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Published: April 12th 2009
We arrived in Alicante after a short flight from London into the open arms of our good friend Bristol. Bristol was in my Master's program at UM and is now getting her PhD in neuroscience at a the University of Miguel Hernandez in Alicante, Spain. She took us back to her new apartment, where we made ourselves right at home eating her food and drinking her wine/beer. Her apartment is quite large and is right downtown in the small pueblo of San Juan de Alicante, with a view all the way to the ocean. She shares it with two other students, Blanca and Ivan who are both natives of Spain (and great Spanish practice for Bristol...and now us!) They are also both incredibley nice and welcomed us openly.
We spent our first few days exploring the nearby sights and settling into Spanish-time...which means sleeping late and staying up late (breakfast is at noon, lunch at 4pm and dinner at 10pm). Bristol still had to go to work, but she still found time to take us for a delicious paella lunch in Altea, for churros con chocolate at the beach and to some of her other favorite spots around town. While
she was at work, Matt and I enjoyed finally having access to a kitchen and made overflowing bowls of oatmeal with fruit and then would set off for a small adventure each day. We took the bus into downtown Alicante and found the main market which was filled with hanging legs of meat and the largest tuna we had ever seen (we thought it was a whale at first!). Another day we borrowed Bristol's car and drove out into the country to a nearby national park, where we picnicked and took a short hike. On a couple of different nights Bristol took us out to some of the local spots and to meet her friends. We saw a Spain vs. Turkey soccer game, hung out in some downtown Alicante bars and one night after making a taco dinner taught her friend Jan Albert and roomate Blanca how to play beer pong-and the two of them made quite a match for the usually undefeated Bristol/Matt team!
At the end of our first week, Bristol was able to get some days off of work, and so we packed up her car and headed off on a roadtrip to explore the south
Beer Pong
Blanca and Jan Albert learning the gameof Spain for a very (6 day) long weekend. We first visited Granada, which is the site of the Alhambra, one of Spain's most famous attractions. After a few circles around the city in the car, we finally found the center of town and a place to park. We checked into our pension, then headed out for one of Granada's best treats: free tapas with a glass of beer. We made our rounds of the tapa bars before heading in for a decently early night to rest up for the next day of sightseeing. We spent the next morning exploring the downtown of Granada and some of the older parts of town. Mid-afternoon, we made our way back to our car and began what should have been a quick 10 minute drive over to the Alhambra. However, because the streets were designed well before cars ever existed and thus are so narrow that they all have to be one way, we quickly found ourselves only feet from where we needed to be, yet unable to get there. We ended up going around in a large circle three times before we finally made all the right turns and found it. The
Alhambra was everything Bristol had promised it to be....large and beautiful with spectacular Moorish architecture. We cruised around the gardens and buildings for the evening hours, then set off for our next stop: Sevilla.
We spent the night at one of the many rural pensions that are conveniently located right on the side of the highways. They make for very easy stopovers and are better priced and much easier to park at than the places in the cities. We woke up early (9am-we're on Spanish time!) the next morning and were in Sevilla just in time for breakfast at noon. Sevilla is the place to be for Semana Santa in Spain, which happened to start the day we arrived. Everyone was dressed up in their Sunday best and out on the streets to enjoy the festivities. Starting around 1pm, the parades began and we got our first sight of the "KKK" costumes (see pictures)! Seeing the parades was a very unique experience, as they are a strong Spanish tradition, and it was very fortuitous that we happened to be there the day they began. We had another night of tapa-hopping...one of the bars we visited was founded in 1670-and
Bristol was nice enough to slide a glass from it into her purse-which is large enough to hide an entire leg of jamon serrano- for Matt. Matt didn't want her to take it, but she insisted (as she did two other times during our trip, and now Matt has three glasses he has to carry all the way back to the U.S.)
Our third stop on the trip was Cadiz, a small port town on the southern coast of Spain that has a nice beach and a cute, historical downtown. The Semana Santa parades were in full swing here as well, and we had to wind our way through the streets to find our way around them. Matt went for a quick dip in the ocean, while Bristol and I watched from the beach. We ate another tapa dinner (if you can't tell we really like Spanish-style tapa hopping) and then continued our drive along the coast to another rural pension.
