After we looked at the exams we ate some lunch and then walked up to Sants train station to get our Eurail tickets authorized, and then we went to a couple of bookstores to try to find one that bought and sold used books. We had no luck with the books, but maybe we will find a hostel that has a book exchange in our travels to Northern Spain.
I thought about all the things I could do on my last night in Barcelona, and I did none of them. I stopped at the internet for one more check on my email, went to the grocery store and then got a beer out of the refrigerator at the residence and went up to my room to pack up my stuff. It was really weird, and sort of sad, thinking of leaving after spending 2.5 weeks in Barcelona. It is the longest time I've spent in one place since I left home. I will miss Antonella, but she has a friend doing a doctural program at Harvard, and hopefully she will come visit her and stay at my house sometime in the next couple of years (after she finishes her own master's thesis). Shari and I will probably get to see Sandi in Granda, and we will for sure see Olivia in Paris. Olivia is leaving tomorrow to fly to Paris and will spend two months there with her grandparents before she goes to India for the month of January.
I went down to cook dinner at 8:30 and there were lots of people in the kitchen cooking. I had cooked my rice earlier and made my salad, so I just had to cook my piece of steak. I'm gald I didn't have to do a lot of cooking because it was so crowded. It was nice to see so many people on my last night though, and to say my goodbyes to everyrone.
10/25: Another day of trains. We got the 8:55 train from thr Passaig de Gracia station (about 10 minutes from the school) to Zaragoza. We arrived there at 2:06 thinking we could get a train to San Sebastian at 2:13 but that train was full. We ended up taking a 2:33 train to Pamplona, or so we thought, but we found out we had to make a change at Caste Jon de Ebro about 3:30, with only 4 minutes between trains. We got there on time though, and just had to get off our train, walk acrosss the platform, and get on a waiting train. We got to Pamplona at 4:45 and took a bus (about a 20 minute ride) to the city center.
We got a room (for 28 euros; it costs 80 euros a night during the running of the bulls) at Fonda La Montanesa, which was listed in our book. The room was on the fourth floor (oh groan, walking up all those stairs with all our stuff) and it was small but clean with bathrooms across the hall. We hadn't planned on being in Pamplona so we had nothing in particular in mind to do, so we just walked around. It is a much bigger city than I expected, and has lots and lots of stores, especiallyclothing stores, with really nice clothes in the window displays. There were a lot of families out walking and lots of people pushing baby carriages.
We decided to follow the path where the bulls run through the city when they have the running of the bulls in July. This city must be a mad house then. We also walked over to one of the parks where there are deer, pheasants and geese in the park, and it was lovely.
About 7PM the bars/restaurants started to fill up with lots of families who were probably out for dinner. The real bar nightlife in Spain doesn't seem to start until afetr midnight. Shari and I wanted take away food but we couldn't find any places until we spsotted Pizza Hut. We didn't see any McDonald's or other pizza or fast food places. We got pizza and took it back to the room to eat and read.
Luckily, Shari had rememebred about changing the clocks tonight. We are going to get an early bus because we have a 7:15 train in the morning, so it will be nice to have an extra hour's sleep in the morning.
10/26: Today didn'tstart out very well. We got up at 6AM to be at the bus station for a 6:30 bus. We weren't sure if there was a 6:30 bus, or whether we would have to wait for the 6:50 bus because it was a Sunday, but we decided to try for the early one anyhow. Of course it didn't come, so we waited extra time in the dark for the 6:50 bus. There weren't many people out at that early hour, but we did see some young people who were probably just getting home from the bars. The 2 young women next to us at the residence in Barcelona came in almost every night (morning) between 4-5:30 AM.
We got to the train station in plenty of time for our train, only to find out it doesn't run on Sundays. We thought about going to Vitoria at 8:45 but that train didn't run either. So we decided to take the bus to San Sebastian. We went back outside the bus stop to get a bus back almost to where we stated.
Luckily, there was a bus at 8:15AM and it cost only 5.46 euros. We got to San Sebastian at about 10:00 AM and started walking up to the city center from the bus station. After walking for about 10 minutes, an older woman started talking to us (in Spanish) and seemed like she was asking where we planned to stay. Finally, we realized she wanted us to stay at her pension, so we walked with her to look at it. It is a very nice place - located near the city center, very clean, and a roomy twin bedroom cost 30 euros (15 euros each). There are two huge bathrooms down the hall, and we even get towels. Oh, the small pleasures in life. There is a young woman from Chicago staying here who speaks Spanish, so she interpretted everything for us. We understood some of what the woman was saying, but 2 weeks in Spanish school just gave us a very basic understanding of the language.
We left our bags in the room and went for a walk. Most shops were closed because it was Sunday, and it was drizzling out today, but it was still nice to be out. San Sebastian is known as a ritzy resort for wealthy Spaniards, and it is a lovely place with a long crescent shaped beach. They even have a cinema that plays some English language movies, but unfortunately the only one playing now is Pollack, which we just saw in Barcelona.
Even McDonald's was closed today, so we went back to the grocery store and got stuff for sandwiches and went back to the room and made lunch, and then read and slept. We we got up we read some literature on hiking in this area, Basque Country; where we could go, and how to get there. It would be a lot easier to get to the hiking places by car, but we didn't want to spend the money to rent a car.
We kind of wish we hadn't bought the 2-month rail pass (we just finished using our 3-month pass while we were in Barcelona). We probably could have rented cars and taken trains and buses from now until we get to Paris for less than the cost of our 2-month Eurail passes. We got our money's worth out of the 3-month pass bcause we traveled around so much, but we probably won't move around as much in the next seven weeks.
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