It’s Wednesday morning and I can be found in the cafe around the corner from T’s english lesson. I arrived back from Spain on Monday afternoon and somehow ended up working that evening (I say somehow but, really, I had told my host mom that I could watch T if she needed before we both went on our vacations). Tuesday was a fully normal day for me, waking up and choosing to read over going to the gym before I started working. In the afternoon, I was still exhausted so I made my way to the gym hoping it would wake me up (it did not) and then I ended up meeting a friend for a quick dinner to finish the day off.
Now that you’re all caught up in my affairs after getting back to France, let me talk about how the Spain portion of my trip went. Now, I know I’ve skipped over Svalbard, but rest assured, I will write about it after I get all the shared pictures between my group.
My journey to Spain was, in a word, stressful. On the morning of the 15th, I was eating breakfast and thought it would be smart to check in for my flight second flight I would need to take that day. When I booked going from Svalbard to Spain, it was cheaper for me to book a flight to Oslo and then book a separate flight to Spain. Upon opening the AirFrance app I noticed, for the first time since purchasing the ticket on 13 January, that I had booked my flight for the 20th and not the 15th. Suffice it to say, my morning started with a bang, and I needed to change my flight for more than I would’ve liked to pay. With that money gone, I thought that the rest of my day would be fine but that was not the case. My friends and I headed to the husky cafe to chill for a small amount of time before our flight (I drank a chili dirty chai, it was pretty good) and then made our way to the airport. The airport in Longyearbyen is small (as soon as you go through security, you are at the only gate) but somehow there were delays in the security line, boarding and take-off. As a result we landed in Oslo around 1645 and my next flight’s doors were meant to be closing at 1710. Normally, while 25 minutes isn’t ideal, it wouldn’t be that stressful, but, in this case, I needed to go through passport control and another security screening after disembarking. Lucky for me, I made it to my flight! with a little bit of time to spare! Eventually, at 2345, I arrived in Malaga. It took a while to get into the city and get to the airbnb where I could meet Lisa but I was able to go to bed after 0100.
Lisa and I started our explorations of Malaga after checkout, lugging all our baggage with us. We weren’t motivated to walk much with our bags so we just ate some breakfast before heading towards the beach where we sat for a few hours. Lisa is three months post-op on her ACL so we couldn’t go wild walking around either. After our late lunch (at 1600) we made our way to catch a blablacar to Granada. I think it’s worth noting that my blisters were completely healed at this point (I will praise Swedish blister patches for as long as I live) so I was on cloud 9. Honestly, I thought Spain would be summarized as pain with an s at the front.
Granada was an action packed time. We arrived around 1800 and were able to drop our bags off at our hotel before heading out for tapas. Fun fact, there was a solid portion of my life where I thought tapas were a specific dish and would always google them trying to get clarification on exactly what they were. I had patatas bravas and a hugeeeeee hummus platter in lieu of a real dinner and then we called it a night, ready to get some rest before heading to the Alhambra the following morning. Of course, Lisa and I can’t be together and have everything go smoothly so Friday morning, after arriving at the Alhambra with a bit of time to spare before our entrance time, we learned that the tickets we bought needed to be picked up from the tour office at the bottom of the hill. After journeying down the hill just to go back up, we made it in time for our entrance to the Nasrid Palace. The palace was insane, the craftsmanship of everything was immaculate. It’s so crazy to me when I see such old things preserved so well and just the skill and intricacies previous generations were able to accomplish with less technology. The Alhambra is over 600 years old and still looks amazing.
After the Alhambra we went down the hill (again) and stopped to grab a tostada and drink. Spain really knows the simple pleasure that is tomatoes on bread, which I can get behind. All fueled up, we decided that we would make our way to a view point of the city. The walk to Mirador de San Nicolas was as easy as walking up the second hill of the day could be and the view it provided us made the effort worth it. Sadly, it wasn’t clear enough to see the Sierra Nevada. Not too long after arriving, we had to start making out way back down the hill so we could grab some dinner before taking another blablacar to El Puerto de Santa Maria.
El Puerto was probably the portion of my time in Spain I was looking forward to most. We stayed at Paco’s place and it was my first time seeing him since 2016 so I was so happy to reunite. If you have spent any substantial time with me, I have probably brought up the Alps hiking trip I did while in high school and it was during that time that I met Paco. He was one of the counselors and I absolutely loved getting to know him during those two weeks in the mountains. Our time in El Puerto happened to be at the same time as Carnival in Cadiz. Lisa and I went to Cadiz on Saturday afternoon and met up with her boyfriend who is currently studying in Spain. We arrived around noon and got to watch the crowds grow as time went on. Alberto (Lisa’s boyfriend) ended up having some classmates that came to Cadiz too so we all spent the day talking, dancing, people-watching and drinking. At one part of our day, we were all conversing in the crowd and a random girl heard us speaking english and asked to join our group. It was easy to socialize and meet new people so I had a blast that night, although I wasn’t feeling 100% the next day.
We woke up late the following morning and didn’t end up making our way to Seville until around 1600 (some of the delay was due to struggling to find a way to get to Seville though) which didn’t give us much time to explore before we needed to catch our flights the next morning. After dropping our stuff at our hostel, we quickly walked to the Plaza de España before the sunset. We stayed at the plaza for close to an hour before making our way back to our hostel to go to an organized tapas hour. Lisa and I ended up being in Seville at the same time as two guys we had met our airbnb in Malaga so they met us at tapas and we got to catch up with them too. The night wasn’t super eventful but it was enjoyable and before we knew it, we needed to head back to get some sleep before our 0600 wake up. Get this, somehow it takes over an hour to take the bus to the airport and its 4 Euros per person but you can take a rideshare app and it only takes 15 minutes (at least in 6AM traffic) and costs around 16 Euros. Definitely a splurge I recommend. But alas, now we’ve come full circle and you’re all caught up from my time in Spain to me sitting in French Coffee Shop, less tired but no longer with my tea and muffin I had at the start of this post. Thanks for reading!
Tash the Traveler 