Wed, 15 Oct 2003

author Tim	location Barcelona, Catalunya, España
posted 10:38 CEST 17/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/Espana ( all photos )

We Made It! ( No photos )
(Continued from France 1)
Depending on what you chose to believe, Port-Bou was either in España (Spain) or France, but when we arrived it was clear we had crossed the border. Signs were different, French was now the third language, behind Catalan (the regional dialect) then Español (Spanish). English was nowhere to be seen - hooray!
Not really being prepared to wait two hours for the next train, I gave up the idea of explaining that we wanted long return tickets all through España and back again, opting just for two (dos) singles to Girona.
Another town picked for the location of its hostel, and the fact that it lie about half-way between the border and Barcelona, Girona was a little more interesting than we expected. The train station was quite a wander away from anything of interest, but at least the information office woman was able to communicate that the tourist office lay in 'that' general direction, which we set off in search of.
Back pretty much as we crossed the border, the weather had turned quite sour. This was not what we had expected at all from sun-soaked Spain. We zigged and zagged through anonymous streets, crossed the river Riu Onyar and found the tourist office. There a girl who had at least some grasp of English showed me on a map where the hostel was, then proceeded to explain on the list of hotels that this was the "price" and these are "hotels" and these are "pensions". She seemed so excited to be able to communicate in English, something she was only fairly new at. Good on her - our Español thus far stretches to "Non hablos Español" and "¿Hablos English?", which is of course "I don't speak Spanish" and "Do you speak English?". The most important phrases in any new country! Oh, and love the upside-down question marks at the beginning of sentences!
The HI hostel Alberg de Joventut proved to be not far from the tourist office, through into the far more attractive old section of town. We checked into the hostel, which unfortunately is always a bit of a let-down, because it's pretty much all in English, so we could have been anywhere.
We dumped our stuff then set out to explore the city a bit. We had heard of the legendary cheap and excellent Spanish food long long ago, and were keen to check it out after so much pasta-and-sauce. The reception girl drew a few places on our map, and we set off out into the rain in search of a couple of them.
First stop was a nice wine bar overlooking the river off Plaza Independéncia and a few of its cute bridges, where we sat for an hour or so before going a few shops away to an empty but cheap and reliable looking tapas restaurant.
For those who don't know, tapas is a concept where you get lots of small servings of food, so that you eat about seven courses, each quite different. We had chicken, spicy potatoes, ham croquetes and all sorts of yummy goodies, finished off great with desserts that we couldn't quite fit in after all that.
We wandered back to the hostel, glad that for a while at least the French regional rail system was behind us, and we could make some progress with our trip.

author Tim	location Barcelona, Catalunya, España
posted 10:20 CEST 17/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Waiting for Trains II ( No photos )
Getting up the earliest we had for a long time, we easily beat the sun out into the world, heading straight for the station and the 8:07 train.
Only it didn't exist. That's not a huge problem, except that there were two other options to get us to Port-Bou. Firstly, we could pay up 44 euros extra on top of the ticket price we had already paid and get on some ultra super-dooper fast train at 8:46. No thanks, these tickets cost us enough already.
That left us with option number two - the 13:29 slow cheap train. Pausing briefly to wonder just how useless and out of date the timetable at the hostel which mentioned the 8:07 train must have been, we trudged out of the station to get some breakfast and begin a long wait in the town Perpignan with seemingly nothing whatsoever to do.
We sat for a couple of hours at the first café we found, having a hearty breakfast of croissants, juice and coffee as we generally sat and planned all the things we want to do should we ever get anywhere via train.
Upon leaving, we asked for an Internet café and were directed further down the main road of town (there's only one of note) to Hotel Meditteranian. There we fought with silly French keyboards for a while, tapping away and reading mails. Not much chance of plugging the laptop there, we thought.
But we were wrong - as we were leaving, a guy was sitting at the bar with a laptop, wireless card hanging conspicuously out the side! How silly, one of the few places we didn't bother to check, and there was free wireless net access in this crappy little town! A few clicks and we were away, updating the website and doing other things we haven't done for ages. The girl didn't even charge us for the wireless bit because she didn't know she had the system there! No arguments from us.
It was finally time to go back towards the train station, where we sat for another eternity before the train appeared on the boards and went to wait for it on the platform.
The poor old run-down thing rattled into the station, and clattered us towards Port-Bou. Remember we still haven't made it to Spain yet, which has been our goal for two days or so now.
Just before Port-Bou station, we crossed the border into España.

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