Another big travel day today. As I write this, we’re about 2/3 of the way to Seville, By that, I mean we are  on the third of three trains we have to take today.

The first was the metro from l’Almir to Alicante. Our host, Gary graciously arranged for a friend of his,  a barrel-shaped Englishman whose name I unfortunately did not catch to drive us to the metro station in Benidorm. He’s been living in Spain for 30 years, but his accent was thick enough that you needed a chainsaw to cut it, so I didn’t catch everything he was telling us. Nice guy, though.

We felt like pros as we bought our metro tickets and found our way to the right platform. An hour or so later, we were back in Alicante. Thanks to Carla’s impeccable sense of direction, we found our way from the metro station to the Alicante train station in no time. 

With an hour to kill, we went to Tim Hortons at the train station for a coffee. The signage there advertised it being Canadian but those of us in the know are aware that Burger King bought Timmies for 11 billion dollars and now both are majority owned by some Brazilian mega corporation. Oh well, the coffee was predictably mild. Quite a change of pace from the  Defcon-9 caffeine level coffee we’ve been served in many places in Spain. There was a public piano in the station which I attempted to play, but what keys weren’t missing were broken inside, so that was a bust. It saddens me that people would mistreat and neglect a musical instrument of any kind. Savages.

The ride from Alicante to Madrid was uneventful. We rolled through mostly agricultural land. Things are looking much greener after th. e recent rains. I ventured into the cafeteria, bar car to get us a couple of beers. It was a real party atmosphere in there. Only one guy was working the counter and he was up to his ass in alligators thanks to a trio of twenty -something young guys who were ahead of me in line ordering enough food and beer for a platoon. It was wild being in a bar moving at 300km/h.

We had to change trains in Madrid. We’d been to the Madrid station before . That was on the way to Barcelona, where I thought I had left my phone on the train. On that occasion, we had exited the platform area into the terminal, then walked to another platform entrance on the same level. The doors opened automatically and we boarded our train. Easy peasy.

Figuring, stupidly, that we could just do the same thing again this time, we entered the terminal, found out we were supposed to depart from platform 6, and went to that door. We walked up to the giant sliding glass doors, but they did not slide open. We could see further down the platform that people were walking toward the trains on platform six, so that was puzzling.

We approached a Renfe employee who was busy social-media-ing on her phone to ask if she spoke english, Nope. We told her we were going to Seville – platform six. “No, no no, she said and pointed to the far side of the terminal, down near the 10 yard line. She walked us partway there and pointed toward a lineup that we  joined… but these people were going through to platform 15. What the hell? We asked another employee who said “No,no no”, and pointed us to a staircase going up to the next level.  Up we went. Then back down to the end zone where we went through the now magically opening glass doors and down an escalator to platform six.  

The good news is that these trains are getting progressively more posh. The train we’re on now as I type this has nice brown leather sets and looks a lot newer and cleaner than the others we’ve been riding so far. The olive trees are whipping past us as we rocket at 300km/h through the Spanish countryside. Two hours to Seville, then, according to Google Maps a 28 minute walk to our Airbnb.

We rolled into Seville on time and Started walking. As we approached the place we booked, the streets narrowed and the density of the crowds increased. Sidewalks were virtually non-existent and all kinds of cars, scooters and bicycles were competing with us for the narrow streets. Eventually we arrived at the door, which we had to open via a link that the host texted us. That was a first. It was weird to be buzzing open this 19th century iron gate with a smartphone, but that’s Spain for you.

Our place is tiny, and old, but clean and well equipped. We had a shower and put on clean clothes to go out for dinner. There was a nice little outdoor cafe  just around the corner. A bit of a wait to get a table, but that’ always a good sign. We ordered way too much food. I had a gigantic beer (must have been about 2L). Our young waiter had obviously never opened a bottle of wine with a corkscrew before, so we watched with amusement as his older counterpart gave him a lesson on the spot.

Afterward, we walked around for a while, through the throngs of Friday night revelers, many of whom were beautiful people that were beautifully dressed. The nearby Cathedral was amazing to look at against the backdrop of the streetlights, the lights from cafes and bars, and the dark sky. It had been a long day, we went “home” to get some rest.

 

We got up about 8am after a not very restful night. Among other things, the neighbors (in the house next door) partied  noisily until well after midnight, and the toilet ran all night. With my hearing impairment, I thought it was someone snoring in the next room.

The next day dawned spectacularly, though. Sunny and warm. We were expecting rain, so this was a nice surprise. We got up, had a couple of cups of coffee produced by a very reluctant drip coffee machine and then set out to find a hiking trail to a lighthouse that Gary told us about the day before.

As we walked through the streets of this town looking at the beautiful homes,  each with it’s own small but private pool, we were both thinking the same thing: We could live here.Housing in  l’Albir is quite l’Expensive, though. Better have a million bucks to spend if you want that pool.

