Saturday April 26th 2008
Noon position: On the Road, west coast of Spain between Barcelona and Valencia.
Bob: What with staying up too late to finish our book and the early morning ruckus caused by unloading the luggage from the ship to the pier, neither of us got a full night's sleep. George and Don had told us that our plans to use the subway to get to the train station were a bit risky due to pickpockets and such, so we changed our plans and took a taxi to the Sans train station. That cost us 15 Euro including tip, but that was a lot less than the $20 apiece the RCI shuttles would have cost. Besides, we had a final chance to sit and chat with Helen and Jeff while we waited for our turn to leave the ship, find our luggage, and hail a taxi. Everything went like clockwork and by 10:30 we were winding our way out of Barcelona in a nice 4-door VW Golf diesel. It was a stick shift and had a clutch that engaged very low to the floor, so while we worked our way out of town in the stop and go traffic I managed to kill the engine three times. Fortunately the Spanish drivers behind me seemed to be understanding and didn't honk or start yelling when I held up traffic. Once on the A-2 expressway things went swimmingly. We joined the A-7 to curl around a small chain of mountains and then pretty much followed the coast to Valencia. |
Monika: By 6:30 we both were up, took a last shower and went up for breakfast. Unfortunately, no omelet man this morning, but we made do with the rather large breakfast bar that was available. We both went for protein, that would sustain us a little longer. After vacating our room so that Ingrid could get it ready for the next guests, we waited in the Ixtapa lounge which was available for Platinum and above members. We met Helen and Jeff and had a last good chat, before our color tag was called around 9:15. We retrieved our luggage on the pier, waited in line for a taxi and headed for the Sans railroad station where we had reserved a car through AutoEurope. It turned out that, just like in Hamburg, AutoEurope was handled by Avis. We got our car and instructions on how to get out of town quickly. So by 10:30 we were on the interstate heading south. Spain has two interstate designations: AP or Autopista is a tollroad and A or Autovia is a plain old interstate. Unfortunate most of our trip south was on AP 7. Now we did have a slight cash problem. We had 90 Euros left over from our last trip, but had been unable to obtain more cash, since I seemed to have remembered the wrong PIN for my German credit card. However, we found two things that helped: 1) the Autopista tolls can be paid by creditcard, so we did not have to deplete our cash reserve, and 2) we found an ATM machine that accepted our Apple ATM card, so we finally managed to get some cash. We started going south past Tarragona towards Valencia.. When we were just going around Tarragona, I saw a camera sign, which usually means scenic view. We stopped, and the camera pointed to an underpass underneath the highway. Beyond that we climbed some stairs. No view yet, but a rather steep trail leading uphill. Well, we had not done any walking today, so we followed the trail. At one point we saw a rather pretty aqueduct, but the trail kept going up. We kept going until we were at the top. But no scenic view of Tarragona, just a electric transformer station. So Bob figured that the aqueduct was the camera spot. We took some pictures and hiked back down to our car. |
Bob: The coastal drive was basically crossing a series of mountain chains separated by broad valleys where the towns and cities were generally located. However, the density and nature of the settlements in the valleys differed tremendously, ranging from almost deserted stretches of coastline to patches where the high-rises formed almost a solid bank of tall buildings between us and the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. We were both also impressed with how dry and arid most of the coastal area was. Some areas were so dry that almost nothing was grown there; we didn't even see any evidence of pastures or grazing herds, although occasionally we saw old, weathered terraces of stone that might at one time have supported some kind of agriculture. Most of the areas apparently had a bit of precipitation, though, and that was enough to support the vineyards that we saw for mile upon mile. As we approached Valencia the agriculture changed over to citrus orchards, but we never saw any trees or evidence of row crops on the entire journey down the coast. The more arid, barren areas reminded me of New Mexico and Arizona, but the irrigated orchards and sun drenched cities around Valencia reminded me more of Southern California. |
Monika: The trip south past Valencia alternated between being close to the Mediterranean and being inland beyond the first mountain range It probably depended how much space they had at the sea. There were ruins of castles or lookout towers on many of the peaks, attesting to a violent past. We stopped at a rest area for a sandwich and found that at rest areas they had special parking areas with roofs. Since the sun was beating down on us, that was really pleasant. |
Bob: After about 7 hours of driving I was getting tired, so we turned off at the exit for Benissa to follow the two-lane coastal road, hoping that we would find a store to buy some food for dinner and a hotel for the night. Just inside Benissa we found a Lidl store (similar to Aldi), where we stopped and stocked up on enough food to tide us over Sunday when almost all stores are closed in Spain. It proved far harder to find a hotel than we had expected even after we found a (closed, of course) tourist information center. The map there informed us that Benissa had no hotels at all and just a single pension at the other end of town. But we couldn't locate that pension despite looking very carefully for it on our way through town, so we continued along the coast where two more hotels were supposed to be located. Well, we didn't see any signs for the first one, but then we saw the big "H" sign and thought we had finally found a place for the night, but that one turned out to be closed, but whether the closure was just for the off-season or completely permanent I couldn't tell. By that time I was getting a bit discouraged, but we finally found a sign for the Hotel de Marco that said "150 meters". I thought that meant the hotel was 150 meters down the road, but it must have just meant the turn off was 150 meters down the main road, because we followed that road for well over a mile as it wound its way tortuously up a foothill. The road was barely a lane wide and driving it around those blind curves brought back not-so-fond memories of driving in Ireland during Wanderung 9. It was just what I didn't need after a poor night's sleep and a long day of coping with driving in a foreign country with a strange car! But finally we curled around the last curve and straight up to the entrance of the hotel and restaurant. Whew! The receptionist looked askance at our rumpled attire and said the only room she had available was one they usually didn't rent out except as a last resort, which sent up warning flags in my mind, at least. As I feared, the room didn't look like much on the outside. It seemed to be a converted garage and was surrounded by construction debris from the swimming pool that was being built nearby. But inside it was clean and the interior was nicely finished. And really I was just too tired to go on looking for another place to stay the night, so we signed up for the night and moved our bags in. We used the groceries from Lidl for a simple dinner of ham and cheese sandwiches on black bread and then tried to work on the computer for a while. But when Monika caught me snoring while ostensively working at the keyboard, we both decided to turn in early. |
Monika: When we turned back to the sea before Alicante, we had not seen a hotel on the Autopista. So we went onto the highway, figuring hotels would be there in plenty. Instead we found a Lidl which gave us an opportunity to stock up on the basics for meals on our own: milk, bread, cheese, meat, and wine. We finally saw a sign "Hotel 150 m". Of course, we overshot the turnoff and had to come back. We then followed signs up the mountain on smaller and smaller roads. It seemed, forever, but probably was not more than a mile. We finally did find the hotel, beautifully situated. The last room they had available was in an addition next to the main house. The room was nice and non-smoky, so we readily agreed to it. By now, it was past 5 and we both were getting tired. We ate from our supplies and went to bed early for a good night sleep. |
| Prolog | Map of Trip | Epilog |
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