We went on a trip to Spain!

This post is going to be mostly a straight copy of my travel blog post that I wrote while the trip was going on, including recaps of what we did on various days, and my thoughts and experiences of the trip. If you’d like to see the original post, it’s here. I’ll also add some extra relevant scenery photos to this one though as extra content just for you guys.

Also for reference, because of the way Tumblr works, some posts have extra details hidden away that don’t show up when looking at the final thread. I’ll add those extra details here though.

Saturday

Unsupervised children will be given free impromptu skydiving lessons.

Gonna turn this into my Spain trip thread.

As explained above we went on a plane.

My brother dropped us in London quite early in the morning for scheduling reasons on his end, but our plane wasn’t until the evening so we spent about an hour at the arcade before going to a burger restaurant and a dessert shop for lunch. We were gonna be out late and had packed sarnies for dinner so big lunch.

Getting to the airport isn’t strictly a new thing for me, I’ve done ferries and the Eurostar and we didn’t have checked luggage. Still queued for it because we couldn’t see anywhere else to go, and they pointed us upstairs to security.

Security was a pain as always, they wanted shoes off which was tedious, had to scuffle through my bag, Lilla got stopped by the metal detectors for apparently something in her neck???

Then we waited, and waited, and made our way through border control, and sat down and waited.

Then came the class of sixth graders. Terrifying. They all crowded into the small waiting area past border control and were pretty much bunched up all together in the three rows in front of us.

The journey itself was simultaneously boring and miserable. Tried to put my head down and mindlessly play a puzzle game, but the kid in front of me kept leaning forward and slamming her back into the chair, which sent the chair into the top of my head, dozens of times, muffled only by a small pillow shaped bunny plush we packed at the last minute.

Note: I am 6’9″ (206cm) irl. It makes sense the plane was packed with unsupervised children, it was designed for them.

Spain first impressions

– The night here is as warm as the days at home

– The air is really thick

Do gotta say though, the architecture is beautiful. Even more so irl than in the pictures. I’m sure I’ll be blown away tomorrow morning when I can see it in the sunlight.

Sunday

Morning time. The architecture is just as stunning as it felt like it would be at night.

We’re on the deck next to Lilla’s parents place, there are big windows that open out to make it literally a shaded balcony. I don’t know why there is a locked gate on the side of the house, maybe the balcony glass panels don’t do a very good job keeping people out.

Lilla was right though, it does feel totally different than home, there isn’t really any grass but there are lots of huge palm trees everywhere providing shade.

Probably gonna head up to the roof later to have a look around.

Also wow, the cicadas are loud

Went on a little toddle outside in my pjs and flip flops, and I think the thing I realised most other than “wow pretty architecture” is just how the heat sneaks up on you, you feel fine and then suddenly you’re not. I think hiding in the shade of the palm trees is going to be the mvp.

Also friendship ended with bath tub, cold showers are my new bestie.

I think I mucked up looking for shirts though, I was looking for light weight and thin, but I think I should have gotten loose fitting instead. Guess we’re going clothes shopping soon.

Another observation:

there are a lot of big areas fences, walls, and double/triple locked doors, balconies, and conservatories(?!?!?!?)

environmental storytelling at it’s finest, I wonder what historical/cultural stuff happened here to necessitate that.

On the topic of prescription sunglasses woes, Lilla and I have just spent two hours in the pool. It’s the first time I’ve been swimming in a decade and Lilla in half as well.

It was fun and comfy and we just vibed and floated around. I’ve lost any front strokes I used to be able to do but I can still backstroke which is nice.

Lilla and I spent a lot of time just hugging and floating around together, the pool was completely empty except for us and her parents.

Also (mostly) accurate representation of something I did to Lilla :3

Some food notes

Grilled salmon: like 6/10, I thought I’d had salmon before, I was wrong, it tasted unlike anything I’ve had before and idk if that’s a good or a bad thing, but it looks like it would be absolute sensory hell in terms of texture, and it took a fair bit on my part to make sure it didn’t. I didn’t hate the experience, but I’m definitely not going to walk into it as easily again.

Potato omelette: like 5/10 idk, there is like something runny in the middle of it and idk how to feel about that, I really like omelettes but really hate hash browns, and this is like a middle ground. Once again, I don’t hate it, but idk if I’d have it again.

I get the feeling this whole holiday is going to be difficult for me, being the super picky eater I am,,,

Monday

First big excursion, Lilla and I have gone to Cartagena. It is 32C and we’re only here for the afternoon so we missed the worst of the heat at least.

We first went and had a look around the excavated Roman theatre. From what I recall they found it in the mid 18th century and literally restructured the whole town around it’s discovery, very fun.

I will say though, the stairs are terrifying. I don’t have a fear of heights, but I do have a fear of instability. If I can hold onto something I’m happy, or if there is enough floor around me that I could take a step in any direction and be ok, that’s good too, but the stairs at the theatre are very long, very steep, and very narrow, and it actually spiked my anxiety trying to go down them. Thankfully Lilla was here to give me a hand on the second set of them.

