Adios Madrid…Hola Alicante!

Saturday, June 2nd

After only 3 hours and 45 minutes of sleep I had my last breakfast at the hotel. I will sure miss the espresso! I should have taken a picture of the breakfast. We had to check out so we made sure to pack up and put our things in the hotel closet so we could do a little more site seeing before our train departed. Personalities are emerging and es muy interesante getting to know the people we are here with. Cait, Alyssa and I headed out for the Palacio Real which is essentially the royal palace. 

It was another loooong walk as we ended up walking around the entire outside, which includes a massive garden, of course.

The dark cave at the bottom must have been a secret passage of some sort.  Very cool and sneaky!

Seeing the palace got me thinking about materialism. Here the royal people lived ridiculously while people in the streets were starving. 

There were hundreds of rooms all adorned with gaudy decorations. It made me think a lot about class status and society. It's a reminder of how easily we can get carried away with thinking that things are important. You weren't allowed to take pictures or I would have gotten more.  Shhhhh!  ;)

View from the front of the palace.

View of the Cathedral from the side.

 We went back to our hotel and waited for the rest of the group. It was crazy how much stuff (again back to the things…thing) we all had to carry. 

We piled into taxis and headed for the train station. On the escalator someone got pushed and knocked over so there was a bag and body pile up. Painful and frustrating but we did get a laugh out of it later. The train ride was quiet and beautiful, it reminded me of Tuscany. 

2 of my roomies...Sam and Alyssa! :)

We went from dry desert to tall pines. Honestly very similar to the terrain in Arizona. Most everyone took a little siesta. I listened to opera on the head set and watched the world go by.

Alicante!! 

I was surprised at how big of a city Alicante is. We jumped in some taxis and headed to our apartments. It's definitely a different neighborhood than what we had in Madrid. We are among the people.

Its a really neat place. 

There are little commercial shops downstairs and then the apartments are on top.

Sam, Alyssa, Cait and I picked our rooms.

Bienvenidos a nuestra casa!

This is the ocean view from our room.  Sam and I are sharing!

Our room!

The living room/dining room.

Patio

Our kitchen.  I got all Martha Stewart and tried to beautify it with the table cloth and a little rearranging.   

Then we met the group back downstairs to go to the supermercado. It was quite a walk. It reminded me of a Wal-Mart. I was hoping for a bit more romantic market but it will have to do. It was crazy trying to pick stuff to eat in Spanish with little direction. I did the best I could and got some yummy cheeses, cherries, olives, tomatoes, bread, pasta stuff, prosciutto and salami for sandwiches. After I gathered several of these things I started thinking about the long walk back with all of the stuff. No wonder all the locals had rolling bags! Sam's room ended up being on the small side with no view, except for the laundry area so we have decided to share a room (ocean view and breeze) and use the other room for storage and a small office. We got back to the apartment and Sam and I decided to go for some tapas at the little restaurant across the street. Elaina is the owner/server and we made fast friends. She speaks a little English. After some sangria and tapas we were ready to get our room put together and unpacked. Of course we were up till 3am again making our casa a home! You take what you have and make the best of it. It is not a palace by any means but its home and there is a lot of love here!