Talavera de la Reina

After we dropped the car off in Madrid we took the bus over to Talavera de la Reina, which is where Sarah used to teach English.  It was a quick hour long bus ride, but it seemed like forever because we had just been in a car for 4 hours and and Metro for another 45 minutes.  Three modes of transportation in one day can be exhausting.

Our bus

We pulled into the bus station and my smart roommate booked us at the hotel that was connected to the station so there was very little walking required - I was so happy.  Our hotel was very modern, but in typical European fashion, had no privacy.

Damn twin beds!

You can see right through to the bedroom. 

We walked around a bit and stopped at an Italian restaurant for dinner, which was surprisingly good.  Once we were full of pasta and cream sauces, we decided to walk around the ferias (festival) so I could experience it.  There were rows of tents selling everything you could possibly want and then there were the food carts followed by the carnival rides and live music.  Everyone was trying to play their music louder than the tent next to them so it was this beautiful cacophony of bass and American pop music. 

We took these wine chupitos (shots) that came with a cookie stick in it - not my favorite, but Sarah and Jeff seemed to like them.  My favorite part was the hamster ball 'ride', which is intended for children.  Sarah somehow convinced them that we needed to try them out, so the carnie acquiesced to our request.  It was the best/worst thing I have ever done with my roommate.  It's impossible to stand in those things because they are floating on water, but we tried for 10 whole minutes to stand for longer than a second.  Finally we gave up and went back to exploring the ferias. 

Sarah's former coworker and her husband also met up with us for drinks and tapas.  They were very nice and I had a fun time listening to them all talk in Spanish.  I can understand most everything being said, but I can't speak very well in Spanish.  My three favorite phrases on the trip were "Quiero un cafe con leche" "Donde vives?" (good for conversations with cabbies) and "Ortra cerveza, por favor".  If you learn those three phrases you can get anywhere.

Benidorm

My travel compadres

Oh Benidorm, you sly minx.  From watching all the travel videos and reading websites about you, I thought you would be a nice oceanside retreat.  What I learned is that you are place where Brits go to drop off their dignity and have no intention of ever picking it back up again.  It is like the British version of Vegas but much, much trashier.  Don't get me wrong, it was really fun for 2 nights but 3 nights is way too much.

Just having a rough go at life.

We arrived at 'the strip' to have some drinks with our friends that were there from the UK.  This is a hotspot for bachelor and bachelorette parties (or Stag Do & Hen parties as they call it in the UK).  They don't take these parties lightly, either.  This is no feather boa and lollipop bouquet party like we see in Nebraska.  This was a professionally made shirt, everyone in a costume kind of party.  It was like Halloween every night that we were there, except everyone in a party would be wearing the same thing. 

Hey, why not?

During the day I spent my time at the pool or the Mediterranean, which made me not completely hate the town.

My home away from home for a few days. 

On our last night, I decided to make the best of it and we went down to the beach to watch the sun come up.  We played music from my phone and just talked about everything, it was great.  While we were laying there, Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" came on - if ever there was a perfect moment for that song, this was it.  I ended up being the only one to see the sun come up and I spent it dancing around in the ocean and trying to take as many mental pictures as I could, knowing that this was the last time I would ever see something so beautiful in Benidorm.

This made it all worth it. 

A few other things to mention about the trip to Benidorm: 

1) Moving my bed out to the balcony was the best idea I ever had, minus all the bug bites I fell victim to.   We called it the Seaside Villa. 

2) If someone invites you to see the "Sticky Vicky" show, be warned that it is not a lady named Vicky eating maple syrup. It's much, much worse.  

3) The downside to the ocean was that there were about 3 stretches of stairs you had to take to get back to the hotel.  Spaniards love their stairs.

My Seaside Villa

Only a small portion of the stairs we had to take to get
back to our hotel from the beach. 

Time for a quick nap and a trip back to Madrid. Good thing I stayed up all night to watch the sun come up...

Madrid/Benidorm - Day 2

Well we survived the night, that's always a plus. We awoke and made our way out to find some breakfast.    Our rental wasn't available until 2pm so we had some time to kill before we needed to be back at the airport to pick it up.  Luckily it takes 4 people a really long time to get ready when you are sharing a small hostel.

