Altea and Las Fallas

March 15th, 2013

Never want to be that level of drunk.  Ever.  Again.

Honestly, I haven't gone out too much while in Spain.  My grandma-esque style of living leaves me pooped by 11:30pm.  The chilly nighttime weather not only makes it hard to leave the house, but forces one to take a jacket with you that we all know you are going to hate having in the discotecas.

So Friday night.  I attended a the Alicante Symphonic concert with my madre and her friends.  As the holiday Semana Santa is coming up, they played some pieces relating to that as well as some other really great compositions.  Afterwards I made my friend Lyndsey's flat for a little pre-gaming before El Barrio.  Now, we were all under the impression that it would be a relatively early night...

Wrong.

What began as just a shot or two to start the night out turned into a hot-potato game of vodka straight from the bottle and Fanta in the park.  Of course the only natural event to follow that is more shots at La Sede.  And of course, those shots need to be 4x's the strength.  By 2am, I was feeling pretty good, ready to keep going and practically begging Lyndsey that I was fine and didn't need to go home.

I honestly don't remember exactly how I got home.  The my friend helping me get home ended up being too drunk to get home from my apartment, so he had to sleep in the spare bedroom at my place.  That's all fine and dandy, except for trying to explain that to your host mom while completely hammered.  It made for one awkward conversation the next day.  Sorry madre...


March 17th, 2013

One of my favorite things about being in Spain is that not only are the big name destinations like Barcelona, Granada, Madrid, etc awesome to have within just a few hours, but the lesser known places in between can be just as impresionante!

Three of us ventured to Altea for the day with absolutely no plan past arriving there at about 10am.  Altea is a small traditional Spanish town, with narrow winding roads and quaint little restaurants and cafes at every turn.  There is a hill-top church (that we took the wrong way to) that is very pretty and offers a wonderful overlook of Costa Blanca and the neighboring town of Albir.

We basically hiked to the top of the hill-top, pointed out to a mountain range along the coast, and said "Let's go there."  And so we did, and that area turned out to be the Serra Gelada National Park.  Ben and Will enjoyed their bromance as they spoke in heavy southern drawls all day,  I got many lovely pictures of the couple as well.  Unnecessary trail blazing, butt-sliding, exploring caves both large and small, napping, and even a little bouldering over what may be a great location for some deep water soloing are just part of the great day that we enjoyed in Altea.  Not to mention, it was absolutely cloudless skies and gorgeous.


March 19th, 2013

I think I mentioned this in an earlier post regarding Carnaval:  when the Spanish celebrate, they go hard.  I believe I also noted about the Spanish lack of fire safety regulations.  This has definitely been confirmed by the Valencian holiday, Las Fallas.

What is Las Fallas?  Well, it is a HUGE festival in Valencia in which the different neighborhoods construct these structures, called fallas, and set them on fire.  I'm not too aware of the history behind it, but hey, shit's on fire yo.  The types of fallas ranged from large, small, creative, vulgar, colorful, creepy, you name it.   Beginning at 10pm, they begin setting the fallas ablaze in a swirling fiery mass of destruction, all leading up to the biggest falla stationed in front of the Valenia Ayuntamiento.  

During my 16 hours in Valencia, I experienced my first (and last) bullfight.  I honestly did not know that they KILLED the bulls.  I thought they just kinda swished around the colorful cape thing and get them all confused.  But no, this was graphic.  They just keep stabbing at it until it legitimately falls over dead.  The crowd roars with cheers when the bull is stabbed, but gasps with concern when the bull gets the horse and rider.  And afterwards they just drag off the dead bull, and bring in a new one.  They do this with about six bulls, but we left after the first.  Some of these Spanish traditions I just don't understand :P

Because of the Fallas, most of the other attractions of Valencia were eclipsed by the immediate festivities.  We bought bunuelos con chocolate, which are essentially pumpkin doughnut churro deliciousness, bartered for some fancy scarves, watched a parade with ridiculous amounts of sparklers and fire hazards, and just got lost in the city.  I even did a good deed, in which I colored in a swastika tagged on a wall so it was no longer visible ^_^  Additionally, got to meet up with the one and only Corey Breier once again, as he was on a school trip for the festivities as well.  Except he got sangria with his group -.-'

