Our train was due to leave at 9.02 but we knew, having had a look around the previous day, that we’d have to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the station since they were doing major renovations/upgrades to the lines and the buildings around them.
We hauled ourselves and our stuff along the river to the station the annoying distance, which was long enough for it to feel onerous to walk (it's next to the bus station we'd walked to and from a few times already), but not long enough (in my mind at least) to justify getting a taxi. And also, somewhat inconveniently, not close enough for a bus stop to make that a practical option either.
There was a long queue, which we joined, hoping it was the right one - there were two trains due to leave at exactly the same time that morning - and slowly moved along as people had their tickets scanned. As we got closer we realised the other reason it was moving so slowly: you need to get up to the level of the platform (we’d gone underground to the station itself) and there was only one small lift. Stairs were an option, but we had too much luggage for that. But I did see sign for the 04086 Alvio to Madrid, which I knew was the train we wanted.
We stood around on the platform for a while and ate an empanada Rochelle had bought at the café downstairs while I was waiting in line. The train eventually appeared (a few minutes late) and we of course were standing at the wrong end up it to get onto our carriage. So, off we set to get ourselves and our stuff on board before it left again. After the usual confusion over which carriage was which and where we should stow our suitcases, we got to our seats - and, like every train trip this time so far (and unlike 2019), no-one had taken it upon themselves to steal (mistakenly or otherwise) our seats. And off we went.
Our next destination was Salamanca. We were taking a somewhat roundabout path to get there - it’s actually closer to Portugal than where were leaving from, but the aforementioned lack of trains between cities around there meant that it was easier for us to have done what we did and go to San Sebastian (via Bilbao) first and then go back, since we could catch two train, albeit somewhat slow ones.
Two trains meant changing trains, since the one we were on was going to Madrid, but not via Salamanca. We had to go to a town called Valladolid and wait there for an hour and a half or so for the train to come that was going to Salamanca.
We arrived in Valladolid without incident, though I did notice there was a train going to Salamanca that was coming sooner than the one we were catching at 2.19pm - but no ticket platform I’d looked at had included that as an option for the journey from San Sebastian. I’d ended up buying separate, standalone tickets because it looked like the Valladolid to Salamanca leg was running short of tickets and I didn’t want to miss out while waiting for it to come as a package. But I assume there was too short a gap between the arrival of the first train and the departure of the second that they wanted to risk people missing the latter; all it would have taken is a few minutes’ delay to mess that up.
As it was it gave us time to have something more substantial to eat at the train station café; we ended up having a (somewhat amusingly named) Nebraska burger and fries. But it was pretty good as train station food goes. It was then time to think about going to our platform, but we were a little confused; to get onto platform 1 there was a bag scanner and security check like the ones we had to go through in Barcelona and Valencia. But our train was coming to platform 4, and you could just walk straight to that one - I know, because I checked. So I asked a security person and they confirmed we could just go to our platform unscanned.
It did look like the trains on platform 1 were always the ones going to Madrid, so perhaps that’s why they needed extra security.
We were a bit shocked when the train arrived and we saw it was only two carriages - way smaller than any we’d been on during either this trip or the 2019 one. There were a lot of people piling on, so we weren’t surprised when we got to our seats and found people in them. But after some slight awkwardness they got up promptly asked the people who had sat in *their* allocated seats to move, and they did.
An aside: I’m not sure why it’s so hard to just sit in the seats you’ve been allocated, if they are allocated. Part of me is annoyed at the train company for offering allocated seats (usually at an increased cost; these, however, were part of the standard ticket price) when there’s seemingly no-one on board to enforce it.
Either way, we had our seats - another pair where we ended up facing people over a table - and were on our way to Salamanca. After an hour and a half or so, we arrived.
Our hotel was quite close to the train station, so it was only a twelve minute (or so) walk; we showed up and checked in and then went for a bit of a walk to check out the options for doing laundry, since we were due to do some; it would be much easier (and probably cheaper) here than in our next destination, Madrid. We didn't end up finding a place that would do it for us, but there was at least a clean and reasonably-priced self-serve laundromat fairly close to our hotel.
Stuff we saw while wandering around.
Day 2
As we’ve done in a lot of cities before, we’d found a walking tour to go on; this one started at 10.00, when I think all tours should start; later than that and you’re just a) wasting the morning and b) pushing lunch out to later in the day than I’d prefer if the tour is more that 2.5 hours. Today’s guide was named Diego and there were four other people in our group, two Americans from Texas (though one of them had recently moved to Madrid) and two Australians from Adelaide - the first South Australians (not counting a woman from Hong Kong who’d grown up in Mount Gambier) we’d encountered on our trip.
This tour was quite short but still informative; again, Salamanca is quite small, even though some interesting things have happened here.
Of course we’d asked about food and been told (though I think we’d come across the word before in our research) that there’s a local pastry thing called a hornazo that we needed to try and which our guide had pointed out at several places on the tour. We found the the first one of the shops and bought one from there; it turned out to be very dense but quite tasty - the only thing was that it was cold, and we wondered if it would be nicer hot. We also got a cheese & chorizo empanada which was both hot and excellent.
Next on the list was the Casa de las Conchas and La Clerecía; we were trying to get in to see the church but there was a wedding going on so we stuck around to see how that went; there were musicians and what I assume were traditional costumes performing. Once we were able to go up the towers we got a good view of the city.
After that we set off to see the Roman Bridge, but went down the other bridge first and then back across the Roman Bridge.
That took us back in the direction of our next destination, Casa Lis, a museum dedicated to Art Deco and Art Nouveau. This was great - I’ve realised that I liked Art Deco a lot - but we couldn’t take pictures anywhere other than outside or in the gift shop.
It didn’t take us long, though, and it meant we had time on our hands; from Casa Lis we’d seen that the Museo de Historia de la Automoción (automotive museum) was not far away, so we headed there next. They have some very interesting cars there, including some makes that I’d never even heard of before, let alone seen.
Rochelle wanted to find a cocktail bar and we tried one but it was too busy so we went to the next one on the list, which had a table free outside. After our drinks it was time for dinner, so we made our way back to Plaza Mayor so we could eat in the square. Food was good but - once again - we’d misunderstood the size of the serving of patatas bravas.
Now we went back to the Roman Bridge because we’d heard you got a nice view of that side of the city at night. On the way across we noticed there were a handful of quite small bats hunting moths, which isn’t something I’ve seen before.
Then it was a longish trek back to the hotel to end our second night in Salamanca.
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