Avila and Salamanca

Day 4 of my 6-day Spain Pass. I booked a ticket Madrid-Avila, Avila-Salamanca, Salamanca-Madrid.

I tried to book a trip to Segovia next week, but the woman at the ticket counter told me it was not Renfe (which is the Spanish Amtrack), but Cercanias, which I guessed were kind of local trains.

After returning from the Reina Sofia, I looked at my ticket and noticed that my starting destination was MCHAMARTIN. What is Mchamartin? I thought. Madrid train station is Puerta de Atocha.

I looked on the internet, assuming the M stood for Madrid, and there was something called Chamartin. Turned out I was right. It was another station. One site I found said it was connected by a tube to Puerta de Atocha station.

I was thinking tube meant tunnel and I was thinking that what the woman at the ticket counter was telling me was that I had to go in a different direction than I went when I got the train to Toledo, maybe Chamartin was an extension of the Atocha station.

It's a good thing I am an early bird in most things I do. Even without the confusion, my plan was to leave here by 10 for my 11:05 train.

I walked to Tirsos de Molina station, which is just a few blocks from here to take the subway to Atocha. As I looked at the map to see the two end stations, I saw that at the very top was Chamartin! Could that be where I had to go? It was all the way at the other end of Madrid!

Just to be sure, I went to Atocha anyway. When I came out of the subway, I came out at Cercanias. This was where the woman told me to go for Segovia, but maybe she was also telling me I had to go there for this train. I saw a sign that a train to Chamartin was leaving from track 2. Hmmmm.... I looked around for someone to ask. There was a woman helping at the ticket vending machines. I showed her my ticket and she said I had to take the train to Chamartin from track two. She helped me buy my ticket. She told me it was only a 10 minute ride.

Apparently the "tube" I read about was actually a subway, or not really even a subway, but a local train. Whoever wrote that post I found on the internet must have been British or learned British English. It was very confusing. I thought they meant a tunnel.

And so I discovered something new. Cercanias. This train only made three stops (I'm not sure where it came from.) One of the other stops was Nuevos Ministerios, where I need to go today to get the subway to the airport. Now I don't know if I should repeat my steps yesterday and take the Cercanias to Nuevos Ministerios or if I should go by the two subway trains I had planned on using to get there before I discovered this new option. I still have some time to look at maps and decide.

Once I got off the train at Chamartin, I found myself in a very big and varied train station. I still had lots of time, fortunately. I bought a sandwich and water, found my track and boarded the train.

I'm really impressed with all of the transportation here in Spain. Buses, subways and trains have all been clean, comfortable and efficient. While the streets of Seville were covered in graffiti, the trains are sparkling clean. And there are so many options.

I was on the train to Salamanca, but it also stopped in Avila. After about 1 1/2 hours, through mountainous and high meseta countryside, we arrived. I walked through a fairly uninteresting new town until I finally arrived at the famous wall of Avila. It was hard to miss.

I don't know what I was expecting, but when I passed through the wall, I was kind of disappointed. Still, it was interesting to see what a real medieval, walled city looked like. I was thinking it was too bad countries are not able to build walls to keep invaders out - Iraq might be in better shape today if they'd had a wall to keep us out.

I bought a ticket to climb up on the wall. It was cool. There was a nice view. I snapped some pictures. And that was it. Now what was I going to do? I didn't want to visit more churches, pay more entrance fees, etc. I looked for the little tourist train and found it, but it only made one round at 3:30. My train to Salamanca left at 3:15.

So, I walked around the old streets, found another access point to the wall and climbed up, took some more pictures, took some pictures of myself (because I could set my camera up and stand in front of it), and climbed down.

I looked at my guidebook to see if I could find a place to eat. I found a few recommendations. I eventually found one of the places, but it looked dead. Next to it, was a place that had several people eating outside. I went for the place with people.

I got a minestra de verduras, which I thought was a vegetable soup (maybe I thought it was minestra, but maybe it was ministre, minustre, minustra???), and chicken wings and thighs with potatoes, garlic and laurel (bay leaf?).

The vegetable soup was not a soup. It was kind of a stir fry with vegetables and some type of ham. It was okay. The chicken was wings and the little leg portion, not really thighs. They were crispy on the outside but really red inside. I was not sure if it was blood. Why was it so red? I didn't enjoy it. The potatoes were just fried potatoes, kind of cold. I didn't see garlic or laurel. I didn't enjoy the lunch. For desert I had natillas, which is a kind of egg pudding that is not too thick, more on the liquid side. It has a lot of cinnamon and sometimes tastes like it has rum. This was the best I've had so far, so the lunch was not a total waste.

I headed back to the train station sort of rushing, because it was after 3. I saw a bus and hopped on. The driver pointed ahead when I asked if he went to the train station. Turns out it was only two stops, but I was so tired from walking and tired of rushing.

I hopped on the next train to Salamanca and from there with the help of my guide book, found the bus that took me into the old part of town.

