Meggie Goes to Spain: Quickie

Q uick trip to Alicante this weekend. It was another holiday in Madrid and Matt's señora wanted to bring us to her sisters apartment on the shore. We had an excursión for our medio ambiente class on Friday, so we were not able to leave until Saturday morning. It worked out for the better because we were able to party with my twins again. Ana had gone to Galicia for a friend's wedding and was gone for the weekend. Once Julian heard of this, he sat at the dinner table rubbing his hands together "¡fiesta!"

T he excursión was fun but it was all things that we had already seen. We went to tour the old part of Madrid and learned some interesting facts. Then Carlos and Augustin (our professors) had a surprise for us- they took us to the cultural arts center in Madrid and had the security guard bring us all the way to the top. We had a full view of the city...little scary so high up, but fun.

A fter we relaxed for a bit and then went for dinner. When we came back to the house there were a good 20 people in the living room and kitchen. Not even 22.00 and the party was at full speed. We discussed things like culture and the use of the word 'cagar' and practiced our Spanish. We called it an early night as we were leaving at 7.30 the next morning for Alicante.
We all packed into Emi's (Mauri's sister) little car and sped across to the coast. We arrived around 11.00 and got a quick tour of the apartment and had some breakfast. We all changed into our bathingsuits and headed straight to the beach. While we could see the water from the apartment, we had to drive about 15 minutes to the beach that Emi liked. According to her, the beach by her "no es sano." The beach we wound up going to was "salvaje." The waves were huge, the current strong and there were little dust balls of seaweed rolling around the sand. It was very windy and quite chilly. We tomar el sol-ed a bit and decided to go for a walk to warm up. Matt found a star fish "estrella de mar" on our little excursión.

T he rest of the group started getting hungry again so we headed back to the apartment for a huge lunch of paella and salad. We all relaxed for a bit and went to another beach. This one was even colder and I got wrapped up in a towel while I siesta-ed. We returned to the apartment once again and had a small bite for dinner and called it a night. We were supposed to meet up with Steph, but we were just too exhausted we decided to take it easy. We watched The Princess Bride in Spanish and turned in early.

T he next morning we got up, had a light breakfast and headed straight to the beach. Everything was crowded since it was a holiday. We went to another natural beach. The weather was much better and we actually went swimming. The waves were really strong, but the water was shallow. I actually concluded how Jesus walked on water- we were swimming over 100 ft out and there was only about a foot of water! Tricky, tricky! I read a lot of my book and took in some sun while Matt played paddle ball with Emi's novio, Bonnie.
We headed back to the apartment and Matt and I made our Mother's Day calls while we waited for lunch to be ready. After we ate we checked out Emi's pool (sadly it was not going to be open until the next day). We walked around and longingly stared at the crystal blue water, wanting to jump in...until we got kicked out. We all showered and headed into town. We got a speed tour of the city by foot and Emi dropped us off at the train station.

We got back to Madrid a little before midnight. Monday started our last week of classes.

View from Emi's Apartment