Scattered Strawberry Summer

We got up at 4am to catch our flight to Madrid. We took a bus to get to Avenida de America bus station. We left our luggage there and went out to have a walk as we had a few hours to kill before our bus to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. We barely left the station when I noticed I had missed calls and a text from a friend who was also catching this bus to get to Santo Domingo that all tickets were sold out. There were no other buses to Santo Domingo that day. We were a bit in panic, we needed to get to the wedding! We managed to contact the groom, he suggested to catch a bus to a nearby town and his father picked us up from there. It was not a good start.

It was a sunny, warm evening when we finally got to Santo Domingo. After longest check in ever, we went out for a walk. It's not a big place but it was rather busy. The old town is mostly pedestrianized which is rather convenient. We didn't stroll around to long, we found ourselves at a cafe on the main road, ordering pizza. It was frozen pizza for a price of fresh one. This has happened to me before in Barcelona, I do not understand how this is can even happen! We were very hungry, so we just ate it anyway. The wine was dirty cheap, to compensate for this coca-cola was ridiculously overpriced.  We stayed at Hostal R. Pedro I, which is really nothing like a hostel. It was a very small, very rustic hotel. I actually rather liked it, I could only complain about small pillows and a very long check in. The people who run it were very nice and very helpful.

We got up rather early to get ready for the wedding. A bus took us to the church. It's beautiful inside but rather ordinary from outside. The weather was brilliant, not a cloud in sight and it was rather hot,it was in high 20s. A lot of villagers showed up to see a glimpse of a wedding. There hasn't been a wedding in this village for more than a decade. Marta arrived in a white audi. She looked stunning. I hadn't seen her dress before this,it suited her well,it had very lovely lace. She looked very grown up and very Kate Middleton.

I hear the ceremony was beautiful, but I couldn't understand most of it. It was quite different to what we would have in Lithuania, which makes it harder to follow. Marta spoke in Spanish and Richard spoke in English. He seemed to be a bit nervous, while Marta was very collected.  I took many pictures, had a minor crisis when I filled up a memory card on one of my cameras unexpectedly, but it was all fine. Many pictures later we got to the restaurant. It had a rather big garden, all set up for us to have appetizers. Now, I didn't know Spanish eat for so long. I think the whole dinner lasted 3-4 hours, we ate so many things!

I loved our table, it was very international: us two Lithuanians, a Brazilian, English, a couple of Italians and the rest were Spanish. I might say so myself, but I think we were most fun table.