This was pretty much a travel and readjusting day.
We breakfasted on coffee and croissants at our new “local” headed back to check
we had all our stuff
together and called a cab to take us to Atocha for our 3
hour train trip to Alicante.
It is interesting that they have the same luggage
screening at the train stations here as there is at the airport. Anyway it all
went fairly smoothly especially after we realized we were in the wrong coche
and had to relocate! The journey was uneventful and moved through rich farmland
to barren rocks down to the Mediterranean coast. All in all there were only 4
stops and at each the faithful smokers all popped out to the platform to smoke
almost a half a smoke and then to hop back inside just before the doors closed.
Once at Alicante train station we walked past at least 3 car rentals shops NONE
were the Sixt bright orange color. We wandered out front of the station and
peered into the adjacent lot/parking area for other signs of rental cars.
Finally a policeman was hailed who pointed across the street and down of the boulevards
was the Orange sign. Two young ladies were manning the counter. One brown eyes
and jet black hair while the other had deep blue eyes and was blond. The blond’s
English was perfect to which Paul asked her background – Danish. Ok that makes
sense as she also said she had lived in Ireland for 10 years as well. We originally
had an Avis car Seat Leon reserved but after struggling with luggage in
Galicia, Paul had
changed over to Sixt who still had vehicles available for
dates. Evidently my choice of a BMW Series 1 for luggage capacity got me
assigned a Mercedes series equal however it was an automatic and when I got it
up outside of the underground parking garage trunk was large enough for just
one of our two American sized suitcases. I told the two girls to put us into
something else as this would NOT suit our requirements, after a brief search
Ingrid said she had an Opel Astra Station Wagon same price and a diesel versus
gasoline. Paul was happy to see that the trunk area easily held all luggage
under the tunnel cover easily. Next Jane asked the Spanish lass which part of town
held our hotel and she promptly pointed to the SW part of the city. Paul
thought the hotel was on the NE side of town closest towards Campello where
Gill lives. We fired up Carmen Garmin and guess what she took us directly to
the hotel which was on one side of a divided boulevard highway meaning we had
to go past and find a traffic circle to return to the entrance. Free parking
was the high light of this hotel because it was a self contained unit fenced
off from the outside world. No place to walk to, no shops, bars, or
resturantes. As it turns out the buffet spread versus ala carte was
outstanding.
As we were taking car contents into the hotel we had parked behind the hotel, Paul tripped at the bottom of the steps having missed the short uneven last stepped and went tumbling to the ground flat on his back having twisted his right ankle and knee in the process. He will feel this tomorrow I am sure. His comment was that he did NOT think anything was broken at least no bones were protruding!! Perhaps that Mercedes Automatic would have come in handy....we'll see.
We turned in early as it had been a very long day.
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