Learning Spanish is getting more and more popular. It’s the second most spoken language worldwide, so if you’re looking to expand your language skills, Spanish is a beautiful and useful place to start. When we started traveling through Central America we were able to say ‘hola’ and ‘gracias’. Even though English is getting more common around Central America, we soon found out that just a few words of Spanish were not enough to make ourselves understandable. Especially when you want to see more than just the really touristy places.

So after two months of traveling we spontaneously decided not to take our scheduled flight back home. Instead, we booked a new flight to Guatemala City and decided to continue our trip for as long as our purses would take us! Following the recommendation from our friends from The Netherlands who founded their own travel agency in Central America, we found ourselves in the magical Antigua. With its beautifully coloured antique streets and surrounding volcanos, you can never get bored by Antigua’s appearance! We’ve been living in Antigua for almost five weeks and we still didn’t feel like leaving.

There are many different Spanish schools operating in Antigua, which also offer a homestay with a Guatemalan family. We took Spanish classes at Antigüeña Language School and stayed with the most wonderful family for 4 weeks. We planned on taking classes for only two weeks, but as we said, we couldn’t get enough of the city and decided to stay two weeks more! There are several options, but the most common schedule was 4 hours a day (in the morning or afternoon) one on one with your teacher. Antigüeña offers an amazing garden where you can take your classes outside and enjoy the view of the volcanos while having conversations with your teacher.

Another reason that made us decide to stay a bit longer was the Semana Santa (Holy Week), something we had to see. We’ve seen some pre-processions in the weeks before, which were interesting as well, but we didn’t expect the Semana Santa to be so crazy impressive! Antigua was chaotic, the streets were filled with people and alfombras (carpets of flowers and vegetables) and all the churches had their own activities every day. It’s something you have to see to understand what it’s really like.

The first two weeks of our Spanish classes took place in the morning from 8am till 12pm. After having lunch with our family we were busy doing our homework, being the disciplined students that we are. But as you can imagine, getting up at 6.45am every day was a big hassle. Because we love change, and like to experience new stuff we decided to change to the afternoon classes after two weeks. They took place from 1pm till 5pm. We didn’t expect that this would had such a big influence on our disciplined life. Not getting up at 6.45am gave us the opportunity to discover the night life of Antigua. As a result: going to class with a hangover everyday.

On the positive side, this means we got to discover many nice places within the city. You won’t believe it, but literally every night there’s something to do in Antigua. You would never get bored, or at least we didn’t. Because of the amount of students and expats living in Antigua, the bars organise some kind of event every night. Every bar closes at 1am though, so start early! Right here you’ll find the schedule of Antigua’s nightlife (the way we did it):

Monday: Pub quiz at Reilly’s.
Tuesday: Salsa night in Sinventura.
Wednesday: Ladies night in Las Vibras. You can get free manicure, pedicure and massages and the ladies will get two free drinks.
Thursday: Busy night, a lot to choose from, or do it all… Beer pong tournament at Big Foot Hostel which starts at 7pm (fun fact: Dos Quesadillas made it to the semi-finals, which was a big struggle in the end). Then you can stop by Three Monkeys hostel, where they organise an open mic night (free drinks for performers) after which you can all roll right into the Ladies night at Lucky Rabbit.
Friday: Salsa night in Las Palmas (also on Thursday and Saturday).
Saturday: At this point you’ll probably be recovering from the 4th hangover of the week and you might think about staying in, but then you realise there’s the Pool Party (Santo Perdido) on Saturday. Something you have to see, something we also wanted to see only once, but we ended up there three weeks in a row… It’s an abandoned swimming pool just 20 minutes outside of Antigua where they created a really cool venue for afterparties (1-8am).
Sunday: Salsa night in La Sala. Yes, another Salsa night, like it or not. If you’re not that good, or a big noob, you can take salsa lessons for free on Monday and Tuesday from 5 till 6pm at Salsa con Gloria. During the salsa nights there are lots of locals who are willing to teach you some basic steps too. Trust us, you will enjoy it, even if you’re not that good.

As you all know, you’ll need some good solid food before participating in this hectic nightlife. Even though we stayed with our family where we got 3 meals every day (really really delicious, including typical Guatemalan food) we did also discover a lot of nice places to eat. Definitely go to Toko Baru, they offer curries, shoarma, falafel and more for very good prices (and: the best garlic sauce ever!). You might also want to go to Samsara to eat healthy, delicious food and enjoy their relaxing atmosphere. If you’re on a budget, you should go to Plaza La Merced, where you can get really delicious local food. In case you’re as addicted to french fries as we are, go to Papas y Salsas. For the healthy juices and sandwiches you should visit Amanecer and create your own detox smoothie to treat yourself with a vitamin boost (you’ll need it after all the partying!).

As you can read, Antigua has it all. It’s very very pretty, it offers good Spanish schools, salsa classes, nice hostels, heartwarming families to live with, an amazing nightlife and many good restaurants! Our number one advice would be, that if you don’t want to get stuck and fall in love with Antigua, don’t go there! We will definitely be going back…