The only downer on the day was that my camera died before any of the actually lighting of the fallas, so credit to Hannah and Katie for those pictures :)

The burning of the fallas, big and small, is crazy.  First, they set off boxes of fireworks next to the fallas to signify that it will be burning soon.  Then, they douse the structure in gasoline, stab sticks of dynamite around it, and set off a cord that spits sparks everywhere until it reaches the falla and just destroys it.  Hannah, Katie, and I made the mistake of being too close, and practically had to duck for cover from the spaying flames and falling incinerated debris.  The burning of the largest falla outside the ayuntamiento was beyond anything I've ever seen.  the pre-burning fireworks were ten times the intensity of any 4th of July firework display I've witnessed, and seeing a structure over five-stories tall just come crumbling down in flames is beyond words.

We didn't get home from Valencia until about 5am Wednesday morning.  Now there's nothing wrong with that, except for my 9am class that takes an hour commute.  That was difficult.  Difficult enough that I pushed through that class, and then ditched the second class to sleep on the beach for four hours.  Spanish life, it's beginning to take hold of me :)


Pictures:

Bunuelos and chocolate :D

Lots of people in Valencia

Adam, Eve, and Steve Jobs.  Fallas don't make sense

Altea

Bromance of the ages

From inside the mouth of the cave

DESTROYYYY

Bullfighting

The giant falla in front of the ayuntamiento...

...IN FLAMES

Pre-falla-lighting parade with firecrackers, sparklers, etc.

In the bullfighting arena

Altea at the end of a great day

Orchestra concert

Barcelona

March 7th, 2013

The week has been long and the preparation tough but the day has finally arrived: Barcelona!  Got my ticket, got my bag packed, got (at best) general direction on where to go, and got a camera for documentation!  Sure, the camera hurt the wallet a little bit, but there is a plan:  The camera has a 15-day return policy on it.  In theory, my phone will be ready for pickup before this 15-day return period ends.  Therefore, once my phone and I are joyfully reunited from our involuntary break, I will promptly return the camera for a full refund.  Can't go to Barcelona without a camera, right?


March 8th, 2013

It is hard to choose words that accurately encompass all that Barcelona is.  Every building is a piece of art.  The streets are bustling with life.  There is an energy about this city that just makes me want to smile.  Barcelona is different from anything I have seen before in my life.  From the outside, I probably looked like a child on their first trip to Disneyland. No doubt I felt like that, too.

Thank goodness I didn't have to endure my first Ryanair experience alone.  Purely by chance, a student from a previous class of mine and his girlfriend were booked for the same flight.  I followed them as third wheel through the Ryanair process.  It is for them most part straight forward, but there is one major factor that I would have not figured out if I were by myself:  it is required that a Ryanair employee signs your ticket BEFORE you enter security.  I had no idea this was standard. I no doubt would have been rejected from my flight if I hadn't been with people who knew what they were doing.  Phew!

I arrived at Corey's place near 1am, and promptly fulfilled my CouchSurfing duty and passed out on the couch.  Corey, a previous host from San Diego, wasn't actually home then.  I greeted them in half-asleep stupor upon their 4am return, then zonked out again.

I spent the entire next day getting lost with Liz, Corey's family friend from San Diego who was also staying the weekend in Barcelona.  Conveniently located at the central location of Passeig de Gracia.  For ease of reading, here are the things we saw in the order we saw them:

