Carnival in Alicante

This past weekend, Christy, Sondie, and I flew to Alicante to visit some of our friends from Ripon who are studying there. Friday me and Sondie have art class in the morning so we couldn't leave until later in the day. For art class we went to the Palacio Real, which is not the palace where the actual King and Queen live, but it is still pretty amazing. This is where they host their royal functions and such. Every room has a famous fresco on the ceiling and is decorated very dramatically. I am really enjoying our art class because the format makes so much sense. Thrusdays we have class in the classroom and talk about a theme or type of art. Then Friday we meet somewhere in the city and actually see the art we just learned about. However I dislike the fact that it meets every Friday morning because it definitly makes traveling harder. Anyway, we left Friday night around 9:00. The flight is really short but our plane was an hour delayed. We arrived in Alicante at 11:20. The last bus from the airport was at 11:10. We were very sad but decided to just take a taxi. The taxi man droped us off right in front of our hostel and Theresa was there waiting for us! We checked in and went to check out our room. After my last hostel experience I was a bit hesatint, but it was great! There were three beds, two twins and one double. There was a little balcony and best of all there was heat! We decided to explore the town a bit before going to bed. When we planned this trip, we had no idea that this weekend was Carnival. Carnival is celebrated all around Spain but it is not a very big deal in Madrid. Alicante is on the mediteranean and it is celebrated much more there. There were decorations everywhere and three stages with concerts and such. We were all pretty tired so we just grabed a quick bite to eat and went to bed. In the morning we went on a hunt for a supermarket. We were trying to spend the least amount of money possible so buying groceries just made sense. We met up with Theresa and she showed us the market. The food was so fresh but I was not prepared to see fish THAT fresh. They still had heads and eyes!! We baught some delicious fruit and went to a real grocery store to get sandwhich stuff. Then we had to walk back to our hostel to put it all away because it was too heavy to carry around. Tour guide Theresa showed us all around her city, starting with the most important- the beach. Although it wasn't warm enough to swim or lay out or anything, it was still nice to see the ocean. There is a huge boardwalk that we walked out on to get a good view of the water. Then we looked at the little shoping stalls around the beach. We found a nice restaurant with outside seating and had lunch. Lunch in Spain takes about two hours so after lunch it was already 5:00. Theresa left us to go take a nap and get ready for her night and we decided to do some touristy things. There is a castle in Alicante that is super tall and from the top you can see the entire city and out into the ocean. We found the bottem and found an elevator that takes you to the top. It was the most amazing view I have ever seen. I knew it would be beautiful but I had no idea how far I would be able to see! We walked on the way down for as far as we could and then took the elevator the rest of the way. I guess the castle started as a fort for protection because you can see the entire city and protect all of the people. Over the years it housed various kings and had other various uses. Now it is a tourist attraction and has an art museum inside. After that we walked around the city a bit more and looked at the kids all dressed up in their costumes before heading back to our hostel to get ready for carnival. We weren't really sure what to expect so we each baught a mask and wore a niceish dress. Don't worry, we fit in quite well. We got beautiful and headed out to the city. The streets were full of people and music. We listened to some music, danced, and had a pretty good time. Me and Sondie even tried a gofer (a waffle with gooey chocolate all over). It was the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. When we got tired we walked back to our hostel and went to sleep. We could still hear the party hapening in the streets all night long. Sunday morning we slept in a bit but had to check out by noon. Our flight wasn't until 11 at night so we had a lot of time to kill. We walked around the beach a bit more and found the bullfighting ring. We went out for ice cream and met up with our other friend Lindsay for lunch. We still had a lot of time left so we found a biodiversity exibit by the water and went. Sondie is a biology major so she was really interested in the science aspect of it all. I thought it was pretty interesting. Finally we were ready to catch the bus to the airport so we waited at the little stop. All of the sudden we saw our bus...going the other direction on the other side of the street. We ran to catch it but it didn't stop so we had to wait 40 minutes for the next one. We made to the airport ontime and caught our flight and everything. We made it home tired but it one piece. Now for another week of school! This week can't go fast enough because my parents are coming this weekend! It's pretty late here so I will post pictures later!