Spain

spain was awesome, although we didnt have enough time and we spent way too much money.  we spent most of the time in valencia.  scott lived with a family there actually from columbia.  he lived maybe 30 minutes walk from the center of town, which was busy most of the time.  people tend to eat late, and generally do everything late.   we spent a lot of time walking actually... but it was still fun.  when i got there on thursday i was extremely tired, having been awake for like 40 hours or something... but scott wanted to go out anyway, so we did.  we went to check out the center of town and some of the plazas there.  bars usually stay open til 2am, and then the discotecas open after that, til like 5am or later sometimes.   we stayed out until like 3 but then i was just way too tired, so we went home and slept.  we woke up at like 10 and then went to the center and checked out some of the shops and stuff.

scott had been dating this slovakian girl there for the last 3 weeks, interestingly.  so we ended up hanging out with her and her friends/relatives quite a lot ( a group of like 7 or 8 slovaks living in a single flat with one bathroom!  they're crazy but fun. ).  scott tends to leave stuff everywhere, and he left a cd that he bought from a shop earlier in the day at a cafe, and so we spent much of the late afternoon on friday looking for that....  then we went out again in the evening with the slovakians again.  they spoke good english and really good spanish, so we got a long pretty well.

one of the central squares that most of the cafes are around and that is sort of the center of the night life was really cool.  people go there to skateboard and roller blade and blow fire, and juggle, and sing etc.. late into the night.  so we'd sit for hours outside a cafe and just watch people and talk, which was really nice.  

i think on saturday lucia, scott's girl, went to london, so we didnt see her any more, but all the rest of the slovakians were staying in madrid and working for another month or so.  anyway, saturday afternoon we went to the beach and sat under a big umbrella for like 6 hours.  so i didn't get sunburned or really even tanned at all, which was good.  the sun says up really late there, so we left the beach at like 8pm still before sunset.  then we went out agaaiin.

our plan was go to church on sunday, and then catch a train at 2:20 to madrid, where we would stay until tuesday when we were leaving.  

so we got up at like 9, packed up, and went to the catholic cathedral down in the center (scott had been going there for his time there) for mass at like 11.  the service was in spanish, so i didn't catch any of it, but it was fairly short and seemed quite traditionally catholic.  then we went to the train station at like 12:30 i guess.  thennn we misread the sign that had train times, and saw MADRID 14:53 blinking, and both assumed that it meant our train was delayed until then.  so we went off to sit in a cafe for a while since the train station was like 7000 kelvin (as were most indoor places).  and then at like 2:15 we decided to walk back to the station to be in good time for our train.  well as we walked into the station, we saw one of the trains with a sign labeled MADRID 14:20 blinking.  and so we were like CRAP and ran up and then the train started pulling away and the guy standing there was like "bye bye".  arg so we missed our train on sunday.  that was the last train of the day.  sooo we could either take a bus at 1am, or take a train the next day at like 11:25.  fortunately we were able to transfer our tickets to the next day for only 8 euros, so we did that.  annd then we didnt want to go back to where we were staying because it cost 20 euros a night, and we were already going to have to pay for the hotel we'd arranged in madrid (which was expensive because all the cheaper places were booked up), so we called up the slovakians and they had some space on their couch for us to stay, so we spent another night in valencia. 

then the next day we made our train to madrid, and got in around 3pm i guess, and got to our hotel fine.  my friend daniela who lived in spain for like 6 months was nice enough to email a huge list of stuff that must be done in madrid, so we tried to knock out a lot of it, but unfortunately we weren't very good at navigating, although we did manage to eat at this really good calimari sandwich place in one of the plazas.  madrid was more touristy than valencia, and we couldn't figure out where everyone went after like 1am.  daniela had told us about this one club that apparently has 7 floors with different music on each floor, but we couldn't find it despite walking around for like 3 hours.

anyway, then the next day we woke up at 9 and went to the airport where we parted ways to head home.  the rest of the trip was very uneventful, and i got back here fine.