What I had written was about the trip during Semana Santa (or Spring Break) that I took with Kristin and Ken. We went to England and Italy. I kind of wanted to see the Easter Sunday events that take place in Valladolid, but missed out on it this time. I had been talking to a friend of mine Raquel about it and she told me she had only been to the festivities once in her life which really shocked me. If I lived in Spain, I would want to experience it every year like any other US Holiday. Here is some more information on Holy Week in Spain:
For our trip, I had written down everything before we left to be organized. Scheduling out this trip, finding the best deals, and suitable hotels was quite the headache. I wrote down what hotels we would stay at, directions to hotels, flights, metros, prices-anything to cause the least amount of stress.
So the first part of our trip to London, England started on March 26, 2010 and we stayed at The Steam Engine Hostel until March 30, 2010. The airport was far away from the city and we had to take a bus to it. I thought this would be a very short trip, but it was not. It was quite long but along our way we saw the construction for the 2012 Summer Olympics and that was neat to see. We arrived early at night, but late enough that some restaurants we starting to close. We were starving so we ended up eating at an Indian restaurant and I had fish curry for the first time. It was pretty good! The place was very tiny though and a little sketchy looking, but all we cared was that we had edible food to eat. Throughout the rest of the trip, we were picky about where we ate so we could save some money which resulted in tiny meals.
That same night we did a lot of walking around the city to get the most out of our first night. We walked along the Thames River and saw the House of Parliament all lit up. It was really beautiful. I especially liked all the detail put into the benches and walkway-I remember that there was fish on either sides of the street lamps. We also walked to the other side on the House of Parliament side. Saw the London Eye all lit up in the background-took lots of pictures of us with the London scenery in the back. At this point, it was getting quite late so we walked back to our hostel. The rooms were located right above the bar of The Steam Engine and it was a tiny room with 4, triple bunked beds. I took the bottom/the floor bed to sleep on. We got along ok with our roommates while there and it changed every night.
One night we had some Chinese students who I don't think knew much English..another night there were two German guys who we ended up watching Lord of the Rings in German on one of their computers. I can't really remember their names, but they were really nice. We also had a brother-Alberto and sister-Marta who are originally from Salamanca, Spain as roommates and spoke a lot with them. We even went out for dinner once with them (being the Americans we are, we were craving some greasy burgers and went to a fast food place with them..looking back I wish we had gone somewhere else,but we were on budget and hungry and it really wasn't that bad) and got breakfast the next day was well.
Because The Steam Engine is a bar, we didn't always got the best sleep. That Friday, it was Karaoke night and though we got back late to our hostel, people kept on singing. As you can imagine, it took me some time before I could fall asleep but eventually did. I can't remember if it was that first night, but during one of our nights at The Steam Engine, I had a nightmare. I was sleeping on my back and all of a sudden sprang forward and hit my head hard on the bunk above me. Ouch. Being exhausted and a slight headache, I was able to fall quickly back asleep.
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