Spain... and then?

Let's Try to Make a Metaphor Out of This

(Warning: I haven't proofread this.  I'll come back and fix it after 24 hours.)

At some point when I was a wee Mary, we had a neighbor in Hawaii who spoke Spanish which seemed like an amazingly exotic and cool language as a six-year-old.  (Some years later, in Las Vegas, this seems a bit less impressive.  But anyway.)  I decided, as much as a first grader can decide anything, that I would study Spanish and visit Spain someday, never mind the fact my neighbor was from Mexico.


No, Man.  Spain.  Someday, it would happen.

I am, not exactly, what one might call ambitious.  I never really took any class seriously in school or university.  I cared about my grades and almost needed my teachers to like me (I'll get a therapist someday to explore that), but I never saw myself pursing a doctorate in anything.  Never really saw myself doing anything for a career.  There is just nothing I really want.  Don't care what car I drive (now), don't care what clothes I wear, don't care what crap I shovel in my face or what movie we watch.  There have been a few things in life I decided I wanted to do.  I wanted to work in Tokyo.  I wanted to go to Las Vegas Academy for high school.  I wanted a Volks Lady Sylvie One-Off (if you don't know what that means, you probably either play sports or have a significant other). I wanted my first car to be a Celica.  I wanted to be a real estate agent while going to university, and after graduation I wanted to be a teacher in Las Vegas mainly for the summers off.  That really is, besides the occasional craving for Thai and for sempai to notice me, pretty much, everything I have ever wanted which I've done or gotten through mostly luck.  When this opportunity for Spain showed up, it was one more thing on the list to check off.

When I left Dublin last month, it ended up being cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket than a on-eway, which means I came back to Vegas in time for Halloween with a ticket back to Dublin...with a two-hour layover in London.  Hmm.  Remember Kelli?  The chick I met in Turkey I think I've mentioned before?  She's in Spain for the month of November.  Now, a ticket from London to Spain is nothing... And, since I have no job and the last of my Japan earnings isn't quite squeezed for blood...

I tend to wander and hope for the best.  Like procrastination, I know this might end badly for me someday, but until I face some sort of serious repercussion, I refuse to learn a lesson. After another brief wander around London, I found myself in Malaga.  I know I tend to rely on short sentences and the expression "I found myself" a lot, but really.  It fits.  I got off a plane at the Malaga airport with reservations to stay at the San Jose University, but didn't really make a plan on how to get from here to there.  Also, I had made an error booking my reservations and instead of a Friday/Saturday booking, I had a Thursday/Friday which I was a no-show for.  Oops.  Well, damn.  I'll figure that out later. After all, I took a year of Spanish 13 years ago.  This should be no problem! (Cough)

 I jumped on the first bus I saw seeing that it went to City Center.  No matter what, I figured city center was probably a good direction to head.  My hotel (?) was near the Picasso museum, which hopefully would be just popular enough to help me navigate my way, and I had a screen-cap of the general area I needed to go.  After a fantastic exchange of Taco-Bell Spanish Dona Lupita would have beaten me for, my God that woman was scary, the bus driver dropped me off in Downtown Malaga.  Which was amazing.

And somewhere in this area, was my hotel!  I did no research before coming to Spain.  I want to try to play this off as a sense of adventure or something admirable, but mostly it was laziness and an inability to figure out how to begin.  I had no idea what to expect from the neighborhood I would be staying in or what I could do in Malaga.  Actually, my plan was just to go to Morocco on a day-trip bus (judge, judge, judge), but that fell through the morning-of.  Well, because I am a lucky bastard, my hotel was in a covetous location surrounded by CHEAP tapas bars and great nightlife.  

So, yeah.  Yay, Me!!!

 After waiting at my bus stop the next morning for a bus to Morocco that kind-of never came, (it did, maybe, but they didn't know who I was so, eh, got my refund from Viatour and let it go), I ended up having a lot more time in Malaga than I expected.  Now what?  Breakfast, Roman ruins, a trip to the beach, and a LOT of walking.

