ESPANA!...Day 1

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t written in forever. I have been super busy and have not had access to a computer or internet for a long time. I’m ok with that though…it’s kind of nice being disconnected from the web for awhile.
So..Spain was incredible. I had an awesome time. I had a speed tour of the whole country. I went to Cadiz, Madrid, Barcelona, and Ibiza all in 5 days. I travelled most of the time with a big group…about 15 or so of us. We all got along really well. It was a blast. It was kind of stressful at times because it is hard to please everyone in a group that size. We eventually started breaking up into smaller groups which was just fine. Because Spain was so amazing, I am going to have an entry for almost each day. This would be one extremely long blog if I wrote everything in one…so here is Day 1.
On the first day, we arrived in Cadiz. I woke up with my roommate Drew at 4:30am and went to the top deck and watched as we pulled close to land. It was crazy how excited everyone was to see lights on land again. Not many of us were awake at this point, but Drew and I were too excited to sleep. We stay up on the deck the entire time until we docked. While we were sitting on the deck talking, Desmond Tutu walked by during his morning exercise and gave some of us high fives. That man is so cool.
Cadiz was beautiful. The architecture throughout the town was cool to see. I didn’t get to see much of the town because we had to catch a train that day to Madrid, but what I saw was really nice. We went to some local shops and just looked around for a few hours. Then we spent the rest of our time in Cadiz at the train station. It was quite an ordeal figuring everything out. I had everything I needed, but there were a few people in my group that hadn’t bought tickets or a rail pass before we got there, so we had to get that done. Hardly anyone in Cadiz, or Spain for that matter, speaks English. That made it a bit more difficult, but Luis, who led my group, speaks fluently. His mom is from Puerto Rico, and his dad’s family is from Ecuador. Stephanie had the most problems. She had received her rail pass reservations, but was never sent her rail pass. She didn’t even notice until we got to the station and then she noticed everyone else had a different envelope. She ended up having to buy an individual ticket to Madrid, which was almost the same price that we bought the whole rail pass for.
After we figured out everything with the tickets, we sat around the station and had a glass of wine as we waited for the train. Once we got on, I fell straight asleep and didn’t wake up until we got to Madrid. The trains here are so smooth; I love them. Once we arrived in Madrid, we caught a taxi and went to our hostel. We stayed at Hostel Metropol. It was right off the Sol and Gran Via metro stops right in the middle of a busy section of Madrid. It was a great location. We just had to walk out of the hostel to find tons of restaurants, clubs, bars…you name it. Once we all got situated in the hostel, we all headed out to dinner in one of the main squares. Once we finally sat down and ordered, it was already midnight. All the restaurants were packed. It messed with all of our mental clocks to have it be normal to eat dinner at midnight. Dinner was good though. I had pollo a la plancha con esalada y patatas fritas. I found it weird that they call potatoes patatas here. I am so use to saying papas. I also had my first Spanish sangria at dinner. It was really good! …but no one in Spain will give you water! That’s all I wanted…just nice cold water, and a gallon of it. I was soooo dehydrated from travelling all day. Apparently they don’t serve water like we do in the states at restaurants.
Once we were done with dinner, we headed back to the hostel. We had walked around trying to find a good club or somewhere to go, but everyone just wanted to go back to the hostel for awhile to hang out. When we got there, we all just stayed in the lobby and mingled with the other people staying at the hostel. It was really cool to meet people from all over the world. I met some people from Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and Germany. We all just hung out and talked for about an hour, then I wanted to go out for awhile so Ryan, Elouise, John, the crazy guy from New Zealand, and I went roaming around. We found a really good hole-in-the-wall hookah bar/sangria place. We all split a tower of sangria. It was about 3:30-4:00am by the time we got done and we were all really exhausted, so we headed back to get some sleep before we had to wake up 4 hours later to start exploring Madrid.
Well I am off to bed because I have to head to Marrakech in the morning, but I will be back soon to fill you in on Day 2 of Spain! Take care. Also, shoot me an email at gmnagaki@semesteratsea.net if you want!