1. Casa Batllo - En route to Parc Cuitadella, where Corey was meeting his program for a picnic.
2. Arc de Triomf - Still pretty awesome despite the large pink Nike Dome parked in front.
3. Parc Cuitadella - Fountains, museums, awesome architectural visions, and a giant mammoth I tried to climb.
4. Barri Gotic - Gargoyles should still be used in architecture today.
5. Museo de Picasso - I am normally not a big art museum person, but I did appreciate seeing how Picasso evolved as an artist throughout his life.  Very interesting.
6. Barcelona Cathedral - So big!
7. Starbucks - Wifi break.  That cookie was better than life. 
8. Porto Olimpico - Awesome street performers and structures.
9. Colom - Couldn't get a good picture of this one :(
10. La Rambla - And I thought that the Alicante La Rambla was bustling.  This street definitely lives up to the hype.  Also, it has some damn good falafels.
11. Starbucks (again) -  Liz likes coffee.
12. The Women's Day Event - March 8th was a women's day event, promoting equality among genders and resulting in women dressed in purple playing drums and chanting.  We were drawn in by the extremely large crowd surrounding the spectacle.

Later that night, Liz and I were supposed to watch Corey during his Castell practice, or in other words, "people stacking".  This is the Catalan-originated sport in which people create human towers much more impressive than the standard 6-person human pyramid.  Unfortunately, we missed seeing it live. But I took a picture of the wall that had photos of it and we saw some people still practicing the process of climbing onto peoples shoulders.   So that counts for something...

After getting a beer at La Bolsa, similar to the Dow Jones bar, we called it a night.

March 9, 2013

Honestly, before this trip, I wouldn't have been able to tell you if Gaudi was a person, place, food, or an adjective describing someone's bad taste in fashion.  I know a little better now.  At least enough to know his significance in the history and architecture in Barcelona.

Liz and I walked from Corey's to Park Guell, stopping to see Gaudi's La Pedrera along the way and winding through the smaller streets simply for the joy of exploring and enjoying the perfect weather of the weekend.  We only needed to ask for directions once, which was pretty good in our book.  Not only is Park Guell a masterpiece in itself, but it is also one of the highest points in Barcelona, producing a spectacular view of the city.  I was hurting that I couldn't get a panoramic with my non-existent phone.  It's okay, just got to hold out until my return trip in May.  Also, my camera died.

Afterwards, Liz and I parted ways and I went to meet up with the one and only Claire Lamneck!  Both she and Corey had been talking about a tunnel that had been re-purposed as an outdoor climbing area.  The tunnel itself I completely underestimated.  I was expecting a small tunnel outfitted with a few holds and easily doable with Converse on.  Instead, we found that it was fully dressed with holds, bolted routes, and climbers of all levels.  Needless to say, I felt a little noobish.  

Ended up returning to the tunnel with Corey and his Canadian friend about 20 minutes after returning to Plaza Espana with Claire, followed by a spontaneous viewing of the Magic Fountain of Montjuic.  The show was extremely similar to the World of Color show I saw in Disneyland during my 19th birthday, except with John Williams music.  The return home was another mini-adventure, as we were three people to two bikes.  The solution?  Stand on the back of Corey's bike as he whizzes by pedestrians and through crosswalks, and try not to lose balance.  

The rest of the night consisted of conversation about traveling, analyzing personality types, sharing strange dreams, and finally completing the night with two Erasmus apartment parties, one in which the theme was the letter "P".  We ended out last night together right and said our goodbyes before parting ways the following morning.

March 10, 2013

Barcelona bouldering shot down all confidence I had in my climbing since I've arrived in Spain.  Sunday morning I met Claire to go to a climbing area about an hour north of Barcelona.  I didn't send a single thing.  Not even the warm up.  Bah!

As they say, even the worst day outside is better than the best day inside.  I got to work on my Spanish a little more (in which WOW they speak much clearer and slower in Barcelona than in Alicante) and I got to see a little bit of the area outside of the urban forest of Barcelona.  I even saw Montserrat in the distance :)

I am sad to be leaving Barcelona after such a short time, but I look forward to my glorious return with the family, and perhaps another day or so later in May.  The trip has left me with the realizations:

1. I am inspired to legitimately begin a training program for my climbing.
2. I want to continue to pursue learning Spanish past my time abroad, as well as look into learning another language to expand my communication horizons.
3. A new-found hunger for exploration has come over me.  My encounters with people from all walks of life here in Europe has left me feeling as if I have been in a box for the last twenty years.  So many people my age have already had experiences far beyond anything I can comprehend. They have stories that leave me breathless, yearning for the day that I can relay similar stories of my own.  Perhaps this is premature, and I am having the equivalent of a mid-life crisis in my early twenties.

