (aaaah, vacation. so nice.) We checked out the SWEET central market, which was less than a block away from our hostel. Apparently, it used to be a train station that was converted into a market later. Anyway, it was huge and filled with all sorts of food. We each bought 40 cent baguettes and some other munchies and were on our way.

We wanted to find this place called the Plaza de la Virgen because there was a free walking tour leaving at noon. After searching for a while (and walking basically in a circle around it we found out later), we decided that since it was a nice day, we should go to the beach instead! WOO!! Andrew made use of his stellar Spanish skills (no lie, he's good) and asked some random lady how to get to the beach. Well, it just so happened that we were right by the bus stop for the bus that went to the beach! Perfect.

We stepped off the bus, knowing that we were close to the water. Willem "saw" the water, so even though Andrew and I wanted to consult a map, we started walking. Well, what Willem actually saw was a blue fence that didn't look anything like the water at all. We wandered for a long time, shedding our jackets and sweaters, on our way to the beach. Eventually, we found it, but then we needed sunscreen. Another long period of wandering later, and we were back on the beach with sunscreen. The only problem was that it wasn't super sunny anymore! :( sadness. but we sat a little beach cafe, looking out on the water. slowly, the clouds began to roll away. aaahh, so perfect. the sun was shining, the sand was hot, the water was cold, and the breeze was gently blowing. it was gorgeous. not only that, but we had the whole beach to ourselves.

We headed back to the hostel and ate leftovers from the night before. I had kind of overestimated the amount of food we would need. oops. That night, Willem and Andrew's friend Marielle came from Granada to hang out with us too! She was so much fun.

The next day, we actually made it to the walking tour, even though we got lost on the way there AGAIN. The streets in Valencia are so crooked, and the map that we had only had about 1/4 of the streets labeled. It was a continuing frustration. Anyway, the walking tour was full of history of the city. I don't really want to go into all of it, but suffice it to say, it was very well done, and I know a lot about the city of Valencia.

After the walking tour, we waited around at the hostel for Andrew's roommate, Ryan, to come from Denia, Spain. When he arrived, we went to an awesome festival in the riverbed park (that's not it's name, obviously, but I don't know what else to call it). We each paid 10 euros and got 4 drinks and 4 small plates of food. Such delicious wines and cheeses and meats. mmm. It was just so classy. Willem and Ryan even had escargot!

The next day, we didn't really do anything of interest until we did a tapas tour. "Tapas" are little snacks that you get with drinks at a bar or cafe. It was kind of weird, though, because the tour started at 2:30 in the afternoon. Anyway, it was rainy, so we were the only people there! It was great, because by this point, the tour guide, Johnny, had gotten to know us from the walking tour, so we had a great time.

After tapas, we tried a drink called "orchata". It's a super sweet drink made from tiger nuts (and heavily sugared...did I mention that it's sweet?). It's served with a churro-like pastry, and the whole thing was just delicious. mmm...

That night, we didn't do anything, really, besides make dinner and talk for a while. It was Marielle's last night, which was sad, but the next day, SARAH ORNDORFF, one of my cross country friends, was coming from Denia!

After some miscommunication the next morning, Sarah and I finally got in touch. It was so great to see her. We went down to La Cuidad de las Ciencias y las Artes, which is a complex of museums and other buildings designed by Santiago Calatrava, who lives in the city of Valencia (thank you, walking tour). The buildings were really cool, but it was expensive to go in, so we just laid on the sidewalk outside instead. Eventually, we decided to go back to the hostel.

Now, I've been leaving out a very important part of this whole trip experience. As most of you know, Eyjafjallajökull, a volcano in Iceland, erupted on April 14. This was the day that we flew out of Amsterdam. The next day, we heard reports that the ash from the volcano was halting air travel. Well, we weren't too worried. How long can it take for ash to clear out of the sky? We met some British students at our hostel who ended up staying for an extra two nights because of it. Well, by Sunday afternoon, it was fairly clear that the skies would not be clear enough for us to return to Amsterdam the next day as we had planned.

Sarah and Ryan suggested that we come to Denia to visit them while we waited for the air to clear. Well, who can resist that? Sarah called their professor, and it was all worked out! Good thing that Calvin profs like to take care of Calvin students, wherever we are. We took the bus to Denia that night.

The next day, we went to the UNED, where the Calvin students take their classes, and tried to work out how to change our flight. We figured that we should rebook for Thursday, since most experts were saying that was the earliest planes would start flying. Then we were off to the beach with all of the other Calvin students. It was so much fun! Although, somehow I ended up buried under about two feet of sand at one point. It was still fun in a way at the time, but finding sand in my hair for the next three days definitely wasn't.

That night, we hung out by a lighthouse right on the water with a bunch of other people from the Denia group, and it was such a great night. I was so glad that we got to connect with another group of students that are abroad through Calvin!

The next day, we heard reports that the Netherlands was opening its airspace! YAY! Now we wanted to go back and re-rebook our flights for Wednesday instead. Well, that proved difficult. After hours of waiting and calling and having the person on the other end set down the phone next to them, we finally gave the task to Maria Elena, the Spanish professor from Calvin. On her fourth call, she finally found us tickets! Such a relief. That meant that we were leaving for Valencia again that night. Kind of sad, but it did feel good to know that we were getting back.

We took the bus that night from 10 pm-12 am, and then we decided, being the brave and cheap people we are, that it was not worth it to pay a taxi to drive us to the airport. No, we wanted to walk. Besides, who likes to sit in an airport anyway? Our flight didn't go out until 7:15 so we had plenty of time. I asked the information guy at the bus station how to walk to the airport, but he didn't really tell us anything useful. I guess I might have been misinterpreting too, but I'm pretty sure he just didn't feel like helping us.

Anyway, we found lots of maps at bus stops, pointing us in the right direction at least. None of these maps, however, had the actual airport on it. We knew that it was going to be a long walk, though, so that was understandable.

About an hour in, the walk started to lose its fun. We were carrying everything on in backpacks, my feet were getting sore, and I was hungry. We were also walking along a sidewalk next to the highway. It really wasn't a bad walk; I was just tired. We did stop a few times for snacks, which Willem had packed in advance. We just kept following the highway signs for the airport, until suddenly, it was the exit for the airport!! YAY! We found it and walked right in.

After a crappy night's sleep in the airport, we boarded our plane, and the trip was over. It was so much fun, but we were returning to piles of schoolwork. In the end, though, I think it was worth it.

PS- Of course, the whole "brief" thing didn't really happen. My bad. There was a lot to cover.