Vacation to Paris!

September 20th

I woke up at 12:00am and pulled up the blinds to the let the sun stream into my room.  My final roommate to move-in, Alberto, was moving his bags from the elevator to his room.  He is 18 and will be starting his first year of college.  He is from Motril, a small city further south of Granada, and he speaks with a thick Andalucían accent.  He's an athletic guy and had spent the summer lifeguarding at the beach.

I spent a couple hours organizing my room and then went over to the tourist center where my monitore, Monica, works on the weekends.  She gave me some cool Granada posters to decorate my room and more maps and information about the city.

Because I would be flying Ryanair, a UK based airline company that has extremely cheap flights if you book early enough, there are a lot of restrictions on how much baggage each passenger is allowed.  Anything weighing over 10 kilograms would be required to pay 10 euros for each remaining kilogram.  I was planning on taking everything carryon and in the end I decided to take my small book bag, packed to the max with boxers, socks, thermals, and a sweater.  I took 1 pair of jeans, a small jacket, and a dress shirt that I would wear on the plane.  Topping it off with my ipod, journal, and camera, I was set.  Besides having my reservations for the plane and a place to stay in Paris, I had no set plans for what I would be doing during the week.

I walked over to my friend Elliot's piso in the Plaza Del Toros where we met up with the other group of friends we would be traveling with.  We walked the 20 minutes to the bus station and didn't have to wait long for our bus to Madrid.

The 4 and 1/2 hour bus ride went well and I was able to sleep for about half of it.  Once we arrived in Madrid, I took charge and remembered how to get to the airport from the metro as I had done it the previous month with my dad.

We had three hours to spend in the airport in Madrid.  It was 2:00am and our flight didn't board until 5:ooam.  When the RyanAir desk opened up, everyone scrambled to get in line.  RyanAir is a pretty sketchy airline as there were no assigned seats.  As we entered the plane, a thumping techno score got us pumped up to fly.  As I was buckling my seatbelt in the extremely cramped, no leg-room seat, my friend, who had flown RyanAir before, told me to expect a bumpy landing.  She was right.  When we arrived in the airport in Beauvais, the pilot didn't even slow down until we hit the runway, causing us to bounce and careen down the tarmac.  We survived and I pumped my fist in approval.

I realized we had left sun-kissed Granada when I was struck by the harsh cold exiting the aircraft.  I'm glad I packed warm clothes.