Leon Cathedral, Easter Sunday 2000.
We got up at 8.30am, and left at 9.10am. Breakfast consisted of two rather naff doughnuts as we walked to the station. We tried to get on the next train to La Coruna, and failed. Once again we were also informed that all the trains to Madrid were full. We got out the map of Spain and looked for places that were roughly in the right direction. We chose Gijon, but although that was full as well, the helpful man at the guichet told us that we could actually get on the train to La Coruna until Leon, which suited us fine since Leon would certainly set us going the right way. Then we attempted to book tickets for our future trains in Spain, which was marginally more successful. We booked the train to Madrid for the 4th May, but the night train to Hendaye that same night was full in second class and our tickets didn't allow us to travel first class. The guy booked us on a train to Hendaye for the day after, we would have to see if that was suitable for us.
We had a very pleasant 6-hour journey to Leon. The landscape was greener, and while it was mountainous at the start, by the end the land was much flatter. We also saw rain for the first time en route, though admittedly it was only a fleeting glimpse somewhere near Burgos. We had a very nice ham baguette on the train, although without butter (not that Ian minded that).
Upon arrival in Leon at 5pm we looked at timetables to see if we could travel any further that night. There was a train to a town called Ponferrada in three hours; we didn't know where Ponferrada was but when we found it on a map it was exactly where we needed to go. We strolled to the city centre up the main street, over a picturesque canal, and towards the cathedral. It was Easter Sunday, and although we'd failed to make it to the pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela (which is where we were actually trying to reach, strangely), we could at least see one major religious point en route. On our way we looked at book stalls, vaguely looking for a Winnie The Pooh one. The Cathedral Our Lady La Blanca is very nice. The square was extremely windy, but it was still very pleasant to walk around it. Quite a tourist spot, with lots of souvenir shops, we only bought postcards.
We had dinner in a backstreet cafeteria. Laure had fish, squid and salad, Ian had mince beef burger and chips and an egg. Laure was absolutely charmed once again by the orange juice, which is pure bliss! They have funny machines to squeeze the oranges, there's a really sharp blade that cuts them in two in no time and then they are crushed. They have so many of them over there that they don't bother to scrape all the pulp from the skin. In town we were struck by the number of old ladies wearing fur coats! Very serene town, probably due to the fact there are so many old people.
Caught the train to Ponferrada, taking us still further West. Ian was quite pessimistic and thought we would end up sleeping in the station. We couldn't find a train from Ponferrada to anywhere helpful in the night, but there was a regional train to Vigo at 6:00a.m. It was night time already when we hit Ponferrada, it was going to be a short night. Fortunately our first try for a hotel was again successful. The reception of the hotel was on the first floor of a building, we rang once, waited for five minutes and rang a second time. Then we heard some people coming upstairs, we thought they were some residents who might help. But they turned out to be the manager and her family, coming back from her father's funeral. But the atmosphere was not too heavy, the woman spoke French and was strangely quite cheerful, funerals can be strange days. Anyway we got a small cosy room for only 3000pts with a wash basin and a view on the railway station; we could actually hear the announcements. Went to bed and had a big snog because we were quite happy to have got a cheap bed in a Spanish town that no one has ever heard of (and that Laure kept calling Profundera)!
