"It's pronounced Ibitha"

That title made me laugh, so I thought I'd use it twice. If you don't get it, go start watching Modern Family. Seriously - watch it now, thank me later. :)

Anywho, this past Thursday my friend Sarah and I jetted off to the Balearic Island of Ibiza for a little bit of vacation. And you know what, it was the first trip I've taken that actually felt like a vacation. As much as I love map-reading, navigating, site-seeing, and city-trekking, it was really nice to just go to the beach and read a magazine and swim in the ocean. Which is what we did for 2 of the 4 days we were there.

The third day we went walking around in Eivissa (the biggest city on the island) and climbed up to the castle to see the Medieval Fair that was up there.

Medieval Fair

Olives

A man making bread in a wood-fire oven.

Then the fourth day, Valery, the guy we were couch-surfing with, showed us around the island by car, which is the only way to really see Ibiza because the buses only run certain routes and the rest of the island is a network of tiny roads.

The last day with the car was by far my favorite day. All of the little coves and cliffs that we saw were so amazing. We drove out to see Es Vedrà, which is a rock formation a little ways off the coast.

What was weird is that as we were driving, you could see the top of it behind the hills in the distance, and it looked HUGE. Then as we kept getting closer to it, it kept getting smaller. I´m not sure how that works...



The view from straight down the cliff.

After taking in the scenery and snapping some photos (while perched on a pretty steep cliff, I might add) we went for a little hike. And by "little hike" I mean a trek through the wildnerness. We climbed down the ledges toward the coast. Part of the way was sand so you could literally just run down the mountain and roll to slow yourself down or stop. It was really exhilirating. At the bottom, we shook the sand out of our shoes and climbed around on the rocks and took more photos.

The sandy stretch of the hike

The water is such a stunning color. It´s so clear that you can see straight down to the bottom where it´s shallow. We tried to climb down to go swimming, but when we got there, we saw that the water was full of pink, iridescent jellyfish. They looked so peaceful suspended in the water, not really caring where the waves were carrying them. They were in a pretty sweet spot if you ask me.

Next came the difficult part - the climb back up. It was about a 40 minute hike, but it takes so long because the gravel was loose so you had to take baby steps. There were also some prickly shrubs and brush along the trails, and I got a nice scratch on my thigh - a souvenir, I guess??

After that we just kept driving around the island (which is about 45 km [27 miles] at its widest) and saw some more beaches and coves.

Sadly, our vacation had come to an end. Valery dropped us off and the airport where we caught our flights back to Alicante - then came the really fun part... sleeping in the airport. The thing is, our flight got into Alicante (which is about an hour from Murcia) after the buses stop running for the night. So we were left with 2 options: take a cab all the way to Murcia (which comes to like 90 euro) OR take a cab into Alicante and get a hostel (which would come to about 60 euro.) So, we chose the secret 3rd option and slept on the airport benches, with my head on my backpack, my money/passport tucked in my bra strap under my arm and my purse clutched to my chest. However, there were really no people around, so I actually slept for a few hours. I checked in the morning and still had all my belongings, so all's well that end's well, I suppose. Not sure I want to that again anytime soon, though.

And thus ended one of the funnest trips I've had as of yet in Spain.

Hope all is well with everyone. I've been thinking this week of all my friends who are finished with/finishing their finals for the semester. I'm sure you all did well on the exams ;)

Much love to all from Spain, xoxo