Part 4- Alicante, Spain

The beautiful beach in Alicante

"Los Plazo de Torros" Bull fighting ring!!

Myself sporting the beard and pony-tail

The stunningly beautiful castle

Random right? Yesterday I was in Munich. Well I found a good deal for a flight to Spain, and I have always wanted to go there! I figured it would be a good chance to not only test out my Spanish skills (or lack there of) and adsorb some different culture (and some sun). When I got off the plane it was a wonderful surprise... it was warm!! I immediately peeled off my many layers and changed into shorts, it was a wonderful feeling. The first day was around 27 C (81 F), and I was loving the sun. I headed off to my hostel, dumped my stuff off and headed up to the fortress. My hostel is a few kilometers from the center of town so it was a nice walk. I headed up the mountain, taking my time, and enjoying the view. The city was very beautiful, but it had a "dirty" sense to it. Its hard to explain, because the city was really beautiful, but there was a lot of grafitti, very dusty, sometimes garbage just laying around. I still loved it, and it was great to speak Spanish again. I finally got up and simply enjoyed the beautiful view, and took my time exploring the palace. By the time I got down it was around 8 and I headed out to find a restaurant. I found a really nice Spanish place along the waterfront and had a nice relaxing meal before heading back to the hostel. I met my roommate, he was a very spanish looking man named Alberto. He decided that he would smoke in the room all day... it was pretty smokey when I got back, so I opened all the windows and passed out. The next morning I got up early, checked out, and then headed out into the city. I decided to just take it slow and easy. I spent the morning being a tourist, going to museums, into churches, traveling to other sites in the area, it was wonderful. I would frequently just sit on a bench, soak up the sun, and people watch. I was extremely relaxed. After a quick lunch I headed to the beach. It was wonderful. I spent about 3 hours relaxing, reading, swimming. (all the while carefully guarding and watching my stuff) Absolutely perfect. It was 28 (85) on that day, and I just soaked it up. I also quickly found out that barley anyone spoke English. So, my Spanish was really put to the test. It was pretty difficult at times to understand, considering the dialect was different and they talk EXTREMELY fast in Spain, but when I spoke to them, almost everything was understood, and reading Spanish was a piece of cake. The Spanish make me laugh, they have workout equipment on the beach... that's right, there was actually and area with pullup bars, crude Nautilus machines, and other workout stuff, right on the sand. How cool would it be to have a nice morning workout on the beach while the sun was rising, then head into the water for a dip. Crazy cool. I also really wanted to go to the bull fighting ring, and did. I tried my best to get into the actual ring, but it was closed and there was no way that I could see. But I headed into the Bull fighting museum, which was pretty interesting. They had their local bull fighting heroes, different mementos and pictures, and even a few of the bull's heads on the wall. The rest of the day I spent walking around the city, seeing different sights, taking pictures, going on the wharf. I happened to stumble into a mall and decided to check it out, it had a movie theater and I decided to check time. Inglorious Basterds... staring now. I bought my ticket and enjoyed this great movie, except that it was in Spanish and German... not a lick of English. I would say I understood 85% of the lines, but it also helped that I had seen it before. I then took the last bus to the airport and prepared for sleep. This night I had to sleep at the airport because my plane left at 6:30 and the earliest check out time for the hostel was 7. So I found a nice bench, snuggled up, and spent the next 6 hours falling in and out of sleep. It was miserable. But finally 6:30 came and I boarded the plane to head back to Memmingen, Germany.