Summer of ‘04
In this post I’ll describe more or less how was my summer holidays. Although
summer is not officially over, the exams’ season is about to start. I’d like to
share the experiences of what has happened until now.
During the last days of June I was looking for a job that allowed me to have a
wealthier economy for the rest of the summer. Unfortunately I couldn’t find
anything.
July was quite a regular month, nothing really special excepting my birthday,
but not a big deal. I spent my days doing the stuff I don’t have time for
during the rest of the year. I also met some people that I don’t see usually
due to my lack of time. Last weeks of the month I made the last preparatory
steps for the big travel.
First week of August Maarten a.k.a. “Release early, release often”, Aki (the first witness of my computer crashing) and me, also known as the
“Finnish - Dutch - Spanish alliance” or “the Knights that say ”Ni!!!”” went
on tour. I took them to the South of Spain because I think it’s pretty
different to their home countries.
First we visited my village, Albanchez de Mágina (Jaén), after a car trip
in a beautiful storm. In my village we walked around, climbed up to the castle
and visited an oil factory. We also started being used to the heat. My
grandparents were there and my grandfather could use the couple of English
words he knows.
After spending a couple of days in my village, we went to the beach in
Punta Umbría (Huelva), where we met a lot of relatives of mine. The weather
was quite windy so it was not nice to stay on the beach, there was red flag
(so bathing is forbidden), but we enjoyed the big waves.
Then we went to Sevilla for eating dinner and sleeping. We eat in a famous
Italian restaurant and after that we went to a terrace where we could see
the “Giralda” while drinking something.
Next day we did some sightseeing, mainly the Cathedral, where Maarten devoted
a Philips speaker. We climbed the Giralda tower, on the top of it we took a
lot of pictures of the city. After that we visited the Alcazar Royal Palace,
where we saw wonderful sceneries, specially in the gardens 
.
On the afternoon we did some shopping around the center and after that we
visited Plaza de España, where some takes of Star Wars Episode II where shot.
Next day we went back to Madrid, that afternoon I had to buy some supplies.
Next morning we went shopping in the place where I used to live, later, after
lunch we had the first contact with Madrid center.
We had a party. It was fun and a lot of people come. Everybody enjoyed that,
specially the taxi driver that brought Jaime and Juan, who was holding firmly
the steering wheel while laughing.
Next days we did some sightseeing in Madrid, we walked around the ”famous”
center, we saw Retiro Park and Templo de Debod, an Egyptian temple located in
“Parque del Oeste”.
Maarten left and Aki also did the next day, after spending more time shooping
in the center and seeing the miracle of rain in August.
Once my international visitors left (next stop: Finland), I spent some time
doing the stuff I left undone at home. Then it was time for studying,
cleaning the dust of my lecture notes and so on.
In the mean time we had the news of both Jaime and Juan selling their bars
(I have talked about that already in this blog) and other bad news that go
beyond the scope of this blog.
Finally I’d like to say thanks to the people that shared this experiences with
us.
