Ch. 10: Llévame de vuelta a España (Take me back to Spain)

Hello Everybody! I hope you had a wonderful winter despite all the snow and cold, and I hope spring is treating you well! I know this blog is a long time in coming, but better late than never? It was been a very different winter for me, the temperature mostly staying around 1 or 2 degrees, and only having snow for 2 weeks! It rained a lot in the winter and was overcast all the time, so we literally never saw the sun… Now, it is almost summer, with green grass and flowers, and some days even being warm enough to tan, but it was nice to take a break from the cold when I went with my host family for a week to Grand Canaria, Spain, for our winter vacation in February. Grand Canaria is the biggest island in the Canary Islands, a group of islands owned by Spain that lay off the west cost of Morocco, Africa. It was a wonderful vacation, sunny and warm the whole time! We spent mornings going for walks or lying in the sun, afternoons shopping or seeing little towns and harbours, and evenings eating good food and taking in the local night-life. And of course we went to the beach and swimming in the Atlantic ocean (it wasn’t even cold!!) I got to try traditional Spanish food like Paella and Sangria (Both so good!) and a lamb stew I cant remember the name of… We also found a restaurant that became our favourite, called Café Opera. They had live shows every night, really good coffee and ice cream and really fun friendly waiters. The show one night was traditional Spanish Flamingo dancers, which was really cool to see, they had bight colours, fans and the little clapper things for their hands and everything. Since we were in Spain, I got to try speaking Spanish. I have little to no Spanish experience, but was still able to talk to a man who didn’t speak English and understand his directions to our hotel when we were lost the first night there. I also learned a little German, because we stayed in a German hotel, so the staff only spoke German or Spanish, and heard a lot of Swedish or Finnish because Playa des Ingles, the town we stayed at is a very popular Scandinavic tourist town. It was a little challenging, especially since I spoke only Danish with my host family, but spoke English to almost everybody else. But all in all, it was a lot of fun to be surrounded by so many languages. It was a really great vacation and I came back home to Denmark a lot browner, and a lot more cosmopolitan, than I went. Over all, Spain is a country that you can’t help but love, from the food to the people to the very atmosphere it emits. All I can say now is ‘Llévame de vuelta a España’!