This past weekend I decided to take on the infamous Carnaval party in Cádiz, allegedly one of the largest celebrations in the world every year. Luckily I lived to talk about it, or else you would not have an excited blog post this week...here it goes.
(Before I get started I would like to say that I finally just looked up how to type accents on a Mac and am very pleased that I can now do that.)
Thursday morning rolled around and I still needed a costume. I had been told that everyone goes all out- adults, children, teens, college students, everyone- so I should not be sheepish about picking a costume. Ben had already picked out a Bavarian outfit, basically a stereotypical German, and asked me to look like a moron with him; I agreed and purchased the same costume, hat and all.
We then went back to quickly pack and catch a cab to the airport. After waiting for Barkan for 15 minutes longer than we wanted (as we have become accustomed to at this point) we headed for the airport. We cought our flight to Madrid and then our connection to the airport in Jerez de la Frontera without a glitch. (There is no airport in the small, old town of Cadiz- Jerez is about 30 minutes away by car and is the closest airport). When we arrived in Jerez we had to figure out how to get to our destination. Ben and David were staying with a friend of Ben's in Cadiz while I had booked a hotel with Danielle Himmelman in Puerto de Santa Maria- a small town on the beach between Jerez and Cadiz. After conversations with about 20 different airport officials (possibly everyone at the tiny airport) and getting a different yet equally unpromising answer from each of them regarding our public transportation options we decided to try our luck with a cab. While I had an incredibly difficult time understanding the stereotypically heavy Andalucian accent with a lisp of our cab driver, who spoke no English either, I was able to communicate our needs. He could get us each where we needed to go for a reasonable price.
As the cab driver pulled up to my hotel I was sure there had to be a mistake; the hotel was incredible. Looking more like a 4 star resort I walked in and called Mark White- he had already checked in and was staying with Danielle and I for the night. Before even asking what room we where in I said, "am I in the correct place." After a quick, "yes, this place is incredible" I headed up to the room. I walked in the room, put my bag on the bed, and immediately walked out to the balcony. We had a breathtaking beachfront view of one of the widest beaches I have ever seen and the lights of Cádiz in the background. I couldn't believe that this place was actually cheaper than some of the hostels I have stayed in this semester.
Mark and I relaxed by enjoying the view and weather for an hour or so as we waited for Danielle to arrive. By the time she got in it was already quite late and we did not feel like making the 35 trip by train to Cadiz. The three of us just hung out in the hotel room and enjoyed each other's company before going to bed.
Before going to bed I thought it would be a good idea to see what time breakfast at the hotel remained open until (yes, buffet breakfast also included). As I was about to head down Mark stopped me and said they had told him when he checked in that it was open until noon. Assuming he was correct I set my alarm for 11:00 and went to bed. At 11:00 we woke up, got ready, and headed down by 11:30 to eat...breakfast was no where to be seen. I went and asked the concierge, who promptly informed me that breakfast closed at 11:00. Damn. Oh well, we decided to go get everything we needed and just head to Cádiz- we could eat lunch soon there.
A quick cab ride, 45 minute wait for the Renfe (Spain's equivalent of the AmTrak), a 35 minute train ride, and a 10 minute walk and we made it to Cádiz! Ben and Barkan met up with Danielle, Mark and myself and we headed started walking into the city. As we headed to lunch we met up with Ínes, Ben's friend in Cádiz with whom him and Barkan were staying. We found a great tapas place and had some incredibly cheap food. I was happilly to finally try the Andalucian famous bull meat- it was delicious. We then dropped off our stuff at Ines' apartment and walked through the city to the beach. It felt so good to sit on the beach and just relax. While my passion for adventure and seeing different parts of the world drives me to exciting, educational vacations this was the perfect occassion to put that aside and instead take it all in. I found it weird that I was sitting on a beach on the Atlantic Ocean-the same Ocean have seen in Boston, D.C., and Florida.
