Spain

Oye, oye, oye.... we did so much yet so little in Spain. The vast majority of the time we were there was in Gandia, a small town on the Mediterranean Sea. Juan, a friend of Allie's, was basically our tour guide the entire time. He showed us around to various places (listed above), took us to good restaurants, etc... Also, he has a flat that's a block and a half away from the beach in Gandia. So needless to say, we swam a LOT. It was a blast being in the ocean again- it's been way too long. The water was super salty, but the waves were really fun to jump into and all that. As we were leaving the beach the first time, a sea shell cut a huge gouge into the bottom of my big toe, slicing about a nickel-sized chunk of skin out. Of course, I wasn't too happy about that considering I'm already recovering from a freak accident affecting my foot. So we walked back, got it all bandaged up and it was fine the rest of the trip. Haha one day Cassie and I were walking to the store though and I had my shoes on without socks- something I do fairly often, I never seem to get blisters. Well apparently this time was different... I couldn't even feel the blister forming on the back of my heel (since that's the leg with the messed up nerve) until it was huge lol, so then I had yet another thing wrong with my right foot... Anyhow, we took some walks along the beach at night, checked out the local night life a bit, etc...

After Gandia, Juan took us back to his real flat in Valencia for a few days. We toured the town a bit, saw a huge flower mural dedicated to the Pope since he was visiting at the time, and ate at a few cool restaurants. It seems I never got enough food there, but that could be because they eat so late.... Most Spaniards eat at like 9 or 10 at night, it's crazy. Another of Allie's friends, Jose, took us out on his sailboat. That was just awesome.... we went maybe a mile off shore, then just drifted and swam for a bit, ate some snacks, then dilly-dallied back to the harbor while we slept on the deck. We also got to see the America's Cup area, which was built for a year-long sailing contest. We visited this really posh, uppity bar/lounge place and had some fun, then went home.

We also got to see Juan's and the other Jose's university, which was cool. We watched Italy win the World Cup match there, then toured the town a bit more. The next day we all headed out to a pretty remote little town called Alcublas, where Renee (actually a Spanish guy's name) has a little place. There were flies EVERYWHERE but the countryside was beautiful. I got a few pictures of the flowes and almond trees out there, so I'll post those.The next day, we had to leave Juan and hopped a train to Paris.