Pictures:

First Gaudi experience

Mammoth of a good time

Totally worth the 2+ euro

Barcelona from up top

Melissa from a top of Barcelona (Courtesy of Liz)

People stacking

Women's Day stuff

Park Guell.  Of course I'm going to climb it.

Bouldering in Barcelona

Surfers with the best host ever

The lovely Claire Lamneck in the bouldering tunnel

Magic John Williams Music Fountains

Pretty neat concept!

Benidorm

February 28th, 2013

Justice is served!

Whilst going out for more gofres con helado (waffles and ice cream) with some ladies, I received a call from the Alicante police.  Unfortunately my Spanish is far from good enough to understand official police jargon over bad mobile connection, so I made a call to my director who informed me that I needed to meet her to go to the police station right away.  As it turns out, they caught my attacker.

I went into the station to identify some clothes of the attacker, as well as confirm the goods that were stole from me.  Looks like I'm getting my iPod and iPhone back after all!  I don't know about the 20 euros though...oh well.  The man had six other counts against him, and two other ladies were brought into the station to identify the evidence laid out on the table.  The man had no criminal record prior, but plead guilty to all charges.  The police gave an estimate of 30 years in jail, but the official trial will not be for about a year.

I get credit for the assist on this one.  The man put in all of his personal information, including photos of himself, onto my phone.  He tried to use my phone, which unbeknownst to him, was red-flagged by the police by that point.  The police were able to localize the phone, and because I had given them a tracking number that every iPhone comes with, it was obvious upon confrontation that the phone was my stolen property.  In short, my phone was the reason the guy was caught!

The only not-so-great news is that I couldn't take my phone and iPod back right there and then.  It is evidence at the moment, so I need to wait around two weeks before I can pick my stuff up from the court.

Camera-less-ness continues...


March 3, 2013

Friday night, I made a glorious return to El Barrio.  And by glorious, I merely mean I actually made it out to El Barrio for the first time since the accident.

It was actually quite nice.  I met up with a group of kids from my program at a more central bar to start before we began meandering through the smaller bars off La Rambla.  I learned that there are MANY different showy-shots in existence, and even got to try a few.  There was one that they lit my alcohol-dipped finger on fire first, one that they light the shot on fire, cap it, and then it acts like a volcano, and even an absinthe shot.  A big thank you to the people who bought me said shots, as my cheap-ass definitely would have hindered me from giving any of these a shot (no pun intended).

Stayed out until 5:30am, a new personal best for me!

The following day was an all-girls trip to Benidorm, a city about an hour or so north of Alicante.  The seven of us stayed in a sweet hostel in the gay district.  Much to our surprise, most of the people and places we encountered in Benidorm were British.  We spent the afternoon in the sand and sun, followed by my first trip to a kebab place for dinner.

Kebabs are everything I dreamed they would be and more.  I dug my own grave with this one, however, because now it will be that much harder to resist purchasing a kebab during my hunger-stricken walks home after school.  And of course, more gofres to top off the dinner ^_^

The rest of the night was the epitome of a stereotypical girl's night in sleepover.  We all crammed onto one bed and just laid there for hours talking (mostly about food).  We tried to get out on the town, but ended up just ordering a pizza to go and crashing at the hostel.  But honestly, I can't imagine a better way to have spend the night.

It's nice to take a weekend and not even worry about speaking Spanish.  But the icing on that cake is returning to school on Monday to see that you received an A in the past month's Spanish class :)  Success in two languages!

Barcelona next week.  Be prepared for adventure!

Girls weekend in Benidorm

Awesome sand art

Benidorm beach during the day

We were so warm

Oh hey!

PIZZA

Sunset in Benidorm