Easter Holiday Part 1: Madrid and London

Hey everybody!  I know this is looooong overdue, but time has gone by so fast since spring break!  I cannot believe it has been 2 weeks since I got back from the most amazing adventure of my life.  Luckily I kept a travel journal, because remembering every little detail is actually pretty hard, and I need some refreshing!  I am going to do it in parts so no one has to read too much at once if they don’t want to, and I’ll try to give a reader’s digest version of everything we did rather than go into extreme details J

The first part of my spring break was my visit to see my good friend Ann in Spain.  On April 6 I flew from London to Madrid, where Ann met me at the airport.  I was beyond excited to see her again! She lived in Alcala, which is near Madrid.  It was really amazing getting to see where she had spent the last 4 months and catch up with her.  Spain is absolutely gorgeous, and I loved walking around and experiencing the culture.  The first night I got there we had tapas and a glass of wine while we sat and talked.  I love the way that in Spain people spend hours at a meal just enjoying each other’s company.  In Italy they call it “dolce far niente,” or the joy of doing nothing, which I am a HUGE fan of J (who wouldn’t be) and loved doing with Ann in Alcala.  The next day we explored the town and had a delicious traditional Spanish meal.  Later we had tapas again and met up with some of the other study abroad students there and went out for the night in Alcala, which was very different than going out in BG or Keele but a blast none-the-less.  On Friday we went and saw the GORGEOUS city of Madrid.  I love everything about Spain-the culture, the beauty, the food, the language.  I really wish I could have spent more time there with her, but the next day I had to fly to London to meet up with our Contiki group.  I was sad to go but seeing her was incredible, and I was comforted to know that soon I would get to see not only Ann again, but all of my amazing friends back home.

            As mentioned before, on Saturday I flew back to London and checked into the hotel where we met our Contiki group.  That first night we had a meeting and got the logistics about when we needed to be there on Sunday and filled out some paperwork.  I could not believe that the trip we had been planning for months was finally about to begin!  I had dreamed about the amazing places I would see over the next 20 days for such a long time, and in 24 hours I would start to experience them.  That night, although I was extremely excited to start the trip the next day, I was also exhausted from the day’s travels and went straight to sleep after our meeting.  We had to be at the meeting point at 6am to weigh our bags and load everything onto the bus.  We lucked out because the bus holds 52 people, and we only had 26 on our tour so everyone got their own seat.  This proved to be very nice on the days we had to drive for long hours, especially if we had late nights the day before.  At about 7 we set off towards the coast, where we caught a ferry near the White Cliffs of Dover, which were GORGEOUS!  After the boat ride we hopped back on the bus, where our amazing tour guide Jenn gave us a lot of information about France and our tour.  She was so knowledgeable about everywhere we saw the entire trip and so helpful to everybody on the tour.  The next few hours were just driving and getting to know the other people on tour, until about 4 pm when we arrived in PARIS!!! J