Daytripper

Cartagena's city seal

Yesterday we took our first daytrip! We took a bus to Cartagena, a smaller, historic city about 45 minutes away. The bus rides were 3,65 per way, the seats were comfy and reclined really far, there were curtains to draw if you wanted to sleep, and it was warm. In other words, I slept like a baby the whole way...and I thought the value was pretty great.

When we got there, we had no plans whatsoever, only having done a tiny bit of research the night before we left. We mostly walked around and took pictures for the first hour, then we had to meet our friends Nicole and Mariana at the bus station because all of our phones were out of minutes and we couldn't find each other. Pay-as-you-go phones are interesting here: any minutes you have expire at the end of the month...so we plan to recharge on the 1st.

Big 'ol greenspace for exercising, playing, or walking dawgs

Right before we found the homeless caves

Next, we took a lift up the side of the mountain to el Castillo. It was a little freaky since I'm mildly afraid of heights, seeing the city so far beneath my feet! Although el Castillo ended up being kind of a bummer (it wasn't even a castle!) we got some good pictures looking down at the city from really high up.

After a little hiking around the city, Mariana found a restaurant that ended up being great! We ordered two of the menu of the day--it came with bread, drinks, a first course, second course, a dessert, and coffee for 11 euros each. I ordered Pechuga de Pollo, chicken breast that came with the obligatory fired egg, and salad topped with tuna. The desserts were flan and Natia; both were incredibly delicious...in fact, I'm craving them now!

La natia y flan

After we stuffed ourselves, we headed nextdoor to tour the Roman Theatre. The lady was kind of a butt... she wouldn't give us the student discount even though we showed her our visas and explained that our Universidad de Murcia IDs hadn't been issued yet. We all just decided not to go because it was too expensive and we were tired and cold anyway. We looked in a few shops and took pictures in the city center of Cartagena--there was a Zara, a Blanco, and some miscellaneous clothes shops. After we felt we had explored, and made our bodies sore, enough, we trekked back to the estación de autobuses.

"Enjoy today, it's later than you think"

After another cozy ride back, we all split up to our own apartments. We met back up around 9:30pm at Kayla's apartment to hang out and watch Spanish tv. I felt bad for Brad, because yet again, he was surrounded by "girl talk" and past roommate horror stories, hahaa.

Today's all-day siesta feels much deserved :).

Cue "We all live in a yellow submarine..."

Growing a palm tree?

Lol, thanks for specifying.