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| Loving It (part II) |
The proximity of Morocco definitely made it easy to discover with only a one hour flight. But truly in Europe a one hour flight can mean a whole new continent, new language and new customs. You just have to be open if you want to make it off the peninsula. Our next trip happened to be farther than Casablanca, but yet still in Spain. Jenny and I decided to celebrate carnival in the best party of Europe, Santa Cruz Tenerife. Even though the Canary Islands are part of Spain the flight still took us 1 hour ½ longer than Casablanca.
We went in the cold days of February perfect time for a little R&R. We both had been working like dogs, running around Madrid from sun up to 9:00 at night and we were a little tired of the city. Madrid can wear on you a little during the winter just because everyone is always complaining about how they want summer to come and there are stuck in the middle of the country, the work capital of Spain. Then there are other people who love being in Madrid during the winter. It’s cold, you need a winter coat, but the sun is out almost everyday shining as bright as can be. It’s nice.
However Jenny and I wanted to get away from the cold just a little and go to Rio de Janiero to witness carnival but since that meant applying for a visa and an expensive plane ride cross continents we opted for the Canary Islands. Not a bad choice considering it’s safe, has beaches and it’s an island.
For some reason neither of us had looked into Tenerife at all before the flight nor had we bothered to look for a hostel of some sort. It was the busiest time of the year in Santa Cruz and we hadn’t made accommodations. We had a friends living in the south part of Tenerife but arriving at 10:00 pm it was impossible to get down there at that time of night. After getting our luggage and going to information, the woman gave us a list of hotels but didn’t bother to call to see if there was an opening, knowing that it might take too much of her time and the possibilities were low. We got directions into town and hopped on the next bus. Twenty minutes later on the outskirts of Santa Cruz we decided to walk towards the center to see if we saw any vacancy signs. Jenny was starving so we stopped in a small pizza café. The workers seemed to have taken a liken to us and were very friendly. We mentioned if they knew of any place that would have space available for the night and not be outrageously expensive. Sure enough the one worker new of something. So after we finished the pizza, Juan, stopped working for ten minutes and took us to find a hotel. The hotel was two stars located on the main street of the fiesta. Juan negotiated the price with the hotel owner and we were able to stay the night for 20 Euros each. Not too bad we thought. The party had already begun. Spanish people were dressed in all sorts of crazy costumes that some really didn’t match. I was surprised by the fact that all the women didn’t look like sluts, some were in cow or elephant costumes and others just had on wigs. We had left the hotel for a while to see the show, but being that neither one of us spoke Spanish and a lot of the Spanish people didn’t speak English we decided to call it an early night and head back home since we both had worked a full day on that Thursday.
The next morning we had a free continental breakfast on the roof terrace of the hotel. That was probably the best part of the trip. The weather was fantastic in February and we had a view of the quaint city Santa Cruz along with a breathtaking view of the Atlantic Ocean.
Following the one night at our Santa Cruz hotel we caught a bus down to the South part of the Island. Surprisingly it only took us one hour to travel from the North of the Island to the South. Unlike Santa Cruz, a city that looked relatively Spanish with its cobble streets and antique looking houses, the southern part looked like a Florida resort. Huge hotels dominating the sky line and residential homes built for my grandparents, it didn’t feel like we were in Europe anymore, I thought I had just stepped into the State of Florida.
We met up with Jenny's two gay friends she knew from Poland but had lived in Madrid for three months in October, November and December. I had helped Walter get a job at one of the English companies I had interview when I first arrived to Madrid. Madrid just didn't seem to work out for them because Walter's partner Matt didn't speak any Spanish and his English wasn't good enough to teach so they had difficulties with the work situation. After three months of no work for Matt, they decided to try their luck in Tenerife. A little more international place with less Spanish and more English. Walter adapted really fast with finding a management position at the hotel and Matt got a serving position at the same hotel. Having legal status of the EU made that possible because Walter was from Holland and Matt was from Poland. But both said that they party scene wasn't quite like Madrid and their neighbors all were over 65. Yes the lived on this gorgeous tropical Island but their next door barbeque buddies were grams and graps.
