Friday, 9 October, 2015
Well, the tour is over and we will start on the road home. We meet a couple of the group at Breakfast but then have to head off to the Train station to return to Madrid and then Melbourne. There are no pictures for this day – the reason is below. Why was it a bad day – there were two things major that went wrong.
Montezuma’s Revenge
I mentioned that two of the party had missed last night’s dinner and two left in the middle. The reason was “Montezuma’s Revenge”, food poisoning leading to vomiting and/or diarrhoea. Another one or two had gone down over night but we had escaped it. WRONG!
As we were waiting for our train at Malaga Station, it struck Julie who suffered all the way to Madrid on the train trip. The good thing was that it only lasted a few hours and she was pretty much good to go after we arrived in Madrid. Me, I missed out totally.
I have not heard from everyone, but it would seem that at least half of our group got it in some way. There is a common vote that it was caused by the Sardines from yesterday. I am not so sure, could it have been the raw prawns or clams at the cooking school? Not a nice thing at all.
Stolen Phone
While out for dinner in Madrid I was taking photos with the phone and had (foolishly) left it on the table. A guy came up and spread a big piece of paper with words on it which we assumed was begging for money. Instead he used it to purloin my phone away. Moral: don’t leave your phone or other valuables out in the open and if anybody spreads a paper or newspaper in front of you, beware – something tricky is going to happen.
We talked with some police who drove by afterwards. They said they were aware of the guy but could really do nothing. They suggested we go to the main police station, which Julie did. They eventually agreed to take a report, which really won’t do us any good because the Travel Insurance company will create massive barriers for claiming it. She did not return until after midnight.
One corollary that occurred is that our Internet access went down in the evening and we were unable to advise Vodafone of the theft until the next afternoon. There was one good thing that had happened though. I had not uploaded my photos for over a week but was lucky enough to have done that in the afternoon when we got to Madrid, otherwise my Blog would have been quite empty of colour during the second half of the tour. However, the lost phone is the reason that there are no photos for this day as I was using the camera on the phone.
Otherwise
Forgetting Julie’s problems, the train trip was quite pleasant. We first went to Cordoba and then onto Madrid. During the first leg, first class again, we could only get orange juice but the second leg there were drinks and food albeit some ordinary sandwiches. At Madrid Station we take a taxi to our apartment and arrived earlier than expected.
The owner’s partner met us pretty much straight away and showed us to the apartment, helping the bags up the few flights of stairs to/from the Elevators. It was a good size, fully functional apartment with a large bedroom which makes it easier to layout the suitcases.
The area of Madrid we were in was good and we settled on an OK restaurant although I can remember little about it because of the phone thingo.
Epilogue
The next morning we go out to get some Brekky and end up in a place in Plaza Mayor. The Plaza is undergoing renovations all around the outside but it did not stop the restaurants from operating. I had a relatively crummy meal, fitting that the last meal on the trip would be the worst.
Back at the apartment, we meet the owner Kristian who seemed to be a very nice guy. He gave us a great rating on Airbnb as guests. We donated to him some leftover Brandy that Julie had picked up on the trip. Gudonya, Kristian.
Link to Kristian
We went out to the Airport relatively early, by taxi, since we may as well. We went into the lounge where we had been a couple of years before. It was quite nice with appropriate drinks and food. I am able to get onto Vodafone via Skype to cancel / disable the stolen phone.
We eventually get on the plane to travel to MEL, gee it is a long way / time. We stop again in Doha and the lounge there is very impressive. Back on the plane and another 13+ hours to MEL. Thus Business Class layout for Doha to MEL was not as nice as MAD to Doha. We got the bad seat 5B (last time it was 5J) – try to avoid these if you are ever in the same situation as the seat is effectively in the middle of the aisle and there is a lot of traffic going to the loo. Still it wasn’t that bad and I did get some sleep, but as I said above, gee it is a long flight.
At MEL at 11:00 PM, there are several other planes that have landed ahead of us. This meant that although our bags came off quickly, we were in a long queue to escape – my fault we did not use our priority pass. Still we exit without any checks and our friend Gary and daughter Jess pick us up in our car. After the drive home, we get there after midnight – with a couple of bruises on the last day but otherwise safe and sound and glad of a great trip.
The next Post will be contributions from other members of the group. We asked them to send us “Top 10” photos which I will be putting in that Post without censorship.
