Having been down through France (Paris for 5 nights and Bordeaux for 2) and having had a great time of it (my first time there so lots of sightseeing and bits of French food I’ve never tried), half a week ago we set off to Spain. This in itself would seem simple at first sight, with trains and such running in the direction we wanted, yet it managed to become a complicated mess. From Paris to Bordeaux wasn’t a problem, but from their it was rather fragmented. From Bordeaux we were informed that there were no tickets on any of the trains going into Spain for the next few days, yet a few minutes later, having ignored the advice of the ticket saleswoman, we managed to get tickets (from one of the machines) for a train to Irún for the next day. Arriving there it turned out that they should have been able to go one better, with tickets available from Irún to Madrid.

Having finished that day of travel we found ourselves in Madrid Chamartin station, knowing there were no more trains that day and quite happy just to sleep there. Seeing us sit down with some sandwiches from a machine a guard told us we had to be out of the station before it closed in half an hour, and that he didn’t recommend sitting outside as there were parties on nearby roofs and falling bottles weren’t uncommon. A short trip later and we were in Madrid Puerta Atocha station and quite happy to just sit outside until it opened at about 5:30 (which was only 5 hours away by then) since it was a lot less risky. We actually ended up staying in a fairly cheap room in an NH hotel (which are apparently a reasonably priced chain of hotels that I hadn’t previously heard of). The next morning we took a train to Granada and then a connection to Almería where I’m staying for the rest of the holiday.

A few things have come out of this journey for me:

1) No matter how bad things might seem there’s usually a solution.
2) Not knowing the layout and availability of the Spanish trains before your journey is a bad idea, as none of the people selling tickets were able to piece together a journey like this for us by using multiple trains.
3) Travelling like this is truly awesome, not knowing exactly what you’re going to end up doing is quite fun in itself.

So on to today, and I ended up going on a quick boat journey (8m long yacht) which was made even shorter by the fact that I had more seasickness today than I’ve ever experienced in my life. I guess in retrospect the wine last night and the beers I had on the boat were a bit of a mistake, but that’s life! Not sure what I’ll be up to for the last week and a bit, but the beach will probably be a main feature, with an overnight visit to another town on the cards.