España de oeste a noreste - Spain from West to North East

Calling today's post Spain from West to North East is perhaps to political a statement - there are those who would prefer From Catalonia to Galicia. I'll leave you my readers to decide which you prefer.

Whichever it is, on the map it looks like this:

Early Saturday Morning

Having gone to bed at 11pm last night, late by our standards, I awoke at 3.30am, almost exactly the time I would wake on a  normal Saturday at home.

Having got up I wrote the blog post about yesterday's enjoyable journey and reminded myself of the plans for today.

Drew wakes up at 7.30am and I make tea for us both. This is a not very flavoursome Green Tea, the options here are mint, chamomile, Te Rojo or Te Verde!

I do my ablutions first and Drew follows me in. The walk in shower in this hotel is wonderful. With my favourite style, both a flexible shower head and an overhead 'rain' style shower, the water is really warm, even here on the seventh floor - An excellent provision, I'll make sure to note it when I write my review for the hotel. 

Breakfast

Breakfast on weekends at this hotel doesn't start until 8am, which works fine for our timings today, but with many eager travellers at the hotel leads to a queue and a very busy breakfast room

There are 28 people in front of us today, even more than yesterday. The door opens at exactly 8am and we all go and many others follow us in. Clearly the 6.30am breakfasters have been joined by the 7am and 7.30am ones, causing something of a bottleneck. 

I began with Greek yogurt with sesame seeds, linseeds, turmeric and chia seeds - this seedy nutty concoction must be doing my microbiome good, but it is also very tasty. 

Drew, with his hatred of busy places, manages to get Bacon and scrambled eggs before being run down by the hordes of hungry breakfasters. 

My turn for the next course and the buffet has calmed down somewhat. I opt for sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs and sauteed vegetables. The peppery sausages, though small, were a real delight, the bacon was to sweet for me (I suspect it has been honey glazed) but the eggs were fresh and the vegetables lightly crisped in olive oil.

Drew, still unwilling to get to deep into the crowds of Japanese, American, Canadian and British breakfasters went onto his dessert phase - this was a Chocolate Donut and pain au chocolate, with a bread roll!

I, wanting to stock up for the day, went back for what might have made more sense as the second course - Cooked meats (lomo, jamon and a lovely meat with pistachios through it)  cheese and tortilla

For drinks I had sparkling water and Drew a Mango Juice. 

Barcelona to Madrid

After breakfast we returned to our room, did our final checks on packing and used the facilities before leaving the hotel at 9am.

At 9.14am we arrive at Barcelona Sants. The platform for our train has already been announced, so we are able to go forward into Access area A through x-ray machines which x-ray the bags we are taking on board, but don't check us - this makes the process much quicker than the equivalent checks at airports.

By 9.16am we are into the platform queue for platform 3 and boarding begins at 9.25am. This involves our second e-ticket check and a quick glance at our passport (or ID card for the locals) then we go downstairs and on to the platform. 

Getting on the train at 9.28am, ready for departure at 9.55am. 

We have booked Elige Comfort for this journey, we are on holiday after all. This gives us wider seats with more leg room. The carriage has great luggage space and again we have opted to be near the luggage!  

We leave precisely at 9.55am, though the first 15 minutes of the journey are in a tunnel under the suburbs. Once we do emerge we see some lovely countryside views. 

Tarragona is the first stop at 10.30am, the station on the outskirts of the town is called Camp de Tarragona. 

The next station is for the town of Lleida with its amazing Old Cathedral, which has been used for other things (like a fortress) in previous years.

and we arrive at 11.00am. The station is called Lleida Pirineus.

Between Lleida and Zaragoza we see hundreds of wind turbines and a raft of solar farms. Drew reminds me that currently 84% of Spain's electricity is provided by renewables - puts the UK to shame and with far less contentious debate.

We arrive at Zaragoza Delicias at 11.41am as scheduled. 

At Zaragoza a train which has gradually emptied since we left Barcelona, suddenly becomes very busy indeed with many people getting on at this station. 

We leave Zaragoza and the terrisn changes, it is made up of multiple hills and small patches of tree, quite barren in its own way. To me this very reminiscent.

It isn't far to Calatayud, our next station where we arrive at 12.10pm

 

We arrive at Guadalajara-Yebes, another station that looks like it doesn't have a town, at 13.06pm a minute or two behind time. 

