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Published: November 13th 2009
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Alicante Saturday morning I woke up and quickly threw together the things I needed for the week into my backpack. Taryn came to my door and we only had a few minutes left to catch our bus when she realized she was still wearing her slippers! After throwing on shoes, we then rushed out of our rooms to catch the bus to meet Katherine (we almost missed it, but didn’t thankfully!). Nothing like a rushed beginning to our trip! From there, the three of us headed over to the train station to take a train to Basel, Switzerland where we next took a bus to the Basel airport. The attendants at the airport were very easy going and didn’t even measure or weigh our carry on bags, despite various warnings that the airline had strict carry on limits. An hour and a half later, we arrived at the Alicante Airport in Spain! We took a bus into downtown Alicante, and wandered around a few streets in the general direction of our hostel and happened upon it a few minutes later. Our room had 4 bunk beds, a bathroom and shower, and we didn’t have to share it with anyone else. After
dropping off our bags, we headed down to the beach, which was only 3 blocks away. It was absolutely gorgeous! I can’t even begin to describe how breathtaking it was, even my pictures don’t do the beach justice. That night we tried a traditional Spanish dish called Paella (a mixture of seafood and rice). It was alright, but not my favourite thing ever. The next morning I went for a run along the ocean and it was great. Our hostel provided breakfast. I actually got quite a few chances to practice my Spanish. Sunday we went up to the castle and had a great view of the city. We spent the rest of the day at the beach. Monday we had to check out of our hostel, so we spent the day at the beach. While we were lying in the sun I overheard a group of people speaking English with no accents, so I knew they must be North American (I always have my ear out for that). Then I noticed a Canadian flag on one of the guy’s back packs so I went over and said hi. Turns out one guy was from Toronto, one guy was from
New Zealand, and one girl was from California. It was really cool talking to other people my age who were traveling. That night Taryn, Katherine, and I went for Tapas at a restaurant and it was not good at all. They gave us Doritos instead of nachos like we were expecting. Off to Madrid!
Madrid So 3 hours in the Alicante Airport made for a very hyper Jean, a somewhat hyper Taryn and an annoyed Katherine! We were planning on sleeping on the flight since it was midnight but thanks to me that didn’t happen!! 😊 We arrived in Madrid at 12:30am and ventured into one of the world’s largest underground transit systems. Luckily Katherine, our navigator, was great with directions and we found our stop after having to transfer between 3 lines. Once we resurfaced we had a bit of trouble finding our hostel although it was only 150m away from the metro stop. (it was off a small hard to find street at 1am). I first noticed a huge difference about Spain when I stopped at a restaurant to ask for directions and saw that they smoke indoors still!! As someone who grew up totally in a
nonsmoking era, this is a difficult thing to comprehend. Nevertheless, we found our hostel a few minutes later. It was in a lovely old building an dour room was great. It was a private room with 3 beds (not bunks!) and a huge bathroom. We fell asleep immediately, as it was 2am at this point. The next morning we woke up at 10am and then headed into the city. We didn’t have a map and only a vague idea of what we should check out so we just wandered around for a bit and ended up stumbling upon a gorgeous park and the royal botanical garden. Then we found the famous Plaza Mayor. We also managed to find the Royal Palace. I think we managed to find all the touristy things without a map! It was a long day of walking but we saw a lot of great things. I really like Madrid.
Barcelona At 7ish we caught the metro back to the Airport and got our next flight to Barcelona! We were quite daunted by this leg of the flight because we had to take an hour and a half bus from the airport to Barcelona after the
flight. It went pretty well though and when we arrived in Barcelona, we had to walk 30 minutes to our hostel but we found it no problem (thanks to Katherine). When we got to the hostel we knew we might be sharing a room but we didn’t know for sure until we opened the door and found 3 people sleeping. We tried to be super quite and surprisingly they didn’t really wake up. Wednesday morning we had breakfast at the hostel and then we headed out to see the Gaudi architecture Barcelona is famous for. We went to Park Guell, a garden complex with architectural elements situated on the hill of el Carmel in the Gràcia district of Barcelona. It was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built in the years 1900 to 1914. It took about an hour to walk to and we were all dead tired. It was well worth the walk though because the park had a great view of Barcelona and it was a really interesting park to see. After having a picnic lunch we head to La Rambla, the famous street and shopping district in Barcelona.
Back to Madrid Thursday morning we
got up early, grabbed some food for lunch from a grocery store (way better way to go than restaurants! So much cheaper!) and then headed back to catch the bus to the Girona airport. The bus ride took a little over an hour and the scenery between the two cities was gorgeous. On the plane to Madrid I sat across the aisle from 3 Americans from California. We ended up talking the whole flight and we showed them how to use the metro once we got to Madrid since it was so complicated. We found our hostel and then we got a text from Katie saying that she had been rerouted to a different airport because of a storm. She ended up missing her connecting flight and had to stay in Barcelona for a night and catch a new flight the next morning! 100 euros later, we met her in the Madrid airport Friday morning.
Back to Alicante We then flew back to Alicante no problem. We headed straight to the beach after dropping off our bags at the hostel. We took Katie up to the castle and then had dinner. After walking along the market we decided to
get gelato from our favourite place. We sat on the terrace and I decided to go inside the restaurant to get a water. The guy helping me asked if I spoke Spanish well (was it not obvious?) and I said a bit. He started going off in Spanish and pointing at the TV and the terrace. I thought he said something about Shakira and her music video was playing on the TV so I thought ok cool… just kind of smiled and took my water. As I headed back to sit at our table I noticed a girl with long curly hair sitting next to us that appeared to look like Shakira. I told the girls how weird the guy inside was being and we all looked at the girl to see if it really was Shakira. By this point, we were pretty curious so I went back inside to ask the guy about what he had said to me and as he started to tell me again, the manager came over and made him stop talking and said “shh it’s a secret.” By this point, I knew it must be her, and it was confirmed when she went inside
the restaurant to take a picture with the staff. As she was coming outside I asked her if she would take a picture with us. She was definitely much nicer than I would be if I had to put up with people asking for pictures all the time! That highlight was such a great way to end our trip, and the next day we headed back to Strasbourg.
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Shakira
non-member comment
No is a problema
Hola ladies, yes it was very pleasure to take a photo with you, underneath your clothes! No is a problem!