Holiday in Spain

This past week I took a trip to Spain with some friends for fall break. In the six nights I was gone I spent two nights sleeping on over-night buses (between Barcelona and Madrid), three nights in different hostels, and one night sleeping in an airport. I don’t think I ever need to sleep in an airport again. I think that’s one of those things you only need to experience once. So basically, I didn’t sleep much at all and have had to recover from my vacation (which you would think wouldn’t have to happen) by sleeping a lot since. But I had the time of my life & would do it a million times over again.

We took RyanAir, which is a really cheap airline throughout Europe, like 10E - $13 a flight if you can find it. I learned that the airline is so cheap not only because the flights are always really delayed and departing at strange times, but also because while you are delayed an hour or so, as you sit in the plane, on the runway, they walk up and down the aisles trying to sell you things. Then, when you actually take off, they keep the bright lights on and continue to try to sell you things – food, perfume, smokeless cigarettes, some kind of lottery tickets… etc. Pretty weird but kind of funny and I still think it’s worth it. I was happy to discover that my initial suspicion that RyanAir is so cheap because the planes are falling out of the sky is incorrect.

The trip was such a nice break, especially right after midterms. My brain has never hurt as much as it did after trying to analyze symbols and meaning as well as the history of pieces of art in Italian for two hours.

Overall, it was a wonderful vacation containing all of the following: drinking café bombon, meeting Scotsmen, eating churros, exploring the Royal Palace in Madrid, meeting Brits, painting a mustache on my face & the faces of all my girl friends there for Halloween, surprising and confusing all of the Spanish men with those mustaches, people watching, practicing my Spanish with the local lisp “grathias”, drinking Sangria, climbing on statues, dancing, eating seafood, playing in Gaudi’s Parc Guell, napping in parks, playing betting games with 1 & 2 cent pieces to waste time in the airport, eating a white chocolate and jam sandwich, sitting on the port at sunset, laughing, laughing, laughing.

Something interesting—I expected the Halloween costumes to be similar to the ones in the U.S., just kind of cute and occasionally risqué, but actually everyone dressed up in terrifying costumes, a lot of scary masks, bloody make-up, fake knives… really just scary looking people constantly trying to look creepy and scare you. I guess that makes sense for the holiday but I really didn’t expect it or enjoy that part.

A funny thing—I was walking up a giant hill here in Siena the other day and this young Italian man was watching me walk all the way up. When I got to him all he told me was, “I like your leg.” Leg, singular, haha!

Other than that life is going well here. Classes are great. Internship is great. Plans for next semester seem to be coming together perfectly. I will be living in a homestay, so that will be a change. But as for now, my apartment is great and I’m really enjoying this living situation. Basically, everything is wonderful here!

Also, I just tried to be extra-Italian and hang some laundry out to dry on the line outside my window rather than the drying rack, but I guess I chose the wrong day to attempt that because it just poured rain. Haha, oops. I will learn their ways before I leave..