After soaking up the sun in South for Carnival Jenny and I decided to head North to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. A stop in Dublin would do the trick for St. Patty’s Day. We had the great luck that year that St. Patrick’s fell on Saturday, March 17th. This time Jenny’s brother, Mike, was studying abroad in Seville Spain and would be joining the fun. Like before, Jenny and I hadn’t done much in way of finding a hotel meaning two days before the trip we still hadn’t booked a hotel or hostel for the busiest weekend in Dublin. I tried to look for accommodations two nights before our trip but nothing was available except on Thursday night. Since we were arriving late on Thursday I decided to go ahead a book the hostel for the three of us.
I was doing everything and anything I could to find accommodations. I even joined the website couchsufers. This website allows travelers to stay the night on other people's couches while traveling, giving them free accommodations and really a host for the city. You have a ranking system both for the places you stay and for the guest that stay on your couches. It's a good system if you want to see the real aspect of the city. I had made up an account on couchsurfers just for this weekend. But I only got one guy who had room for two girls. Jenny was a definite no since her brother would be out. Fair enough I figured for Friday and Saturday night we might get to see some sights of Dublin since we were going to have to book our hostel pretty far outside of town.
As we were boarding the plane, nervous about the hotel situation, Jenny’s Mom gave her a call. Her mother, who had her credit card points with Westin hotels, said she had just managed to get us a room at the Westin hotel, right across from Temple Bar. I couldn’t believe our luck. Not only was Jenny’s Mom hooking us up with a free place to stay for the weekend but we also got to stay in a damn nice hotel such as the Westin. I had only been in one other Westin before when I went with a friend to San Sebastian. He introduced me to the Westin lifestyle that I had no idea about. Traveling in class was obviously important to some people.
Arriving in Dublin, with a place to stay for all three nights, Jenny, Mike and I were elated. This had been the first English speaking country I had visited since my arrival to Spain six months earlier. As I exited the airport for the first time in six months I wasn't nervous to ask for directions. We got on the shuttle to take us downtown and needed to ask the bus driver where we would exit. The bus driver was incredibly kind and spoke with his sweet Irish accent, I felt at that moment I should just pack up my bags and move to Ireland to find work there and forget about learning Spanish, it was just too difficult. Stopping and asking everyone for directions in Ireland to our hostel for the first night was simple. People were friendly, patient and loved our accents and we loved theirs. We all had Irish descendants and it felt as though we were coming home.
Even though it was dark when we arrived to Dublin we could immediately see the difference between Dublin and Madrid. For starters there was a lot more space to walk in the streets and more houses less apartment buildings. And every house or townhouse had a big giant door of different colors. It was going to be a good weekend..
After checking into our hostel we decided to check out the night life in Dublin. Arriving on Thursday night we had managed to dodge most of the foreigners for that night. It was a good night to go out in Dublin and meet the actual people from the city. We started the night with a pint of Guinness Beer in a bar that was relatively crowded. Immediately we had people asking us questions, where are you from? Where's that located in the States? It's always an easy pick up line when someone has an accent. We made friends with everyone in the bar. I enjoyed ordering a beer and not having to think about how I was going to say it in another language. It was nice to say my name and not have people tilt their heads and say “como”. “Megan' como el coche, you know like the car Megane from Renault.”
Needless to say I was very happy when Megan Fox started to become popular because then I could use her name instead of a car. However in Ireland the first night we went out I met two Megan’s. Immediately I gave them hugs and told them that I loved their names. Megan’s forever I cheered to everyone and hear’s to Ireland.
The next day I awoke with a huge hangover and in some house of the red head guy that I had met the night before. Maybe last night I had done too many cheers, after a long week of work and first time in six months in an English speaking country maybe I over did it on the Guinness just a little.
“Top of the mornin’ to you” He said to me with an Irish accent, just like I had always imagined people would say in Ireland.
“And to you” I said with a smirk.
“Did ya have fun last night” he said looking at me with a smile.
“Yeah I guess I got my good Irish welcome that I was looking for.” I laughed with a look of shame on my face.
“Megan, what would you like for breakfast?” Damn I had no idea what this guy’s name was, maybe Dan, Donny, Dave. Damn what’s an Irish name.
“Just some cereal if you have any, if not I’ll just take some toast” I replied thinking of what my ancestors would say to this.
