Spain: Alicante, Granada & Madrid

Alicante, Granada, & Madrid Spain: 14-17 October 2016

Our trip to Spain was made possible by the combination of an Austrian Holiday canceling all of our classes on Monday, our group Italy trip starting on Tuesday morning, and a $10 flight from Spain to Italy on Monday night. Not to mention my sister Christy serving as a Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Spain Malaga mission. We were hesitant to try and visit Christy while in Europe because missionaries aren't usually supposed to have visitors, but we found her mission president's number and called him to say we were visiting the area because my Mom served as a missionary there and to see if we could visit Christy. He said we could see her at church on Sunday.

Alicante, Spain

We first flew from Vienna to Valencia Spain and on the way passed over the Alps which were starting to get snow on them! 

When we were coming in for our landing in Valencia, we were just about to touch down when the plane pulled back up and kept going. The Pilot announced that there was a stray dog on the runway and that we were going to circle around again. 

By the time we got from the airport to the train station it was already dark out. This is a mini colosseum next to the train station in Valencia.

We bought our seat reservations and got on a Renfe train that took us to Alicante, Spain. Alicante is the First city that my sister Christy served in, and even though she had been transferred to Granada we still wanted to see it because of some of the pictures that she sent home of the castle there. 

We got into Alicante late, and walked a mile and a half to our hotel where we checked in around 11pm. During our walk there were so many people on the street! You would've thought that it was mid-day on a holiday. After checking in, we decided to go walk around the city. and were out until 1am or so.

First and only Taco Bell we saw in Europe.

Then there was this crazy tree!

Carli liked this doorway.

This photo was taken right along the pier. You can see the castle that we went to the next day! We figured we should get some sleep so we returned to our hotel after that.

We got a bit of a later start than we probably should have, but that's okay... We found donuts on the way to the castle!

It was an incredibly beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky and it was warmer than any other day that week. It was quite a hike up to the castle, but it was worth it. Christy had been here just a few weeks before with some other missionaries from the city, so I was determined to find the places that she took pictures at and get the same pictures to send her. Christy did not yet know that we were even in the country, and definitely never would have thought that we would be coming to see her the next day!

Here are the side by side places that we found just by looking at Christy's pictures and wandering around the castle.

We're pretty sure these used to be phone booths. :)

When we left the castle, we had to hurry back to the hotel in order to check out in time. Since it was such a beautiful day, we got there and changed into our swimsuits and made way for the beach which was only a 5 minute walk away!

It was pretty awesome to have good beach weather in October!

Waiting just outside the Alicante Bus station.

We got tired of sitting on a bench and decided we were hungry so we grabbed something to eat inside the bus station. It's Paella, which Christy had talked about in her emails and other people said we should eat. It is a seafood dish. After eating, we boarded our bus which brought us to Granada!

We found a grocery store and got some food for Saturday night and Sunday. I wanted to get one of these, but Carli wasn't feelin' it. 

We did find a huge delicious mango though! We were so tired that we didn't go explore much more of Granada that night and stayed in the hotel with all our snacks and Netflix.


It was super exciting the next morning walking to the church. We planned on getting there about half an hour early hoping that she would be there already for some reason. I had Carli walk behind me and take this video of us walking into the building.

She just kept blabbing at me in Spanish and I had no idea what she was saying. That's a good sign I guess because it must mean that her Spanish is pretty good. 

She was doing great! 

It was great to see Christy and to be able to surprise her like that. She kept saying that it was super weird and felt like a dream that we were there. Lucky we got some pictures to send her. We left church after the first two hours and tried getting to the train station to take a train to Madrid, but the train was full or something, so we went all the way back to the bus station instead and took a bus. Here are some pictures from Madrid.

We took a metro from the bus station to our Hotel. It was not in the best location... The streets were so loud with clubs, people, and parties and it was kinda sketch. You win some you lose some I guess.

Spiderman retired to Madrid.

We grabbed some lunch at steak and shake, and wandered around the city until it was time to take a train to Zaragoza, Spain in order to catch our flight from there to Milan.

This is a Ryanair plane, and the flight from Spain to Italy cost us 10 dollars a person. We landed late in one of the airports about an hour outside of Milan and got to our bed and breakfast late. The next morning we got on a train from Milan to Venice where we met with the rest of the study abroad students who arrived the same time on a night train from Vienna.