March 5

It was 4:45 in the morning when my alarm went off but I had no trouble waking up and hopping in the shower. Most people weren’t even back from the discotheque yet when I left which was pretty funny. I looked up the metro time and saw that if I arrived at the station closest to my dorm, I would get to the airport at 6:00 exactly. I made great time and was sitting in front of the Ryanair (a cheap British airline that has very inexpensive flights all over Europe) gate at 6:30.

I was a little nervous when I saw that my flight was delayed fifteen minutes. I decided to kill some time by going to get a café cortado and a bocadillo. By the time I finished and got back to the gate, I only had to wait fifteen minutes until they started boarding. It was funny to me because Ryanair doesn’t have assigned seats. I asked a flight attendant where my seat was and she kind of laughed and said, “You can sit anywhere you like.”

The flight was quick and easy (only about 45 minutes from Valencia to Madrid). The only part that kind of bugged me was some lady was painting her nails on the plane and she stunk up the entire cabin. We arrived a head of schedule, which was good, I needed as much time as I could get to find the Delta baggage claim to try and find Laura. Of course, my terminal I got off was on the exact opposite of the Madrid-Barajas airport. When I got to the baggage claim area, I saw that there was a sign that said that we couldn’t enter for security reasons.

I was determined to get in there. I timed it so when one of the security guards was looking the other way, I acted like a passenger looking for my bag and went in the baggage claim area. I know it probably sounds like I was violating some major laws, but the security in the airport is so lax, the guy didn’t care at all. After all that though, I found out I was in the wrong baggage claim.

I left the room and started heading down to the other one when I saw Laura walking my way. I was so happy that I had found her, since we both didn’t have cell phones there was a lot that could have gone wrong. We decided to take a shuttle bus into the city. Once we got in the city, we walked around looking for an Internet café. We were out of luck, but stopped in at a café and had a coffee.

We walked a few more blocks and caught the metro. It was kind of confusing because we had to take two different trains to get to the bus station. We found it all right though and got to the bus station at around 12:00. Now we had 6 ½ hours to kill before our bus left. We sat in one of the restaurants while I did a little studying and she caught up on some sleep on my shoulder.

At around 2:00 we decided to go check out some places to eat. There was a Burger King across the street; it looked especially good to me because I hadn’t had American fast food over here yet. It was spitting rain and overcast, which was unfortunate however, my whopper was awesome. We walked back and still had about three hours to kill before our bus left. I read and Laura got some more sleep (she didn’t actually sleep very well on the plane so she was exhausted).

While we were waiting for the bus, there was a guy sitting next to us that had his bag sitting next to him on the bench. A crazy old man came over and created a huge scene saying he was like the rest of young people and had no respect. The old guy kept heckling him until the younger man finally just picked up his stuff and moved to a different seat. The old man stunk really badly and I plugged my nose the entire time he sat next to us. During the whole confrontation, I just kept my eyes down on my book but listened in as best I could.

It seemed like forever (because it was) but our bus finally left at 6:30. The buses were actually really nice, they were very clean and I had more than enough room for my legs. It was rainy most of the entire ride. We stopped at around 7:30 at a rest stop to go to the bathroom and get a cup of coffee or drink. Laura had her first café con leche and really liked it. Once we got on the bus, I finished Shutter Island. I really enjoyed the book and am excited to see the movie when I get the chance.

We got to Granada at around 10:00. We took a ten-minute taxi ride to our hotel. The hotel is very small, but cool. It’s in a very old building right in the center of Granada. For the price, it is perfect. We didn’t do anything else the rest of the night, I was exhausted and Laura was feeling a little jet lagged.