I am currently sitting in my living room contemplating, once again, where the past week has gone. I'm going to write three separate entries this time because this week couldn't have been more different from the previous weekend, and all the events deserve their own chapter.
So, Friday was taken up by a run in the morning, a meeting with my linguistics group at 2 and a lecture at 4. In the evening the girls and I went out for a few drinks, which ended in a trip to the children's playground opposite - who says I have to grow up just because I'm nearly twenty-one? The next morning we met at the bus station at 11 ready for our bus at half-past. We'd decided to go for the earlier bus that took longer but would still get us there earlier - little did we know that the reason for the longer journey time was not just a slight detour. Around twenty minutes into the journey, the coach pulled over at a service station and we were all instructed to leave the vehicle. As we were standing around deciding what to do for the next forty-five minutes, we noticed a large group of foreign-looking passengers being lined up on the curb in front of us with their belongings. Before we knew what was happening, we saw the police arrive with a huge German Shepherd dog, searching the foreigners' baggage. We still don't know whether this scheduled stop was meant to involve a drugs raid or whether the passengers had been considered suspect and given a spontaneous spot check for this reason…
Either way, the event did provide some amusement in the form of an amazingly dim-witted Mancunian, who came up with some statements we could hardly believe were genuine. The best way to illustrate this is probably with his explanation of why he was on his way to Benidorm: he'd wanted to have an unusual holiday and had planned to go from Malaga to Istanbul - but it "looked well closer on Google Earth". He'd been two weeks getting from Malaga to here and had already run out of money, and to make matters worse, no one speaks any English here, which is clearly "well weird".
Anyway, it wasn't long before we were on our way again, and at 2.30 we were pulling into Benidorm bus station. Emerging into the sun, we were immediately enveloped into a concrete jungle of high-rise hotels and apartments stretching all the way to the distant sea. On the positive side, the streets were clean and well-kept and the sea looked amazing. The horrific thing was that there seemed to be more people there from northern England than southern Spain, and more English pubs than Spanish tapas bars. Walking down the high street felt like going down Queen's Street in Wolverhampton.
The walk to the apartment was longer than expected and we had to stop at Tourist Information to get a map and directions, but twenty minutes later we were there. It seemed really nice for the money - all light stone tiles and airy spaces. We had two twin bedrooms, a sofa bed and a kitchen-lounge-diner.
After a quick freshening-up and a change of clothes, we made our way straight down to the beach, which was a five-minute walk down the high street. It being April, the beach wasn't yet filled with the horrific hordes of people like you see in the pictures, and we were able to find ourselves a nice spot for the afternoon.
When it started to get chilly we found a Mercadona to buy some drinks for the evening. After popping back to the flat we went in pursuit of dinner - which, in true Benidorm style, had to be curry. It didn't take us long to find the only Indian-owned curry house in Benidorm, where we stuffed ourselves for ten Euros each. The funny thing (or tragic thing, depending on how you look at it) was that the staff hadn't even bothered to learn Spanish since all their customers were British.
After our amazing dinner we headed back to the apartment to get ready to go out. We stayed there until around 2am when we made our way to the sea front, where all the bars and clubs are. We spent the rest of the night going into practically every club and bar on the strip (insisting, of course, that we receive free shots every time). At the end of the night (or morning, as it was around 6am) we bought cheesy chips and shared pizza with some fellow Brits.
The next day we had to be out of the apartment at 10am, which was painful to say the least. We dragged ourselves to breakfast at a local English pub, where luckily it was already warm enough to sit out on the terrace and soak up a bit of vitamin D. Then we went straight to the beach, where we stayed until lunchtime. After scouring what felt like the whole town, we finally found a cafe serving traditional English Sunday lunch, which was what the others were craving.
By the time we'd found somewhere for lunch (a little cafe owned by a kind English lady of retirement age) and everyone had eaten their three courses, it was nearly time to catch the bus. Stopping off at a seaside shop along the way to buy the obligatory bracelets, we made our way back to the apartments, picked up our bags and began the long trek to the station. Our coach left on schedule and, although it stopped at the same service station as the previous day, it stopped for only twenty minutes this time, getting us back to Murcia for 8pm. By this stage the exhaustion was beginning to hit and we all gladly went our separate ways for food and bed. Benidorm had been tacky and tasteless, like some kind of embarrassing caricature of Britain in the middle of the Spanish coast, but we'd taken the experience for what it was and had an amazing time.
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