Met with the smell of coffee – an illustrious drink which I
tried just days ago, but now cannot imagine life without – my senses came alive
as I turned toward the great plasma screen in the sky which read ‘Departures’.
Somewhat different from navigating with a map and compass, I
struggled to read between the lines of orange text flashing in the distance,
but finally managed to establish that in order to reach my next destination I
had to find ‘Platform 4’. Or ‘Quatre’ as they say in this beautiful city.
One of the finest things about exploring this new world via untried
and tested transport is that everything seems to move much more quickly –
meaning that I get to try out most of the recommendations I’m given for things
to do and see, as well as learn some words of a new language.
Clutching my European phrase book and jumping aboard a train
– I’m finally getting to grips with this new-fangled contraption – I nestle in
amongst my fellow travellers for a trip set to take almost 12 hours, but which
will land me in one of my oldest haunts – a Spanish port close to that of
Valladolid - the very place I hung up my original travelling hat in 1506.
When sailing on the high seas time is of the essence, and it
took just weeks to travel from one land of opportunity to the next.
However, after boarding what is known as the SNFC (Société
Nationale des Chemins de fer Français),
I came to the realisation that journeys have become abnormally fast in this
modern Europe, and that less people seem to suffer from the sickness.
This can only be a good thing – I lost many a good crew member to scurvy, and even more to the broken promises of chests of treasure at our destination.
There was no such problem as I pulled into the city of Irun after spending the night sleeping on this automatic invention.
However, beautiful as it was, this fair city was not my final destination for the day.
No, I was heading for the city of Bilbao. Capital of Vizcaya, in the Basque country of Spain, the city has become vast and very ornamental in my years away.
Housing many large buildings I’m told are called museums, I spent the next few days ‘Guggenheiming’ –an exciting way to use a few hours – and exploring the rich green hills of the surrounding countryside which were less plentiful many hundreds of years ago.
Thankfully I had access to Toowist – an accurate guide as to what was available to see and do. Goodness me, if this had been around in 1490, I would have wasted less time at sea, and spent more time on land!
And now that I’m in Spain, I need suggestions of where to hot foot it to.
It’s a large country you know…
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