As the title of this post highlights, today's journey was the tale of three trains - the middle of the three being the most unusual, yet the one that proved my nervousness about tight transfers to perfection. I've often said, that as my Dad would be late for everything, I'd rather be an hour early than just five minutes before. Sometimes this seems decidedly odd - but not today, where it paid off wonderfully.

But more of that after the beginning of the day.

Early Morning

Clearly still in holiday mode I wake at 3.30am and edit the photos from the day before. This makes me late starting on the blog for Thursday. I assume I'll catch-up with it on the train later, but that doesn't happen, as I'll explain as the day progresses.

I shower and do my other ablutions at 5.30pm, have a cup of Earl Grey tea and make one for Drew. Drew showers and does his ablutions and all packed and ready to go, we start to make our way down to breakfast at 6.20am. We go down in the loft for Breakfast and get there three minutes before they open.

Breakfast

As I mentioned yesterday, they have a lovely breakfast selection here at the Hotel Mundial, almost in the heart of Lisbon.

Drew begins today with a fruit plate

while I go for the plain yogurt with four types of seeds and two types of nuts.

I then move onto the cheese and salad with a lovely wholemeal bread

Drew has gone straight to the dessert element and has Madeira Cake, a chocolate cake of the same consistency, a Pain de chocolate and a muffin.

I opt for a tortilla and sausages, with some more seedy bread.

Heading off

We finish breakfast at 6.55am and go back up to the room for a toilet stop, then downstairs to check out at 7.00am. Fi, the tour manager is there to say goodbye to us, as she has been for the two Americans who left at 6.45am and will be for Kerry, the New Zealand based Welsh man, who will leave at 8.30am for his flight to Brussels, where he is going to do the four day tour of Waterloo with the same company - that's commitment.

The First Train

I mentioned at the beginning that this was a day of three trains, well there were in fact four, I'd discounted the metro train which tool us from the hotel to the Railway Station.

We leave the hotel at 7.05am and arrive at Restauradores metro station at 7.16am. This station is in the big square called Praça dos Restauradores, Square of the Restorers and celebrates the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy in 1640 after 60 years of Spanish rule.

The metro art here is very impressive

Either Lisbon has the best Metro in the world or we are extremely lucky with timing. We arrive at 7.16am and it is 7.18am when the train arrives, here's our train pulling in.

We head to Santa Apolónia Station, the oldest rail terminal in Portugal, were we arrive at 7.25am.

The top of the Metro escalator leads straight to the station as you can see below

So we are in and ready for action at 7.27am, it is quite an impressive station.

We head over to platform 1 where the train comes in and we board at 7.40am

Drew looking comfy in his seat.

We are in carriage 1, seats 84 & 86 which are beside each other.

The train departs at 8am precisely, its final destination Porto Campanhã the large transport hub in Porto, that we changed coaches at on our way down to Lisbon a week last Tuesday.

The train stops at Lisbon Oriente and Santarem which though small is very well decorated.

The train then arrives at Entrecomente at 9.03am, five minutes late.

The Second Train

We had been assured when booking, that the Badajoz train would wait at the station called Entrecomente until connection trains arrived, as it was a through booking. Thankfully this was the case and the train for Badajoz was on the neighbouring platform , so it is an easy walk to the single coach, single class Badajoz train.

It began filling up and was already quite full

Even before the train from Porto arrived, which moved it from full to packed. Drew had to sit across from me opposite three others. There were four of us on our side of the train.

There is no luggage compartment, so this is a selfie shot from my seat of the luggage above my head.

This slow stopping train goes from here to Barquinha, Almourol, Praia do Ribatejo, Santa Margarida, Tramagal, Abrantes, Bemposta, Ponte de Sor, Torre das Vargens, Chanca, Crato, Portalegre, Assumar, Arronches, Santa Eulalia-a, Elvas and finally across the border to Badajoz. I thought mid-wales trains stopped at out of the way places, but this beats even that.

We wait another 30 minutes for a delayed train from Porto, the carriage gets even fuller. The train is busy with a mix of 30% locals and 70% tourists, it leaves at 9.36am.

There are large stretches of flat land and lakes

with occasional buildings of interest

We pass through Abrantes, where in 1807, General Junot occupied the town as he began the first French invasion of Portugal. In hour Napoleon Bonaparte granted him the title of Duke of Abrantes.

We next come to Crato, this is the station building, there are no concrete platforms only a dusty path!

It is at Crato that about fifty young people disembark. Why, it is not clear, as there doesn't seem to be anything there. It might be a challenge to see if any of our readers can find out what might be going on there this year. I'd say most of the youngsters were German, but others from the UK and elsewhere.

After Crato we had a lot more space in the train.