Being as we were already on the southern coast of Spain, and that Africa was only 14km across the Straits of Gibraltar, we decided that it only made sense to take a short side-trip and hop over
to Morocco for the day. We caught a ferry from Tarifa, Spain to Tangiers. The ride was less than an hour and the boat was first class compared to our other ferry experiences this trip. When we arrived in Tangiers, it was only 8am because of a two hour time difference between there and Spain. The port was immediately adjacent to the old, historical quarter of town and so we set off into the narrow, winding streets to begin exploring.
We had almost no idea what to expect as it was sort of a last minute decision and we hadn't done much research beforehand. We were pleased to find that it felt nothing like Spain and that being in Africa actually felt like being in Africa. It felt almost as if we were back in Asia, except that the culture and climate were the complete opposite. Bristol and I had luckily worn pants and a sweater because of the chilly weather and were very glad to have our arms and legs completely covered. Even still, we felt extremely exposed in comparison to all the Muslim women who are covered completely from head to toe and received much unwanted attention
from the men who were not at all shy or covert in their taking notice of us. We were also extremely surprised at the aggressiveness the locals displayed, both towards us and between themselves. In the few hours we were in the country, we witnessed two fights between local men and had two people yell and cuss at us after we refused their services or declined to buy something from them...something we haven't seen at all during the rest of our travels.
Within minutes of starting to explore, we came across our first food vendor and the three of us shared a delicious honey pancake thing that was the first of many delicious treats we ate that day. Other foods tried include a very sweet mint tea, a garbanzo bean soup eaten with thick pita bread, Moroccan pastries, chicken tangine, kebabs, olives, tomato/cucumber salad, grilled eggplant, and lots of tangerine juice and fruits. Bristol was an awesome sport for eating in a Matt-style restaurant...essentially a hole in the wall where the chef needed to be bathed in our hand sanitizer and where flies buzzed around our heads as we tried to eat (I've had seven months to get used
to these kind of spots). Having said that, the food was fantastic.
After walking around the old town, we headed down to the beach where the sand looked as if we were in the Sahara desert. We dipped our toes in the "African" ocean-it was really just the Atlantic-and saw two camels. We ran into a character who decided to join us for some chit-chatting, picture taking and random singing (he was a little off in the head), but after we realized he had a knife on his belt, we quickly ditched him and headed back into town. We walked around a bit more, Matt bought some fruit to sneak back into Spain, and we hopped back on the ferry to Tarifa. It took a bit of hassle to get our departure cards for getting through customs (it was the first time we've been in a place where they've tried to sell us our departure cards), but we got them-for free-and made the ferry just in time to pull away from the dock.
Despite already having a very full day, there was still hours of light left and so we decided to fill it by stopping off in
the third country of the day...Gibraltar, which is technically a part of England. We got to see the Rock of Gibraltar and rode the bus out to Europa Point for sunset and pictures at the lighthouse. It was cool to essentially be in Spain, but hear British accents and use some of our leftover pounds.
Our final day of the trip was a long drive from just outside of Malaga back to Alicante. Luckily, Bristol's friends Pablo and Melanie had us over for dinner and so we got to show up to a wonderful home cooked meal and some great company. Pablo shared with us his wealth of knowledge on Spain and told some fantastic stories of times when he had met the king of Spain and other adventures. Melanie, who is from Leeds, finally cleared up Matt's many questions about British royalty. They also provided recommendations for our upcoming travels around northern Spain and even outfitted us with some much needed maps.
We enjoyed our last few days in Alicante getting in some quality last minute time with Bristol before she headed off to France for skiing the day before we left to start our roadtrip around
northern Spain. Now we've completely taken over her apartment, as we are here without her, typing on her computer and sleeping in her bed (but we cleaned her bathroom for her and took her recycling out today-she doesn't know yet, but she'll find out when she reads this!)
Smurf yea!
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Aunt Diane
non-member comment
Enjoy the last days of your trip!!!!
Megan and Matt, We have relished sharing all your adventures and can't wait to hear more when we see you. I just read several blogs as I needed to catch up and it's exhausting just reading how much you've fit in! I'm going to have Ali read your London blog as she will be there (and Paris, Rome, Florence, Athens and Greek cruise) in June/July with a group from her high school (her Grad. present). Have a good trip home to sunny California! Love and hugs, Aunt Diane