The Beach and a Sangria

Hey everyone,

Apologies for the long break. We came here to relax and so we spent all of yesterday at the beach.

Picking up where we left off. In madrid we spent a whole lot of time just laying in their beautiful parks while the weather outside was really hot. We saw a mexico promotion festival and had some really good eats. We have few pictures because of that.

On our last day there we went for what was supposed to be cheap food but ended up costing a whole lot more than we expected. After walking througha sunday market, we went for a 14 euro menu but it was sunday so the menu was not available. They had paella for 15 euros per person and we decided to treat ourselves with that and a jug of sangria. We decided to choose the most expensive looking paella; which was seafood in squid ink paella. However we werent that adventurous so settled for rabbit, snail and mushroom. It was delicious and our pan of paella could have fed at least 4. We rolled out of there to the Parque de Buen Retiro, and sat in the shade. We then walked around the crowds of people looking at all the street performers (painters, dancers, caricaturists, jugglers, palm readers). It was amazing to see so many people walking around the park! Finally we went and saw what we had come to Madrid for: a drum circle. Every sunday from 5 pm until midnight these people drum and dance and drink (beer/wine, yes it is legal and nobody gets sick or rough), it was a great time! We walked back home, had a gelato, and watched Spain beat Italy in the Euro quarter finals.

Our place in La Cala was not very easy to find; we had no adress and no real instructions on how to get there. We took the train to Alicante, walked through a festival to the Metro/Tram/Train station on the other side of town. Took a train to Benidorm only to find out that La Cala was a few stations back and that our ticket had expired. The nice ticket guy got out of his booth and told us to just get on the train anyways and then accompanied us to La Cala. From there we did not know where to go so we walked in the 30 degree heat to the tourist office which was closed (8am until 2 pm only). We then walked to the beach where we fianlly asked a real estate place where our appartment was. After going to the wrong building the guy who was renting us the palce finally took us there.

Since then we had not done too much to write home about. We swum a whole lot in the warm sea, the beaches are crowded but still fairly nice. We have cooked really good foods (pasta with guacamole, paella, pastas, potatoes) and had lots of yogurts, sangria (a bottle of red wine for only 79 cents), fruits, chocolate with that. Yesterday we heard the celebrations for Spains win against Russia in the Semifinals, and we will be watching sunday when spain goes against germany for the cup.

We are having a blast at the beach and living in a appartment. We are sad that we will have to leave here in a few days because its so easy to relax, but the journey must go on. We are occasionally also getting homesick.

Talk to you later!