travel day
Slept in so missed bus to Potes. The only destination close by on the train was Torrelavega so I checked on buses across the street. It was the same so got onboard one by noon. The ride is short and the bus station clean. Sign indicated Tourist Office was 1 km away. Needed help to find it but it had closed 15 minutes earlier until 5:00. On way back to bus station looking for hostals, I found the FEVE train station. Temperature was now over 30 not my kind of weather. I bought at ticket to Cabezon de la Sal which was very pleasant. The landscape is scenic reminding me of Costa Rica and the town is at a higher altitude so the temperature went down to 26. It is a real neat quiet town but in my town tour all I found was a phone number for rooms. There was a tourist office but it was closed until 4:30 and there was another train at 5:00. I tried to call about a room but couldn´t figure out how to use the phone in the station so bought a ticket to Unquera . A long train had been sitting on the siding next to the station so I figured that it was mine waiting for 5:07 to arrive. Needing to find out which coach was mine I asked a security guy who referred me to two RR employees. The woman spoke very good English and said I would board about where we were onto any coach. She also made the suggestion that I wait for the next ten minutes in the shade by the station. Good idea. When the time was up I tried unsuccessfully to open the coach door, then another and another. At this point the security guy came running to say that this wasn´t my train. The long train left 2 minutes before my was supposed to leave and mine didn´t show for another 10 minutes. I guess you shouldn´t hop on a train just because it is on the right track and leaving at approximately the right time. (That was how I got on the wrong train in Avignon and went to Marseille by mistake.) It was another scenic trip but south of where I wanted to go. I passed on the three star hotel across the street and did my town tour. Shortly I found a one star hostal run by a chatty lady who had her place full of workers until the summer when she caters to tourists. I passed a cybercafe along the way. I walked past the three star again until it looked like the town was ending. A man confirmed that there where only two hotel/hostals in town so I went back to the hotel to get the bad news. I balked at the price but she did tell me that there was another establishment about a km out of town. It was a hostal at a major highway intersection. It was large cheap and unimpressive but that was it. Before going back to the cybercafe I patched a blister on my foot that was getting tender. The second use of the first aid kit. The cafe was closing in 20 minutes by the time I got there so I had no time to add anything to the blog. I enjoyed my first bocadilla on my way back in a very clean cafeteria. By this time it was pretty well dark so I packed in early hoping to get an earlier start in the morning. It is difficult to start early in Spain when no one will feed you anything substantial before 9:00.
Tags: Spain, Travel, Travel, Tag Index