Málaga

The final destination of adventure: Spain! Our morning started off QUITE stressful...due to our late night the day before, and also moving up the time of our depart time led to a interesting morning. Carolyn and Theresia left to secure our tickets at the station, while Ryan and I had the task of grabbing breakfast for everyone and meeting them at the train station. I always laughed at people out power-walking, but man, I now understand what a workout it is! Ryan and I were walking faster than I've EVER walked before...almost running, with all our crap. AND, when we finally found a place to dash in and grab breakfast, the girl helping us took FOREVER. If anyone has ever seen Love Actually - the scene at the jewelry counter - well, that was our experience. Each croissant was separately wrapped and man, I was sweating just looking at my watch! We made it to the train station with about 2 minutes to spare, and all four of us RAN to our train. It was a ridiculous adrenaline rush and we all needed to cool down once we found our seats on the train, haha.

Our train ride was fairly short, and before we knew it, we were in Malaga! We had to take two different buses to get to our hostel from the train station, but had no trouble finding them. We walked into our hostel and could see through the glass doors - a PATIO! As it turned out...85% of our time (awake) while in Malaga was spent on that patio (see above left). That first day we just laid outside and soaked in the sun. We had our daily sangria and a DELICIOUS home cooked dinner by the owner of our hostel, "Papi". This little old man didn't speak any English, but was very animated and cooked a MEAN dinner (see left)! We each had an overflowing plate of cous-cous, kabobs, veggies, and different kinds of cooked meats. Our evening was filled with more sangria (with "extra fun" added according to the bartender) and LOTS of games of the card game Presidents. (More on that in the Top Ten). We ended the evening with a lively edition of musical chairs - one of the many games on our list for the 8-hour train ride that never got completed. The rest of the hostel guests were quite amused as we dashed around our circle of chairs. Theresia won and I lost (a theme on this trip). Then, we took a little walk down the beach, which was RIGHT next to our hostel. We couldn't get onto the sand, but could walk the boardwalk (see below right). It was very peaceful and serene to hear the waves crashing...I could fall asleep to that! Then - off to bed!

The next day the girls went out to do some souvenir shopping while Ryan slept in (see below right). We didn't shop for too long, and did a little walk along the beach. It was a nice temperature, but VERY windy. We went back to pick up Ryan - and then we hit up the beach! Our plan was to go in the water, but the cold wind was going to make that very unpleasant. Don't you fret - we DID go in! The beginning of Carolyn and my sprint is on video in fact, those on Facebook can check it out. Let me just say, I completely submerged myself and it was INSTANT body aches of cold. You can't even imagine how loudly we were yelling as we ran out! Ryan and Theresia found it pretty humorous! Ryan went in later on, so he understood the pain eventually. We didn't stay at the beach long, it was just too cold. We went back to our spot on the patio for the duration of the afternoon! Sadly, my camera got sand in the lens RIGHT as we were leaving the beach, and it stopped functioning. RIP camera! (No worries - I now have a new one, and it's working really well!!) We spent the afternoon eating strawberries, sipping more sangria, getting a FEW more freckles, and enjoying the most delicious frozen pizzas I've ever had! No joke - our hostel would cook them for us in this little wood oven, and they were great flavors to choose from. Mine was a BBQ pizza, complete with BBQ sauce that was squeezed on top. We need frozen pizzas like that!! Before dinner we did a little exploring down the beach and found a fun "muscle beach" area that had work-out equipment. We decided to take advantage and take some fun photos. (Well I didn't, my camera was deceased, so picture at right is donated, as are some others in this blog.) When we got back to the hostel, we had another one of "Papi's" dinners, and entertained ourselves that evening with more card games. We hit the sack, for our last night in Spain, full of food and some epic memories!

Our travel home day (see left) went pretty smoothly...we had a few trains that were a bit late, but other than that, no problems. We were home Sunday night around ten-ish, and I just wanted to collapse into bed! Our new classes for Block 5 started the next day though, so we didn't get much recovery time...but hey, we were in Spain - so I wasn't about to complain! ;) Stay tuned for the Top Ten, which should be entertaining to read, or so I hope!