There is a cool little main street with lots of nice shops and restaurants, and on the other side,a  long and spectacular beach.It was a very sunny and hot day, so we popped into a grocery store and bought some snacks and water for the hike. We brought some bananas to the till and got a rapid-fire verbal Spanish assault from the cashier because we hadn’t weighed them in advance and marked them with a sticker. OK.. we’re still learning how things work here.

After some fumbling around, we found the trailhead for the 2 mile or so hike up to the lighthouse. It was an easy and paved path and we were sharing it with many other walkers of every age. People here stay active well into their 70s and 80s, it seems.

The views along the way looking back on l”Albir, the bay and the beach were amazing. Along the way there was plenty of interesting signage pointing out caves, an ochre mine, and historical remnants of observation towers dating back to the time that pirates hid out in these coves. No pirates now, just expensive looking boats.

After making it up to the lighthouse and taking in the spectacular views, we headed back down. It started to sprinkle rain and we were hungry by this point so we stopped in to a little Carribean cafe next to the ocean and had a couple of magical drinks and some food. We made it home just in time before it started to rain for real, so I took the opportunity to update the blog and get a couple of business things sorted out. I don’t know what Carla is doing , but I imagine it’s siesta time for her. The rain is tapering off now, so I will sign off for now.

(Later)

It rained again for several hours this afternoon, quite hard. It was nice sitting outside listening to the rain pelting down on the canvas awnings covering the outdoor seating areas. There’s something about that “rain on a tent” sound that just feels so calming. Maybe it’s because when you’re in a tent and it’s raining, you just need to settle in and wait it out. It’s a feeling of resigned calm.

We went back to the Jungle Joy Thai restaurant again tonight after the rain stopped. Such great food and fun people there. Their #4 level hotness curry had me wiping my nose and mopping my forehead, but oh so good!

Another big train day tomorrow, so we are hoping for a good sleep tonight…..

 

 

This holiday is like playing a jazz tune. 

In jazz, you play the head (melody), improvise in the middle and then play the head again going out. We knew we were flying in and out of Malaga, but what happened in between, we hadn’t decided in advance. Today was going to be a very jazzy day.

I woke up early and reached for my phone to see what the logistics looked like for our day. We’re heading for Alicante, or so I thought. Our train tickets are for Alicante, the city. Which is in the Province of Alicante.  It’s like if in Alberta, there was a city also named Alberta. It might get a bit confusing to the somewhat unprepared traveller.  

Our Airbnb, however, is in L’Albir. This, I did not notice when I booked it. I only saw Alicante.

I punched in the walking directions for Alicante station to our Airbnb. 10 hours. Okay. That’s going to be a problem.  L’Albir is about 53km from where we get off the train. Oops. 

Now what? I did ask the host, at the time of the booking to supply directions from the rail station, but they didn’t reply to that. Instead, I got what looked like a generic message asking us to give them an ETA. I messaged again, specifically asking about getting there from the train station. Another generic looking message followed telling us to park our car out front. 

The host had provided us with a number to text him, so I gave him a call. A friendly Australian sounding voice answered. I explained the situation to him and he told us that we could get on the L1 tram destined for Benidorm, where he would meet us and drive us the rest of the way. He also told us that it is very stormy and rainy there, which is unfortunate, seeing as it is such a beautiful day in Tarragona.

As I write this, we are on the train. Despite the fact that we made seat  reservations days ago, Carla and I are in the same car, but sitting about as far apart as is possible. My seat is the very last one in the entire train and is situated as far back as is possible. Since it is a single seat, I have space for my pack on the floor next to me which is nice. I’m also right next to the washroom.  We’re on board this train for about another 2 hours. 

(Later)

We arrived in Alicante about 1/2 an hour late.  We got vague directions from a non-english speaking security guard at the train station to find the metro station. Luckily, it was not far away. We managed to figure out how to buy tickets from the machine and found the platform for the train to Benidorm.  This train, like the last one we were on was running late, and by the time we got to the last stop on the line, which took over an hour, we were done with trains for the day.

Our host, Gary, who as it turns out is Irish, not Australian, met us right outside the metro station and loaded us up into a Chrysler minivan. We drove through a fairly industrial looking area while chatting and learning much about each other during the 15 minute trip to the Airbnb.

Gary has a lot of irons in the fire. He runs multiple properties here in l’Albir as well as a cleaning business. The place we are staying at is very nice. Lots of common spaces both inside and out. Three friendly cats, and a very nice bedroom /private bath with two private balconies just for us.

the town of l’Albir is very nice. It seems to be all very new, and is what can best be described as a beach town for fairly well-off people to retire to. According to Gary, there are many Norwegians and English people living here. He doesn’t think much of the English, as a hardcore Irishman.

