Blogs from Spain, Europe - page 13

Today we were heading to Malaga, our last stop, and our longest trip. We got up, took a shower, and packed our stuff. After checking out (by the way I highly recommend the Loop Inn Hostel), we headed down to the bus station, to catch our bus to Malaga. The bus ride took a bit over 4 hours, with one stop for a break/lunch. The views were nice, but the rest stop was even better. El Romeral was in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, but had a decent restaurant/cafe. Manoli had a chicken sandwich and I had a seafood salad. Both were pretty good. After about a half hour break, we reboarded the bus and continued our trip to Malaga. I think we pulled into Malaga around 6pm and met my niece Salome at ... read more

Most of my thoughts below only pertain to those considering walking the 120km El Camino de San Salvador, arguably the least walked and at times most remote of the caminos in Spain; otherwise, consider it fodder for my photos. I’m not going to give any directions or trail descriptions because they can easily be found free online. I paid $10 to download a very long pdf book from PilgrimageTraveler.com and it was pretty good. Most everyone else was using the Camino app, but I didn’t have cell service. Why not El Camino Frances? Last summer I walked a 5-day portion of The French Way - the walk that most people choose - and opted for a different approach this year. The biggest pro and con of choosing El Camino de San Salvador vs. El Camino Frances ... read more

Today we took our time getting up since we didn't have anything planned until the train from Alicante to Murcia at 2:50pm. We walked a few blocks to the bus stop, and took the bus almost straight to the train station, Alicante Termino. Arriving at the train station in plenty of time, we just sat around waiting for them to call our train. The Alicante Termino is very modern, as was our train to Murcia. It was almost an Ave, which is the high speed train in Spain. We had reserved seats, next to each other in the back of car 4. Pretty soon, we were off. The scenery along the way was pretty cool, and the train only made 3 stops, I think, before reaching Murcia del Carmen train station. Again, we decided to take ... read more

Well, today we are moving on from Valencia to Alicante. We had bought the tickets for the train last night, but still we weren't sure of everything. We'd had the hotel order a taxi at 12:10, but we were up and ready to go by 10am or so, so we walked to the shopping center just up the street from our hotel. After browsing around, we returned to the hotel, finished packing our stuff and went downstairs to turn in the key card. The taxi showed up right on time and took us to the Alfafar station, where we bought 2 more tickets to Estacion del Norte. We were there quite early, so after confirming that our tickets to Alicante were valid, we looked for a place to eat lunch and relax. We ended up eating ... read more

We were pretty tired when we went to bed, so we didn't get up until 8am. There was nothing planned for today except a foot tour of Valencia... and I mean foot! We walked to Alfafar train station and caught the train to Valencia Estacion Norte. We still had a few trips paid for with our metro ticket we'd bought at the Valencia Airport. Manoli bought an 8-trip ticket that would serve for both of us to take the Metro or Train 4 times. It worked fine, except the first person thru the gate had to pass the ticket off to the other. Oh well, it was a lot cheaper than individual one-trip tickets. We arrived just a little before 10am and started checking out the Plaza Ajuntimiento sights. First, we visited the museum inside the ... read more