Cole's Summer in Spain: Alicante or bust!

The view from our sea looking towards the castle de Santa Barbara in Alicante.

Wed. 4/18- Thur. 4/19

Hola! After a car, 3 flights, a bus, a train, and a taxi totaling in 24 hours of traveling my journey to Alicante, Spain is complete! Fortunately there were no major snafus and arrived safely in the beautiful seaside hotel where we spend one night before starting our internship program tomorrow. Let me take you through the highlights of the trip:

My journey began early Wed. as most major trips do with a mandatory amount of stress and setbacks. I got up 2 hrs later than I planned because my alarm didn’t go off (really I think I just ignored it 100%), I rushed through packing and printed off some last minute documents before leaving 2 hrs early to catch my flight at 2 pm. It turned out we needed every bit of those 2 hrs because I forgot the one thing on the top of every international traveler’s to-bring-and-never-ever-lose-ever list. That’s right, I left my passport in the copier at home. *Sigh*

Other than that I got from Louisville to Atlanta smoothly, navigated Atlanta’s mammoth passageways, and found out one of the guys in my internship program was on the same flight from Hot-Lanta to Barcelona with me. The 8+ hour flight actually went by pretty quickly and before I knew it I was in Barcelona 7 hours ahead of St. Louis and speaking Spanish with the natives. I found myself half asking questions b/c I cared and half because I wanted to practice Spanish.

In the Barcelona Airport. I mostly walked around through all the shops during my 3 hr layover. It wasn't huge, but it was very nice and modern.

The middle of the Barcelona airport with all the shops

Barcelona is a pristine airport with a lot of glass and fútbol playing on a screen at every gate. I think I walked the length of the concourse literally 5 times exploring, searching for my gate, and getting my ticket printed. I got to Madrid in a jiffy, but found myself having to hustle if I wanted to catch the bus to the train station to catch my train that I still had to buy a ticket for. I feel like God was keeping an eye on me though because even though I was a bit lost and confused at first He made sure it all worked out. First I withdrew some Euros from the ATM and barely got to the bus before it took off. I ended up running up to the bus staying on the street in front of it so it couldn’t leave without me (I’m sure aI looked ridiculous waddling double-time under the staggering weight of my marine seabag and dragging a roller suitcase behind me. I sat next to a precious lady from Portugal who I engaged in Spanish conversation with several road bumps here and there. We became fast friends. I even met some people from St. Louis who sat right behind me on the bus. Truly ‘it’s a small world after all!’ When we got to the train station I had trouble finding the taquilla (ticket office), and even when I got there I had no idea how to make sense of the mass of people crowded in the room and only 10 minutes before my train left. I made eye contact with this lady and I think she could tell I was stressed because she walked by me and handed me her line-ticket like you get at the DMV. That prolly saved me 10 minutes and waiting behind 40 people right there! I ran into my Portuguese friend and she explained the waiting system b/c I was still confused and in the end I left ticket-in-hand and my friend and I blew goodbye kisses too each other (don’t worry she’s like 60).

I was so relieved to be on the train and tired from being awake for so long (by this time it was 2:30 pm on Thurs.) that I passed out for most of the ride. I woke up and several minutes later we were at our final destination of Alicante. Even something as simple as determining what train stop too get off at was stressful though. When you are in a new place and especially one with a foreign language you become so uncertain of the simplest tasks. On the flipside, if you have the right attitude about it, the constant change and always not knowing what comes next can be quite exhilarating. It’s like a huge dark maze that have to navigate with a little flashlight until you reach the center and find the Tri-wizard Cup, but wait it’s a portkey and now you’re in a graveyard with some ugly baby!

After taxiing to Alicante and getting situated in the gorgeous hotel where the escalators are motion-sensored and the ground floor starts at 0 (like all Spanish buildings), I got to relax a bit. At night I met with some of the directors of the program and the four other students doing the intern portion of the program with me. We went out to dinner around 9:30 (typical dinner hour in Spain is 8-12) and ate at this great traditional restaurant. On our way we ran into another American guy who the directors knew who told us how he met this girl from Poland on a train three days ago and they fell in love and they live together and will prolly get married soon. We think he may have been high, but the girl was real. We had all sorts of tapas (small appetizer like dishes) from tuna to octopus to Spanish olives to Chupis (reminded me of Philly cheese steak). At the end we got some type of alcohol in a shot glass on the house. I thought it was really amusing that the three of us guys slammed the stuff down like a shot and the 3 adults gently sipped with an air of sophistication.

The central boardwalk near the sea. It is prolly .5-.75 miles long and the whole design is made up of tiny colored tiles! There are always people selling things along here b/c it has a lot of tourists.

As we ate, we were approached by vendors selling the most ridiculous things (we mainly laughed at the guy with 20 pairs of the huge fake sunglasses adorning him). As we left the restaurant we got a real sense of Spanish time and community because it took at least 25 minutes once we stood up to get out the door because the local directors kept stopping to talk to all the people they knew. Our exit finally came after we were all convinced to try some sweet liqueur that you poured out of something like a plant-watering pitcher into your mouth and saw how far you could make the stream stretch from your mouth. Around midnight we saw the restaurants packing up the table they had put out in the alleys and saw groups of Spanish bros with faux hawks and skinny jeans heading to the clubs in the “barrio” district. As we had all endured a long journey we decided we’d have to catch up with those bros another time and went back to our rooms around 1 am (early for Spaniards).

That brings us to now! Tomorrow I meet my family and will hopefully have time to post sometime in the next two days (I doubt it will be this long). I’ll also throw up some pictures then.