Interrupted

Yesterday is backblipped.

My recent experience with trains is not happy. I can't remember the last time a train I was on arrived on time, or even on the right day. Here I was, trying to reduce my carbon footprint by returning to France for choir practice on the train rather than flying. It looked so simple: an AVE from Málaga to Madrid, and another one right through from Madrid to Narbonne. Leaving Málaga at 9 a.m., arriving in Narbonne around 7 p.m.

Would that it were that simple. The first train was fine. In Atocha my suspicions were aroused by the departures board listing my train with a destination of Figueres, not Marseille as it should have been. So I went to the customer service desk and asked if I needed to change in Figueres. "No, no problem," was the reply. It was a different story from the woman checking tickets at the platform barrier. "Nothing's going further than Figueres today," she told me. "You can't get a train to Narbonne till tomorrow morning." 

This was due to October flood damage on the line, which I  knew about. But I booked these tickets online over a month ago. Renfe had my email address, why couldn't they have told me? Grr. The ticket lady suggested I get off in Barcelona and catch the train to Narbonne in the  morning. But I wasn't about to spend an evening alone in Pickpocket Central, and the AVE station in Figueres is in the middle of nowhere. So I made an executive decision to stay in Girona overnight.

Thank goodness for a) ability to speak Spanish and b) possession of a smartphone! With judicious use of booking.com I found a small family-run hotel five minutes from the station in Girona. And when I arrived in Girona it was easy to get a replacement ticket for tomorrow morning's train. Sadly it was dark  by the time I got here, so I haven't seen much of the city. Dinner was a good pizza in a restaurant a three-minute walk from the hotel, and now I'm just hanging out in my small but comfortable room. Probably more comfortable than the icy cold house I was expecting to be in this evening.