Not a drop of rain in Spain...and we went by train AND plane!

Wow. That's all I can say as I'm sitting in my cabin here trying to come up with a good way to reflect on this past week. The trip was OUTSTANDING!! I most certainly had high expectations coming into it...Amy and Jaimie absolutely fell in love with Spain when they were there and all the European students here were jealous of us going...but I really didn't think it possible to even blow those high expectations out of the park! But it did. I really love Spain and I am now determined to become fluent in Spanish so I can go back and feel confident.

I'm exhausted and sort of out of it, so I'll start the blogging now and then most likely deliver it in two parts to keep people guessing at home. I think I'll start all this off as a day-by-day reflection of what all we did, but bear with me if I switched gears because that's too boring or whatnot :)

DAY ONE: 

After a crazy night at the International Dinner (HUGE dinner/dance put on for everyone at the University), 7:30am came very early for Stacey and I. We meet up with Daniel, walk down a few blocks to the train station, get on, and promptly fall asleep again until arriving in Stockholm four hours later. I have always liked trains, but this whole trip has really amplified my appreciation for them...they're so much easier to sleep on than airplanes!! Alright. So we get to Stockholm city center. To the folks tuned in at home who have used RyanAir before, this will be redundant, but you sure get what you pay for with them. Seriously they are by far the cheapest airline in Europe and you save so much money using them, but I tell you it's a pain in the butt to orchestrate how to get to the tiny little airports they fly out of! When they say "Stockholm" they really mean Skavsta, an hour and 40 minutes out of Stockholm. "Barcelona" is really Girona, an hour away. BUT, we still save a bunch by flying with them so we just grin and bear it and it all works out in the end. So anywho. We get to Stockholm, hop on an hour and 40 minutes train to Nykoping, where we hang out for a while before grabbing a ten-minute bus to Skavsta, where we would be flying out of the next day. There we met up with Kevin. The four of us had made these adventurous plans to sneak in and sleep in the airport for the night, but decided against it when we found out the cheap hotel across the street gave us free breakfast and Internet. We have the attention span of goldfish I swear. :) The hotel ended up being amazingly accommodating, and the little we slept in anticipation for sun and heat was more comfortable than I had had since I'd been here! 

DAY TWO:

An even earlier morning than the day before (in fact three hours earlier...), but a far more welcomed one!!! Spain was only five hours away and already 20 degrees warmer! So at 5:30am we left the hotel with our bags stuffed with as much abuse of the complimentary breakfast service we could fit. A reliable tennis bag proved itself to be a brave soldier on this trip and has earned the status of my backpacking backpack...quite the accomplishment :). Before we knew it, we had been in the air for three hours and were flying in to sunny Girona, Spain! 

And this is where I leave you for now. I'm practically falling asleep at my computer and I would hate to get into the meat of the trip with this boring and detached sound in my writing. Stay tuned for part two!!

kt