Today is travel day. We have an 08.30 train to Valencia, which means getting up at 06.30, breakfast at 07.00 and a 07.30 departure. I am expecting to go through luggage checks at the station, and have no idea as to how much time this might require.
My first panic is that I cannot find my passport, it is no longer in the room's safe and Vera has no knowledge of its whereabouts. Vera doesn't know where her passport is either. The rucksack is emptied and repacked, the room is searched. The solution to the mystery, dear reader, is that Vera had put my passport along with hers in her passport wallet. I had taken the passport wallet out of the safe, unaware of its contents, and put on the bed to be packed. 10 minutes of confusion, not a great start to the journey.
We take the metro to Sants station, and are through the security scanners within a few minutes. Our train is on the board, departing from platform 5. We join the queue, our tickets are scanned, and we wait. The queue moves and reforms in a different part of the station. I've no idea what is going on, but there are loads of staff around managing the non-moving queue. As it gets closer and closer to the 8.30 departure time, my only comfort is that there are a lot of people in this queue, and they wouldn't let the train go without its passengers. Or might they?
We eventually move. There had been a platform alteration and we board the train on platform 3.
The landscape on the journey looks dry, though still green. There are orange and olive groves along the route, which broadly seems to be following the coastline but also venturing inland
It took over an hour for the parade to pass
We then went to locate our B&B, drop off the rucksack and go for some lunch - cheeses, meats, bread, sangria, sunshine…..what more could one want?
This is the first working fountain we have found. Like Happy Cow Day in Denmark, we think there must be a day in Spain when the fountains are filled and switched on
We return to our B&B for a rest before going out for the evening.
Suddenly all of the church bells in the city are ringing, the sound is all around, and we come across a continuation of this afternoon's parade
and processed through the city to various churches, where the flowers carried earlier in the day have been built into floral St Vincent tableaus
We eat at a street side bar. The stuffed mushrooms are amongst the best that I've ever tasted, the paella, rather burnt, less so.
AAaahh a 'passport panic'! Of the many trips we took to Spain, once our car was broken in and they took D's passport but not mine (French innit). Which meant we had to stay for another 3 days in and out the Consulate ... terrible as you can now imagine, not! Happy adventures my lovelies xx
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