We’re in Salamanca! That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Internet doesn’t work at the hostel. They have WiFi, I just can’t convince anything to give me an IP address. That’s almost more annoying that not having WiFi at all!
We started the day really early. We needed to get up, finish packing, get a little breakfast, and scuttle down to the main train station to catch a bus out to the airport at 7AM. We caught it by about five minutes. Not the best showing, but it got the job done.
Out at the airport we had to figure out where check-in was. That took a bit, but we finally found it and got the bag checked. Going through security was an absolute breeze. We got down to our gate just when the line was forming. Ryan Air doesn’t assign seats, so it’s a first come-first served basis. There is an option for priority boarding that’s a little extra. We decided to get that, just to see how well it worked. I figured that most people would get it and there wouldn’t be much benefit.
The line started behind the priority boarding sign and got pretty long pretty quick, so I figured that I was right: everyone was “priority”. There was a group in front of us (a couple and two teenage boys) that just left their suitcases in line, then went and sat down. We thought that was pretty crummy of them, so the whole time we were waiting we were plotting revenge and nastinesses!
The gate opened late and started processing people. Guess what. No, seriously, take a guess at what I’m about to say.
I’ll wait…
No one in that line was priority. Including the two of us, there were three people for priority boarding. The lady running the counter had to tell the entire line to move from the priority boarding area into the “normal passenger” area… including the crummers (that’s the name for the crummy people). It was hilarious and I may have laughed out loud.
The lady checked the three of us in, then brought us outside. We were going to walk to the plane. She had us stop just outside the door, then told me to make sure that no one ran out onto the tarmac. The power instantly went to my head.
A little bit later we all got to walk out and board the plane. Being priority booking, and hence superior, we took the front seats with extra leg room. Oh, it was splendid. Everyone else boarded and we took off. The flight was only two hours and was very nice. We didn’t even have ear poppy issues, which was a surprise.
We landed in Madrid soon enough and started trying to find the subway. We had to ask someone at an information desk, but we did manage to get to the metro (subway) and take it to the station where we needed to change trains. Google Maps had provided us with directions, but they differed slightly from what was labelled at the station. We ended up going out of the travel area, asking someone at an information desk, then buying new tickets to get back into the travel area! A little annoying, but hardly anything to worry about.
We arrived at the train station and found a ticket machine. Getting train tickets was insanely easy. We had some time before the train left and we were both really hungry, so we broke our rule of “try new things” by eating at Burger King. It was scrumptious, if a little… Burger Kingey.
We hopped on our train and spent the three hours to Salamanca reading and looking at the scenery. We went through some fairly mountainous areas. The land was extremely rocky, and it actually looked a lot like the American southwest. The vegetation was all low shrubbery. It was pretty.
Before long we were standing in Salamanca wondering where to go. We exited the train station and started walking to the hostel. Salamanca is a very nice city. We had gotten a lot of warnings about pickpockets in Spain, but after seeing the city, we just couldn’t imagine that being a problem! Everything is nice and clean and just feels peaceful.
The hostel was located without much difficulty and we got all checked in. We collapsed for the evening. We were planning on messaging Addy’s friend Mike who was also in Salamanca visiting, but we couldn’t get the WiFi to work. We just spent the evening relaxing and munching on some food we had brought with.
Now, this part actually took place in the middle of the night, but we’ll group it in with this post. We were both sound asleep when all of a sudden we heard what sounded like a police car, ambulance, and fire engine all flying by our window at top speed with sirens blaring. We both woke up at the same time, but we just happened to be facing each other at that point, so we were a little startled to just see each other laying there with our eyes wide open! I think I said something like “What a racket!”, but we fell asleep again immediately and slept until morning.
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