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| Tuesday, May 22, 2003 (UPDATED 6/20/03) Breakfast: Everything bagel with lox cream cheese and a grande skim no-foam latte from Starbucks* Lunch: Curry chicken over rice from the little Japanese food station in the pedway Mid-day snack: Nothing Dinner: Scrambled eggs since the car's still at Danny's I'm back from Spain! It was an awesome, amazing, fun, inspiring, exhilarating, challenging adventure into what life should be. Meet new people. Dive into new experiences. Create your own path to destinations unknown. Challenge your idea of reality. Re-discover what "maturity" has buried; remember who you really are. I am in love with the culture; it's so laid back and carefree relative to my wonderful corporate American life. Marisol and I flew from Madrid (center of Spain) to Malaga (on the southern coast). On the plane, I decided to take off my pullover (AKA "jumper" in Australia) and threw it over the headrest of the seat in front of me. Shortly, I got up to use the bathroom and, when I returned, I was horrified to see that someone had been sitting in front of me. She never said a word about my pullover smacking her in the head! If I had done that on a UAL or AA flight, I would've heard quite a few choice words. What I wasn't too thrilled about was driving in Spain. BTW, being both the driver and navigator in a country with no street signs is quite the treat indeed and could have some bearing on why I was so unhappy with the lack of signage. The highways were alright once you found them but most of the cities seem to think that street signs are an eyesore. Once you're in a city, you might see a sign on the corner buildings. The traffic circles didn't take long to get used to but the tail gating was extreme and nerve wracking. I'm guessing that I wasn't the only one with velcro on my rear bumper because there were signs along the highway suggesting how much distance should be between cars. Thankfully, I drove for only a couple days since we joined up with our Contiki tour group on Wednesday. It was so nice to sit back, soak in the scenery and follow someone else's lead. Thanks, Nathan and Manuel!! Here's a high-level overview of the pre-Contiki trip... Saturday, May 3 - Flew from O'Hare towards Madrid. Sunday - Arrived in Madrid and took the Metro to our hotel. Took a nap before meeting up with a local tour company for our bullfight. Blech. I wonder if I would've appreciated it more had I finished reading "Death in the Afternoon". Checked out Canas y Tapas for dinner. Our order was screwed up. Apparently, they didn't have two of our dishes and our waitress substituted them without asking us. Two other tables were having the same problem. I later found out that we ate baby eels (angulas) which is apparently a great delicacy. Yum-yum! Monday - Flew from Madrid into Malaga. Drove to La Linea and checked into our hotel. Drove to a port to take a ferry to Ceuta, Morrocco and spent the afternoon there. We had our first bocadillo there. Tuesday - Went to Gibraltar in the morning and took a tour with one of the local cab drivers. Met a family of Barbary apes. Drove to Torremolinos and checked into our hotel there. Left for Alhambra immediately after; I think the drive there took approx. 3 hours. Fun for me! Imagine the drive back... yeah... Wednesday - Gave Marisol a 15-minute lesson on how to drive stick. She decided that she shouldn't drive on the highway (I agreed) so I drove us to the airport. Flew back into Madrid. Ate lunch at Botin, the world's oldest restaurant per Guiness' Book of World Records. Shopped a bit. Met up with the Contiki group at the hotel in the evening. Had dinner with most of them. Sat in the hotel bar with a few of them. Joined most of them in a room party. Clubbed with a handful of them. And that's a taste of my pre-tour stuff. I'll probably add more details and will definitely write about the rest of the tour once I'm caught up with my sleep and tied up some loose ends. Until then!! |