By the time we were settled and had freshened up it was nearly 9pm. We got a recommendation from Gary to go to a Thai restaurant a few blocks away. He said he was fussy about his Thai food, and this place was the best he had ever had, even after living in Thailand. Of course, we took his recommendation and we were not disappointed. The food and the atmosphere was great. It was also pretty reasonably priced.

It was a great way to end a long a trying day.

I love Tarragona. I think I could live here.

It’s not too big – Around 135,000 inhabitants. It has the ocean. It has a seemingly endless amount of history to explore. It’s got a friendlier, more relaxed vibe than the other major metropolitan areas we have visited. Real estate seems almost affordable. You can own a car here because there is actually parking in many places. What’s not to love? Sadly, we are leaving here tomorrow, but who knows? MAybe the next town (Alicante) will be even better. Hard to imagine, though.

After a relaxing morning at home, we ventured out. The entire town seemed to be crawling with school groups on tour. Teenagers everywhere.  It almost made me miss teaching for a minute. We headed into the local contemporary art museum, which was very good. They were featuring the work of several prominent Spanish artists. Time well spent.

But then it was time for something I had been wanting to try out. On some food shows I had watched, they said that many Spaniards enjoy churros with a thick hot chocolate to dip them in. I Googled up a place and within minutes we were watching the nice lady there deep frying a half dozen just for us. Sugar? Sure. I wasn’t sure if the chocolate was intended to be a beverage or not. I decided that I could make that work. I came to the same decision about gravy some time ago.

After this completely unnecessary indulgence, we began walking toward the ocean. Not with any real purpose, but on the way there.

We found our way to the train station that we came in on and verified that we would be leaving from the same one tomorrow. Good to know, because there are two in town. Then we continued walking toward the ocean and eventually wound up at the marina. There were a few fancy yachts moored up but, nothing quite like we saw in Malaga.

The day was getting pretty hot by this point and we started to think about the cold beers that we had in the fridge back up the hill toward our apartment near the Cathedral. There were a bunch of those little electric scooters you can rent there by the marina, so we downloaded the app and after some frustration that was caused by me having my VPN activated, managed to get signed up and jump on them. It was fun zipping back up the hill. A lot more fun than walking would have been in the heat. I know I could’ve used the exercise after the churros though. Still, we’ve been pretty active. I think it may even be possible that we lose weight on this vacation because of all the walking we are doing.

After a break back at home, we decided to go out and grab some groceries to cook a meal at “home”. We were in a  grocery store the day before, but damned if we could find our way back there. As usual, trying to navigate by the use of our phones produced very mixed results. Being those narrow streets with the buildings towering up above doesn’t contribute to very good data connections. Eventually we found the place and bought some fixins’ to cook up a couple of cheeseburgers – or Hamburguesas, as they call them here. Don’t worry, we’ve been steeping ourselves in the food culture of Spain. It didn’t kill us to have a simple (and affordable) meal at home for a change.

Last evening after I posted the blog, I headed out at dusk for a walk and it was magical. There were very few people out and about. Seeing the ruins at this time of day was a totally different vibe. I walked to some ruins overlooking the ocean, stopping to watch the bats flit about between the medieval remnants of the Jewish quarter and watched two tomcats growling menacingly at each other. I think I’ll go out again tonight.

 

We dragged our asses out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7am to make sure we gave ourselves plenty of time to make the train from Barcelona to Tarragona this morning. Good thing we did.

We had a bit of a screw up with getting to the station. It seems I no longer know how Uber works because for the second time I managed to input our destination incorrectly in the app. Luckily, the taxi driver picked up on my screw-up and asked us where we were REALLY going.

Like Malaga,  the Barcelona -Sants station is massive. We’d been there before, because we came in at this station, but of course, we were still a bit confused by the layout. At least this time we knew that we had to use a machine to take a number to see a ticket agent. We had tickets, but in Spain, for many (most) trains, you ALSO need to make a reservation. Catch-22: If you are travelling with a eurail pass, you must make the reservation in person at a station. WTAF.

Anyway, we had already planned out all our rail trips for the remainder of our Spain experience, so we decided to book ALL of our reservations at once before getting on our train this morning. That way, we wouldn’t have to arrive an hour or more in advance of the departure time for any subsequent trips.

With the purchase of the eurail pass, I downloaded a handy-dandy rail planner app which allowed us to make all of these plans, knowing the departure and arrival times for all trains, when we had to switch trains etc etc. So we got our number, and I pulled out my phone to prepare for our turn at the wicket… only 8 people ahead of us and almost an hour before our train was to depart. No sweat.

