HALF THE FUN IS GETTING THERE

Griffin at the top of Puerte de Atocha Train Station

I arrived at the San Francisco airport at 7AM on Tues. July 9, made the flight to Newark, but was almost sure I wouldn’t make the flight to Madrid from there—the flight was oversold as usual, and there was a long line of surprise stand-bys ahead of me (a number of pilots and flight attendants were going to a conference in Madrid). I sat in the boarding area, pad in hand, looking for places to spend the night in NY. I got into a conversation with a lovely Spanish biochemist also flying to Madrid for a science convention. When I told her I didn’t think I’d make the flight, she said, “No, you’ll be lucky; you’ll get on”. I thought, “Why not think positive?” and my mantra became “I’m luckyluckylucky”. Sure enough—last seat on the plane was mine once again. Overnight in the cheap seats, then a late arrival in Madrid. 

There’s a great shuttle from the airport to Puerte de Atocha Train Station for only 5 euro—the Airport Express (the website is in Spanish, but you can figure it out). I found out about this through the blog MadridMan.

Skylighted roof over the courtyard of Reina Sofia

Puerte de Atocha is close to the Prado and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (modern art, including Guernica by Picasso)—alas, I didn’t have enough time to tour before the next train. Because the flight was late, I missed the train for which I had already bought a ticket. Lucky again, I ended up buying the expensive flexible train ticket before I left because the Renfe Train website wouldn’t accept my credit card (not unusual, but the site is good for checking train schedules) and I had to buy through Palace Tours in New Jersey over the net. If you buy the ticket in Spain, it’s considerably cheaper, but I expected to make the original tight connection.

Puerte de Atocha

While bumbling around the multi-floored station in search of the right office to change my ticket, I saw a classic scam: a young, blond girl “fainted” in a crowd—recent news reports tell of Romanian gypsies dressed like westerners, pulling the old distraction number while pickpockets work the crowd in airport and train stations. They didn’t get me this time.

A 4 ½-hour train ride to Granada included a change and stop at Antequera Santa Ana, a beautifully designed modern station, empty, in the middle of the sparsely populated Toledo plain, scoured by a hot wind.

Nick was waiting in Granada, and we made the 45-minute drive into the Sierra Nevada mountains and the village of Orgiva. I took him out to the charming café Baraka for falafel.

The Alpujarra region surrounding Orgiva is very dry; we passed close to wind machines on the curving road. After dinner, a stunningly bumpy dirt road outside the village led to Nick’s adobe-and-timber casa. Just before we made to cross the stream to the house in the dark, we spied Ron who had arrived minutes before from southern France, a happy reunion ensued, and we spent the next several hours catching up.

Check out the video: https://vimeo.com/70760985