As the sun began to go down it began to get chilly; we walked around the small town for some time before heading to dinner. Upon the recommendation of Ines and her roommates we went to a great place called "La Gorda Te Da De Comer". We arrived around 10:00 and sat for a little over two hours as we each slowly enjoyed 4-5 tapas dishes. It was a great meal. Eventually the restuarant kicked us out. Ben called Ines to see what the plans for the evening entailed- we were instructed to meet up with her and a bunch of friends in one of the big plazas. As we walked there the streets were not as crowded as I had imagined. The plaza, however, was quite packed. Only about 1/2 of the people out wore costumes on Friday night. As we hung out with Ines and her international friends I was in awe at the number of languages known/ spoken at any given moment among group members. I was also surprised that I was introduced as the one that knew Spanish- something I greatly appreciated, but definitely resulted in a couple difficult conversations. It was very strange standing in a plaza with people from from Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and friends from college and high school- another 'pinch me' momoent.
I spoke with Ines and a couple of the other locals about the rest of the weekend. They informed me that Saturday all day was the truly fun, crazy, famous day of the festival. Hearing this I decided to head back to our hotel relatively early. Around 3:00 Danielle, Mark and I left the plaza and caught a cab back where we quickly went to sleep.
Saturday morning I did not miss breakfast. Mark and I woke up around 10:30 and quickly headed down; Danielle slept in (she's lucky I'm so nice and stole some food to bring back to the room). After a quick breakfast we got ready, packed everything up, checked out and headed back to Cádiz. While on the Renfe Mark received a phone call from our other roommate, Austin, saying that he was at the hotel. At this we all started laughing histerically-let me rewind and explain why...
Austin and Mark had decided together to join me on this trip. Mark had booked his flight for Thursday morning while Austin could only come on Friday. I told Mark that he was welcome to stay in the hotel room with Danielle and me Thursday night- he had Austin booked a room at our hotel for Friday night. Their hotel for Saturday night was close to the airport in Jerez. Friday afternoon Austin called Mark saying that he couldn't get on his plane. Apparently he did not realize that he needed a passport for local flights; the airline refused to allow him to board without the passport. Because he did not have time to go back and get the passport, he was forced to miss the flight. He then called me to see if he should spend a lot of money to get on antoher flight Friday, try and book a flight for Saturday, or just completely skip the trip. I told him that I did not think it was worth it for him to come on Friday, but that he had to decide whether just coming Saturday would be worth it. After a long discussion he said that he would continue to look at flights and call us when he figured out his plan. This took place around 8PM on Friday evening. So when Mark saw that Austin was calling him around 12:30 Saturday morning we naturally though he was calling to inform us that A) he had booked a flight and would be in Cádiz soon or B) he was just not coming. As is usually the case with Austin, natural logic did not hold. Austin had found a 'train hotel' just after hanging up the phone with me the night before. He then took this train 12 hours from Barcelona to Cádiz without informing any of us, and was calling to inform us that he had arrived.
Continuing with the weekend's events- when we arrived in Cádiz we dropped all our stuff off at Ines' place and met up with Ben and Barkan. We had to wait a little while for them to get ready and then met up with our friend from Barcelona, Audrey (coincidentally goes to University of Illinois) and her three friends for lunch. Then back to the beach.
When we got to the beach there were a couple of guys throwing around a frisbee. For any of you that know Ben you know what this means-gone. Me, Barkan, Mark, Danielle, and a German guy that was a friend of a friend of Ines' that we had met the night before and bumped into at lunch, and a French girl that he knew relaxed on the beach for a while. We eventually began talking to a group of people sitting near us. Most of them were Americans studying in Vigo, Spain (Galicia), but there was also a German girl and a guy working in France with them- back to crazy language time. When the Germans were introduced the girl asked our friend, "do you want to speak German or English?" "English" he replied and the conversation continued- I was baffled and awestruck at this ability/ desire. The language capabilites of some of the Europeans I have met is truly magnificant.
Now to the guy working in France: he is in Europe temporarily and said he actually works in the Chicagoland area. Where? "Have you heard of Evanston? That's where I live." Uh, really? I then asked where he worked. "A small elementary school in a bordering suburb- Central school in Wilmette." He said as if there was no one I would have any idea what he was talking about. I basically freaked out! "I went to Wilmette Junior High and Romona Elementary school and have a ton of friends that went to Central, not to mention I live about 10 minutes from it" I told him. Small world, huh?
As we talked it began to get chilly, but we had told Austin to meet us at this beach and wanted to wait for him. Good thing we did. The moment came about an hour after Mark had told him where we were and that he was only about a 15 minute walk from us. Mark pointed down the shoreline stating, "Oh my God, theres Austin."
