Hello Everyone!
Sorry it has taken me so long to post after my trip...I was exhausted, and for reasons that will be obvious after you read all about my journey.
So...the suspense has ended. Where did I go? The island of Mallorca (one of the Canary Islands, part of Spain). It was definitely paradise! Gorgeous! But I am skipping ahead...
Our vacation began early..like 4:30 am. I got up, dressed, and left my house. After walking a couple of blocks, I hailed a taxi (like the only one I saw in 2 minutes that was not full...oh drunk people!). Then I taxied to meet my friends at the metro stop near school...very close by, but the metro does not run from 2-6 am and I did not wish to walk that far in the dark. Unfortunately, by the time I made it to my friends, I had a fare of 10 euros.
Anyhow, my friends Elizabeth and Katie, who had spent the night at Katie's house, met me there and hopped in the taxi. We headed for the airport. When we got there, we had to figure out which terminal we were in and then take a bus to get there. We finally made it to our gate. Yay! Soon enough, it was time to board the plane. So far, so good. We all slept during the hour flight and disembarked excitedly, ready for the adventure to begin.
Unfortunately, we: 1. had not printed out the hotel confirmation (my bad!), 2. had not looked at exactly where the hotel was located on the island in relation to the airport, and 3. Had no idea how we planned to get from the airport to the hotel. We realized this after we arrived...first mistake! And first lesson of many to be learned on this trip. Fortunately, my friend Katie remembered the name of the town our hotel was in! Yay! Until we looked at an island map and discovered that we were at the airport on one side of the island and our hotel was diagonally on the other side of the island...boo!
When we finally found someone who recognized the name of our hotel (because we could not find internet to look up the exact details), they told us to take bus 1 to Palma de Mallorca (the main city) and get off at Plaza de Espana. (From there we would take another bus.) Easy enough, right? Wrong!!! We managed to miss our stop, discovering this at the end of the route when everyone else was getting off...so we paid again and rode all the way back.
By this point, we were all frazzled, tired, and a bit frustrated. But we looked around for internet in Palma...but to no avail. Finally we found a tourist information place that told us the name of the bus we needed to take. Which would not arrive for 1/2 hour...so we had some ice cream and cheered up a bit. Then we boarded the bus and rode for 1 hour and 15 minutes to our town, Puerta de Alcudia. When we got off, we were all super excited...though bemoaning our own stupidity. After a 10-minute walk past all sorts of shops we wanted to visit, we finally made it to the hotel, checked in, found our building, and went to our room to freshen up. Phew! By this point we were excited, realizing that our hotel was more like a resort and that this town was adorable and worth the 3+ hours we spent trying to figure out how to get there. We were all pretty slap-happy.
We decided to shop a little, get some groceries for lunch, eat, and then hit the beach. We did all of this in about that order. The island was full of cute little shops (like those you might find on Main Street for anyone who lives near me, only cuter and more tourist-y). We looked around and then found groceries. Finally around 5 pm (our plane landed about 9:30 am and there was no time change) we made it to the beach, a 10-minute walk from our hotel. It was beautiful! Little covered areas with chairs, soft, damp sand, and a sea indescribably blue that felt like bath water! Heavenly!!! We hung out there until about sunset and then shopped a bit more on our way to dinner. After all this shopping (it doesn't sound like much, but in reality it was a lot), I ended up purchasing a beautiful dress. Then it was dinner time. We went to this fairly expensive restaurant that had everything. I had pizza - very good, Katie had tortilla mixta - also good, Elizabeth had this expensive chicken dish, which she was not a fan of. Then we returned to the hotel and passed out.
See next post for day 2.
Peace and Blessings,
Melanie
Spanish Words of the Day: autobus = bus, isla = island, hotel = hotel, playa = beach :)
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