Well, here we are, still not in Denia, and today was our day to check in. One exciting thing -- we wanted to let the Ogisaka Garden people in Denia know that we wouldn’t be checking in today, but we have a terrible time trying to use the phone systems in the various countries. David had said that if we are online, the computer phone can be used to make international calls here, so we tried it and were able to get through to our Denia hotel and they noted on their books that we would check in tomorrow instead of today. Wow, what exciting technology!
It was good that our train didn´t leave until later, because it gave us some time to walk around Avignon and see the old walls (They call them ramparts).
We saw some trees that were different than we´ve seen before. The young ones have smooth bark, but as the trees grow older, their bark gets very interesting.
The train rides today were easy and interesting. We were along the coast with a sandy beach much of the day. Crops, especially vineyards of grapes and orange groves were all along the way. We surmise that Valencia oranges originate in Valencia, Spain. In much of this area, the land is quite flat and productive. Terraced vineyards often have very old rock walls edging the terraces. Ruins of old buildings, castles, walls, and deserted rock/stone homes dot the countryside. We had a bit of a scare leaving Port Bou in France headed for Barcelona. We got on the train for Barcelona at the time listed, but the train went back north through the tunnel we had entered on the way into Port Bou. It went to the town at the north end of the tunnel and stopped. Everyone on the train got off. We asked a man that got off from the front (engineer?), and he said it was the right train to Barcelona. It was hard to stay on the train when no one else was on it, but we stayed, and the train went back to Port Bou and more people got on and we headed on toward Barcelona. We don’t know what the deal was at first with our train, but we’re happy that we remained on the train even though we were the only ones on it for awhile!
Two recent graduates from Purdue, one from Kentucky and the other from Chicago, sat across from us on the train from Barcelona to Valencia. They are staying at a Youth Hostel in Valencia. They lent us their phone to call their hostel, but it was full for tonight. They gave us two other hostel phone numbers from a travel guide book they had, but we couldn’t make the phone connect.
Our train got to Valencia at 11 p.m. We put our bags in a locker at the train station and went out to walk around town for awhile, planning to probably sleep at the train station until morning. However, according to the Internet, our bus doesn’t leave until 2:30 tomorrow afternoon, so we decided to stay at the Hotel Sorolla in Valencia.
Well, Italy is not the only "kissy" country:
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