From Rota to Madrid

Day 4

1900 Local Time May 02, 2010 – 2300 Local Time May 03, 2010

Dinner was very nice. We went with Alan and Debbie (an easy pair of names to remember =)) walking around Rota until we found (thanks to many jumbled directions explaining where the restaurant *wasn’t*) Marcón Los Arcos. Everyone there took the waitress’ suggestion and ordered paella but me. I had some sort of steak type thing with mushrooms and potatoes which was quite exceptional. I hear that the paella was very seafood-y.

After having our dinner with them, we parted ways: they went back to the room and the traveling buddies continued on to downtown Rota where we consumed more chocolate than was really necessary in the form of specialty ice cream and layered cake. In this little café we hatched the plan for the rest of the trip. It went something like this: tomorrow go to Madrid, Tuesday—Toledo, leave Wednesday for Barcelona, stay until Friday morning, come back to Rota for Feria and to see the monkeys at Gibralter. I’m pretty psyched for these monkeys.

At that point, we called it a night, set up the alarm for the morning and went to sleep. In the morning, Papo went to help another couple who flew over with us get their travel plans straightened out (they were already missing part of their cruise that they had planned). As it ended up, we went with them to the estación de policía to get our passport stamped and then traveled together via taxi to Puerta de Santa Maria to catch the train.

The train station should have gone relatively smoothly. I’m pretty sure all the words you’re supposed to know to talk to about the train I was taught somewhere around Spanish 2 or 3. Unfortunately, the vocabulary section of the book does not account for “how to solve the problem when the train ticket you just bought leaves in an hour but your credit card is no longer working and you don’t understand why you can’t make an international call”.

After fumbling with the phone, we ran to another phone across the street, and then finally figured out that you don’t need to press #06 to make the international but you do need to dial 00 before dialing the country code. In the end, we made the call to the bank, told them “yo we’re in Spain quit holding up the money” (or something like that) and then ran back to the oficina de venta for RENFE tickets. Unfortunately, credit card still wasn’t working but thanks to someone else who sold us their Euros in the airport for dollars, we were able to purchase our tickets to get to the next train in cash.

So the four of us boarded our train with the help of a Spanish gentleman who happened to be going to the same place with his family. Then we sat tight and watched the countryside go by.

We arrived in Sevilla and grabbed a quick lunch at a rather neat sandwich shop which was really busy in the train station. Our waiter’s name was Alex, he seemed like a pretty nice kid even though we didn’t get to talk too too much. And before long (we got a few more dollars exchanged for euros in the mean time) we were boarding the AVE train to Madrid.

And then we sat for another long time but this time in first class where we were offered complimentary refreshments, una merienda, and free headphones for a movie (Napolean y Yo) along with newspapers (I have two) and two moist towelettes. We saw along the way a lot of olive trees along with a couple of castles which were pretty neat.

When we got to Madrid, we parted ways with the couple we were traveling with, Judith and David, and took the Tren de Cercanías to Alcarcón to find our Holiday Inn Express. We got to Alcarcón without any trouble but upon arriving were nicely lost as to where the hotel was and unfortunately no one seemed to have heard of it. This puzzles me a little bit because the Hotel was a mere handful of blocks from where we were standing.

We did, however, run into a very nice girl who was new to the area who helped us using her ipod (pronounced ee-pod) that was able to connect to the WiFi (Wii-fee). She brought us up a map and tried to help us as best as she could since the Holiday Inn Express didn’t list any street number. So we walked a little ways in the general direction that we thought was right and stumbled upon it across the street. Lucky for us, we made it with very little trouble and checked in.

Our room is quite nice: two twin beds and a shower/bath; it has a TV and the lights only work if you put the keycard into a slot. This is actually a very reasonable way to save electricity, I think. You only get one key card so you can only have electricity if you’re in the room. Works for me.

We managed to get in touch with Alicia, the foreign exchange student we hosted 7 some years ago. To put this in perspective, this was before the fall of the Twin Towers and also before I spoke any Spanish. The fact that I didn’t speak any Spanish when I met her makes it really seem like a long time ago. Tomorrow we will go with her and her sister to Toledo and spend the day and then come back to Madrid and eventually have dinner with her family. We’re looking forward to it.

By the time we had all this squared away, it was around 2030 which is a reasonable (almost) time for having dinner. We got a recommendation from the girl downstairs (who we have bugged I don’t even know how many times now with questions) for a tapas restaurant where we went and had some excellent comida. I’m not really sure if we had tapas though. We asked for tapas and said we had no idea what to get, she recommended some things and it was really good. At first we had (and split) a type of toast with some meat on it, and then these homefries type things with mustard, ketchup, and sour cream. Interestingly, it’s perfectly fine to smoke in those types of restaurants. Clare: we thought of you and how much you wouldn’t’ve liked that.

Then we walked back to the hotel and are now quite exhausted from a long day of traveling. We’re looking forward to not lugging suitcases around with us tomorrow (woo-hoo!).

*~The Traveling Buddies

Current Location: Alcarcón, Spain (a ten minute train ride outside of Madrid)
Day 4: Over and Out.