Sun. 09-09-07 -- San Sebastian, Spain and night train to Barcelona, Spain
Originally published on: 10-07-07
First off, I'm not actually writing this on the train, but writing it the next night in Barcelona. It was lights out in our sleeper car almost as soon as we boarded, so I had no time to write. Anyways, to keep up continuity, the rest of this entry will read like I wrote it on Sunday night...
Last night we slept in a hell hole! Well, it wasn't THAT bad, the old lady seemed a little off... The bad part was that our sheets smelled like wood varnish or something. I ended up using a shirt as a pillowcase for half the night but the smell got to me and I couldn't sleep past 5am. We were sleeping in single beds and somehow Kara's bed didn't stink so I crawled in with her and we slept cramped into a single until about 10am.
We got up and had breakfast at a cafe while Jessie found a different place to stay for tonight. The found a room at the pension they stayed at the night before, so we walked over there and left all of our bags.
Today is some kind of Basque pride day, so the steets are pretty crowded. We hopped a bus to Hondarribia, a small fishing village very near the French border. Once we got there, we realized that there wasn't really much to see. We walked a big circle through the town (along the water, on the main road, on a hill overlooking the city) then hopped the express bus back to San Sebastian. When we got back, Jeff & Jessie had to go to the train station to look into tickets, so we planned to meet up in a few hours.
Kara & I went down to the dock and bought tickets for a boat ride to Isla de Santa Clara, the small island in the mouth of the bay. The boat ride was only like 5 minutes, then we walked up the island/hill and found a nice spot on the grass with some shade. We lounged there for about an hour and a half, just relaxing, reading, and soaking in the sun. At one point I laughed to myself and said to Kara, "Do you realize what we're doing? We're relaxing and reading on a little island in a beautiful harbor on the Spanish coast!"
With 30 minutes left to meet Jeff & Jessie, we went back to the boat launch and caught the boat back. When we met back up, we had a few hours to kill before Kara & I had to go to the train station, so we sat down at an outside cafe and hung out there for an hour or two. Kara ordered onion rings, but the rest of us just hung out and drank half-full glasses of beer.
Around 8pm, we walked back to their hostel. We picked up our bags, said goodbye and left in search for an internet cafe. We checked our email and sent a bunch of emails to hotels/hostels in Nice to see if we could find a room. Then we lugged our bags to the train station and waited for our train. We were using our Eurail pass for this ticket, so I wrote today's date on the pass. Only after I did it did I realize that I needed to write tomorrow's date on the pass! You aren't allowed to correct the date because they won't be able to tell if you were scamming, so we had to just write it off as an expensive mistake (at least a $120 value) and just use the next box for tomorrow's date. I was pretty upset with myself, but there was nothing to be done about it but be more careful next time.
Our train pulled up shortly before 11pm and we got on. The sleeping compartment was 6 beds, 3 bunks on each wall and barely any other room. You basically had to get right into bed because otherwise there is not room in the compartment for 6 people! Once everyone was situated, the ticket collector came by, took our tickets and shut our door and turned out the lights. Ready or not, it's time for bed!
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