I kept wondering what this guy had to do in the way of work. He seemed well into his thirties and maybe hadn’t been with a woman for a long time. His apartment was nice, better standard of living than in Spain and he lived right on the Liffey River. He was a really nice guy and seemed like he had his shit together so why wasn’t he at work on a Friday.
“So you don’t have to work or anything?” I asked feeling a little strange that he was bumming around with me at noon.
“Well with St. Patty’s Day and all being tomorrow I don’t have to work today.”
“Right we’re all here to celebrate the St. Patty’s Day celebration.”
He seemed like a really nice guy but maybe one I shouldn’t have hooked up with my first night in Ireland. Because the problem happened to be 1:00 pm and I had to find Jenny and her brother. The Irish guy was nice enough to take me by car to my hostel. I told him to wait for me because I didn’t know if Jenny and Mike would still be there, with check out being at 12:00. Of course they weren’t in the hostel. My stuff wasn’t there and they had checked out over an hour ago. Then I let my head clear up and remembered that Jenny’s Mom had gotten us a room at the Westin. So the Irish guy took me to the Westin. Thank goodness they spoke English at the reception. It was sort of like the walk of shame only at the Westin hotel. I asked if there was a room for Jenny Hodworth. Sure enough I had found them. I gave their room number a call and thankfully they were just watching TV and getting ready for the day. I thanked my new Irish friend and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Got his number to be polite and was on my way to discover the daylight in Ireland.
Being St. Patrick’s Day weekend the day was similar to the night Guinness, Guinness, Heineken, and Guinness. We met a lot of American studying abroad in Temple Bar area, really Americans love St. Patrick’s Day. We met Spanish people, who were crazy in the Bar and we met good old Welsh folk who had just come for a Stag party and had no idea it was St. Patrick’s Day weekend. We ended up hanging out with the Welsh folk until the wee hours of the night. Once the song “Hey Jude” came on it we had truly bonded with the people each doing our own unique solo guitar at different parts of the song.
The next day, hangover again, we woke up rather late but still had time to see the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. I always love going to the St. Patty’s Day Parade in St. Louis because there is always traditional Irish music, Irish dancers and people just green. However in Dublin there were floats, colorful floats, bands but nothing that Irish. I couldn’t believe it, I kept shouting for Irish dancers but they never came. It was more the Macy Day Parade in New York, the bigger, the louder, the better.
By the time we left Dublin I was ready to get back to Madrid. It had been a hard weekend on my brain and stomach. But it seemed as though I couldn’t stay in Madrid that long. Every weekend if I stayed in the country I was off to another small Spanish town to visit. And usually I left the country about once a month. My final trip out of the country before heading back to the States would be France.
Originally on my first backpacking trip to Europe I had skipped over France. For some insane reasoning France not agreeing with us about something struck me the wrong way. At that time in my life I rarely read the news and wasn't as informed about current events as I should have been. I just felt the negative vibe towards France and decided there were too may places to see in Europe and I could afford to skip over the fry eating country. After living seven months in Spain I decided I would venture over to the neighboring country France to see if it was even that good..
Jenny and I had booked the last Ryanair flight of the day on Thursday to make our way over to Marseille France. I ended my last English class 15 minutes early, made it to Barajas airport with some time to spare, hopped on a flight with Jenny to wonder where we were going to stay for the night.
We arrived to the Marseille airport right at dusk. Definitely a smaller airport than I was used to about 1/10 the size of O’Hare. To get to the city center we had to take the shuttle bus and about a thirty minute ride. The thing is with all these low cost airlines, usually they fly to cities where the airport is located a good distance from the city because the airport taxes are much cheaper. The shuttle bus wasn’t that bad except we arrived right near the train station at dark. Since Marseille was a port city we just figured we would walk down hill until we saw a hotel. The first hotel we saw we walked into and the people were speaking Arabic. I thought it was a little strange but we figured we would ask the price of the hotel. No one could speak English and we couldn’t speak France or Arabic. Finally they wrote down 20 Euros. We said, “Merci” and headed out the door quickly. Then I started looking around the town a little closer. There at a café were sitting all men staring at the street, facing the same direction all wearing long loose hooded gowns.
“Where are we?” I asked Jenny more confused than Jessica Simpson wondering is she was eating chicken or tuna. I was wondering if we had landed in Marseille or Marrakech.
