To get to the north of Spain, I had to return to Lisbon and catch a night train that took 12.5 hours – in total, it took around 20 hours from one hostel to another. I have no idea how people get a decent nights sleep on a train as I felt as though I was trying to fall asleep on a roller coaster.
What made me laugh on the way here was that whilst I was living in London my biggest concerns would be whether or not I could find matching shoes and be on time for work, whether or not my cut fingers would need stitching back together and whether or not to bother getting a Sainsburys meal deal for lunch. This time on my way to Spain, I faced the slightly bigger problem of will I wake up in Spain or France and I thought that it was a bit of a non-issue.
After finding the hostel and dumping my stuff I went to get some breakfast. On the way I saw a lot of people outside a tapas bar with food and wine so I thought it’d be silly not to join in. I’m not going to go into too much detail about what I ate for every meal as I’m aware that not many people care.
There wasn’t really a lot else happening for me that day other than a coffee, nap and more food, but it soon became apparent that I may fall into a cheese-induced coma at some point over the next few days.
The next day I got up, had a coffee and walked for a bit before getting some more food. The weather here hasn’t been great but I climbed up one of the hills next to he beach or a view over the city. I came down, booked my next stop and chilled for a bit before going for more coffee. After this, I went to a place called the Whiskey Museum – it’s actually a bar that very much specialises in whiskey. Once inside, I asked the bloke behind the bar for a menu which was as lengthy as the argos catalogue so I asked him to reccommend one instead. The place is home to the worlds’ smallest cocktail shaker that actually works, but as far as me and cocktails go, I’ll be sure not to order a cocktail from that shaker. After this, I went for dinner, had quite an impressive amount of sangria and an awesome foie gras dish.
My last morning I went for breakfast I had one of the best cappuccinos that I’ve ever had with a chocolate brownie. I’m not sure if I can remember it happening but I’m sure that sometime over the past 21 years that I’ve been promised that I can have this kind of thing for breakfast when I’m an adult, so there you go. I went for a walk across the seafront and someone came up to me and tried to have a coversaton with me when all I wanted was some peace and quiet, so I did a probably rather unconvincing job of pretending to be Russian and not being able to speak much English, which may or may not have done the trick. After this, I had some lunch and didn’t do much else before having a rather large dinner which may or may not have resulted in a food baby or food triplets.
Tomorrow, I have yet another train ride and after there is one more stop in Spain until I fly to Italy, making my way up to Norway via the ultimate detour.