At last!

Despite all stress, nerves, and frustration to the contrary, our ensuing travel time was surprisingly trouble-free. Well, except the part where Peter almost forgot his Eurail pass at home. But that was resolved! Hooray!

We didn’t get quite as much sleep as planned on the plane because we were talking to David, our row-mate, but that was pretty fun so we didn’t mind. The airline food even tasted ok (although my stomach was still nervous so it marred it fairly well) and the flight was on time. As a last ditch effort we tried to change the tickets again once we got to LHR, but they said it would be $250/ea…so we decided to just go for it, aided with the detailed signage that we’d been sent by one of Peter’s online contacts. London Underground itself, to its credit, is not terribly difficult either. The cars were packed for a while but we TOTALLY SUCCEEDED in making it to LCY, even with a bit of time to spare! Peter’s suspicions about the existence of such a place – PS, London doesn’t have just three airports, it has at least five that we now know of – which is to say it is a really plush airport that a lot of classy / business people fly out of in order to avoid the yikes-factor that is LHR and midlondon traffic. So we pretended to be swanky for the half hour or so we were there. Hah!

Once we landed in Madrid we also successfully navigated our way to the Eurail validation office and through the metro to the train station. Metro system #2 reinforced the feeling that the American systems are way lacking…in both you could even hear what was being said over the intercom, and the trains looked pretty new! Also the AVE trains – the high speed new ones – are incredible. We had more leg room there (and a movie about breakdancing! lol) than in either plane. It was a pretty full train though, so we were glad we had reserved in advance. We then figured our way through Spain’s deli-counter approach to ticket reservations (take a number, wait for it to flash overhead of one of the tellers) and booked our Sevilla-Madrid and Madrid-Barcelona seats. Woohoo! I’m kind of excited to get back on those trains actually.

And then we were actually IN SEVILLA! After navigating yet another public transportation mode (bus into the center of town) we found Hotel Abril pretty easily. The location couldn’t be better, and the room is way more hotel than hostel. After all this travel time (4pm EST to 7pm Spain time…more than 24 hours of solid on-the-move) we smelled pretty interesting. Did I mention it was about 100 F today in Sevilla? The AVE clock told us so (it also said we got up to about 210km/hr!). Anyway I was super glad we booked a room with an ensuite shower for this leg. It did mysteriously come with a bidet, however. Hooray? At least the sinks are plenty big to do laundry in. We emerged clean enough to show our heads outside for dinner, eaten at Los Coloniales on recommendation. I unfortunately felt quite ill at that point – probably all the nerves and not a lot of sleep caught up with me – so I didn’t eat as much as I would like. But I can definitely say that the Tempranillo we had was good! And the Beso de Dama ice cream, whatever is in it ( I suspect vanilla and chocolate syrup and a few other things) is great, from Rayas, although a bit pricy.

Despite all these changes and the different inflections and languages being spoken, the fact that we’re so far away from home has barely sunk in. I guess we’re too tired to process anything new, and hotels are hotels (thank goodness). Peter’s out as I type and I am quite ready to follow him. Tomorrow will be a more relaxing day of adventure!