Keri Goes Abroad: Ibiza, Spain, days one and two

Spain's landscape from the plane. Dorothy, we're not in Austria anymore!

I have managed to catch up to my Spain trip just in time for Fleur's visit! The Salzburg assistants are having a little reunion this weekend, which is both exciting and terrifying because it means that our time here together is almost up. It also means that I'm getting closer and closer to Pat's visit, our trip to Rome (I booked the hostel last night!) and flying home to see my family and friends again! There are so many mixed emotions right now, but I don't have time to enumerate them all (and you probably don't want to hear them all anyway).

Spain is an entirely different world than Austria. It is less organized, less wealthy and less beautifully maintained. One of Fleur's many insightful quotes of the week was: "Spain: everything is just a little bit shit." It's kind of true. There could be beautiful beautiful landscape, but then one giant dump in the middle. Or like the computers in the hotel, which functioned perfectly the majority of the time but then suddenly crashed one day. It's also obvious that the state is in some financial difficulties - things like the subway tunnels are in a state of disrepair. And they're numbered wrong. One of the train stations had the platforms numbered 2,1,3,4. That doesn't make sense no matter where you're from.

Fleur picked me up from the airport (and thank goodness - I would have been completely lost otherwise!) and together we headed to our hostel for the night. The next morning we got up early, had a couple of churros for breakfast and headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Ibiza. My bag was oversized (ugh.) which meant that Ryanair got to charge me 40 euros to check it. I swear, they're amazing at squeezing every last penny out of you!

We arrived in Ibiza to a windy day and spectacular views from the airplane window. The airport is in the south east portion of the island, and our hotel was north west, so we had to take a short taxi ride. The island is much bigger than I expected! I had envisioned something more like Santorini, where you could easily hop from place to place, but it takes almost an hour to get from Sant Antonio to Ibiza town on the bus. Neither one of us had brought our drivers license so we couldn't rent a car (which would have made things a million times easier).

Fleur and I spent the first evening wandering around Sant Antonio and the sunset strip. Apparently that part of the island is well known for the best sunsets, so we plopped ourselves down on a sun lounger at a place called Buddah Bar and watched the sun set with a pitcher of sangria - just like the locals were doing.

The next day we spent sleeping late and lounging by the pool and soaking up the sun for one of our only warm and sunny days.