Two weekends ago, I met up with Amber in Málaga for a little vacation! I took the train to Paris and flew to Málaga, where we met. After a bit of a struggle in the rain with the buses and trying to find each other, we successfully (but with minutes to spare) made our way to the real bus station (not the one I’d been dropped off at, of course) and were on our tired way to Vélez-Málaga, a small town in Andalucía. Luckily, my first twenty minutes in Spain were not indicative of the rest of the trip, weather- and otherwise.
We struggled some more with maps once we actually got to Vélez, because of course the bus did not drop us off where it had said it was going to so our directions weren’t exactly helpful. Also, this was a pit stop for Amber on her way back to the U.S. so she had an extremely huge backpack to deal with. Suffice it to say that we definitely looked like tourists as we wandered around the small town. We did, however, find our hotel, and it was great! My dad had done the planning for us mostly since we’d both been having midterms at the time and he found the most charming hotel that had really cheap apartments. Our apartment turned out to be so cute, and it was amazing to have a kitchen. We cooked all our meals, which was really fun in addition to money-saving! There was also a lovely pool and wifi in the room so it was basically perfect.
We just hung out the first evening because we were both really tired and we hadn’t seen each other in so long that we had lots of chatting to do (I mean, when do we not have lots of chatting to do, really?). We found the grocery store and got ingredients for a delicious pasta salad and we watched a movie online. The next day, it was forecast to rain and I had oh-so-wisely decided to do this trip the week before our finals started (in my defense, it wasn’t officially finals week and I hadn’t known I would have three finals and a paper for this week when I’d booked the trip) so we decided to hang out in the room so I could get some work done. It did get sunny at one point, so we went down to the pool and read outside for a while, but it wasn’t warm enough to swim.
The next day we wanted to go to the beach but we slept late and we couldn’t figure out the tram system so instead we went exploring in the town. We walked up the hill behind our hotel to a church and went inside it. It had a semana santa (Easter week) museum. We then kept trekking up the hill, past a lot of apartments and Spanish people talking to one another from their doorways, to the fortress. This was really cool. We couldn’t go inside so I don’t know its name or anything about the history of it, although Amber knew from her classes in Spain that it was built by the Moors. It was surrounded by native trees and flowers and it had a great view of the city. I love all the terra cotta and white buildings. There was a small circle of tiled ground at the top with a bench, so we sat up there for a while in the shade and made a bucket list for senior year. The flowers were so pretty!
Sunday we succeeded in finding the beach! It was really hot outside and we took a picnic with us. It was warm enough to go in the ocean and we actually swam around for quite a while!
In all, it was a really relaxing weekend. It was nice to have a vacation that was low-key for once and not jam-packed with sightseeing! From the Málaga airport, Amber took off for home and I flew back to Charles de Gaulle, whence I began a roundabout and long train journey home.
When I got back, Michel had arrived! Then we had three days of school, the last of which, Thursday, included three tests, which wasn’t stressful at all. On Wednesday our class (the five of us in 5A) had lunch with Michel and we all went out to dinner together at Place de la Liberation, one of the prettiest places in Dijon. We ate outside and had a rollicking good time. I even rode a double-decker bike when a guy came around offering free rides to promote his custom bike shop! It was fairly frightening but also hilarious, and it was fun. I would never have agreed to do it before this semester.
I don’t even remember what we did on Friday, but on Saturday we met up bright and early and set off for our last last excursion to Flavigny, with Michel and Valery, Nathalie’s husband, along. We went first to the Château de Bussy-Rabutin, which was beautiful! The castle itself was actually pretty boring. Our tour consisted solely of going in near-identical rooms, the walls of which were all covered with paintings of people and other castles, and our guide explaining the portraits. But the surrounding gardens were great! We went through a non-maze (it was like a maze but there was only one path so we really just went in a spiral until we finally got to the middle. Then we had to walk all the way back out. Don’t worry, though, we entertained ourselves by pretending we were doing the third task of the Triwizard Tournament), the sun came out and we even got Michel to take a jumping picture with us.
Lunch was typical but fun and afterward we drove on to Flavigny, the town where Chocolat was filmed! Michel and Valery made a hilarious pair and they were thoroughly entertaining on the way there. We walked around the town, which was small and quiet but pretty, and went to the shop that sells the famous anise candies of Flavigny. They are little candies that come in lots of flavors, from rose to cassis to ginger and more, and inside there is an anise seed. It’s a secret recipe and no one else has ever been able to replicate the candies!
We all passed out in the bus on the way home, and we were sad when we got off the bus and had to say goodbye to Michel and realize that this was truly our last excursion ever. It was so much fun, though, and a perfect thing to do on our last real weekend here. Once again I just had such a great time with the others and Nathalie, and it was special to have Michel around. And that concluded the semester’s travels for me after I think six weekends in a row of travel! Of course, I still have my trip with my parents, but the semester will be officially OVER (thankfully) by then! I can’t believe it.
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