It always pays to pace yourself in such a way that you have time should things go belly up and this morning it did go in that direction, slightly. We had a leisurely breakfast followed by final packing of the bags and then downstairs to order a taxi/Uber for our trip to the train station.
We started by ordering an Uber which was 15 minutes away and a sixth of the price. No problems as we had two hours before our train left. Then Uber cancelled that request after 10 minutes so we tried for a fixed priced taxi. After 10 minutes the taxi got back to us and said nothing available. Hmm, time is ticking. We asked the receptionist at the hotel and she tried for us and no taxi was interested or available. It was a €12 trip yet no one wanted it. We wouldn’t have thought 10.00am on a Saturday morning would have been an issue.
Plan B
We walked (thank God for our small bags) to the Sagrada Familia which was about 10 minutes away and then leapt onto a metro train for five stops to the Barcelona Sants railway station for the princely sum of €5.10.
In the end we still had 40 minutes to spare but we dislike that feeling of being flustered. We have also noticed that to be a tourist has turned into a bit of a combative, competitive sport🤪and you constantly need to be connected to your phone and responsive to it. Guess we can compare it to what it was like to travel back in the early 1990’s, and it has changed. We must not forgot either that a lot of our travel in the last eight years has involved canal boating which is a totally different kind of way of travel…..slow, surreal, peaceful but very engaging.
We are looking forward to this train trip to Madrid as it will be through new countryside for us and on one of their high speed trains.
The distance in total is 506 kilometers and will take us 3 ¼ hours.
At one stage we went through quite the rainstorm at 300k/hr and the speed accentuated the winds and driving rain.
Once we figured out how the taxi system worked at the main Madrid train station, we made our way to our perfectly satisfactory hotel which is centrally located.
The elevator was installed in 1886 and is still in use but if you have luggage, they encourage you to use the newer elevator. We could have ridden it for hours but thought we had best grow up.
We have two sets of double-glazed windows and doors in our room, so here is hoping they will be enough of a sound barrier.
We have been given a list of eateries from Fraser’s rowing friend Patti who is married to Francesco who is Spanish and comes from Madrid. So, we have started up the top of the list and first cab off the rank was excellent. We didn’t get into Madrid until 3.15pm and by the time we got to the hotel and went out for something to eat, there wasn’t much of the day left.
We have booked a walking tour for 10.00am tomorrow, so looking forward to that as from what we have seen so far, the city looks charming.
Steps – 7,658.
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