Ja, Si!

I LOVED Spain.
I can't really say why exactly I liked it so much. It was wonderful being able to use Spanish a little bit and actually understand what locals were trying to say to me. I guess I just didn't feel as helpless as I do here in Switzerland. I also very much enjoyed the weather. It was December yet the sun was warm and shining every now and then. It did rain a little the Sunday we were there but it didn't last long and it was still waaaaay warmer than it is in Zurich. Except for one instance in a lame cafe with an extremely rude hostess, the people were generally pretty friendly and helpful. We even had a couple of people stop us and ask if we needed help when we were looking confused and holding a map on the streets. People in Switzerland definitely do not go out of their way to ask if you need help, they are known for their stand-offish style. The hostel we stayed in was very nice. It was clean and the staff was friendly and helpful. The three of us - Heidi, Amanda, and I - had a room to ourselves with a shared bathroom just outside our door. The hostel was also in a pretty good part of town where we only had to walk a few minutes to the main areas. We were a few blocks back from the beach and towering above us was the Castillo de Santa Barbara.
When we got into Alicante on Saturday afternoon, we checked into our hostel and found a place to get a bite to eat. I have to say that I am not a fan of Spanish food. I'm not sure what I was expecting (tacos, enchiladas, salsa, guac?) but there did not seem to be anything very unique on the menus. I did have paella one day, which is a Spanish dish, and which was probably the best thing I ate the whole trip, but this was not really anything special. I ordered a hamburger at a cafe before we left and I received two plain beef patties without any bun or vegetables and some french fries. Even the ketchup was not very good.
The three of us decided to hit the town Saturday night. Unfortunately, we did not realize that most people in Spain go out really late at night, like midnight or later, and we were already pretty tired by this point. We went to several different bars and just walked around the downtown area but were back to the hostel relatively early.
The next day we headed out to do some more sightseeing. Our goal was to go to the castle but the lift to take people up there was not working. So we decided to just walk around town instead and we actually ended up making our way up to the castle on our own. It was a little bit of a hike but it was worth it once we got to the top. We could see all of Alicante and the ocean, it was beautiful. And the castle itself was also very pretty. I wanted to go down into the dungeons to see if there were any dragons down there but unfortunately this was locked.
After touring the castle and hiking back down to our hostel, we took a little break before heading out to explore the city some more. We walked along one of the main roads near the beach. There were some really pretty parks along the way and we had fun taking many pictures. Alicante is a big tourist city and so there were not a lot of people around this time of the year. There is a big casino there but when we checked it out it was all closed, which we found odd.
Again, we went out on the town Sunday night. Amanda, Heidi, and I went to a really cool restaurant/bar. It was called Lizarran I think and it was pretty unique to anything I'd experienced. The servers brought around large platters of food with toothpicks in them and you just grabbed some when they went by. When you were finished they would add up your toothpicks and charge you this way. The food was pretty good and the atmosphere was fun. After this place closed we went back to our hostel where Heidi and I had a nice chat with some of the other people staying there as well. Amanda was having problems of her own because she had stepped in dog doodoo on the walk back and ended up getting it on her sheets.
The next day we woke up to check out of our hostel and do some more touring. We went to a few cathedrals, namely the cathedral of St. Nicolas. This was gorgeous! It was so pretty inside and very plain looking outside. We also wanted to check out this market we had heard of. After finding it, we were extremely disappointed. It was mainly just a market of fish and meats and vegetables/fruits that the locals would purchase. We were expecting more of a Saturday's Market but we were very wrong. We walked around a different part of town looking for a big mall. The mall wasn't anything special by the way. After purchasing some postcards, we sat in a little square in the middle of the city to write on them and then managed to find a post office to send them off. By this time we were really craving some gelato so we took off to find a gelateria. For some reason, we could not for the life of us find one and we ended up walking way farther than we meant to. Anyways, by the time we had gotten something to eat, we had to catch the bus back to the airport. You would think that this would be the end of the story, right? Well, not quite.
After our flight, we arrived in Basel around 22:30 and had to catch a train back to Zurich. Well, even after running with our bags all the way from the bus stop to the train gate, we missed our train by a minute. It's a good hour's train ride from Basel to Zurich and we had to wait for the next one, hoping and hoping that we would get to Zurich in time to catch the last bus to my house, which is outside of Zurich. So we got on the train and ran off as fast as we could to the tram stop that would take us to the bus stop that would take us to Maur. Well, even after running with all our stuff to the tram stop, we missed the last tram by 2 minutes. We tried running to the next tram stop to see if we could catch it but alas, we did not. We had about 6 minutes to get to my bus stop before the last bus left. After that we would be forced to take a cab to Maur which would cost more than 60 francs. Heidi then had the great idea to take a cab to the bus stop which was only a few minutes away. After scrambling around trying to find a cab, we finally got this really old lady cabdriver to take us to Klusplatz, the bus stop. We explained to her our situation and that we only had about 4 minutes. This was not the best idea since she then decided to go sooooooooo slow the whole way. We're pretty sure that she wanted us to miss our bus so that we would have to pay for her to take us all the way to Maur. We were still a block away from the bus stop when we told her we were getting out. She actually told us no but we did not care, we had a minute to get to our bus and she was stuck at a stop light! We ran to the bus stop and actually made it on time!!! It was quite the ordeal but we were very happy to not have to pay a ridiculous 60 francs. We ended up getting home at 1:30 AM and were very tired.
It was definitely worth it though. It was a fun trip and I really really want to go to Spain again! Below is a slideshow of some pictures I took of our trip! Enjoy!