An accidental holiday in Magaluf.

This was the week that we had been looking forward to for a long time.  Booked at the end of last year we decided to spend our holiday in Mallorca, it was somewhere we could all get to from 3 different airports, it was a good price and it is a nice place.  We booked a hotel called TRH Palmanova (remember this, it is going to be important...), booked our flights, and all we had to do was wait, so wait we did.  A quick read up on the internet suggested that the hotel wasn't quite in Palmanova like the name would suggest, and on a steep hill, neither of which really caused us a problem.  Easter week rolls around and off we go!  Charlotte and Vicki arrived first having flown together from Manchester, and get told we've been moved hotels as there had been over booking with ours, not a problem, it's just  even further up the hill!  Now I'll take you back to our location, we were basically on the end of the strip in Magaluf!  Not quite what we'd intended, but oh well!  Palmanova itself, when we actually did go there for a wander, is a lot bigger than we had realised and we'd certainly go and stay there again.  The only problem with the location we ended up in was that there was a Spanish festival of some sort on for a few days and there was a huge group of people staying in our hotel, and they weren't the quiet type!  But when this is the view from your balcony, you really can't complain:

The very first time we took a walk down to the beach we realised that we would have to find another route, it is impossible to walk down the main strip without getting stopped at least every 5 or 6 steps (and I'm not even exaggerating) by some promoter or other trying to get you to stop in their bar for a drink.  It doesn't matter how clear you make it to some of them that you're not interested, they'll engage you in conversation, physically block the way, try and split up the group and even try pulling you in by your hair!  It's a bit of a laugh but certainly gets tiresome after a while.  We instead tended to go to places along the beach front or walk over to Palmanova where there are still plenty of lively bars but without the hassle.  We did cave into them once or twice though, the first time was at 4 in the afternoon when we bought beer and sangria and got given free shots of Sambuca, only in Magaluf...

Because we're so cool and so mature we bought a bucket, spade, rake and some little animal shapes, oh and a sive!  We spent quite a while on 2 different days making these creations:



And on a sand related note, the girls buried me in the sand and sculpted me into a mermaid.  I didn't get the best photo of that though!

In general we spent our week wandering, eating, drinking and laying in the sun, so I'm not going to give you a diary entry style blog of what we did for fear of boring you all so much that you never come back!  However, we did go to Palma for the day which was nice, other than paying €4.50 for a Fanta!  We had intended to see one of the Easter parades for Semana Santa but by the time we'd spent the day there we were getting tired and ready to leave so we didn't get to see it.  I just see that as an excuse for me to get back out to Spain another Easter and see it all though!

We also did one of those holiday essentials and played mini golf which was a lot of fun.  Especially with holes like this one where the water gets in the way some what:

I didn't do very well, lets just say that I lost by a long long way and leave it at that shall we?  Whilst we were there Katy and I had our photo taken with a snake, it was pretty scary and we weren't really expecting it to happen, but we had to buy it just to prove we've done it! Apologies for the quality, it really needs to be scanned in at some point.

That  is about it really!  I came back this morning fairly early, I've unpacked, done 2 loads of washing, uploaded my photos, done my photo of the day project and now I've even written this!  Will be an early night for me tonight though, and hoping for my first totally uninterrupted nights sleep in a week! Got a day tomorrow to catch up and maybe do some work before classes start again on Tuesday which feels really odd.  I'm glad though, because I'd quite like the next few weeks to pass, it's been hard knowing so many Erasmus students that have been home and seen their families this week and I haven't.  Oh well, one blank weekend, then Cordoba, then Seville and then my parents are here with my Nana for a whole week which even includes my 21st!  Can't wait!

Now I remember why I prefer Spanish...

Reason number 1- (Yes I know this isn't normal but I'm using it all the same) Walking round on the last weekend of November and not even needing sleeves.

Reason 2- Tapas and Sangria, how much more stereotypical can I make this?  I'm sorry...

Reason 3- The language, it just comes to me sooo much easier than French does.