It turns out that there are towns of both Guadalajara and Yebes but they are ten or more miles from this station in opposite directions from each other. In building their fast trains Spain avoided towns and built new stations specially to accommodate the AVEs, local transfer trains then link these to the nearby towns. A much more sensible idea as it keeps the focus on the fast train and not on the sensibilities of residents in the town - don't get me started on HS2!!

We start to look forward to our transfer in Madrid - The original schedule of this journey had us arriving in Atocha at 1.19pm with an hour and twenty-one minutes to get across the city to Chamartín station. However, on the first of May we received an update email from RENFE saying that, due to 'Operational Reasons'! the arrival time for this train is now to be 1.44pm, leaving us only 54 minutes to cross the city. This still looks quite practical if the local trains are running on time, we shall see. 

It turns out we aren't the only people in the City today, Pope Leo arrived in Madrid this morning, so the City is much busier than usual. Though I'm not sure he has any responsibility for the timings of our train. 

Crossing Madrid

We arrive at Madrid-Puerta De Atocha-Almudena Grandes, to give it its full title, known by everyone as just Atocha or at most Madrid Atocha at the slightly early time of 1.35pm

There is an airport length walkway from the trains to the exit at Atocha, but it was moving speedily, so at 1.42pm we were out of the fast train area and in to the main station concourse. 

We went downstairs to the Cercanías (commuter train) Station and our Renfe ticket covers us for the through journey on the local train. We asked a lady in a yellow pide ayuda jacket and she directed us to platform 1 and 2 where the Chamartín trains stop. 

We caught a C7, which ends up in Príncipe Pío station, but pases through all the central Madrid stations, so after three stops we were at Chamartín and it is only 2pm. While the train has six stops after this it was empty as we left it in Chamartín.

We now have 40 minutes to find the AVE section of the Station for our next train. Like at Atocha, the two stations, i.e. fast and slow, are separated by some distance, though on the same site. We have to leave the building to get to the fast-train section and see the high rise buildings of central Madrid in 32⁰C heat. 

At 2.10pm, we go through the security check i.e. another x-ray for the luggage. At this one a lady is selecting occasional passengers and waving an electronic detector wand at them. She decided I looked like a likely candidate and she waved her wand at me. Guess what; my phone beeped her wand, but when I said "es mi móvil" she said "Los móviles están bien". I wonder what the wand might find on others!

After all that fast walking we arrived above the platforms before the platform had been announced at 2.12pm. Though at 2.15pm the announcement happened and we headed to  platform 23 and we joined another queue for ticket checks and went down to the platform. 

We are again in carriage 2, but in seats 8c and 8d this time. Our carriage is the front but one on the train. Luggage secured we were sat at 2.24pm and on our way by 2.40pm. 

Madrid to Santiago de Compestela

This train has a map of our route on the back of the seat in front, like a plane. The map says it is currently 32⁰C in Madrid, but at least the train is air-conditioned and very, very comfortable i.e. cool. We depart Madrid-Chamartín at exactly 2.40pm.

The train gets up to 302 km/h, it had dropped down to 301km/h by the time we take the photo, it is still pretty impressive.

The countryside between Madrid and Zamora (our first stop) is very fertile, with lots of cultivated fields and vineyards. Here are a selection of photos from this route, but there are more on Flickr for those who like photos of the country.

We arrive in Zamora about 4 minutes late and when we leave we get straight back up to the unbelievable speeds. How relaxing this journey is. 

Today we have travelled through five of the Spanish provinces: Catalonia, Aragon, Castile-La Mancha, Community of Madrid and are now in Castile and León - we are rapdily approaching Galicia.

As we approach Galicia we travel through long, dark tunnels, it is almost as if the line has become an underground! This is presumably because of the lots of hills/mountains the mark the border between Castile and León and Galicia. 

We continued to make progress and arrived at our first stop in Galicia, the town of Ourense, with its impressive calm blue river, at 5.05pm, 5 minutes after our due time. 

There was a slight delay in leaving Ourense with the train starting and stopping, they didn't say why. I hope it doesn't mean problems to come. We finally left at 5.15pm, 12 minutes behind time. We stayed on the hills for much of the rest of the journey.

Since we left Taffs Well on Thursday this is the first train where we are not going to the terminus. The Taffs Well one stopped at Cardiff Central, the One from Cardiff at Paddington, the one from London at Paris and the one from Paris at Barcelona. We must rember in 45 minutes time to get off and not end up in A Coruna, however interesting that location might be. 

