This weekend turned out to be my favorite of the semester so far, mostly because we left Alicante with zero expectations, plans, wifi, or boys. Six of us (Lauren, Sami, Shelby, Christine, Christina) took off Friday afternoon for Benidorm, a city northeast of Alicante along the coast. It's a huge vacation destination, mostly for English people, with its long beautiful beaches and nightlife. It's also known for having the tallest buildings in Spain (which is really not saying much at all). We kept calling it "70s Florida" so can imagine that however you want to. When we got there, we wandered around with our backpacks for a few hours, stopping for some awesome sangria at a beachside cafe and stumbling upon a beautiful balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and the entire length of the city and surrounding mountains. With the accordion player, sunset, waves, and the six of us, I'd have to say it was pretty romantic. We still didn't know where we were staying that night, but we could not have cared less. While the rest of us were taking pictures, Sami was chatting with some Spanish vendors that were suggesting hostels, and before we knew it we were following their hand-drawn map until we found ourselves at a sketchy-looking place with beads for doorways that turned out to be the best first hostel experience possible. We stayed in a room meant for four with a big outside balcony with a table. They might as well have given us a five-star hotel room - we were ecstatic. We converted the muggy room into our personal wine bar/hang out spot for the weekend. The next morning we got up and headed to Altea, a cute older Spanish town with all little white buildings stacked on the mountainsides. It was beautiful and practically deserted; the Spanish people don't like to go to their vacation homes in the "dead of winter" at 60 degrees. We hiked through the narrow streets and passageways between houses, finding breathtaking views, churches, and cats walking around every corner we turned. We stopped at a restaurant for some pizza, tapas, and wine before heading back to Benidorm for the night. Altea further proved to me how unique every city in Spain is. It was like it's own little world or something out of a painting; nothing like Alicante and certainly nothing like Benidorm. Sunday morning we left for Calpe, where we knew we wanted to hike but didn't know exactly where or how. From the tram window we could see a huge mountain that was more like a vertical cliff, and we joked that it was the mountain we were climbing. We got to Calpe, hopped on a bus, told the driver we were trying to hike, and were driven directly to the exact mountain we were joking about. With all of our stuff on our backs, we followed the paths around the mountain as they turned from grassy walkways to narrow ledges with slippery rocks, where we had to hang on to ropes to stay balanced along the edge of the mountain and up through a cave. It was nothing short of freaking awesome. The views got more and more incredible as we wrapped around the mountain, from overlooking Calpe and the surrounding cities to the mountain ranges to the Mediterranean Sea. Even the greenery surrounding us on the mountain was like nothing I had ever seen before. That day made me want to hike in different places as much as I can this semester. The goal is to see as much of the world as possible, right? Well the higher you get, the more you can see. :) To reward ourselves for a long hard weekend of beautiful views, we went to a seaside restaurant where we had seriously the best salmon and mussels of our entire lives and - surprise! Lots of wine. So that was our weekend, in short. I left out a few stories here and there, like how a random charter bus in the middle of nowhere took us to the right tram station and how taking advice from strangers worked 100% of the time. Everything went better than expected...if we would have had any expectations to begin with. Also, I don't think I've ever laughed harder than I have in one weekend in my entire life - clearly we needed some girls' time away (from our rough life at our university's beach town...yeah right). I cannot wait for all of our adventures to come!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Renee Fleddermanncopywriter Archives
June 2016
Categories |