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This year I was lucky enough to be invited on holiday with my friend and her family to a house her grandparents own in Spain. As I had never been to Spain before, I had mixed feelings about going. Of course I was excited but I was also ridiculously nervous.
I have never been on holiday with friends before but it wasn't that I was nervous about, it was the Airport! I have have travelled by plane before but only once and that was with my parents and it was also their first time, so as you can probably imagine it was quite a stressful ordeal! This lead to me feeling rather tense in the weeks leading up to our departure on the 28th June (having A-Level resits just two weeks before ensured my stress levels to be through the roof). However once we arrived at Manchester airport at 3:10 in the morning following a 2:15 start I discovered that all my stress and been about nothing. Molly and her parents are well accustomed to the process of airports so the whole thing turned out to be a breeze and I actually felt surprisingly calm. However I was quite gutted over not getting a window seat on the plane and missing out on the generic wing-clouds-sky photo...
Once we landed in San Javier airport it was approximately 30 degrees outside which was very welcome after we had just left behind a very grey and rainy North West England. As someone who has never been to Sapin before there was one rather big thing that I noticed was missing from, well, pretty much everywhere. Grass. I understand that it is hot but surely it's not
that hot that grass doesn't grow (I saw evidence that this isn't the case because I did actually see some grass in my time there...)
Once we arrived at the apartment we had the joys job of cleaning up all the bugs that had somehow managed to enter the house. Apparently they get a swarm of bugs every year and no matter how many precautions they take they just cannot make the house 100% bug proof. After that is was straight down to the beach which was literally bout 5 minutes walk away. It was absolutely blissful even if I did get awful sunburn on my back and shoulders (for the record it cleared up in about three days leaving unbelievably brown).
In total we probably spent about 4 out the 8 days we were there just on the beach or walking round the town eating ice cream. We ate a lot of ice cream. I'm the type of person that enjoys holidays that are full of museums and what ever culture there is on offer so I got quite bored quite quickly on these days but I did my very best to cover this up. I think I was successful...
On one day we went to Cartagena which was about a 45 minute drive away. We visited the ancient Roman amphitheatre which I could not believe it was only found in 1984 because they'd built right on top of it! To say it was so large I really don't understand how they managed it! We then walked round the front of the city wall to the cave like things which had been built into the rock during the Spanish Civil War as a sort of air-raid shelter. I couldn't believe how big they were! Being the claustrophobic I am I don't thing I could have stayed for a long period of time like they would have had to during bomb raids. On top of the rock where the shelters were, there was a castle. However I don't think they'd made a big enough thing of it because they've essentially built right on top of it. You can't really tell from the outside but when you go into the castle itself you can see how they've used the Castle ramparts as a sort of foundation for the building above which was home to a Dan Vinci exhibition.
There was one day where we went to Lo Pagan which was the town next to where we were staying in, Santiago De La Ribera. We walked past these salt pools where there were hoards of people covering themselves in mud because it's supposed to be therapeutic. It was quite amusing actually to watch people walking around with their whole body apart from their face covered in mood. There was also people lying in this ditch for some reason but we presumed it was rich in minerals...
We drove through the national park and there were so many flamingos in the salt lakes. It was so nice to see them in the wild rather than stuck in zoo where they have limited to space to fly around.
On the Thursday we went to the Spa in Archena where they have these therapeutic thermal pool. They were amazing not going to lie. I haven't been swimming in ages (mainly because I hate hate HATE swimwear) and I had forgotten just how much fun it is. I turned back into my 10 year old self! It was such a good day. The spa itself was really hard to get to but once you there it was like some amazing escape. It was essentially a little town. It even had a church and everything!
A couple of days before we left, Me and Molly took a boat trip to La Manga. You could see it from the beach in Santiago but it took longer to get than we thought it would. Apparently it's were loads of footballers go on holiday but there was literally nothing there apart from loads of boats, high rises, some shops and a Burger King. However the boat ride on the way back became a bit wild and started tipping all over the place. Molly hated it but I thought it was rather exciting!
All in all I had such a fab week, even if I did get frisked in security on the way home...
