March 7

Laura and I had another enjoyable breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The orange juice was great, and we enjoyed toast with some strawberry jam again. After we checked out, we went to an Internet café and looked up the bus schedule to Almunecar. We caught the city bus to the bus station (it was about a ten minute ride). I went to the ALSA ticket counter and asked for our roundtrip tickets to Almunecar and back. I didn’t fully understand the lady and she ended up giving me a return ticket for the same day.

I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to switch them out but I wasn’t too worried, after all it only cost seven euros a piece. The hour and a half bus ride was really great, the clouds were hanging low on the mountains and everything was so green. When we got to Almunecar, I went to the ticket counter and the lady reluctantly switched out our tickets. I was pretty happy though.

We stopped at McDonalds right near the bus station. I had a Big Mac and an orange soda. We took a taxi to the hotel and checked in right around 2:00. Our room was really nice, it was an apartment/studio with a washer, a stove top, kitchen table and outside patio. The view of the Mediterranean was superb. We saw in the distance a huge rock with a cross on top so we decided to go explore a little.

We stopped in an ice cream shop and I had a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone that wasn’t my favorite but it was still very refreshing. It was a pretty steep hike but it was so worth it, the rock jutted out over the sea and the view was beautiful. The sun started to peak out a little bit. We decided to look for a supermarket to buy some snacks. We wandered into a ceramics shop that was really cool. The artist was actually a Vietnam veteran whose mom was from Pamplona. He never returned to the U.S. after the war.

He was actually very nice though and he took a liking to us. Laura and I bought some of his ceramics as gifts. They were handcrafted and actually very cool. We were out of luck in terms of the supermarket though; it had closed at 4:00. We stopped at a beachside café and had a beer. With the purchase of a drink came a small plate of paella that Laura tried for the first time. It wasn’t her favorite but I was proud of her for trying. The sun felt so good. There were birds all over the patio that we sat on and we watched them fight for bread pieces that other people had thrown to them.

We headed back to the room and hung out until dinnertime. We had seen a Mexican restaurant down the street and decided to check it out. The city was dead; we were the only two people in the restaurant. We enjoyed a strong margarita over some nachos and a chicken burrito. I was a little perturbed when I saw that they charged us an extra two euros for hot sauce, but it was worth it.

We finished around 11:00 and walked back to the hotel, pretty exhausted from all the day’s activities.