As we come towards the border the terrain becomes more hilly until we come to Elvas

which again has a prettily decorated station

Elvas has a big castle on top of the hill and was a crucial part of settling the Portuguese/Spanish border during the Battle of the lines of Elvas in 1659, as part of the Portuguese restoration.

It was also a place where an action took place during the Peninsular War, but as we hope to do the Spanish leg of the Peninsular War we hope to be back to Elvas and Badajoz as part of that journey.

Badajoz

At 1.23pm we cross the border into Spain (it is 12.23pm Portugal and UK time) and at 1.34pm, 40 minutes late, we arrive. In my original planning we would have taken a slow stopping train to Madrid from Badajoz 25 minutes after this train had arrived. It is very lucky we didn't as the Portuguese and Spanish rail systems don't interact, so that train had gone on its way. Sorry, folks, I did feel a bit smug that we had changed our minds are were waiting for the AVE fast train to Madrid later this afternoon.

In theory, we might have walked down to the river and taken photos of Badajoz's mighty defences, but as it was now 36°C we decided just to walk to lunch.

I'd scouted a few eating places in advance and Freiduria El Faro struck us as just the type of place we would enjoy. We were right.

It was 350 meters down a leafy street from the station and looked like this;

I realised how much more comfortable I am in Spanish than Portuguese, though I have been using as much Portuguese as I could manage in recent times, and had been commended on my accent by four people (I wonder if they were being nice because it's nice to be nice, or flattering me to improve the tip, or Portugese with all its seemingly strange sounds has sounds which are also common in Welsh?). But her life was easy and I could get by entirely in Español.

Drew had Anchos

and I, one of my favourite Spanish soups, Salmorejo

No longer asking for pão, I could now have pan, and it was soft and excellent for mopping up the soup.

I was back to the Pulpo, my third time of the holiday. It wasn't as astounding as the place in Santiago de Compostela, but was still delicious. It was served on mashed potatoes.

Whereas Drew had Lubina with patatas a lo pobre. He eat every bit but the bones.

We also had Ensalada Mixta which was well dressed in olive oil and a strong balsamic - delicious in its own right and great with the mains.

Drew completed his meal with a dessert, I'd call it Tarta Catalan, but this far from Catalonia it was called Tarta Casera. Whatever it was called he delighted in eating every bit.

The bill came with two small Magnum icecreams, which Drew managed as well.

We walked back to the station arriving at 3.00pm,

the station is very well air-conditioned, almost chilly in comparison to outside. It has a coffee shop called Mas Cosas, which has very handy charging cables in the wall beside the tables. I say handy as there was no charging on the Entrecomente to Badajoz train, so it was getting below 40% which is to low for comfort for me.

Drew went to check the departure board and our train is on time at 5.28pm.

We had two coffees and aqua con gas/coke cero and we happily whiled the time away. We went across to the seats in the station and both of us managed a doze, at different times.

The train arrived at 5.00pm and we were able to board. The Entrecomete train which is supposed to meet this train was again delayed, also by 40 minutes. So, when the people who left Lisbon at 12.30pm on the scheduled route for Badajoz, due to arrive at 5.26pm to meet this train which leaves at 5.38pm, finally get here at 6.06pm they will have to find accommodation for the night in Badajoz before catching the next Madrid train, tomorrow morning at 6.36pm. When I planned this holiday, this is the route and time the ticket agent (Omio - Trainline don't do Portugal) recommended. Thank heavens my panic at a 12 minutes change kicked in, so the case of the tortoise beating the hare, a tale from Aesop in the days of the Greek Philosophers is again proved right. Did I feel smug, yes very! I suspect I enjoyed it so much that not thinking of all the poor people on that little tootling train arriving here shortly without a route forward is a sin - I only went to confession in Santiago last week, clearly I need to go again!!

Here is Drew boarding

and going into the carriage

settled into his seat

And this is the rest of the carriage, air-conditioned and quiet.

Like many of the Spanish trains small luggage (a criteria ours meets) is to be stored in the overhead locker.

This was our route

Note a delay occurred on the journey, following two accidents on Span's fast trains in the last year, the network company are constraining train speeds at vulnerable pieces of track.

We had a couple of coffees on voyage for El Cafe de Tren, who bring them to your seats.

and arrived at Atocha at 10.49pm.

Madrid

We were exiting the station at 11.02am - would we find the hotel OK? Well this is the view from the front of the station - and there it is.

We had to cross two roads and arrived at 11.04pm.

Our room, 705, is smaller than some of the others at which we have stayed. When I booked the hotel we were expecting to be on a train at 6.30am tomorrow morning. So I went with the basic/standard room. It was fine, but didn't have tea or coffee facilities like the superior ones we have stayed in before.