Day 35 - Cordoba

I woke up to the sound of rain.  Emily and I spent the day exploring the city.  There were no other major sites besides tapas bars.  We got lost in narrow streets between white buildings with flower pots hanging off the walls.  The streets are all short and run diagonally, and the longer ones change names every block.  Getting oriented was very hard.  When packing, I seriously considered packing an umbrella or some of the other rain gear I had.  Then I decided that I wouldn’t need it in Spain.  Wrong.

We got held up at a restaurant (getting the bill takes an eternity in Spain) and ended up running to the train station to catch our train to Cadiz.  At 6:18, Emily asks in frantic Spanish if we can still get tickets for the 6:15 train.  She gets a negative response.  The next train to Cadiz isn’t for another two hours, so we cross the street and check out the bus station.  Buses to Cadiz typically have to go back to Sevilla for a connection, but we were lucky to find a bus to Cadiz-San Fernando leaving in 30 minutes.

We bought tickets and relaxed.  The bus showed up, and we got comfortable for our 4-hour ride.  We both fell into a deep, deep sleep.  I woke up only briefly when we started making stops toward the end of the night.  During one of these moments, I saw something about Cadiz outside the window.  I asked Emily, and she said that Cadiz was on that island over there, and I went back to slumberland.

We get out at the last stop, and we were definitely on the wrong island.  We had ended up in San Fernando, and it was about 11 at night.  We stopped the few passerby’s on the street for help.  When we said Cadiz, they widened their eyes and said, “ahora?!”  And San Fernando seemed to be some sort of transportation wasteland with no train station or bus station or stations of any kind.  We walked down totally deserted streets, following train tracks that soon dead-ended.  In final desperation, we asked a barman who was closing up for the night.  He used a lot of hand gestures to point us to a bus stop where supposedly there was a bus imminently departing for Cadiz.  We powerwalked the whole way.

After a left turn, a right at the turnaround, and a walk past the police station, we saw a bus with “Cadiz” on it.  We got on, and 4 minutes later, it departed.  We were relieved, but we still weren’t sure where we were.  We knew only the major bus station right beside the ship, but these buses stopped on the streets which we haven’t explored yet.  I saw some signs for “Puerta” and we stayed on.  The bus made a turn, and suddenly the bright lights from our ship were visible.  Emily cried out, “The ship, it’s our ship, I see the ship!”

We get off, tell our story to a few students we pass on the way, and finally get onto the ship we call home.