Sure enough, walking up the shoreline was Austin wearing a yellow shirt that said "Me Cai Picha" (we later learned this meant 'I'm from Cádiz'), a pink sombrero, a dream catcher, a stick on beard, and holding a 40oz beer in his right hand and a cigar in his left. Definitely one of the funniest moments of my life. I think our new friends were fairly freaked out. By this time the city was bussling with people in costumes, at least.
It was then time to head back, change into our costumes, and get ready for dinner. I went to get Ben who then requested, "5 more minutes, pleeeease." Feeling a little like his father I granted the wish. He said goodbye to his new Israeli, Australian, and British friends with whom he had been playing for about 3 hours, bought the frisbee off one of them, and we were ready to go.
We slowly made our way back to Ines', looking at rediculous costumes, seeing some parades, watching bands warming up stages, and gazing open-eyed at the crowds of people that were flooding this little island-town. As we were finishing changing Ines told us that we should come with her and her friends to the San Antonio plaza- we went. We grabbed some quick bocadillos (sandwiches) there and then began arguably the craziest night of my life.
I won't get into too many details of events between 10PM and 4AM...Ben and I learned some great German sayings to go along with our Bavarian costumes. The night was filled with dancing in the streets, beaches, Spanish, English and a mutlitude of other languages, new friends, old friends, people in rediculous costumes, packed streets, concerts in plazas, parades, confetti, lights, losing people then finding them then losing them again, dead phones, lost voices, and anything else you can imagine. Before going one friend informed me that Carnaval in Cádiz was "like Mardi Gras mixed with Halloween on steroids". I've never been to a big Mardi Gras, but I guarantee it is nothing like this. I've never seen so many people looking so rediculous and so drunk...ever! I don't think I saw anyone dressed normal, and probably didn't see anyone sober (except a couple police standing around smoking) for the entire evening. I did not feel unsafe at any point, however, and we all made it out in the morning fine.
Now to that part- 'morning'. Early in the night we had agreed to meet Ines at her apartment at 4:00AM to get our stuff so we could head to Jerez and catch our 7:40 flight to Madrid- Ben, Barkan and I then had a connecting flight to Barcelona. We got to the Renfe station at about 4:45, which we thought would leave us plenty of time to get the 5:30 train; we were wrong. There were about 1,000 people in line for that train. On the way I actually saw everyone I had met in Sevilla (except Dena) which made for a nice 10 minute reunion. Because there was no way we were getting on the 5:30 Renfe at this stop, Barkan and Ben suggested we walk to the next stop and try and catch the train there- they thought it was about a 10-15 minute walk. They were wrong. After walking for about 35 minutes we finally made it to the next stop-we had already missed the first train. The next one would not arrive in Jerez until 6:55 (leaving at 6:00), which would not leave us enough time to take a cab from the train station to the airport to catch our plane. We had to hail a cab. This took longer than I would have liked, but we eventually found one. At around 6:30 we arrived at the airport to discover how lucky it was that we had not actually taken the Renfe. Our flight was not at 7:40, but at 7:05!!! However, the small Jerez airport let us check in, go through security, and basically walk straight onto the plane. All 4 of us (Barkan, Ben, Danielle, and I) were sleeping before the security video aired.
In Madrid we said goodbye to Danielle, got on our next flight, and again fell asleep in under 5 minutes. Finally we arrived in Barcelona, got on the Renfe to our metro stop and walked home. However, I hope you are still reading because this might be the best part of the story. If your paying attention you might be asking yourself when we changed from those rediculous Bavarian costumes shown in the first photo. We didn't. Look back up at that picture- its taken on Sunday afternoon in the Barcelona Metro station 2 stops from our apartments. Ben and I paraded like that through the entire Madrid airport, on two planes, through the entire Barcelona airport, on a packed Renfe in Barcelona, on the Barcelona subway in the middle of the day, and walked all the way home on Sunday afternoon. And when I say paraded, I do not mean walked. It was quite a sight- people were taking pictures with us, clapping for us, cheering, etc. Another hillarious adventure.
Mon, Tues, Wed in BCN before I headed to Florence. I'll try and get that post out this week. Sorry again for the delay.
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