Reason 4- It's just better and I don't need to justify that.

Now to actually tell you about my trip.  If you've read my other blogs you'll know what an annoyance the airport I flew from is, it calls itself Brussels South (Charleroi), well, for anyone that doesn't know Belgium, Charleroi is a whole different town a 45 minute train ride away.  So it's a bit of a planes, trains and automobiles mission to get there but not as bad as I'd expected it to be if I'm honest.  For once in my life I didn't have a delay, up until this week every flight I have been on alone has had a delay varying from 30 mins to 3 hours.  So "that was *trumpet fanfare* Ryanair flight arriving on time!" love that little announcement just as you land.  Ellie met me at the airport and we went back to her flat, where we just chilled for a bit before realising it was actually quite late and we'd still not eaten.  We went to a tapas bar called El Tigre, for me about a year ago this would have been an utter nightmare, there were loads and loads of people, it was hot and just generally chaotic but I loved it.  With your drink they give you a mountain of tapas (and that would've been why I wouldn't have liked it about a year ago, I didn't know what I was eating), it was brilliant and very yummy.  From there we went onto a market which is full of bars and tapas stalls, again packed and very typically Spanish.  Just to carry on with the being typically Spanish theme we then went and ate churros in the sort of place  you'd only find in Spain, it was about 12.30 at night and the average age in there must've been ...55 I guess.  I said to Ellie that at home at that time it would just be the drunks and the students left out.  I even made friends with a lovely Spanish woman and her friends whilst Ellie left me unattended for just 5 minutes, she offered me some of their churros and everything!

The next day didn't get off to a great start as we didn't set any form of alarm and managed to lose our morning to sleep!  We soon got up and out and about and seeing all the sites of Madrid, or at least about half of them before we headed to meet Dan for a drink.  But that came later, first we had a very important appointment to keep with a Mr Noel Gallagher?  Don't know if you've heard of him, used to be in that band Oasis (Or to the Spanish Oh-wa-siis).  We just happened to pass the hotel he was staying at, asked the people there what they were waiting for and decided to hang around and see for ourselves.

In the evening we decided to go to the Ice Bar, now I've been to one of these before somewhere else in Spain but all I remember from that is that none of us were dressed appropriately but that it didn't really matter because they gave us a fair bit of free drink... (The lack of memory and level of drink are not linked before someone suggests it!)  This one was better than the one I'd been in before that you got a proper coat instead of the furry poncho thing I had before, but it was still just as empty.  We stuck it out for an hour though and amused ourselves so all in all it was still good fun!  After this we decided just to head back to Ellies flat and we made our own churros, some were more successful than others lets just leave it at that!  But the peanut buttercups we'd made earlier, despite looking awful, tasted really good!

Today was my last morning in Madrid so we got up at a decent time and headed off to see the rest of the city, got lots of photos which I'll put on Flickr as and when I remember.

The journey back to Brussels was uneventful and I'm now sitting in my room listening to cheesy music before I go to bed because when I wake up the reality of the washing, food shopping and work I have to do is going to hit me....

Why did no one tell me I'd be in Brussels for the hottest October ever recorded?

Today has not been an exciting day so I'll save you the details and say that I went food shopping, did the washing and cleaning and then went and purchased a cheap suitcase for my little trip to Lancaster in 4 weeks time(!).

What I did want to talk about though is the heat!  I was under the impression that I've picked the Belgian equivilant of Lancaster and packed accordingly, jeans, hoodies, boots, warm clothes!  But we've currently got the same "Indian summer" as England is going through, meaning it is boiling!  Today was actually the hottest October day ever recorded out here reaching 27,9 degrees or something similar, lovely, if I wasn't wearing jeans...ah well, on the bright side (or actually rather more grey) it won't last and it's getting cooler next week.

Found myself a better radio station to listen to, (Bel RTL for anyone that is interested)

Tomorrow holds a dictee, some reading and I really better crack on with this work for Lancaster....

No news on the Spain situation yet, will let you know!