spain part one

After much anticipation and much packing and re-packing, the morning finally came for us to head to the airport to begin our Grand Spain Adventure! We flew from here to Dallas and then boarded the "big plane" to Madrid. Our carry-on bags were stowed and we settled in for our eight (and something) hours of flight across the U.S. and Atlantic ocean. The flight tracker mode on the video screens was a pretty neat way of checking in on where we were and the flight path we were taking. Unfortunately, I only snapped this one photo, as I may or may not have been a little uneasy about seeing a little plane image over blue ocean for a very long time. 

International flights are quite nice. They entertain you with movies and food. We had a full dinner, which was more than a little foil bag with five pretzels in it, and... it was quite tasty. Later, towards the wee hours of the morning, they served a small breakfast. Plenty of drinks were rolling down the isles too. The couple in the seats in front of us made themselves cozy right off the bat by reclining their chairs completely back. They were pretty much in our laps the entire flight. The woman behind me was very tall and as she lounged down in her chair to sleep, she kept slipping further and further under my chair as the night rolled on. I was a bit startled when I first felt her feet on the back of my legs! Ugh. Other than feeling a bit claustrophobic,  the flight was good and we dozed a little throughout the night.  As we were flying into Madrid, I snapped a photo out the window. It was almost 7:30 a.m and still dark! Our first impression of Spain...the sun doesn't rise very early!

We marveled at the airport as soon as we stepped through the doors! We just followed the crowd hoping we would find our next gate easily and anticipated whether or not we would need to use our Spanish..."donde estsa el gate-o?"

We had a few hours to "people watch" before our next flight boarded, taking us to our destination of Alicante. We finally arrived and so did our one checked bag. Hooray! Next, we found our way to the bus stop which would take us close to the place we would be staying. This was an experience trying to figure out the correct bus and if it would make the stop we wanted it to. The driver seemed to know where we were going and said he would let us know when to get off. At a certain point however, at a bus stop... that driver got off and a new one got on! Shift change evidently.  A little confusion ensued as we talked with the new driver to let him know where we wanted to stop. Fortunately, there was a man on the bus that could speak a little English and told the driver where we wanted to go. It was a bit of a rush to get off, when we were told it was our stop, and as the bus zoomed off and we were standing on a busy street corner with all our luggage, we had our first moment of "here-we-are... now where do we go?" My very-skilled-at-reading-maps husband, studied his map and directions and pointed "this way", to find our apartment. (they rent apartments as they do hotels). We quickly found out that the streets are not marked with street signs, the corners of building have the street names. But not all of them. So, we started to walk, me following my leader, lugging my rolling suitcase along brick streets, hearing Leah say in my ear..."Mom, you don't want to be hauling big suitcases through those streets"!  Soon, north didn't seem like north and streets didn't seem to be matching up like he thought they should. It didn't make sense in his head and his well-studied map did not seem to be helping.  So, when we found ourselves on more of a main-street again, we made the decision to hail the cab that was driving by. He stopped and we stumbled through conversation, showing him the address and our map of where we needed to go. He pointed to the direction we had come and said..."there".   Or in other words..."you crazy Americans...it's the street right there...you passed it". We thanked him and turned around and started walking again. One small block and there it was.

We had come down the street and didn't look to our left to see the small sign Apartmentos Artilleros above the small door. You see, the streets are narrow, the buildings are tall and shops are on the bottom floor with apartments on the top. As was this with the Optical shop below. However, as we walked towards it from the direction in the photo, we recognized it right away from the pictures we saw on the internet. As we were standing on the corner looking up, the cab driver came down the street. He had driven around the corner, the other way, to see if we found it! We thought it very nice of him, as he could have piled us in his car initially, driven us around a few blocks and pulled up to the apartment, charging us a cab ride and us not ever being the wiser that we were really only about 40 walking steps away. We had to call the number on the door for someone to come give us a key and let us in. MANY narrow steps up a great staircase later, we were finally in our Alicante apartment.

The stairs we had to walk to get to the fourth floor...

The view off our balcony...

The view the other direction...I loved the tile detail on the corner of the building.

And the view of the street below.

 And then we got to meet up with this girl...

We were happy to see her and she was happy to see us! We walked around awhile and then had a nice dinner. Our first Spanish tapas dinner!

And then it was off to bed for the two of us. We were starting to feel the weariness of our long travel and being awake for 24 hours (mostly). Leah would have class the next day, so we had plans to visit the castle on the hill.

Stay tuned.