“Seriously, did we land in Morocco?” I asked Jenny again.
“I don’t know but I want to find the center of the city fast and get away from the train station. Train stations are always the worst part of the city.” I agreed and we kept walking down the main street.
Finally we made it to the center of the city. We went into several two and three star hotels but by 10:00 at night there wasn’t any space available. Finally we found this dirty, one start hotel where they had black stains on the kind of white walls, no furniture except a bed and no pictures on the walls. We were only going to stay for one night so I guess it would have to do.
That night we went out for a few drinks and found French people to be very open. The young people spoke English well and enjoyed having intellectual conversations. Typical discussion of politics came up with the French but everyone was very respectful and was curious to what the other side thought. After making it back to our Moroccan home stay aka our hotel we both were fast asleep from working all week and waking up at 7:00 am that morning.
The next day we visited the islands located off the shore of Marseille. We rode the ferry and saw where Dumas got his idea for the Count of Monte Cristo. Next we went to some further island in the Mediterranean Sea. The water was crystal clear with deep blues and shades of green. The sun was bright with few clouds in the sky and the wind kept the temperatures down to a cool 78 degrees.
For the afternoon we decided to head over to Nice to stay two nights there. We wanted to arrive early enough to find a hostel during the daylight. The train was nice with the view of the Mediterranean Sea meeting the mountains. The French Rivera was a spectacular sight, a place that makes you wish you could stay forever.
The first thing I recognized about Nice was the colors. Every house, ever shutter, every door was painted a different bright pastel color. Nuzzled in between the mountains and the Sea, the city of Nice had so much personality to it, more than most cities I had visited. Finding a hostel easily during the day we headed towards the beach to breath in the salty air.
Immediately I wanted to move to Nice. How could one not like this city, bright colors, great food, and friendly people. Everyone that I had met had been extremely friendly not like the rumors I had heard. Everyone tried to speak English and I tried to speak un per Fances. Walking on the promenade we saw a man who looked like he had jumped out of the 80’s carrying his bombox, set his boombox down of the payment, turned up the volume to soundtrack of Flash Dance and started dancing as though no one was watching. It felt as though the French people just had so much feeling and passion.
That night Jenny and I went to a wine shop to purchase a bottle before we went out for the night. After buying our bottle we were discussing in the street if we should go back to our hostel and drink the wine or go drink the wine on the beach. We suddenly,
“Pardon, Pardon..Je voudrais ….” Said a tiny small blond hair woman sitting in a green antique chair outside a French antique shop.
“Pardon..I don’t understand” I asked her afraid she might mention that we can’t have an open bottle on wine in the street or something along those lines.
“You speak English. You like to sit with us and enjoy your wine?” I looked around sitting next to her was a small boy around the age of seven playing his video game and an man in his forties with a round nice looking face drinking his wine, smoking a cigarette, and sharing a plate of cheese.
“We have more chairs in our shop where that we can bring out. It is Friday and we close our shop in 11/2 so us and some of our neighbor sit and enjoy nice weather on days like today before we close.” She told us with her French accent.
“Yeah sure that would be great” we told her finding a fast solution to that problem.
There we sat in the alley close to our hostel with our bottle of wine with a French family outside their shop before closing time. I couldn’t believe how nice, friendly and open they were. Soon other neighbors came and joined in the mini celebration of the Friday Street Party.
We purchased other bottle of wine from the shop next door and stayed with the family until it was time for their son to go to bed. We thanked them for a lovely evening and continued the party with the other neighbors.
Ever since that day I have thought the French people are wonderful. It completely changed my thought of the French way of life. The French new how to live, they had figured out some secret to life and they enjoyed it. One day I would like to make it back to Nice, find the shop and give the owner at 1997 Robert Mondovi Opus One.
Having a wonderful May weekend in France I had to start packing my bags because my bother was getting married in July and I was coming home at the end of June. I didn’t want to say goodbye after everything I had done here in Spain. I felt like I learned a lot about myself and when I was put in a difficult situation and I was able to take full advantage of my time here in Europe. But the year was over, Jenny was moving back to the States, most of my friends that I had made were also moving back so I figured, what the hell I want to see more of the world so I figured it was time to move on.
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Posted by mmac18 on 2009-09-14 10:23:03 | Rating: | Views: 22
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