My first taste of Spain

Since the weather had been relatively miserable here in Edinburgh, I decided that I needed some heat and sun so I took a very quick weekend break to Alicante.

I got up really early - 3.30am and Christopher took me to Edinburgh airport so I could catch the 6.00am plane to Alicante, arriving at 10.00am local time. I caught a bus into town only to discover that my hotel was another 10minutes out of town. I had no idea where I was going so I caught a cab to Hotel Albahia - a good hotel, quite cheap but rubbish location. After I checked in, I got changed and caught a bus (I knew where I was now) back into the main beach (1 Euro). I hired a beach lounger for the day and spent the rest of the day lying in the sun and admiring the Mediterranean from both the beach and the water. Slightly overcooked myself despite coating myself in SPF 50 lotion, but at least I went back to Edinburgh looking like I had seen the sun! It was interesting discovering that this too was a topless beach - must be continental thing. It was kind of scary actually - while there were some lovely looking women who could carry it off well, there were also many less successful at it. I for one would not be game to go topless now, although I may have considered it 20 years ago!

I headed back to the hotel about 5.30pm and met up with a lovely Irish couple for a few drinks before going into town for dinner. It was lovely just being warm all the time - it was a balmy evening and I enjoyed my dinner on the promenade. As the last bus back to the hotel left town at 10.30pm I had a pretty early night!

The next day, I really didn't want to head back to Edinburgh but sadly, I had to. I reluctantly packed myself up and caught the bus back to where I could catch the airport bus. I was staggered to find that the driver decided to have a smoke and read his paper before we left. However I thought it would give me the perfect excuse not to catch the plane so I wasn't overly worried. We eventually took off only to stop again half way there for another read and smoke. You can imagine my frustration when we eventually arrived at the airport to find that the airline obviously used the same timekeeping methods as my bus driver and I was still in plenty of time to catch the plane!! They were so disorganised that they didn't have any catering on the flight - not even prepacked food that you could buy - so all the passengers made a mad dash for the sandwich bars to get drinks and something to eat, which of course made us even later taking off. Again, I didn't mind because I had heard the forecast for Edinburgh and wasn't really in any hurry to get back to it. We did get there in the end though and it was as bad as forecast but at least Christopher and Leigh picked me up so I didn't have to drag my bag around in the rain.

I'm going to have to go back there, perhaps not Alicante but definitely Spain although I didn't understand a word of what was said around me. Even my phrase book will not help me here - shame I don't have Adriana here to help me with this, but I guess if I spend more time there I might pick up a few things.

Next trip is to Amalfi to meet up with Joe and Mandy in a couple of weeks - I'll update after that.