May 30th Saturday

Well what could be easier than a travel day by train that takes you across the rolling countryside of Northern Spain?  Ride from Santiago de Compostela to San Sebastián on the boarder of Spain and France and meet my lovely wife who is flying in from Florence, Italy via Barcelona.

Well first of all, you can only call to get a taxi in Santiago de Compostela. Would be simple if their system worked and you spoke Spanish. Even Spanish speakers have trouble. So there I am outside in front of the hostel at 7:00am hoping to get to my 8:30am train a 10 minute drive away. Another couple from Croatia are having the same problem. No taxis coming or answering. I had even asked last nights driver to come in the morning. “No you have to call”

Luckily the Croatian couple secured one and took me with them. They by bus, me by train, but the same station. 

I board my train and someone with a bag the size of a Volkswagen is in my seat. He moves over to the isle and I to the window. For 2 hours of the trip he watches TikTok and laughs very loudly. That is when he is not talking to someone on his phone so loud the people in the front of the train car are annoyed. Every stop he jumps off to smoke something. Not sure what. 

Eventually some people leave so I can get a different seat. The first part of the train ride was to be about 7 hours. So of course I slept. 

Around 6 hours into the trip, a conductor comes and says that due to construction, the station at Miranda is closed so those traveling to San Sebastian will need to go one more stop where a bus is waiting to take us there. 

10 minutes later, she comes back to tell us that the tracks ahead are blocked by a stalled train. We are ordered off onto the small station platform being told to leave our luggage on the train. They plan to hook our train up to the stalled train and pull it out of the way. 2 hours later they call someone who knows how to do that. I did meet a lot of people I probably will never see again that way. 

On the platform. No food. No water. The blond student became a friend and interpreter. It was hot. Phones ran out of power. 

The station 

Interestingly, these trains have one set of wheels between the two cars instead of one set for each of the cars. Well interesting to me  

They finally get the stalled train moved, is back on, and to our bus arriving in San Sebastián around 10:00 pm.  Maybe only a little easier than the Camino.  I slept well that night and got to see Mary Ann again.  Finding food at that time of night where we were staying was hard, but we did and were both so tired we didn’t care  she had flown in from Florence via Barcelona and they of course had lost her checked bag  

To be continued…..