Ok ok, so I'll admit that I'm about 3 glasses of wine in at this point in my postings but the wine is just so good and so cheap here!
Anyways...to the point. As I did not finish my stories about Spain in the last post I am back again to continue. Jess and I decided we were going to take the night train from Barcelona to Madrid in order to save some cash (since this time, train was cheaper than flying). Well, turns out that 2 days in advance is just not good enough to buy a train ticket and many other people already had the same idea. So, we ended up being forced to buy 1st class (Preferente) tickets on the train. I was briefly excited at the though of being in 1st class until I realized that this is the night train, an old train, and it only costs us 17 Euro more than a regular ticket so it might not mean much. Truth be told, that was exaclty the case. 1st class train tickets meant we ended up with reclining (economy class airpline-like) seats for the 9 hour train ride to Madrid which normally only takes 2 hours. Needless to say it was another night very much lacking in sleep.
Madrid was neat to see and I was pleased that the language had changed from Catalan (one I don't understand) to actual Spanish, however I have decided that I much prefer Barcelona. Madrid is lacking the beaches and is much more versed in the area of business, museums, and government rather than shopping, beach and food (yes, I have my priorities straight,
haha). We still enjoyed Madrid and got to see the palace of the Royal family (Palacio Real) as well as the famous Museo del Prado with works by Gaudi, etc. However, after the first day, and day 5 of our trip, we were about done with the touristy stuff and decided to take of to the random little town of Toledo, only an hour south of Madrid.
Toldeo was a neat city with much history and Roman architecture. We only spent half a day roaming around but the city was filled with cathedrals, synagogues and mosques...pretty Holy I've gotta say....plus I was amused getting to say "Holy Toledo" whenever I wanted without Jess getting irritated, haha! We also discovered some amazing stuffed baked potatoes filled with deer meet, cheese, salsa, veggies, etc. Fun times thats for sure.
Well our trip was almost over but the excitement sure wasn't. We got home to our hostel that night only to discover that the French transit workers were on strike and that almost all flights into France had been cancelled, including ours that was scheduled to fly out the next afternoon. Needless to say, Jess and I weren't pleased but we had seen that the strikes were only scheduled for 24 hours so we decided to wait until the morning and see what happened, and choose then if we should panic or not.
Luckily, after a restless sleep, we found out our flights had been rescheduled and we were still set to arrive back in Grenoble on Wednesday night (Sept 8) ready to start school orientation the next morning.
Mon dieu, what a week!
Anyways...to the point. As I did not finish my stories about Spain in the last post I am back again to continue. Jess and I decided we were going to take the night train from Barcelona to Madrid in order to save some cash (since this time, train was cheaper than flying). Well, turns out that 2 days in advance is just not good enough to buy a train ticket and many other people already had the same idea. So, we ended up being forced to buy 1st class (Preferente) tickets on the train. I was briefly excited at the though of being in 1st class until I realized that this is the night train, an old train, and it only costs us 17 Euro more than a regular ticket so it might not mean much. Truth be told, that was exaclty the case. 1st class train tickets meant we ended up with reclining (economy class airpline-like) seats for the 9 hour train ride to Madrid which normally only takes 2 hours. Needless to say it was another night very much lacking in sleep.
Madrid was neat to see and I was pleased that the language had changed from Catalan (one I don't understand) to actual Spanish, however I have decided that I much prefer Barcelona. Madrid is lacking the beaches and is much more versed in the area of business, museums, and government rather than shopping, beach and food (yes, I have my priorities straight,
haha). We still enjoyed Madrid and got to see the palace of the Royal family (Palacio Real) as well as the famous Museo del Prado with works by Gaudi, etc. However, after the first day, and day 5 of our trip, we were about done with the touristy stuff and decided to take of to the random little town of Toledo, only an hour south of Madrid.Toldeo was a neat city with much history and Roman architecture. We only spent half a day roaming around but the city was filled with cathedrals, synagogues and mosques...pretty Holy I've gotta say....plus I was amused getting to say "Holy Toledo" whenever I wanted without Jess getting irritated, haha! We also discovered some amazing stuffed baked potatoes filled with deer meet, cheese, salsa, veggies, etc. Fun times thats for sure.
Well our trip was almost over but the excitement sure wasn't. We got home to our hostel that night only to discover that the French transit workers were on strike and that almost all flights into France had been cancelled, including ours that was scheduled to fly out the next afternoon. Needless to say, Jess and I weren't pleased but we had seen that the strikes were only scheduled for 24 hours so we decided to wait until the morning and see what happened, and choose then if we should panic or not.
Luckily, after a restless sleep, we found out our flights had been rescheduled and we were still set to arrive back in Grenoble on Wednesday night (Sept 8) ready to start school orientation the next morning.
Mon dieu, what a week!
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