Oh yeah.  I forgot about this.  I ended up hanging out at a wedding reception for awhile.  I kept running into the bride and groom taking photos at all the places I was visiting. Since I ended up running into their party, I decided it was fine for me to linger for a bit. 

It ended up being a fabulous day of standing on top of high places and watching people wind surf. Topped it off with, of course and lacking creativity, tapas and wine.  Actually, I've down-played the amount of wine I had consumed in the twenty-four hours I had been in Malaga. (Although, I think you can see it in some photos.  Ahem.)  Spanish wine is both delightfully cheap and cheaply delightful.  As an aspiring alcoholic, I was dog-with-peanut butter happy.   The next day allowed me a few hours in the morning to get lost while wandering towards a bus station that is in a general that-way direction.

Caught a bus from Magala up to Granada where I would be meeting Kelli 'round 4 or 5.  Continuing to beat this oh so subtle allegory of my trip to Spain tells a lot about why I don't have a job right now to a dull death, I happened to find the proper bus stop when a bus was happening to leave in 14 minutes to Granada. Two hours or so later, I listened into to a nice Russian couple talk to a lady at the Granada tourist information desk.  So, the old town is nice to walk around and there is some sort of famous.. castle... on a hill?  Hmm, well.  Tourist-Help Lady insisted the Russian couple take a cab and a tour since they only had, like me, a few hours to kill, so, naturally, I hopped on a city bus that seemed to be heading toward city center.  By pure luck and coincidence, I jumped off at what, in hindsight, was the absolute best spot I could have jumped off.

Kelli and I met up at the train station after a few hours.  She had some friends in town who are from, yep, Las Vegas (Henderson, actually, pretty near me!) and we spent the evening talking nonsense and eating pizza.  Kelli and I had a train to catch to Barcelona at 9:30pm.  What can I say?

12 hour train rides suck.

Barcelona was a little more thought about since I knew I would have Kelli with me.  When you have someone with you, the pressure to screw up less is greatly intensified.  There were a few things we knew we wanted to do in Barcelona.  There is the church your supposed to see.  The park you are supposed to visit.  Food you are supposed to eat.  All of these things were within walking distance (so  is Cape Town if you have time) from our hotel.  More than I can remember in recent time, we spent the day eating.  Have some food porn.  For whatever reason, I didn't unleash my inner Instagram-er and take photos of all of the food we ate.  There were tapas.  There was bread.  There was wine, pastries, a LOT of meat, churros... It all blended together in an all-day smorgasbord of Barcelona goodies.

OH MY GOD!!! Hedgehog chocolates????

Oh yeah. We ate all of that and more.

........................'cause we are AWESOME.

The cliche and predictable part of this story is, of course, that because we had plans and things we wanted to see and do, this was the only day in awhile where we were disappointed.

The Sacred Family was under major renovation.

We made it to Gulle Park too late to really see it!

(Not pictured things we wanted to see but didn't: The beach, the magic fountains...)

Once again, when you expect nothing, you aren't disappointed.  We had a FANTASTIC day, and I feel like I couldn't have seen Spain in three days better.  I would love to go back (but I won't because why go back when you can go new?), and I really enjoyed seeing three completely different cities in Spain.   

But, as I wandered and stumbled my way through Eastern Spain, I really felt a certain level of discomfort in the back of my brain.  I mean, this was SPAIN.  This was a childhood dream of mine and it just... happened.  It was a short little visit, a long-layover ("rollllll credits") really, but it was a visit to Spain.  Shouldn't these things be more difficult?  Or require more effort?  Or be more meaningful?  Also, with this, I am running out of goals!  I want to go to Egypt and Iceland.  I need to start expanding my life ambitions beyond just going places.  If anyone has a suggestion for me of how I should use the next 35 years of my life, I've got a suggestion box.

So, yeah.  Spain.  Check!

Here is an uninspiring photo of flowers to make you think about calendars.