Ribadesella and I will always have a love-hate relationship. This town on the coast of northern Spain, about 2 hours west of Santander, hosts a very locally famous annual kayak race. Last Thursday (the 5th), Caitlyn, Josh, and I decided to check out (over the weekend) the equally famous fiesta that accompanies this race. We happily bought our bus tickets and got very excited for our first real weekend in Spain. Suffice it so say, we had no idea what we were in for.
Friday- 6 PM
I meet Caitlyn at the Plaza Porticada. We are meeting early for our 7 PM bus- just in case. Josh and Jonas (Josh’s German host brother, here after known as JoBro) are not on time. They call and say they’re on their way.
6:40 PM
Josh and JoBro call and say they are going to the grocery store.
7 PM
Caitlyn and I board the bus. Josh and JoBro are sprinting to catch it.
7:02 PM
After deciding that we don’t want to go to some random town alone, Caitlyn and I get off the bus and run away from the very annoyed bus driver. We find Josh and Jonas outside the bus station a few minutes later. We are pissed off.
8 PM
Dinner in the park- all the food we had bought for the weekend plus Nocilla (Spanish Nutella) and bread. We all decide to take the train the next day.
Saturday 3:55 PM
We successfully board the train 15 minutes early. Everything is good. The train is slow, but the views are pretty. The train gradually starts to fill with fiesta-goers toting camping supplies and food.
8 PM
We arrive in Ribadesella. We see lots of tents and lots of people. We follow the crowd to the beach. We don’t have anywhere to put our bags, so we just sit on the beach with them. We don’t know what to do. Caitlyn and I end up going to find some of the cider that the Asturias region of Spain is known for and a pack of cards. We find the cider, but not the cards. We get back to beach and end up making cards out of the box the cider was in. The cider is gross.
11 PM
We decide to go check out what’s happening in town because the beach is getting pretty cold. We pack up all of stuff and trek across the river to the town, where a crazy fiesta is happening. There is music, dancing, carnival rides, tons of food and drink, and tons of people. However, we don’t have any place to put our stuff so we just walk around for a while.
2 AM?
We go back to the beach because we’re feeling kind of homeless and have nowhere to go. We figure it’s as good a place as any to sleep so we curl up under our wet beach towels and fall asleep in the sand.
5 AM
I wake up freezing and can still here everyone fiestaing in town across the river. These people go all night.
6 AM
Caitlyn, JoBro, and I give up on sleep and leave Josh on the beach sleeping. We go walk into town again.
7 AM
We find the bus station, then sit on the sidewalk there because there’s nowhere else to go. At this point I’m feeling really homeless. Everything that walks by is like, “Extranjeros!” (foreigners) We eventually decide to go back to the beach, but not before some Spanish man actually asks me if I’m really homeless. We go back to the beach and fall asleep again.
11 AM
We’re back at the bus station- hungry, tired, dirty, gross, and miserable. It smells terrible and all we can think about is how we have never wanted to leave a place so much in our lives.
1:30 PM
Our bus finally arrives to rescue us. We scramble on and are inexpressibly happy to be escaping that place. We have thoroughly learned our lesson about going to random fiestas unprepared.
So I can’t really say I enjoyed the weekend, but it did have its good moments (or good milliseconds.) And now that we know what not to do, we might be more successful with our next fiesta excursion….
No comments:
Post a Comment