We started for LAX bright and early in the morning of the eighteenth, and flew off to Newark, where we had a two-hour wait for our Paris flight. Arrival in Paris was at something like eight in the morning of the nineteenth, and we took a suburban train from DeGaulle to a regular Metro station, from which we went off to the Gare d’Austerlitz.

Nothing much to show: we hardly took any pictures while traveling. The Austerlitz station is probably the most boring of all the stations in Paris. But that’s where our sleeper train for Madrid was leaving from. Only a small image, the picture is so boring. I could have put up a picture of Mark King walking away from the very clean and very cheap public rest room, but that would have been much too undignified.

We had quite a wait before our sleeper train to Madrid was to leave. Mostly we sat around the train station, but I did find an acceptable-looking bistrot across the avenue from the station, and we went there for a very nice lunch. It was Paris, after all, where my experience has been that you need to struggle to find bad food. With a half-liter pitcher of good red wine, we enjoyed ourself well and fed ourselves well, too. Mark had an “Italian salad”, and I had Coquilles St. Jacques — the scallops were perfectly cooked, with a little caramelization on the surface, but juicy and almost translucent inside.

It was still something of a wait till our train should arrive and become ready. But eventually we got on, and the Language Problem began: it seemed that all the staff on the train was Spanish. But we managed all right on the train and throughout the vacation, so there actualy were no language disasters.

The train left some time around six, and before long the dining-room steward came around saying that there were two sittings for supper, eight and ten, and we said eight, by all means. We hadn't had any real sleep, you understand: the previous night was spent on a plane from Newark. My journal says that the meal was unmemorable, and in fact I don’t recall anything about it except that we had two half-bottles of wine and were feeling no pain when we rolled back to our compartment.

And that was what would be called a bedroom for two in US railway parlance, except that it didn’t have its own toilet. A sink yes, but for relief we had to go down the passageway a little bit. Bunk beds, and in view of my advanced age, I told Mark that he’d have to be the one in the upper. Not good for him, as it turned out: the room was very warm practically the whole night long, and he had trouble sleeping. Not a problem for me, partly ’cause I’m an old train hand, but mostly because of the lower temperatures where I was.

The train got into Chamartín Station in Madrid, not the famous Atocha where the bombs hit, and it got there only a little late. No difference to us: we had yet another long wait for our train to Granada. But where were we going to eat? It was raining steadily outside the station, and the counter places were not particularly appealing looking. But there was a sit-down restaurant, opening only at one, in the Spanish style of doing everything a couple of hours later than everybody else. (There’s a reason for this: Spain is way far west in its time zone, so sunrise and sunset happen a lot later than you expect.) The meal we had in the restaurant was pretty grim. Fortunately it was redeemed by the many wonderful dining experiences we had later on in the trip.

Mark decided that it would be a good idea to use our waiting time there in the station to make arrangements for our train transportation after the walking tour was over: Sevilla to Córdoba, Córdoba to Toledo, and Toledo to Madrid. It turned out that, just as Mark expected, there was no direct route from Córdoba to Toledo: we’d have to go by way of Madrid. The most convenient scheduling for this involved the barest minimum of turn-around time at Madrid Atocha, but I refused to worry about this. In fact, I kept refusing to worry for the next twenty-four hours.

The train to Granada was eventually anounced, and we piled on. Our baggage was not as manageable as what we took with us to Chile: then, we each had a carry-on suitcase and a small handheld — mine was my hiking pack, which fits under the seat in front of you. But for this trip, we would be staying away so much longer that we felt we had to have a big checkable suitcase for putting dirty laundry and such into. We bought a real monster at Target, in a shocking purple-dark-pink that could not be missed on a luggage carousel, nor mistakenly taken by anyone else. Due to my advanced years, it went without saying that poor Mark would be saddled with lugging the thing behind him on its straining wheels. So I just had to worry about the same amount of stuff I went to Chile with, while he had three pieces of luggage to worry about. I mention all this now, thinking about getting onto the train for Granada, because the track was announced only very late, and we had a certain amount of worry whether with all our encumbrances we would find our reserved seats before the train pulled out. In the event, we got nicely settled in comfortable seats, and eagerly awaited our arrival in Granada, and our first real lodgings.

From the Granada station, a cab took us to our hotel, the Palacio Santa Paula, a parador that had been a convent, which was far and away the most elegant hotel we’ve ever stayed in. We got there late in the evening, and we were hungry indeed. Asked for a recommendation for a restaurant, the concierge said it was pretty late to get a reservation, but we could certainly get a table in the hotel’s restaurant downstairs, which would be closing in less than half an hour. We left our stuff with the concierge, and hightailed it downstairs, not even going up to our room to freshen up. I thought it was a fine meal, and I think Mark agreed. I had lomo de ciervo, in other words loin of venison, though I wonder whether it might have been farmed rather than hunted, and it was just superb. We accompanied the meal with a nice bottle of Spanish wine, and a glass of sherry for each of us, and we were definitely ready for bed.

Of course we were ready for bed: this was the night of the twentieth, and we had left home early in the morning of the eighteenth, and we hadn’t had a real bed the whole time — bunks in a sleeper don’t count, especially when the air temperature in your compartment is in the nineties — and we slept till about ten the next morning.