View from our balcony at the hostel

Let's talk about this hostel, shall we?  Like I had mentioned previously, it was pretty nice as far as hostels are concerned.  Its about the size of a dorm room and had 2 sets of bunk beds and a twin bed in the middle so 5 people could sleep in there if you so choose.  This set up was their definition of a suite.  There was no air conditioning (standard) but luckily there was a breeze coming from the balcony, which is not typical for a hostel to have.  We had to share a bathroom with the entire floor, which had 2 showers, 2 sinks, and 1 toilet for about 7 rooms.  There weren't too many girls on our floor so we lucked out.  One girl from Japan stood next to Sarah in the morning and popped her zits in the mirror over the sink, it was just what I wanted to hear about before we went to breakfast.  You could eat breakfast at the hostel, but we wanted to explore a little more before we left (plus the Syrian boys in the room next to us kept yelling off their balcony in Arabic the night before so I was ok with leaving).


While we were getting ready, I heard some chanting coming from down the street.  We looked outside and there were some protesters coming our way.  They were protesting against the cuts to public education in several Spanish regions, and to defend education as the true path to liberty and justice. A peaceful protest, and as I'm typing this I realize this all happened the night before.  Oh well, too late now - let's just pretend it happened today.

Instead of being in school, these students were protesting. 

So we remember there is a place we had passed the night before that had Doner kebabs.  For those of you who have never had one, its a little piece of heaven on Earth and more commonly referred to as a gyro.  The ones in Spain do not have tzatziki sauce, but instead more of a toum sauce - its delish.  As we wondered down to the street we thought the delicious Doner kebabs were on, we found ourselves going deeper into Chinatown (every major city must have one).  As we were getting ready to turn around and backtrack, and small Spanish grandma came out and rushed us into a small cafe.  She said "This place has very good food and is cheap" in Spanish, so she was either related or was really a big fan of this cafe.  We ended up there and had one of the best breakfasts I had ever had.  The waiter, who I assume was the owner, brought us all coffee and water as we deliberated over what we wanted.  In Spain you typically order plates to share with everyone, but I was feeling particularly selfish and wanted my own.  We ordered a potato & aioli appetizer and then I ordered scrambled eggs with potatoes and chorizo mixed in, both major staples in a Spanish meal.  Everything was amazing and then he brought us each out a croquette, which are little fried balls of ham, beschamel cheese and potatoes. I'm drooling just thinking about them.

Once we were full and happy we made our trek back to the airport to pick up the rental car.  I must say, the Metro in Madrid is one of the cleanest modes of public transportation I have ever been on.  There was graffiti everywhere but I will take that over the dog sized rats that run around in New York. We finally arrived at the airport (mind you, I had to schlep my over sized bag through the streets again - I need to learn the art of packing) and grabbed our rental car.  It was a manual so I got out of having to drive, so I made a comfy home in the back seat full of snacks and trashy magazines.  As we were pulling out, it became apparent that Jeff did not know how to put the car in reverse.  He tried everything and finally resorted to Fred Flintstoning it and trying to push it out with his foot, while still sitting behind the wheel.  When that wasn't working so well, Sarah got out and started pushing the car.  I'm fairly certain the Spaniards thought we were nuts.  We finally figured out that you have to pull UP to reverse instead of push DOWN....which is what we do in America. Ooops.

This is how Americans back out a European car. 

Anyway fast forward a few too many hours and we finally arrived in Benidorm, Spain.  Below are a few pictures of the ride there...

We checked into our hotel and they had 4 individual twin beds for all of us...another staple of Spain.  The plus side was that we had a corner room so the balcony wrapped around both sides and we had some amazing views.

View from the North

View from the East

With views this spectacular, I was confident this was going to be the best part of the trip. Until we got to the bar...

Madrid - Day 1

As most of you know, my roommate Sarah and I recently set out on a week long adventure to Spain.  I have received requests for updates from the trip so I have decided to blog about each day in an effort make my friends/family feel like they were there with me - whether or not that is a good thing still remains unknown.

