There´s nothing better than Spain with friends. Even new ones. Dana and I had no plans when we landed in Madrid late last Monday night. So we felt lucky when we headed for Alcoy, despite the fact that it was a small inland industrial puebla with nothing particularly good about it. My friend from college Amanda had lived there for almost a year and we were invited. Over the next week, we had the pleasure of spending most of our days with Amanda, Celia and Oli, old friends and new.

After a night in Madrid, we caught the train to Valencia where we met up with Celia, Amanda´s cousin who´d just recently moved there. A few beers later (establishing a theme for the week) we hopped a train to Alcoy. Meeting up with Amanda and Oli, we hit the town. Apparently, it is a custom in Alcoy after a night of drinking to have one last tequlia shot with the bartender free of charge. Makes for a great morning.

The next morning the five of us rented a car and headed to the beach. After only seven or eight wrong turns, we finally got on the right track. We made the beach and sunned our selves.

(Sidenote: Navigation in Spain by car is more difficult than it has to be. For one, there is a roundabout every 10 kilometers. Now I´ve got nothing against these in theory but after a while, they make driving around awfully confusing. Especially when there´s some arcane sign at the beginning of the roundabout directing you where to go (wait, was Alicante the turn at 3 o´clock or 2 o´clock!?! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!) Luckily however, not much harm is done by roundabouts, because, by their very nature, they allow the lost traveler to keep circling and circling until you decide which way to go (look kids, Big Ben...Parliment...) However, it doesn´t end at the roundabouts. The highway numbers themselves are inconsistent. You can´t trust them. They change for no reason and people in Spain are the first to admit this. So you basically have to follow the signs for the town you want to go to. Of course, the town you want is not always the town on the sign. Not only that, but the tricky Spaniards like to switch it up on you - they like to throw all sorts of different random names at you. So you´re driving north from Valencia and one sign will say "This Way - Barcelona" and you´re happy because you want to go to Barcelona. But then 20 seconds later (after a few small turns), you´ll get a sign that says "This Way - Figures" pointing the same way. So now you´re all turned around and panicked that somehow in the last 20 seconds you´ve suddenly missed the turn for Barcelona and you are now heading to far-off Figures and for certain doom. What you don´t know is that Barcelona and Figures are both the EXACT SAME DIRECTION from Valencia. Not only that, but Figures is WAAAAY PAST Barcelona, which is obviously a big city. So you´re still going the right way -- Spain just wanted to switch it up on you.

Imagine driving up 101 north from Los Angeles. Most (if not all) of the signs say "101 North -- San Francisco". Sure you´ll get the occasional "101 North - Santa Barbara" or something in there, but it´s usually pretty clear. I mean at least they put the DIRECTION on there - you know you heading north! Imagine if the signs on the road just read "San Francisco", then 20 miles later the signs read "Portland" then 10 miles later "Seattle" and then "Sacramento" and "Anchorage" and on and on. And every 20 miles there was a roundabout for good measure to make you nice and confused.

All of this results in the American in Spain having to constantly check the map to make sure the town on the sign is in the same direction as the one you want to go to. EVERY sign. If the stupid highway signs from Alcoy had simply said "EAST", we´d never have made a mistake. Thank god when I´m driving, I have Dana to read the map. She´s like the Rain Man of map readers. It´s amazing. I just drive. In any case, I digress...)


Where was I? Oh yes, we were chillin´ on the beach in Spain. Perfect. Like a Corona commercial. Except I´m much fatter and more pale than any of the models in those commercials. But no matter! We were still there enjoying the sun and surf and the aftereffects of a huge meal of paella and sangria. You should be jealous.


After the sun went down and we had a few more beers at the beachside bar, we headed to Altea to experience the tourista nightlife. Amanda´s ex met up with us and we drank until the wee hours of the morning. And we took all sorts of strange photos like this. And then I drove us all home, somehow miraculosly not getting lost on the way back to Alcoy. (We took the new highway. And I quote "It´s so new, it´s not on the map...") Then we slept. And it was good.

Next up -- Barcelona...