I arrived back to Granada from yet another trip this past week. I know it seems like I don't do anything but travel, haha. But no worries I am in school and I have been keeping up with my work even though I still don't really know what is going on in my university classes. One thing I do know is that the lectures could not be more boring so that being said I find it really easy to pay attention, haha.
Where to begin. The Sevilla airport. Back a few months ago when my friend Sarah and I were planning this trip we were looking at flight to Valencia and trying to avoid a long bus ride. I had the bright I idea to fly out of Sevilla and just sleep in the airport, so when I saw really cheap tickets, I bought them. This was stupid. Number one being that we had to take a bus from Granada to Sevilla, which is about three hours away. We could have just taken an over night bus to Valencia and avoided changes in modes of transportation. So we were stuck with this. The number two reason why this was poorly planned was that the airport closes. I guess with all of the success and fun I have had with my airport sleeping, I did not think to check to see if it it would close. Luckily the weather was tolerable, there were some other people in the same boat as us, and we found a nice comfortable cardboard box to sleep on.
After a long night with little sleep we made it to Valencia to find our couchsurfing host. Couchsurfing.com is a website for people who travel and want to find people to stay with for free. We thought that it would be interesting to test out so we found Ignacio (Nacho) of Valencia and went for it. He was working in his tool shop so we went there to meet him, drop off our things, and check out if he was a creep. After meeting him we felt comfortable so we left our things and explored a bit. He wanted to eat lunch with us so we came back to his shop, met his friend Rodrigo from Brazil, and went back to his place to eat. His apartment was really nice, big, and had a rooftop patio so we were quite happy with this arrangement. He had to work after lunch so Rodrigo went around town with Sarah and I. I could tell he was cool so I invited him to continue travels with us since he was on break from school as well. He said he had a friend that lived in Benidorm which is also on the coast and that we could possibly stay with him, score. More to come on this...
So we passed the next day in Valencia checking out the festivities and Las Fallas (pictured above). There are more than 700 throughout the city and they all have different themes. They are all made of paper mache so they can burn the shit out of them at the end of the festival. Apparently the really big ones take all year to design and build, which is crazy since they destroy them. Sadly we did not get to see hundreds of hours of work and euros go up in flames because we were there for the start of the festival, but I am sure it's fun.
Sarah and I in Valencia
All seemed to be going well with our buddy Nacho. We decided to make some food and drink some beer at his place before going out to watch the fireworks. Then things started to get a little silly. My friend Sarah was having one of those never ending bad luck moments. I can attest that these are not fun but really not controlable. She spilled her drink, then spilled some beer, and then when she was putting the seasoning on some toast with tomato the top came off and all of it fell out. I, of course found this hiliarious just because her luck was so bad. Nacho did not think it was funny and rather than salvage the spice he could and save some of the food, he threw it all away. He left the kitchen and Sarah, Rodrigo, and I gave each other frightened looks ans started laughing. After some time all was well again and we were enjoying our drinks when Nacho decided it was time to talk about politics and about everyone's favorite president. This is never a fun discussion for me, espcially in another language. He finally stopped only to continue again when we were out at a bar later. After the bar back at the house all seemed to be well again. Everyone went to bed I stayed up with Rodrigo to figure out our plans for the next day and listen to him sing the alphabet in English which was priceless because took him about 15 minutes since he was intoxicated. So the morning rolls around and Sarah and I are getting ready to go. Nacho asks what we are going to do and I say that we are going to the beach with Rodrigo. Well he though that we were staying in Valencia to go to the beach and upon realizing that we were leaving and going some where else he seemed angry. He drove us to Rodrigo's and we had a really awkwardly silent car ride and angry goodbyes, well from his end. He was sooo pissed at us but we had no idea why. We had done anything disrespectful. After talking with Rodrigo we decided he was jealous that we did not invite him to go and that we liked his friend a lot more than him, haha. Really though, overall it was a good experience and FREE. Valencia is a cool city, it's really different than Granada. There is a lot of modern archeture and some really great parks which is probably one thing I wish Granada had more of.
Rodrigo, Me, Nacho, and Sarah
Nacho seems to be happy here, less than 8 hours later, not so much.
From Valencia we went to Benidorm and stayed with Adriano, Rodrigo's friend from Brazil for two nights. It was really relaxing and we cooked which was a lot of fun. I realized how much I missed cooking this past week. It's been so long that I have been able to decide what I want to cook and eat. From Benidorm we went to Albacete to stay with some of Adriano's friends. We really did not do much anything there as well besides laze around and eat. The only sights I saw where the two clubs I went to and the hamburger place outside one of the club's we ate our 7 in the morning snack at. We slept for about a half hour and then got up to catch our bus to Cartegena for couchsurfing experience part two.
Benidorm
Sarah and I with our Brazilian amigos Adriano and Rodrigo
We were more or less dead and disgusting from lack of showering due to slothness. We went to our new buddy's apartment, Pako, to meet him, drop off our things, and go to the beach to sleep. We had intended to catch a bus back to the center at 6 pm (it was on the schedule we got) but one did not come for over 2 hours so that was really cool. Our friend Pako was working and we ate some fantastic taps as his place for half the price and finally went to bed (after night number 2 with out sleep). The next day it was raining all day so we walked around for a bit before we decided to go back to Pako's place and lay around, without him there, haha. He was working and gave us the keys so we could get our things when we needed them. So we watched Godzilla in Spanish before we dropped the keys off at his work and this time at a meal for free. So needless to say this was a really good couchsurfing experience. Pako was great to us. After Cartegena we caught a bus to Sevilla for our 3rd sleepless night on our trip.
Our couchsurfing host in Cartegena, Pako
Sevilla is only about 3 hours from Granada but I somehow had not been there yet and now I am very happy that I have seen it. It is a really pretty city but packed with touristis. It is famous for Semana Santa so this past weekend was especially busy. I stayed the night in Carmona with my friends that I met in Egypt. Not all of them were around, but it was good to see some of them. I really hope they come to Chicago next summer, it will be really funny.
Sarah and I in front of Guadaliquiver River in Sevilla
The Cathedral in Sevilla
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