Part 1: The Getting There
Spain, first of all, is awesome. The people are so friendly, it is like a community the size of a country, the food is wonderful, the weather is gorgeous, and the sights are fantastic. There is so much to say about Spain that I have decided to break it up into chunks, starting with the getting there and the getting around.
Our trip started on Friday the 18th, we left Bordeaux to spend one night in Paris because we had an early flight out of Beauvais the next morning. It was on our train to Paris that we realized that this would be a trip of compromises. The train to get to Paris is divided in two trains so if you get on the wrong part, you are out of luck. Unfortunately we did not know this and ended up standing for the entire three-hour train ride in the café car up to Paris. Upon our arrival we took a metro to our hostel to find that it was the wrong one, we had made a cancellation and reserved another but forgot which one was which. Four metros and two ghettos later we get into our hostel (around 9:30 PM). Our hostel was nice, but once again we found ourselves compromising: we had a clean, nice, hostel with three beds and light fixtures…but only one light bulb. We were only there for one night, so it turned out to be fine. At this point we needed to get some sleep to wake up at o’dark thirty to make it to our next leg of the trip. After taking the metro to a bus to the airport, we got on the plane on time and had a nice little one-hour flight into Barcelona. When we arrived there it felt like heaven. The sky was blue and the sun was shining (we even took off our sweatshirts!). We were all pretty tired and wanted to get to our hostel, so we found the bus to get to our place. Unfortunately, we had to talk to a woman with, “half a brain and robotic arms” while we waited the next hour for the bus (she eventually got off at the ‘asylum’ stop). After the bus and a quick metro ride, we got to our hostel called HelloBCN. It was really nice in that hostel, its facilities were all geared towards traveling college students so there was a ping pong table, a bar, computers, a kitchen, and all of the rooms were kind of set up like dorms (we were in a six-person room and since Emily was staying with her brother, it was Sandy, Lea, Me, and two British boys, James and Alex). After four glorious days in Barcelona we left (again at o’dark thirty) to take the metro to the bus to the airport to Malaga. After being in a big city with a group that turned out to be around nine people, we were all looking forward to three days in the coastal city of Malaga with just us girlies (Emily, Lea, Sandy, and me). When we got to Malaga we took a bus and then a taxi to our hostel. Our place was like a converted villa, we had a huge room with four separate beds, a communal kitchen, and the compromise: one toilet. The one toilet thing never really turned out to be a huge problem until the last day and a half when the toilet paper would run out by noon and we were never told where the rest was kept. Regardless, Malaga was beautiful and we all wore shorts and dresses. Three days there was not enough for me, but as we neared the end of our trip it was time to taxi our way to the bus station and take an autobus for six hours to Madrid. We were smart travelers this time though and remembered snackies. We got to Madrid and took the metro (which we were pro at by this point) to our hostel. When we got there we were buzzed in by an old man that spoke no English or French, he was the owner of what we assumed was our hostel. After we paid him though, he went around the corner to grab his cardigan and started motioning us to follow him out of the building. We followed him down the street and around the corner where we found the rue St. Catherine of Madrid. We kept walking (all the while eyeing each other to see if we were really still following this man who, at this point, we assumed had a shiv up his sleeve or something and was just playing the frail old man) and he began opening a door to this nice apartment building. We walked up the stairs, up an elevator and he opened a door to a loft apartment with four beds, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a balcony. We couldn’t believe it! It was the best place we had been in yet! Just us four girls staying in this awesome apartment!! We were all so excited until the compromise came: you could have an apartment on one of the swankiest streets in Madrid for 15 euros a night…but the toilet wont work. We knew we couldn’t talk to the guy about it, and we were only there for two nights, so we ended up using the McDonalds (with a marble staircase and chandeliers and wifi) for our restroom. Two days in Madrid was not enough either, but it was finally time to head home. It was raining when we left, dreary and sad, but we knew it wouldn’t be raining in Bordeaux so we grabbed some (much missed) Starbucks and took the metro to the airport. We flew into Toulouse and then took a bus to a train from Toulouse to Bordeaux. Upon arriving in Bordeaux, we all hopped on the tram, soon to split to our respective homes. It was on this very last leg of the journey with these four awesome girls that I realized that I am at home now in Bordeaux. While I don’t have my family, I have a welcoming and warm home, a city that I know and love, and friends in which I never have to compromise.
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