The Last Alicante Weeks

May 3rd, 2013

It's just about time for me to say goodbye to Alicante.  My parents arrive on the 5th, and then it's time to spend the rest of my time abroad backpacking until I come home on June 9th.

So what have I been up to the past two weeks?  Honestly, not too much.  Until a few days ago, the weather had been extremely gloomy.  It even hailed.  I thought this was Spain!?  It had been absolutely pouring for nearly a week straight, with wind to match, making it near impossible to do a whole lot past catching up on TV series and movies.

Goodbye's are strange.  There are people I've spent the last four months with that, all of a sudden, will never be a part of my day to day life again.  There are people that I've hung out with the first half of my stay that I've already have fallen out of touch with.  There are people I've just met within the last month that I lament why I hadn't meet those people sooner.  The daily commutes down the explanada, waking up to the view of the Mediterranean, the routine; it's like saying goodbye to a different life.  And it's surreal.

For memory purposes, I got three t-shirts from the three things that defined my time in Alicante:

1. RocAlacant.  Despite a very prominent language barrier, the community at this rock gym took me in from day one.  They have driven my sorry butt from crag to crag, allowed me to climb virtually for free, and are the sole reason why I have even been able to make it to so many beautiful areas in Costa Blanca.  
2. Barbaros Ultimate Frisbee.  Who'da thought that I would come to Spain to discover a love for a sport outside of climbing?  A sport that involves a ton of running at that!  I now crave for every next opportunity to play ultimate.  Being a part of this team has been an absolute pleasure, and I will take back the fondest memories of the many Wednesday and Saturdays spend playing such an amazing sport with such a wonderful group of people.
3. The University of Alicante.  Of course I'm going to buy a t-shirt from my university.  Especially when it says UA, the same name as our rival school in Arizona.  Oh, the hilarity!

I have had some of the most eventful days and some of the craziest nights here in Alicante.  The thought of not returning here for years, if ever, is incomprehensible.  

And yet, it's almost concerning how ready I am to leave this place.


The best way I can begin to describe it is comparing the feeling to when one is choosing a college.  Generally, one needs to visit the campuses in person, take a tour, and assess whether or not they can see themselves attending that school.  It's not a decision based on the credentials or the programs.  It's a decision solely based on the feeling that you belong there.  I do not belong in Alicante.  I do not belong in Spain.  Don't get me wrong, it has been a wonderful and amazing experience here that has taught me more than I could have ever expected.  But I'm ready to be done here.

I miss my Arizona life.  There, I said it.  People are all, "You're tired of it already?  Why do you want to go home?  I never want to go back to my life in the States!"  Sure, I get it.  The truth of it is, this Spanish party culture and homestay business just isn't my thing.  I miss drinking to enjoy conversation and company (and maybe climb onto the roof), not to get wasted.  I miss cooking how I want to eat.  I miss my freedom of local travel outside the limits of buses and metros.  I miss my AZ people, I miss my language.  And surprisingly, I miss working and feeling productive.  Being abroad has definitely shed light to the fact that I have a pretty damn good life back home.  While it may not be located in an exotic or awe-inspiring part of the world like Spain or Europe, it has just about everything that I need to be happy.  I guess that's what makes it home.

With inspiration from an LOTR quote, the time of Alicante is over, and the time of international European "go-wherever-the-wind-takes-me" travel is about to begin.  Because there has been nothing of interest to take pictures of these past two weeks (that or I just don't carry my camera around with me every waking second), Here are some of the Alicante highlights over the last four months of my life:

Pictures:

My host mom Puri.  Cannot even begin to thank her for everything she's done for me.

That first day at the Castillo

Crazy light shows

The morning bus commutes

Best classmates ever, even if I ditched you guys

Carnaval

Oh the places I've climbed

Impromptu group day trips

These two Illinois ladies

The southerner's that got me to start going out

Dat beach

School field trips to guitar and chocolate factories

(Most of) The ALI group

That first climbing trip

Frisbee

Madrid

April 18th, 2013

Courtrooms.  Trials.  Testimonies.  In Spanish.

That's something I wasn't expecting to do during my study abroad.

Because the real court date for the robbery/assault case wont be for another few years, I was required make a date with the court systems here to do my part of the testimony against my attacker.  It's been almost two months since the accident.  However that doesn't make it any less awkward having to see him in person.  Especially when he denies claims of assault against me.  Seeing as he will have six other cases against him, I'm sure his false claims won't really have any effect.

But phew, I'm glad that I can officially put this all behind me!

And, within 48 hours of returning to Alicante from the Balearic Islands, I'm off to Madrid for the long weekend.


April 22, 2013

People generally ask, "Which city do you like more, Barcelona or Madrid?"  Before I got here, I thought this was a perfectly appropriate question.  One that seemed pretty straight forward, if anything.  However, I now realize that it is impossible to compare the two.  They are practically polar opposites.