Day 1

Our day started as expected - last minute errands to Wal-Mart to pick up things we had forgotten and a trip to the bank to exchange our US dollars to the precarious Euro. Once we were sure everything we could possibly need was packed away, we headed to the airport to start our adventure.  We met up with Jeff, Sarah's cousin and faithful travel companion.  After a quick bite at The Hangar we made our way through security and eagerly waited the boarding call.

We flew to Newark on the less than spacious ERJ and were only an hour behind, which is a small miracle when flying into that awful airport.  We met up with Sarah's former roommate, Nicole, who was also joining us on the adventure.

Kailey & Sarah excited for the beer cart!

After a quick layover in Newark we were finally on the plane to Madrid!  Luckily, United has TV screens on every chair with a pretty good selection of movies to watch since you are basically held captive for 8.5 hours.  I watched the final Harry Potter Movie and The Vow, and in between I would take naps for a few hours.  Somehow my nose recognized when food was near so I conveniently woke up in time to snag a dinner, drink, and eventually a breakfast.

Madrid from 30,000 feet

When I woke up, I was in Spain! It was about 10am there and I was rearing to go explore the city.  We grabbed our bags and trekked through the airport to get on the Metro.  A fun fact about Madrid: its not a good place to bring a giant suitcase, especially when there are more stairs than escalators.  After a few line changes on the Metro, we made it to our hostel.  It was pretty nice, as far as hostels are concerned.  There were 5 beds in the small dorm size room, but there was a balcony and it was close to restaurants and the Plaza Mayor so it worked out.

View from the bottom bunk of the hostel.

We freshened up and set out to meet up with our friend Nutty and his wife - yes, that is a nickname but I have never once called him by his real name.  Anyway, they are from the UK and were on holiday in Madrid so we met them at their hotel so we could all grab a bite to eat.  Once thing I learned in Spain is that they love to feed you.  Every time we ordered a beer, they would bring out some tapas (appetizer) for free.  It varied from a plate of olives to a tuna spread on french bread.  It was all delicious except the one the hotel gave out - I think they just gave up on being creative:

Not my favorite tapas, but I still ate it.

The 6 of us ventured over to the Plaza Mayor for more drinks and tapas, which I thought was very pretty.  They had some concert stage set up, but we were not sure what it was for.  They were testing the sound system though by playing a compilation of popular songs as sung by a female lounge singer. My personal favorite was "Like A Virgin" by Madonna....it was much slower and a little sad at the same time.

We went to La Torre del Oro, or the Bullfighting Bar for my English speaking friends. It had pictures from previous bull fights, as well as stuffed heads of slain bulls.  After seeing the graphic pictures, Im fairly certain I would not be able to survive watching one without getting physically ill.

La Torre del Oro

The weather was beautiful so we sat out on the plaza and people watched.  There were a few street performers, but performers is a huge overstatement.  Basically they wanted money for dressing up in costume and sitting there.  The most worthless one I saw was a llama looking guy with a bell on his horns.  Every time someone would walk by he would snap his head and ring the bell in an attempt to get your attention.  That was the one downside of the Plaza was that EVERYONE was fighting for your attention.  The vendors, the street performers, the restaurant owners - it was a bit much.

Please don't touch me, Mr. Llama

Finally the effects of jetlag were setting in and I desperately needed a nap.  We all went back and napped so we would be ready to go for dinner.  The people of Spain typically have their dinner around 9pm, which worked well for us so we could get a nap in and not feel rushed.  We ended up back at the Plaza Mayor for dinner, but realized we were suffering the touristy prices so we went to search for something off the beaten path. Oh, remember that stage setup I had mentioned earlier?  Turns out, there was a full orchestra and opera singers who were performing that night, it was beautiful.

Sarah's former roommate when she lived in Spain, Emily, met us there after she was done teaching and pointed us in the right direction for a non-touristy tapas bar.  We had some potato & aioli concoction which was just amazing.  We also had a bocadillo that was bread, salmon, caramelized onions, and a spread that I cant remember - what I DO remember is that is was amazing.  I finally hit my second wall and had to go to bed - they walked me back to the hostel and then they all continued to explore the city.  I just can't hang with the big kids.

My home away from home the first day in Spain.

Nutty wondering how I'm still functioning. OR questioning our friendship, Im not sure.

Sarah and Vardy enjoying the Plaza Mayor.