This is just one of many strange stories from my trip to Spain a few years ago. It was one of our (mine and Kate's) last nights in Valencia, and a group of our friends decided it would be cool to hang out on the beach all night. I think Kate and I had dinner at "home" and then we met up with everyone later at the Palau, where there was some kind of play or something going on.

We all walked to the beach, equipped with wine and speakers for Leslie's portable CD player (I remember a lot of Dave Matthews Band music that night). It was fun to talk to everyone, but the time kind of dragged on after a while as everyone started getting a little tired. To wake ourselves up, Kate, Ann and I went to a club that was a little ways down the beach. It was probably about 2 AM at that point, and we could barely even get through the door because it was so crowded (people just start going out around 1 AM and stay out until 5 or 6 AM). If it hadn't been soooo crowded, it would have been an awesome club. There was a deck outside, and there was a room upstairs for salsa dancers. I remember we took our drinks up there and sat down for a while to watch the dancers, and I started falling asleep, lol. We probably only stayed for 1-2 hours and headed back to the beach. Everyone was starting to get super tired (especially after drinking so much wine) and at one point we all laid down, although no one fell asleep. While we were laying down, 2 people passed by, but no one else was near us for the rest of the night. When Kate finally sat up, she said, "Where's my purse???" We all looked around our little area and it was just gone. I'd heard that pickpockets in Spain are quick and unless one of our friends swiped it, it had to have been swiped by those 2 people who had passed us by earlier. The purse had some money, both of our IDs, our house key, and Kate's glasses. I felt so bad for her, especially because her vision's really bad and she had to wear her contacts the rest of the trip (which kind of hurts your eyes after a while!) She calmed down after a while, and we sat up to watch the "sunrise" which actually was nothing but grey. Honestly...this was to be the one day in 5 weeks that the sun didn't rise and it rained all day. Go figure!

We were all just ready to leave at that point, and we went to get a cab. One funny thing is that Luke had rolled up his pants because some girl had splashed him with water, and he was wearing white socks and black shoes. We ran into another guy from our school and he laughed at Luke. Kate found it really funny too:)

Kate and I finally made it back to our "house" and had to ring the doorbell to wake Esperanza up at 6 AM. She was REALLY mad that we had lost her key and made us pay to get a new one on top of the 20 minute lecture we had from her (all in Spanish, of course). We went to sleep until about noon and spent the rest of the day wandering around town with our British roommate (a 30-year-old guy from Australia) but that's another story.