Even though it seems like forever ago that we returned from Spain, I haven’t documented it yet, so here goes.
Last Thursday morning, the 7th, Meaghan, Tara, Andrew, Cristin, and I got up around 8am and ran around doing last minute things (shocker that we weren’t ready to go…). We grabbed a cab, forsaking The Bagel Factory for train station bagels to save time -- see, we’re learning. We bought our student priced tickets to Dublin, saving mad cash, and after boarding the train, recognized a friend of ours from our apartment complex who was on her way to Belfast via Dublin. Excellent. Side note: She told us Belfast is amazing, and she goes there all the time to stay with family friends, so now we have plans to go soon! Yay!
Anyway, after two hours, many hands of rummy and some Mars bars, we finally arrived in Dublin. We jumped a cheap and convenient bus to the airport, which took twenty minutes, and then breezed through check-in and went to our gate. Molly met us at the airport, since she had been in Dubs two days longer than us visiting a BC friend who is studying there. Our RyanAir flight was on time, thank god, and we snuck on the back entrance to the plane so we could all sit together. Our flight went well and we touched down in Madrid around 5 or 6 pm their time.
I think we were all expecting to be immediately inundated by warm weather, but it was actually a bit nippy. Furthermore, once we actually got into the Madrid airport, we realized we had no plan. That’s right. We had planned to fly into Madrid and stay up all night, choosing to save money over booking a night in a hostel, since we had to be back at the airport at 6am, but we hadn’t actually gotten around to deciding what that thing was that was going to keep us occupied/awake. Since I had been to Madrid before and was familiar with the airport and such, I led our group to the metro and bought tickets. We got on going in the only direction possible, and got off at a stop near the centre of the city that I recognized. At this point, we still didn’t really have any plans, but were starving. However, unfortunately for us it was only about 7pm, much too early for most places to be serving dinner. So, we found a map, located where we were, contacted the States to secure my BC roommate Alison’s Spanish phone number, and called her. This is Alison’s second semester in Madrid, and we had plans to meet up.
After making tenuous plans to go out, we finally found a place that would serve us at 7:45, and sat on some benches outside it staring hungrily in the windows until they let us in. We were the only people in the restaurant at first, so we took full liberty to use their bathroom ten different times (toothpaste, anyone?), use their floor for all of our backpacks and bags, etc. We were so touristy looking it was ridiculous. We ordered “coronitas” to start off our meal, as well as steaming loaves of delicious bread. I don’t remember what I ate, but I do remember that it was delicious. So was the cheesecake.
Side story: I was nominated as the person who was the best as getting the lime all the way to the bottom of the Corona by sticking my thumb in the opening and flipping the bottle upside down. As I was doing this for the sixth or seventh time with someone’s beer, and clearly acting over-confidently, I messed up, causing beer to squirt all over two entering patrons. The youngish women shrieked and said something in Spanish, and all I could do was just laugh and say “lo siento” (sorry) a lot, but it was really funny slash embarrassing. Andrew told me later that he had seen them walking in and didn’t warn me, thinking it was funny…excellent. Haha.
After dinner, using our Irish pub radar, we found an Irish pub and had a pint. Then, feeling stupid for not expanding our cultural horizons, we made plans to meet with Alison and spend a night on the town!
Fast-forwarding through the minute details, Meg and I cabbed with all the bags to Al’s apartment to drop them off, then met the rest of the kiddos at a random McDonald’s where they had, more randomly, bumped into about six or seven BC kids who are studying in Madrid. It was hilarious -- when we walked up to the window, we were not expecting to see them: Bobby and Johnny Johnson, Alexia Schwartz and her friend from home, Katherine Dolan, this kid John, a girl named Jackie from my floor freshmen year etc. I was so excited to see everyone, but me, Al and Meg needed a quick refreshment, so we hit a bar where drinks were free for “ladies.” Holler. After one drink and some “Ella, Ella, Ella, Eh, Eh,” we met back up with the BC crew outside a club called Joy. Or Fever. I’m not sure. I think it was called both of those names actually.
We were in a pulsing/pushing mass of about 100 kids who were all trying to get in before one am for about ten minutes, until Alison pushed to the front and got us in, no problem. Sweet. The only problem came when I went to the bar to order some drinks for our group and was told too late that each mixed drink was eleven euro. I nearly died. Sooo we all had one drink, wishing we had saved our money, and then danced our butts off for about four hours. The place was huge, it was packed, and it had cross-dressing professional dancers. They were extremely pretty and they could have fooled me. (Pictures soon, I swear.) The music was great, everyone was having a good time…exactly what we needed to keep us awake!
Once the bar was closing around 4:40am, we hit the road, went back to Al’s to grab our stuff, bid everyone goodbye and hopped on the metro right when it opened at 6. It was then off to the airport on no hours of sleep to catch our 8am flight to Sevilla. After check-in, etc. we all passed out at the gate for a bit before getting on our once again on-time flight. We landed one hour later in Sevilla, dazed and confused, dirty and exhausted.
We had instructions to board a bus that would take us to a square near our hostel – easy, right? It didn’t take too long before we were told in broken Spanish that this was the last stop. Unfortunately, it was not any name that we recognized. Boo. After wandering around for a good hour, asking fruitlessly for directions and getting crankier and crankier with each other, we found the hostel. Of course it was down a cobble-stoned street where cabs can’t drive, tucked away behind a huge building, on as street with no sign, etc. But we had found it! And they had safes, towels, running water, friendly staff, free Internet, free international phone calls and free breakfast! We were in heaven…until we were told that we couldn’t check in until 2pm.
I don’t know if you follow, but this meant that we couldn’t sleep until 2pm. Damn it. I nearly cried. But, manning up, we dropped our stuff and went to meet three more BC kids for lunch. Jenny is Meg’s roommate from school – she’s studying in Sevilla and is crazy. She’s straight-forward and funny and great. Colin is studying in Madrid but was visiting for the weekend. He was really relaxed and nice. Suzy is living with Meg/Jenny next year and is studying in Rome currently, but was also up for Carnivale. So, we wandered down the WARM, SUNNY streets of Sevilla, trying to shake off our fatigue and enjoy the sights. There were big open squares where horse drawn carriages lined up for service, a huge cathedral that we investigated the next day, open air market type things, gorgeous architecture, flamenco dancers and small quartets playing on the streets, etc. It had the small town feel of Galway, but its actually much bigger. It also reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Greece, since its near the water and all the buildings are smooth and pure white.
We passed up lots of weird looking food places before finally settling on one. I ordered some sort of shrimp salad and tortilla Espanola, which are both typically Spanish foods. They were both quite good. Then we got banana split ice cream, which was even better. We wandered around until 2, at which point we hit the hostel hard. After checking in, it was into glorious bed, where we slept until 7ish. Then we all took freezing showers, got ready and headed to dinner.
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