Monday, July 6, 2009

Weekend in Malaga by Chris

Now that the students have had a taste of travel in Spain and learned how it easy it is, they are trying excursions on their own during the weekends. The following is Chris' account of his trip last weekend with Ross, Carson, Tommy R., Reece, James, and Brandon.

This past weekend, me and six other guys (Ross, Carson, Tommy R., Reece, James and Brandon) decided to spend our weekend in the beautiful city of Malaga, which is located along the southern coast of Spain.

After booking our train tickets and a hostel, we were ready to go. Upon arriving, we were excited to begin what ended up being a fantastic weekend! As we departed the train station in Malaga, we made a long, rather confusing walk to our hostel; which seemed to be 3 miles away. We were a bit reluctant about our stay in the hostel, ‘The Casa Mata’, after finding out that one of the translations for it is ‘The house of death’, but after asking one of the employees that spoke English, we were told that the translation is actually ‘The plain house’. We were very relieved. The hostel was more impressive than I had imagined. There was a general kitchen for anyone to use, and a salon with a big, flat-screen TV and a Playstation 3 with various games. The rooms were very much like dorm rooms, two bunk-beads and four travel safes in each one. There was a community bathroom per floor and a refrigerator on the second floor.

That first night, all of us traveled to El Corte Ingles to buy some groceries for dinner; we ended up getting pasta ingredients and some snacky foods. While eating dinner, we met three girls from London who were in town on vacation. It was interesting asking them about their way of life in London, and comparing it to the way of life here in Espana, and in the United States. We spent the night in the hostel hanging out with the very down-to-earth management of the hostel and the three girls.

The next morning we were off to the beach. Little did we know that it was going to be nothing like that of Cadiz. The sand was a lot darker, so it was steaming hot, the water was very cold, but bearable, and there weren’t very many waves. Yet, we found things to do; around lunchtime we searched for an Asian store and bought some water tubes to float in, a Frisbee and some cheap scuba gear. After spending a good five to six hours at the beach, we headed back to the hostel, where we showered and rested heavily. The dinner theme for that night was every man for himself, and after dinner we agreed on finding a disco bar to spend the rest of our evening.

Being the true and proud Americans that we are, we apparently didn’t dress up enough to get into the disco bar and all the other nice bars, so we ended up walking around and exploring the glowing city in its nighttime fashion. The next morning we all enjoyed being able to sleep in. Around lunch time, we headed out and ate lunch at a pizzeria then proceeded to visit the Castillo de Gibralfaro, which is a massive castle seated on a hill that overlooks the whole city and it’s port; it was once used as a fort to guard the city from enemies back in the 1800’s. The hike up the hill to the castle was a workout worthy of an Olympian, but we made the trip with enough energy to walk around and enjoy the incredibly beautiful views of the city from up above.

After soaking up the views, we were low on energy and time, and headed back to the hostel once again, and had some downtime before traveling back to Seville.

Looking back on this past weekend, what I treasure the most are the friendships we made with the people we met from the hostel and the bonds we made between ourselves. It will surely be an experience I will never forget and one that I wouldn’t have to think twice about doing again.

P.S. COME TO SPAIN!!

Follow this link for all of the photos from their weekend: Malaga Photo Album

3 comments:

  1. hey it was Tommy G. lol

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  2. Great photos and a nice story. Diana

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  3. Hi Carson and all--I enjoyed the story and photos and was glad to see Carson's appetite hasn't changed! Hope all is well and stay healthy! Thanks for the story Chris . Lori West-Weyen ( Carson's mom)

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