We also wanted to go up the elevator to the castle but didn’t get the time, so instead we took a tourism boat around the harbour and the mouth of the cove. I didn’t expect there to be so much historical military presence here but now that I think about it, that makes sense. This place is very close to the mouth of the Mediterranean so it makes sense it’s so well fortified.

More observations

There is a lot more verticality here. 3 or 4 storey houses with access to the roof in a lot of cases, and shopping promenades with extra shops stacked on top. I don’t know if this is a tourist area specific thing or a cultural thing for Spain in general.

Also it feels a lot like the Spanish road rules are a lot similar to England’s than Frances is. There doesn’t seem to be any weird rules like the give way rule in France for junctions, but that’s maybe because every junction is a roundabout lol, though I’d want a second opinion from a Spaniard before I tried driving here myself.

Tuesday

Slower day today, Lilla and her parents spent the morning doing afaik not a lot of anything, and I took my first of two nomad days for work so I spent my morning, siesta, and early afternoon building some SQL tables for recreation.

In the afternoon we spent another 2 and a half hours vibing in the pool, and Lilla thinks it’s less boring to vibe alongside me than it is on her own.

But the highlight of today: We’re currently at a seafood restaurant that does Paella dishes and stuff all made to order. Lilla and her parents shared a mixed seafood paella and I had “chicken skewers with rice and curry”

When Lilla saw curry, she assumed it would be the same as the curry they have in France, which she says is pretty similar to katsu, and I took her word for it.

Can a Spaniard please tell me what they put in their curries that makes them so different and also green, I ate the skewers but couldn’t finish the rice because I felt myself getting overwhelmed and continuing would have caused me a lot of problems.

6/10 maybe again, let me recharge first though.

Off to the ice-cream parlour before bed.

Wednesday

Update: ice cream was very very good. 

Anyway, Wednesday,

We all went out to a small little tourist town about two hours north. It’s built around a little castle on a big hill surrounded by mountains on pretty much all sides.

We went quite early in the morning and Lilla and her dad were excited to go to the communal swimming pool in the little town.

When we got there we went to a little cafe, which is unremarkable in itself but the funny part is that lillas parents ordered a plate of various things including a burger, and the burger they got was the most impotent one imaginable. literally just one thin burger inside an oversized bun and nothing else.

also it was only 27c outside.

Lilla and I sat on a bench in the shade for half an hour while her parents went and checked out all the tourism stores, then we went up to the castle, which is a nice lil museum before a climb up the side of the mountain.

And while we were sat at the top, we felt a drip on my arm. and another, and we decided we should head back down so that Lilla and her dad had time to swim, after all, we were only staying one more hour.

So we got back to the car, about to drive to the pool, when in a stroke of divine comedy, the moment we closed the doors, the light sprinkling of rain turned into a torrential downpour. Needless to say, they decided not to go to the pool lol.

The flooding on the drive home was incredible. Spain is not built for rain and that definitely shows when it does lol.

Anyway, tomorrow is another work day so I might ask Lilla to write about what they do. I’m going to be working through the day and then tanning in the pool in the afternoon, Lilla and her parents are going out on the town and maybe the beach.

Thursday

Like I said yesterday, I didn’t really do too much today other than make a few charts for a website at work, and then get upset at literally the exact 90 minutes I tried sunbathing by the pool being the only 90 minutes of the day where the sun is behind clouds.

That’s enough from me though, Lilla has been on an adventure.

—

Just finished up minigolf. The course looked a lot like just a miniature golf course, with regular straights, greens, roughs, and turfed walls to represent the out of bounds areas. Nothing very interesting design wise except one hole with a very comedy jump over a water hazard in it. Was still fun to play though.

The scores, as always, were super tight between Lilla and I (we both got par+8) and even tighter than last time we played when we account for her parents getting par+7 and par+11, on a full 18 hole course. We all had fun, and now we’re all tired because it’s midnight. gnighty all.

After we got home, it was just gone midnight and I decided to go up to the roof and snap these pictures. Had to wrangle the camera’s exposure time and use a steady hand, but I’m actually super proud of these ones.

Friday

Last full day here. The morning was particularly lazy, especially so for me as I slept until like 11am, but a shower and some leftover sausage later, we ended to travelling over to the castle in Alicante which is a lot of beautiful views and steep hills.

We would have gone to another POI but lillas dad got an unfortunately timed phone call that put a damper on things and slowed us down, so we mostly just vibed on the various benches around the castle.

Tomorrow we go back to England, so we’ll be packing in the morning before heading back to the airport in the afternoon.

Saturday

And we landed safely in England. Most of the morning was packing and playing a few cheeky rounds of Uno before heading back to Alicante airport. The lines were considerably longer, but the security checkpoint was a lot easier.

We picked up a whole load of chocolate from the duty free to bring back, so that’s my next couple weeks sorted, and all in all it went very smoothly. I did not have to defenestrate any children which was nice.

We’re currently in London just before the passport gate, and anticipating the thermal shock of British climate after Spain, though it’s still apparently 23 here so maybe it’ll be easy on us.

Thanks for reading.