Madrid, unlike Barcelona, is much more in touch with its Spanish roots.  The city is teeming with classic Spanish architecture and monuments.  They seem to be particularly fond of monuments of military leaders on horses.  The city seems to go on forever (and it does), but at the same time is surprisingly walkable.  

I'm feeling a list:

Things I loved about Madrid:

1.  You can see most of the important sites and museums in one day walking
2.  They have THE BEST park in the world.  I could live there.
3.  The metro system is ridiculously organized and timely.  I never waited more than five minutes for a metro.
4.  The life of this city is incredible.  The streets are constantly flooded with people, and there is always something going on somewhere, whether it is salsa dancing during the week or inline skating at the park.
5.  Outdoor rocodromos in the city.  Open at all hours.  How neat is that?
6.  You can take day-trips to other neat places like Toledo and Segovia fairly easily for relatively cheap.
7.  Churros and chocolate.

Things that weren't so great about Madrid:

1.  Fucking Rastro resulted in the pickpocketing of the iPhone that I literally just got back.  I know that's completely my fault, but still...
2.  Because the city goes on forever, it's impossible to leave the city and see the mountains, lakes, or anything outdoorsy without a car.
3.  Finding a general grocery store is pretty difficult.
4.  Madrid likes to start fiesta-ing even later than the rest of Spain.  You don't even leave to go out until 1:30am.  My body can't handle that.
5.  It can be expensive in Madrid.

There's of course more, but that would be starting to get into the nitty-gritty.

For anyone looking to go to Madrid, they offer a very informative, entertaining, and free walking tour offered every day.  It covered about half of the main sites in the central Madrid area, and our tour guide was straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode.  Complete with a tweed jacket and psychedelic shades, his dialogue was littered with "groovy" and "far out" slang.

Continuing with lists, this was also my first experience traveling alone:

Awesome things about traveling alone:

1.  Get to do what I want, when I want, without having to compromise or consult with anyone else.
2.  More inclined to meet new people, which leads to getting to know some really cool people from all walks of life.  Not to mention expanding that traveling network :)
3.  It is really relaxing to just wander through the streets of a beautiful city in silent admiration.

The other side of traveling alone:

1.  Lonely.
2.  It can get costly in terms of food.  It's never easy buying for one.
3.  Safety and overall comfort level is a little uprooted.

Despite there being con's to my pro's, the trip was undoubtedly fabulous.  I met some really interesting people, including an Australian who was living in South America for 15 months and an Italian dude that gave a very impressive performance to all the people in our hostel during a group dinner.  I got to experience yet another Spanish police station.  Believe it or not, I saw MORE Spanish cathedrals :P  I got to do a little outdoor climbing, both on real rock and at a really spiffy city rocodromo.  Perhaps one of the most impressive parts of my 5 day stay was that I managed to keep spending to under 30 euro.  In Madrid, that's saying something.

Would I go back?  Yes.  Would I go back from more than a day?  Hmmm depends.

Madrid marked the beginning:  I am officially homesick.  I saw a picture of Kingman, AZ in the Reina Sofia museum, and I have never had such a weird sensation come over me.  Just looking at the picture I was immediately longing to come home.  I don't even live in Kingman; it's not even close to Phoenix.  Yet, I guess my subconscious believes it's close enough.


It took 4 months to kick in, but there's no denying it now.

Pictures:

I don't get art

Learning good stuff at the Reina Sofia

Heiroglyphics (spell check was needed)

At night, the park turns into a roller rink

And a gym

Outdoor Rocodromos

Parque del Retiro

Parque del Retiro

I love everything about this park

The Crystal Palace at the park

Inside the Crystal Palace

These little guys were in the train station

Gardens at the park

Palacio Real

One of the major streets

One of many monuments.  This one is to Cervantes.

The geographical center of Spain

My reaction to getting pickpocketed

Toledo

Cathedral at Toledo

From the edge of Toledo

From the other edge of Toledo

My first experience with authentic Roman anything

Just leave me in the Retiro

Spring Break, Spanish Style

April 4th, 2013

Note to self: always be prepared for anything and everything to fall through.

These 20 days off from school were supposed to be filled with outdoor adventures through Croatia, moving up through Slovenia, breaking way through Austria, and capping off with some Switzerland.  Flights booked, trains bought, hostels scouted, the works.  But I guess its as they say: you can plan all you want, but something will go wrong.  Amidst the sudden cancelation of my trip, I was left with 2 days to salvage my vacation; too late to book flights with other students here, too dangerous to travel alone, and no one staying in Alicante.  Not to mention suffering the blows of Europe's no refund policies. They'd better thank me for stimulating the European economy out of the goodness of my heart.