I launched the rail planner app and…… all of our planned trips were GONE. Naturally this made me say some words that even the Spanish-speaking-only folks surrounding us would understand. How in the F$%#K could this happen? I’ve launched this app dozens of times and everything was always right there where it should be.  Unable to think of anything else to do, I resorted to my extensive IT training and experience and restarted my phone. Success! Everything was back.  Holy crap. What a relief. It took about 30 minutes for the agent to make all of our reservations and print them once we reached the wicket, leaving us just enough time to make itto platform 11 for our train.

Unlike our previous train travel day, this was no high-speed high class train. More like a city bus on rails. This was the one train where no reservation was required and seating was a free-for all. I could tell by the body language of the people on the platform as the arrival time of our train drew near that this was going to be a free for all. I was 100% right. When the train rolled in I told Carla that I would run interference and to just get behind me. We didn’t get seats together, but we got seats and were on the way to Tarragona.

The train probably maxed out at 100km/h, but it was only an hour and a quarter to Tarragona. We followed the coast and passed through a few one-horse towns along the way, with a few people getting off and on. As we rolled into Tarragona, we saw the beautiful combination of beaches, seaside Roman ruins, buildings rising up into the hills, and sunshine.

Once off the train, we punched in the coordinates for our airbnb flat. A 20 minute walk. We decided to go for it, even though we knew it would be all uphill. As we walked, we realized what a relief it was to be out of the insane rush of Barcelona. This place had a very chill vibe. THIS was the Spain that I imagined when we booked the trip.

We arrived at our place and our host was waiting outside for us. Although we were almost 2 hours early for check-in, he told us it would just be 10 minutes for our place to be ready, helped us up the 3 flights of stairs (19th century building with no elevator) and let us put our stuff inside. Key in hand, we set out to explore and find a cold beer to quench the thirst we built ascending the hill. We are right next to the Cathedral and can hear the bells chime every quarter hour. The flat itself is small, but very well equipped, comfortable, cool, quiet. Everything Barcelona wasn’t.

After a quick look around, we went back to unpack and relax which turned into an hour long siesta. After that we headed back out and found Roman ruins everywhere within walking distance, a very cool modern “Rambla” with many shops. We had dinner at a seaside restaurant , walked down the Rambla to the end, then started back stopping along the way at a grocery store for surprisingly inexpensive necessities (like beer for about 65 cents a bottle).

We’re back at the flat, showered and relaxing now. Feeling happy.

 

We are starting to be able to find our way around in Barcelona, so it is time to move on.  Now that we’ve been here for six days or so, we have a pretty good feel for the city.

Unlike Malaga, Barcelona is not “polished”. There’s a lot more graffiti, more visibly homeless people, fewer “obvious” tourists like us, greater cultural diversity. There is also much more in the way of amazing art and architecture than we saw in Malaga.

It’s interesting to note that this area (Catalonia), of which Barcelona is the capital, brings in the majority of the tax revenue to the country. At one time, it was an autonomous region with its own language, customs, traditions and government. There is a political movement to separate from Spain and return to that autonomous state. It make me think, of course, of the Quebec separatism movement and, to a lesser extent, the “Wexit” movement in western Canada.

It is very expensive to live in Barcelona. Only the extremely wealthy own anything we Canadians would call a ‘house’. This is probably the most pricey place we will stay airbnb-wise on this trip, with six nights coming in at a relatively bargain-basement cost of about $1450.00 CDN.

It’s a much different way of life. Few people own a car. Parking is practically impossible, and where it is possible, outrageously expensive. Make a wrong turn, and you will face a 200 euro fine for driving on a  street that requires a special permit.  You can find a market within walking distance of where you live. The public transportation system is highly efficient and modern. Bikes, scooters, skateboards and feet are how people get around here. Also, you see far fewer overweight people here.

Something else I noticed about this city; there are many dogs here and they are, for the most part very street-wise. It’s pretty common to see dogs off-leash but walking right alongside their owners, paying attention to the traffic around them and very comfortable with it all. So cool to see that. I had to include some photos.

Today was Sunday, and many shops were closed. The frantic pace of Friday and Saturday was replaced by a much more leisurely tempo on the streets. Of course, you still had to take care not to get mowed down by a speeding scooter or cyclist.

We purchased tickets for a noon concert at Palau de la Música Catalana. The concert featured choral works by Brahms and Mendelssohn for the first half, then some contemporary works by Catalan composers were being premiered. All works were fantastic and hearing them in such a stunningly beautiful venue was an experience we’ll never forget.

After the concert we wandered aimlessly for a while, at least as much as it can feel aimless in Barcelona, then headed back to our place to relax, have a beer and figure out some next steps. We are tentatively going to reconnect with Dan and Fran, who have been on their own cycling journey for the past 5 days. Follow them here: https://danandfran.yukonfilms.com.

Tomorrow, if all goes to plan we will be in Tarragona, Spain shortly after noon. The adventure continues!