Today we began the winding down/get-back-to-the-real-world process.
First, we didn’t set an alarm and slept until 9:00! We still had cafe-con-leche and tostadas for breakfast (didn’t want to shock our system too much.)
After breakfast we did a “trial run” walk to the train station to check the time it took and to help us decide if we wanted to walk it tomorrow morning with our full packs or use a taxi. We decided we’ll walk it.
We returned to our room and chilled until 3:30, when we walked a few blocks to a restaurant for lunch/dinner.
We spent the rest of the afternoon reorganizing our stuff to make it as easy as possible to maneuver with our packs getting in and out of the trains tomorrow.
We were unable to get seats on a direct train to Madrid when we bought our tickets yesterday, so we’ll have to change from one train to another in Ourense with 10 minutes in between exiting the first train and boarding the second one. We’ve never been in the Ourense train station before, so we’re a little anxious about that process.
Our train departs from Santiago at 5:40 a.m. tomorrow morning. We arrive in Ourense at 6:20 and the train for Madrid departs at 6:30. It arrives in Madrid at 8:45 a.m.
Our train will arrive at the Chamartin station in Madrid, but our booked apartment is located near the Atocha train station some distance away. We’ll wait until we get to Madrid to decide how best to get to our final destination with our packs: either catch a local connecting train or take a taxi.
Needless to say, we’ll get to bed early and set two alarms to make sure we get up in time to board our first train.
So we’re moving from a relatively calm, uncomplicated life of the past two months to meeting a tight schedule in unfamiliar territory in an unfamiliar process where we don’t speak the language, understand what station announcers are saying or what the arrival and departure boards mean. It’s a slight increase in stress to say the least, but part of our transition back to the real world.
Jimandi 