Therefore, this past week has been pretty tame.  So I am combining it with this upcoming week :)

The only interesting thing I did during this first week was take a day trip to Murcia, a city south of Alicante. The trip was planned halfway because a friend and I were bored out of our minds in Alicante and the other half because we desperately needed to correct our sleep schedules which had taken a serious hit from staying up all night a few days prior.  Apparently, we picked a bad week to try to see Murcia as Murcia - everything was closed.  Instead we attended one of the largest festivals in Murcia: Bando de las Huertas.  Google tells me that this is a celebration of the development and colonization of Murcia in harnessing the river as an irrigation mechanism to create a flourishing crop-rich community.  How it appears to an outsider is a festival of strange parades with ladies riding on the backs of large maggots, blowing up fireworks in close proximity to spectators, and an excuse for thousands of Spaniards to dress in traditional garb and get wasted in public with no worries of police intervention.


April 10th, 2013

IBIZA

Finally, I escaped the monotonous lonely life in Alicante to enjoy the remainder of the spring break in the Balearic Islands.  The adventure begins!

We arrived in Valencia the night before our flight on the 9th via a CouchSurfing-esque ride share program called BlaBlaCar.  A driver who is going fro, point A to point B markets the extra seats in his car to travelers looking to find a ride to the same or nearby locations.  My friend Will and I managed to snag a ride with a very pleasant family of three for less than half of the price of a train from Alicante to Valencia.  We spent the night at a friend of a friends apartment in Valencia, and were off to Ibiza first thing the next morning.</p>

Ibiza is well-known for their discoteca scene.  It is home to the second largest discoteca in Europe, and is where many big-name house artists make their mark in the music scene.  Every billboard is an advertisement for shows at major clubs like Pacha, Privilege, and Amnesia.  This lively party scene, however, is seasonal.  Most clubs open their doors in late May, and go out with a bang as the end of the summer in September.

We didn't do any of the above, because we came out of season :P

Instead, a friend from Alicante offered for us to stay with him in his one person flat in Ibiza.  Here's the cool thing:  He lives inside a castle.  Literally.  Where most neighborhoods have a gate, he has a moat and a draw bridge.  Pretty neat.  Not only that, but he us our own set of keys to his place to come and go as we please.

The first two days were spent exploring the Eivissa.  I bought myself a cute new skirt at one of the many shops in the touristic part of town and we meandered up, down, across, upsidedown and right side up through the streets.  Without the summer floods of tourists, Ibiza is actually quite tranquil.  The best part for me was the apartment.  Oh how I've missed the ability to just come home, plop on the couch, turn on a movie, and just laze the night away over food and alcohol with friends!  We watched V for Vendetta (in Spanish, very difficult) as well as the WORST movie I've seen in a while: Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.  Yes, it was as bad as the title implies.  Complete with cheesy lines such as, "Emancipate THIS."

My friend did introduce us to a wonderful British comedy series called "The IT Crowd," that I highly recommend to anyone searching for a laugh.


April 13, 2013

Golly, traveling without an itinerary can sure make things interesting!

We tried to find some climbing in the eastern coastal town of San Eulari on Thursday. It didn't work out well, or at all for that matter.

Melissa Gets Lost:  Part 1:  

Despite having a guide, we (I) couldn't seem to find the crag.  In fact, I am so bad at following directions that we somehow ended up at highway rotunda outside of town away from anywhere that we would ask for directions.  We must have looked so lost that an older Dutch couple stopped, asked if we were okay, and offered us a ride back into town.  So I guess I have officially hitch hiked?  After 2 hours of bushwacking and guesstimating where in the world the climbing was, we resorted to boulder-hopping and exploring.  Hey, a day outside is a day outside, and that's good enough for me.

The next day we traveled west to San Antonio.  As residents of Alicante, we never see the sun set over the mar seeing that we are on the east coast.  So equipped with cookies, champagne, and a hammock, we found a cozy little beach north of the more populous San Antonio to enjoy the day until the evening show.  Somebody outfitted the first half of a bowed-over  tree with climbing holds, so that was exciting.  About halfway through the day, the quiet beach was infiltrated by a rather large party of study abroad students from Granada, thoroughly enjoying their first day on the island.  We drummed up some conversation and merged groups for the remainder of our time there.  Good thing too, because every last one of them became too drunk to function by the time the sunset passed and nighttime fell.  We corralled them to a nearby pizzeria, assuring them repeatedly that "No, you guys aren't annoying" and "No, really, it's fine, we are happy to help."  Admittedly, they were annoying when belligerent.  But overall they were a very lovely group of people that added a nice little twist to the end of a relaxed beach day.

