Welcome to Spain

It only took a year and a half of planning but I'm finally on the road, and the feeling is priceless. I landed in Madrid January 10th, but unfortunately my luggage decided to catch up with me later. "Sorry sir, your bag is in Britain." So, no problem, they would deliver it to Jake's place in Alicante next day, and I could still make the last train out of Madrid. But the backpack confusion, combined with the struggle to decipher the subway system with a vocabulary of 3 Spanish words, meant I ended up rolling into the train station 5 minutes too late. So, no problem... I'll just hang out here until the next train - 11 hours later. I had lots of movies on my ipod, a magazine, and I can catch a few hours of sleep here.

That was a great plan (no, not really) until they kicked me out at midnight. On crossing through the doors my two thoughts were 'damn, it's cold' and 'now what'. So I walked around for 4 hours snapping pictures of some weird shit and cursing my shoes that needed to be broken in. I killed off the rest of the time by sleeping on the roof of the train station. Thankfully it opened at 5 right before hypothermia set in.

After getting about 30 minutes sleep in 42 hours, I had no choice but to snooze the train ride away. 4 hours later Jake and I were having a sweet, sweet cerveza in sunny Alicante under the palm trees. They came to deliver my bag while I was having a nap, but regrettably I don't remember packing only golf clubs and my name is not Mr. Escobar. Learning of this screw up, Jake's Venezuelan roommate Rebeca said "Welcome to Spain," which is a phrase that describes the general backwardness of this country. Long story short, I got my actual bag yesterday, the 14th, and my golf game still needs work.

For those who like to party with a drink now and then, Spain is definitely the place. Until today I hadn't seen the sun since being here. We go out at midnight and come home around 7 or 8am. The drinks are generally cheap, the food is great, the music is a lot of fun and the people are cool. I did finally force myself out of that routine today and did some sightseeing at Santa Barbara castle which overlooks the Mediterranean. That salt water air on your face feels damn good. The pics are amazing, check em out.

Jake and I are off to Morocco on Thursday, and definitely looking forward to it. Next post coming soon...