We arrive at Santiago De Compostela-Daniel Castelao at 5.50pm and exit the train without any difficulty. We have to walk along the platform and up the escalator and so leave the station at 5.57pm. 

At this time in the evening at weekends the public transport, which would normally take us straight to our hotel, which is the other side of the city centre isn't running. Should we get a taxi or walk - we dedicated that walking was best given all the sitting down we had done yesterday and today. This was the route, right through the centre of the old city. Thankfully, the temperature in Santiago de Compostela is a comfortable 24C, so the walk was comfortable from a heat perspective too.

The end of the route took us through a park where we had to carry, not roll, our cases, as the path was not tarmaced. The hotel we are staying in, the NH Collection Santiago de Compostela, is situated in the park. We arrived at 6.24pm, 3 minutes faster than Google had predicted our walk to be! 

We had checked in online, so it was a matter of picking up our room keys and getting comfortable in Room 315 which has park views, this is our view from the window 

and comfortable seats, as Captain Jack displays below

It even has his and his sinks, which is a luxury we don't have at home.

Dinner

Having settled in to the room, unpacked our cases - we are staying here for three nights, so aren't living out of our cases as we have been on previous nights. We had decisions to make about where to eat. 

We have a Michelin starred restaurant booked for lunch tomorrow, so we don't want to much fancy food tonight. I'd also noted that the prices of food in the centre of the City, near the Cathedral, was almost twice what the restaurants near the station had been, so we decided to eat local.

A quick check with Google Maps revealed that, apart from the restaurant in the hotel itself, the nearest eating place is the other side of the park and called Mesón do Pulpo which translates from Gallican as Octopus Inn. We left the hotel at 8.30pm and arrived at Mesón do Pulpo ten minutes later. 

We were greeted by the friendly front of house staff who directed us to a table on which the simple menu was already located. 

We ordered thinking we would have Pimientos de Padrón and Croquetas Caseras (jamon con queso) for starters and then Pulpo a Feira and Calamares Fritos for mains with una ensalada normal. However, that's now how things work here - the small kitchen, beside the bar, cooks at its own speed, so food comes out when it is ready. So we began with Polbo á feira (which is Castilian Spanish is Pulpo a Feira), which everywhere else in Spain and beyond is called Pulpo a la gallega - octopus gallaga style, but being in Galicia, that makes no sense here - it is Fairday Octopus and it was a delicious, juicy treat.

Though not mentioned on the menu the pulpo came with Patacas cocidas, boiled potatoes which also have the paprika and other spices used in the octopus dish over them - simple but delicious.

At the same time we received a generous plate, of what I would have called Pan Gallega - but of course, it is just called Pan here, a sourdough bread.

The salad came at the same time and was simple: onions, tomatoes and lettuce, but fresh with a light oil and vinegar dressing.

About ten minutes after we had begun eating the above the Pimientos de Padrón arrived - as tasty as ever with a delightfully high sea salt flavour.

Another few minutes and the Croquetas Caseras arrived, they really were homemade, they have long been a Drewish treat. 

Finally, about fifteen minutes later the Calamari arrived. The batter was light and fluffy and the squid rings were juicy. We had another basket of bread with the calamari 

but failed when it came to having dessert, Drew said he was stuffed. A pity really as this was one of the few places I've seen in Spain where queso makes it to a postres menu!!

What a delightful meal in a plain homey setting and all the better for us. The three ladies in the kitchen appeared to wish goodbye as we paid at the bar (see it isn't just in Australia that they have this habit!!). In age and looks they could easily be grandmother, mother and daughter, with the latter being in her 30s, but I wasn't cheeky enough to ask.

The whole meal and the two litres of sparkling water we drank with it, oh and the two espressos we finished with came to 60euros, just over £50 at current exchange rates, a real bargain.

We left the restaurant at 9.45pm and walked the long way back to the hotel, i.e. around the block, not through the park. We did this to see a little more of the City. It turns out that the hotel isn't the only example of brutalism in town - the residential apartments, school and university buildings we passed all looked like they might be in Bratislava or Gdansk rather than in this north eastern corner of the Iberian peninsular. I wonder who made the ascetic choices? 

We got back to the hotel at 10.30pm and were in bed by 11pm