We ended up missing the last bus to the port that night.  Stranded in a town on the other side of the island with our return flight to Valencia in less than 10 hours.  So what are the perks of traveling with someone who is nearly fluent in Spanish?  They can ask the other two people who missed the bus to share a taxi with us.  What luck!  Our next option was to camp overnight somewhere and hope to make our flight the next morning.

VALENCIA

12 hours in Valencia.  After camping out in McDonalds for some free WiFi for about an hour, we hit the city.  We couldn't have asked for a better day:  cloudless skies and wonderful temps.  Well, wonderful temps after we changed into shorts.  Valencia is a truly beautiful city.  Amidst the hustle and bustle of Las Fallas, one cannot really appreciate the stunning monuments, intricate architecture, and the energy of a city on a spectacular spring day.  We even struck up some luck; two tickets to the new science and oceanography museums given to us from a couple in passing (a 60 euro value, ours free!).  Will and I parted ways, him back to Alicante, and me on my way to Mallorca. 

MALLORCA

Melissa Gets Lost:  Part 2:

Because I was alone, I had no one to bounce my concerns and questions off of in trying to make it to my host's apartment in Mallorca.  I had explicit directions:  Get on this bus line, get off at this stop, call me when you get there.  Either I can't read, or the bus did not solicit my stop on the overhead board.  Either way, I ended up riding the bus until I got kicked off the bus in the middle of nowhere, Palma de Mallorca.  I had to wait for another bus coming the other direction at 11pm at night where the only trace of civilization was the lone lightpost over my head. 

Overall it was about an 1 1/2 hour detour.  But my host and the other girl staying with us from Barcelona were patient with me.  After a 1 hour trip to OpenCor supermarkets at nearly 2 in the morning, we went to sleep with one thing on our minds:  Deep water soloing.

April 15, 2013

If there is one place I've visited thusfar that I would return to in a heartbeat, it would be Mallorca.   I truly cheated myself in only allotting myself one full day.  Palma alone is gorgeous; and much larger than I ever expected it to be.  It (along with every other city I've been to generally) dwarfs Alicante.  I can see where it can become very touristic.  Apparently it is a hot spot for English and German retirees, and it shows.  It reminded me a lot of Barcelona in terms of walking the streets and alleyways.  But once you get out of the city, that's when it gets really breathtaking.  Everything is so green!  And the coasts.  Wow. 

We took a bus that next morning to Portocolum, a coastal town clear on the other side of the island.  We had a general idea of where to find some deep water soloing, but...

Melissa Gets Lost:  Part 3:

We definitely reached an area that was climbable at first, but as two newbie deep water soloers, we  weren't about to just jump in and ignore the inherent dangers that come with the sport.  Therefore, we spent the first part of the day frantically searching the web for any sort of Mallorca DWS guide to find where established routes were.  That, and praying that we would come across some climbers.  I managed to scrounge up a PDF miniguide of the areas in Mallorca, and we discovered we were about two "cala's" north from an area.  We ended up traversing the coastline, losing the trail a good twenty times and having to ask for directions a couple times before finally arriving on the sandy beach of Cala Sa Nau.

Cala Sa Nau was incredible.  The water was crystalline surrounded by a cove of beautiful rock.  Amongst the many beach-goers, we spotted one group that had climbing shoes and chalk by their bags.  Finally!  We were adopted into their group and spent the remainder of the day traversing, projecting, and laying out with our new Spanish friends from the UK.  Turns out they were there just for the weekend to escape from the frigid climate of Cambridge.  They even gave us a ride back to Palma!  Making friends in all locations, it's just what we do.

Deep water soloing is a trip!  Especially when the water is as cold as it was!  I can only imagine that during the summer these locations are phenomenal.  I am already looking at when my return trip will be, and look to go to Cala Barques and Porto Colum :3

After taking a short tour to the immense cathedral located in Palma the next day, I began my seven hour return trip home.  As much as I love traveling, I am very excited to come home to a bed, a computer, and meals that don't consist of only bocadillos and hummus.

However, this won't stop me from going to Madrid on Thursday for five days :)  Viajandoooooo!

Pictures:

Ibiza from the port (Cathedral on top)

Our front gate

Perfect beach setup

Sunset in San Antonio

Changing pants in public

Gulliver playground!

We are winners with cool helmets

Tortilla, wine, friends, and The IT Crowd

Camping out in McDonalds

Valencia is pretty neat

Aquarium tunnel!

Look at those cliffs!

Deep Water Soloing!

Watching some girls faceplant in water bubbles

Valencia has some really cool structures

Cala Sa Nau

What?  Just hanging in Mallorca.

New friends!  See you in Cambridge

Doner Kebab pizza.  Oh my god.

HUGE Cathedral in Mallorca

Insane botellon-ing in Murcia

You can't go to any Spanish city without a picture of the Cathedral (Murcia)

Still can't figure out how this works