Salamanca is quite lovely. The old part of town has buildings that are all made of Sandstone, so there is a lovely uniform color to everything. There were a lot of old buildings, churches, monasteries, palaces, etc. The old plaza was also very beautiful but my photo taking opportunities were ruined by an ugly book fair set up in the middle.

I walked around a bit, feeling really tired from walking so much, and my feet were killing me. I eventually found the tourist train and hopped on board. We made our rounds, I saw some interesting sites I hadn't seen on foot, but mostly was bored, so I began snapping photos of myself again. I might show them to someone, or I might delete them. I don't like to see myself in photos. My idealized version of myself is much better than what I actually see.

And that was it. I had done Salamanca. The cathedral was closed when I decided to enter, and I didn't know what else to do. I went to McDonald's for a snack because it was after 6 and I knew I wouldn't get back to Madrid until 10:45 p.m., so I thought I should eat. I also knew restaurants would not be serving food at least until 8, and I needed to use the bathroom. McDonald's has saved me in that regard so many times on this trip!

After my unhappy meal, I walked a little, I tried to find the bus to go back to the train station, partly for peace of mind, partly for something to do. And then there was the problem. I couldn't find it.

Lonely Planet said you could get on it in front of the market. I found the market. I checked every bus stop in front of the market. I had come in on bus number 1. I dropped me off in front of the market outside of the main plaza, but now I couldn't find it and I couldn't figure out which direction I should be looking for it to come from. So I decided to walk, and since I had lots of time to kill, I decided then would be a good time to start walking.

I walked out of the old part of town into the newer part. It was nice to see actually. This was a mid-sized university town. It was about 7 p.m. There were a lot of people out walking around (many driving), stores were open, there was a lot of business going on. I thought about how in many parts of the US we have lost this. People go to malls now, but it isn't the same as a vibrant downtown. It's kind of sad actually, how our society has kind of degenerated in many ways in the name of progress. I like being able to walk along the street and window shop and see things like pet stores, hair salons, hardware stores, restaurants, clothing stores, all mixed together. And you could browse all of this stuff while actually going somewhere and not walking around in a circle with the smell of cinnabuns tempting you to eat something you don't need.

On the way to the station I passed two churros vendors set up outside. There were long lines at both. I stopped and took a photo of one and looked to see if perhaps I could figure out how to order. The churros looked good - big thick ones like in Granda, but I could not figure out how I would order them, so I walked on. Across from the station, I saw a bar/restaurant that had churros and chocolate for 1.50 euro. I went in, sat at the bar and placed my order. The churros were the thin crunchy ones like everywhere in Madrid, not the big puffy ones. The chocolate was good though, it had a hint of cinnamon.

From there I went to the station, where fortunately, even though I was like 40 minutes early, the train was sitting on the track and I was able to board and relax. The ride was uneventful. It was dark. There weren't many people. We arrived in Madrid Chamartin on schedule. From there I found the subway, and indeed the line that runs near me runs to Chamartin.

I went down to the track. It was now after 11. In most cities the subways would have been closed by then. In many others, they would be nearly deserted. There were several people on the track and a sign said a train was arriving in 3 minutes. Awesome!

The train arrived and I got on a car with a few other people. As we chugged along, more and more people got on, to the point where the car I was on was comfortably full. People were dressed up like they were going out. Maybe some, like me, were going home.

I was amazed that there was so much life this late at night, and that the city recognized it and continued to provide train service. In Tokyo, where people went out late and got drunk, the trains shut down by midnight. Either you made a drunken mad dash for the last train, sprung for a taxi (which could be quite expensive) or slept on the street until the first train in the morning. This seemed so much more civilized. I read that the trains run until 1 a.m., and after that buses run the same routes as the subway. I was really beginning to like Madrid.

Plus, it was after 11 p.m., and this very clean, comfortable subway train felt completely non-threatening. Everyone seemed so respectful. I don't think I could say the same about any big city in the US at that hour.

I got off at Plaza del Sol because I was tired of being on trains and looked forward to the extra few blocks walk from there. There was a gaggle of very loud American girls waking with me up the street towards my apartment. While the Spaniards were walking in small groups and talking quietly, these three girls were making so much noise and being so obvious about being American. I wondered what their parents would think if they saw how they were acting. Why is it there are so many Americans abroad who don't know how to act? The first rule of safety in a foreign country is not to draw attention to yourself. I wondered how many of those three would end up at the US Embassy to report their passports stolen, or if they weren't carrying passports (I mean why would you?) would have their money stolen. I wonder if thieves target people not so much because they are obvious, but because they are obnoxious and deserve to be robbed.

I got home exhausted, and checking my e-mail was greeted with a new flood of unsettling news, including a letter to the editor that one of my colleagues sent to our school newspaper equating "homosexualism" and homophobia. It's too crazy to even get into here. I'm just glad in Lisbon I will not have my computer, so I can take a break from some of this stuff that I am finding upsetting.

Travel is supposed to about getting away from it all, but after a certain point, you are drawn back to it. It's hard to achieve a balance between staying connected and being drawn-in, consumed, overwhelmed. Hopefully, in time, I will find that line and be able to walk it. Until then, maybe like Avila, I need some strong defensive walls.