First Week in Spain

I flew out from Milan at 09:00, transited at Barcelona, landed in Alicante, took two bus rides and finally arrived at the Pension Jaen in Guardamar del Segura, aka home for the next 2 months, at 18:00. I live in a double room with a private balcony above the main street (and the hostel’s restaurant/ café). The room is tiny w minimal furnishing—two single beds, one night stand, a TV set that doesn’t work, one chair, and a small bathroom.

Guardamar is a small coastal town and the Pension is less than 10 minutes away from the beach. On the first day of official class day, alex took the class on an introductory tour of the town and informed us about the town’s history. We walked through the low density residential areas, up the hill to the Guardamar Castle, made our way through the planted sand dunes towards the mouth of the River Segura, and finally down to the beach and the tour ended with a long walk along the shoreline.

We took our first field trip to visit the Castle of Santa Barbara in Alicante during our first weekend. Like many other Spanish castles, the Castle of Santa Barbara situates on the top of a hill (for view, protection, and fortification purposes.) the walk up to the castle was cruel. We started walking around 11:30am when the sun was strong during the whole time of our climb up the steep hills. We finally reached the castle after ~45 minutes of hiking and everybody was soak wet. Food that we eat at the pension is pretty heavy and greasy but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore… Despite the torturing hike uphill, the view and breeze up at the top was quite rewarding. We were assigned some work regarding the walk and class was dismissed and we were allowed to travel for the weekend until class started again Tuesday.

While some people went to Madrid and others stayed in Alicante, Wendy and I decided we could get away to Barcelona. We booked a night bus to barcelona and had 12 hours to kill before our bus departs at 00:30. We took a break in an air-conditioned McDonald’s for food and wifi, and started our walk through the town in the late afternoon. We took a long walk around the city, did a little shopping, had some tapas, and returned to the bus station by midnight for our 8.5 hour ride to Barcelona.

-queenie chan