first half of semana santa

so spring break started out very interestingly....

cancelled greece, packed my bags, and at 2.45 on friday i decided to catch the 3.15 to algeciras, stay the night (no hostel planned), and get on a bus to tarifa the next day to meet up with aliyah, toni, graham, dani, and chris.

6 hours bus ride. hour 2 a CRAZY lady comes on. and thats when I realize I forgot my camera in my other purse sitting on my bed in my piso in Córdoba. typical.

shes dark, like super tanned.... bright red injected lips, a wig but i can see her real hair under it, a baseball cap. she starts talking nonsense... the guy sitting next to her changes seats, but she continues to talk... and its at this point you realize she has an imaginary friend. about hour 4 she starts smacking this imaginary person... pulls out a bag of potato chips and a beer, cracks them open, and goes to town. hour 5 she's yelling at her mother about french fries and broken shampoo..... and the younger crowd around me starts cracking up laughing....

keep in mind, this is all in spanish. so if the people around me are laughing hysterically, you can only imagine that i am only getting a small part of the craziness... aka broken shampoo and french fries.

made it to algeciras at like 930, checked into the first hostal i saw... the woman looked at me like i was nuts for going on my own, gave me my own room for 20euro, and excellent price. the shower room was a bit grungy, but i was happy to have a shower. got directions to a kebab place around the corner, met up with an american girl, chatted a bit. she was on her way to morocco. returned home and slept.

next morning, the gang came up to algeciras and we went to GIBRALTAR! yes, i went to GREAT BRITAIN! walked around, ate fish and chips at a place called LORD NELSONS. got in a van, saw all the sights, st michael's cave which is just a cave filled with stalagmites and stalagtites, and they were playing beethoven. loved it. and the MONKEYS! i had a monkey climb on my head, slap me in the face when i ran out of peanuts, and sit in my arms like a small child. one got in our van even and tried to drive away with us. amazing.

went to tarifa, made breakfast burritos for dinner, went to the beach, trespassed into an old castle tower and then down onto the beach. next morning we went to the beach and frolicked in the strait of gibraltar. my back is sunburned BUT I PROMISE I USED SUNBLOCK!

i met a lot of nice people in the hostel. i was in a different one than the group, but because i had requested a female dorm, i ended up by myself in a 3 person room. NICE. i went to make myself pasta and instead some australian girls gave me some of their stir fry dinner since they had made too much. met up with the gang and went to a place called the CIRCUS -- watched american TV, played ping pong, and then the locals bought us games of pool and we played together and spoke in spanish. we stayed there until like 2 or 3 am... ridiculous.

the next day we caught the bus to cádiz, walked around the city (we'd been there for one night only before to celebrate CARNAVAL in february), saw the castle and went to the beach again. We saw a man selling sea urchins on the street and people eating them just like that... raw and straight out of the spiny shell. the man gave me one for free, opened it for me, and showed me how to eat it.

it was like eating slightly thick freezing cold salt water. i do not reccommend it. but i was in cádiz and living up the experience. we saw a procession and were amazed, then headed to the bus station.


the idea was for chris and i to catch a bus to algeciras and then head on to ronda. we got there 30 minutes early and yet SOMEHOW missed the bus... how, you ask? BECAUSE IT WASNT LABELED that it was going to Algeciras. so we didnt get on it. so we missed it. ended up begging the woman to give us the last two seats to seville with the rest of the gang. she finally caved and chris and i squeezed on.

Seville is KNOWN for its semana santa processions. It is also known that it is EXPENSIVE during the time and IMPOSSIBLE to find lodging on short notice. However, since I am Jamee, OCD, and incredibly lucky... i had written down the numbers of the hostels we had stayed in LAST week and called up... thank goodness they had a room. We made our way to the italian place i had eaten at with katie and jenny and then on to the hostel.

next morning, we went to the bus station to learn that the bus to ronda wasnt running on its normal schedule due to the traffic and the next one wasnt leaving until late in the afternoon, effectively blowing the whole day, so we opted for a quick lunch and then the trip home to córdoba, where i am now.

i got home around 4, helped a guy from san diego find a hostel, and passed out around 5.... woke up at midnight to hear the procession in the plaza, but was too exhausted. i woke up this morning at 9... effectively 16 hours in my bed completely asleep.

looking at other day trips for the rest of the week. madrid or valencia maybe.



love you all, miss you. if i had internet in my house, this would be easier. i had no electricity apparently, so thank goodness i slept for 16 hours.