Farewell to Spain...

We did eventually get to Hendaye, glad we had a room booked at the hotel across the road from the station as I think they were turning people away.

This is what I wrote on the train between Leon and Hendaye…

We ended up stopping three nights in the beautiful city of Leon.  Both Anna and I seemed to be coming down with a cold and thought we would take it easy.

The Parador was pretty amazing, although we weren’t in one of the really fancy rooms!  Nevertheless on a purely creature comfort front, the beds were comfortable, the shower was the best so far and the breakfast was like a buffet breakfast in Australian/US etc hotels, not just juice, coffee and a pastry as we had found in many places in Spain.  We didn’t need to eat again until we had a picnic dinner in a delightful park near the third place we stopped at in Leon.  The only downside of the Parador was the dodgy wi-fi, which we needed to use to make some bookings for our future travels.

Today (Friday) we activated our 21 day Eurail passes and are on a train from Leon to Hendaye, just over the French border.  The train left Leon at 3:25pm and doesn’t get into Hendaye until nearly 9pm.  We hope we are booked into a hotel very close to the station.  We are hoping to book train tickets to Marseille for tomorrow – we couldn’t book them in Spain.  Although we have a first class Eurail pass on some trains you have to pay an additional fee to book seats. 

For our third night in Leon, we booked accommodation through a different online booking site.  We ended up in a room, with an ensuite, in someone’s first floor apartment.  A bit like a B&B but without the second B!  However we had a very delicious breakfast at a café around the corner.  Unfortunately when we asked our host where the supermarket was located, she failed to mention that Friday was a local public holiday and many places were closed.  My Camino guide said there was a festival in Leon on October 5, but apparently October 4 was the holiday for 2013.  Although some cafes/bars were open, our planned visit to the supermarket didn’t happen.  

We have seen some more stately windmills from the train.  It is good to see renewable energy production.  So far we are travelling through much the same countryside as we did on the bus the other day.

Unlike some trains we have travelled on, there doesn’t seem to be charging available, so I will have to finish this later and post when I have internet access!

The train trip was going ok until we got to a place called Tolosa, which wasn’t even a stop.  We had no idea what was going on but another passenger told us there was a tree across the line – sounds like home!  Except we don’t speak the language, we want to book some tickets for tomorrow and we are not sure about tonight’s accommodation!

Must go to bed, hope to catch a train at 6:51am