"soursop"

Nantes àParis à Madrid à Palma à Valencia à Marrakech à Madrid à Paris à Dijon à Champagnole à Mouchard à Paris à Nantes

This is how I spent my 2 week vacation, traveling for 16 days nonstop. I actually spent time in only 6 of these places (Madrid twice!), but that’s still pretty ridiculous. This being the first time that I’ve actually travelled in Europe, I thought I ought to take advantage of it. It turns out that the most expensive leg of the journey was getting from Nantes to Beauvais airport in Paris, but once you’re there, the world is your oyster, with flights all over Europe (and a bit of Africa!) for as little as 12 euro. Like I said, thought I should take advantage of it. I don’t think I can do this voyage justice here, if only because the beginning seems like much more than a month ago, but here goes.

Madrid, or: I like to sit on the floor where I don't have to worry about falling down, like with chairs

My trip started with a train to paris, a metro across town, and a shuttle bus to Beauvais airport. One of the most stressful parts of my trip was the fact that all 6 of my flights were with Ryanair, the Dublin based budget airline that I’ve heard countless horror stories about. I was told that my backpack might be to big (yes, one normal school sized backpack for 2 weeks of traveling, in climates as varied as northern African and the Jura mountains of France), that the planes were unreliable at best, and to expect to have flights arriving late if not cancelled completely. Arriving at Beauvais I was pretty nervous about these three warnings, however, I made it through security with my backpack no problem, and on finding my seat onboard, I looked up at the security card (pasted to the back of the seat in front of me) and read ‘Boeing 737.’ I fly Frontier Airlines, people – where the aircraft literally creaks – give me a 737 anyday; when I see the name Boeing, I relax. I arrive in Madrid on time, no problem, and on entering the baggage area see my best friend from when I was a tiny little kid walk into the restroom. I wait outside for her and after a brief reunion we exit security to meet my good friend and host for the next 4 nights David Davidson (of my most recent post fame). We catch the shuttle back to his place and crash (my flight arrived around 11pm).

sweet, Seattle-built safety

Dave’s mom and aunt are supposed to be in town, so I’m not expecting to get to spend much time with him, but their flight was delayed so to my happy, happy surprise we got to spend all of Friday with him (toma!), an excellent guide around the city. Based almost entirely on this one day, Madrid was my favorite part of the vacation. Maybe it’s because I got to spend it with two of my very close friends, maybe it’s because it was probably about 80 degrees after months of rain and winter in Nantes, or maybe it’s because the city itself is marvelous. We explored a bit then ran into a few of Dave’s friends in a huge park who invited us to join them for a picnic. It being a splendid day, we obliged. While Julia and I are chatting with some American girls who are in Madrid to play volleyball professionally, Dave turns to me and says, “Mary Ochs, we know her, right?” In fact we do – she’s in my sorority, I tell him. “Oh!” says his friend, “she’s on her way here right now!” I knew Mary was working in or around Madrid, but jeez. This was the first of many experiences this vacation to remind me just how small of a world it is that we live in. After the quick DG reunion we meet up with another of Dave’s friends for an afternoon “caña,” which I’m pretty sure is Spanish for “tiny beer,” then head back to the homestead for a sit down.

this guy really wanted a pic with me. obviously the feeling was mutual

Around 9:30 we meet up with yet more of Dave’s friends, this time mostly Spanish, and head out for “the real Madrid experience.” Rodrigo, a teacher at the school Dave works at, is our guide for the evening. What a man. He is incredibly welcoming and friendly, and spends the night teaching us “useful” and “colloquial” phrases, as well as humoring my attempts at Spanish. I use quotations because I honestly don’t know if anyone besides Rodrigo uses these phrases, but they’re entertaining, none the less. So at about ten pm we start our dinner at a little bar where we order more cañas, a plate of fried mashed potato like things, and a plate of fried fish. Once we’ve finished these we head to another bar where we order more cañas, some fried pigs ears, fried peppers, and fried potatoes with hot sauce. I’m noticing a trend. I’m surprisingly full after this melee of a meal, and we head to a final bar where the men order purple lavender flavored frozen cocktails, the women order smoothies, and I order a beer. While contemplating which smoothie flavor to get, Julia asks our 3 Spanish companions what a guanábana is. “It’s red. And it’s red on the inside.” Ooook. We ask the server. He tries to explain but after beginning to form a few words he tells us he’ll look it up. He comes back with a small piece of receipt paper on which is scrawled one word, in quotations: “soursop.” There is no way this is correct. There cannot possibly be a fruit called a soursop. We spend the next half hour coming up with new definitions for soursop, settling on ‘the waiter who neglects to bring you the beer that you ordered,’ because at this point, the purple drinks are halfway gone and I’m still parched. Someone signals the soursop and he apologizes profusely, brings me my beer, and doesn’t charge me for it in the end. Excellent. About 2am we head home through the incredibly alive streets. I’ve heard about how late everything goes in Spain, but I was still a little surprised to see even restaurants open in the middle of the night. What a night, what a day, what a city. I even wrote a horrible poem about it – in Spanish. The books coming soon, keep your eyes out.

Rewind to “based almost entirely on this one day.” Sometime during said great day, I started feeling the symptoms of whatever miserable disease sees fit to attack my body once or twice every month. By day 2, it was in full swing – fever, aches, chills, general misery. Julia and I headed to Toledo for the day, and it was a lovely place, but my usual ‘pump Tylenol all day to keep the fever at bay’ tactic wasn’t working, and even when increased to 2 every 2 hours, I just wasn’t able to properly enjoy the city. Kudos to Julia for humoring me and my ill-temper (get it?). That evening we were very kindly invited to dine with Dave’s family at their rented apartment, which was a perfect way to spend a sick evening abroad. Great food and great company, and a comfy couch to sit on. The next day we were slated to go to the rastro, the huge open air market, for which I was totally pumped. I got up later than I meant to, ate some toast, unate said toast, and went back to bed until 4pm. Julia picked me up some sunnies at the market and that evening we had another excellent dinner with the fam. In the morning Jules and I headed back to the airport and caught our plane to Palma, chapter 2 of my adventure. 

turns out it's real, but in no way is it red