April 10th, 2003

So we wake up on time and have a lovely breakfast. The plan is to get out by 8:00, drive to the train station where my sister Karen, her husband Randy, and their two boys Sam and Will are scheduled to arrive at 8:58, then start our drive up to Pontevedra in northwestern Spain (just north of Vigo and south of Santiago).

When we leave the apartment, Vicente and Berta call out to us from the 7th floor window (8th floor by U.S. terms, in Europe there is a ground floor before the 1st) and tell us that we have forgotten the Chorizo and other items that they had packed for us. So Vicente tosses the baggie down and, by startling chance (it seemed highly improbable), the bag gets caught in the branches perhaps 30 feet above us. I get out a Ziploc I have with some lotion and deodorant, which I figure is compact and heavy enough, and toss it up to dislodge the most excellent chorizo. As you can guess, there are soon some toiletries keeping the food company up in the branches. We all have a good laugh, but time is running out, so we leave the industrious Vicente to rescue the trapped items as we leave for other parts. (A sad note: I had a wonderful series of photos showing this sequence of events, including one of the chorizo coming down–and they appear to be lost. Ah, well….)

My father and I navigate successfully to the airport to discover two things: the Hertz rental van we got has a near-flat on the back right side, and my sister’s train is late by three hours (a train worker’s strike somewhere in Spain, apparently). So my father and I take advantage of the time to exchange the rental car at the airport and then go back to Berta and Vicente’s to see if the bags have been brought down from the branches yet. Vicente has approached his 3rd-floor neighbor and convinced him that deodorant is hanging outside his window, and has successfully gotten the chorizo down, but apparently the toiletries are all too happy where they are and refuse to budge. OK by me, the chorizo is great stuff.

We get back to Chamartin Station just as Karen and the gang walk out, and after various small chores and trips, we get it all together and are off to the province of Galicia. We stop for lunch (not the best place we ate to be certain) and carsickness (not necessarily cause-and-effect) along the way, and eventually arrive in Pontevedra; I’ll spare you the details of how Spanish highways do not mark exits or provide directions well, suffice to say we had a few small detours and asked for directions a lot, but by God, we got there.

Then began what we later jokingly dubbed the “death march.”

Understand that we were all traveled out. I had just flown from Japan, had gotten just six hours sleep (four hours the night before), was jet-lagged, dehydrated and felt like I was getting a sore throat. My father, having arrived a few hours before me (though he always upgrades to first class, so he was in better shape), was not in too much better shape–but Karen and her family were the most haggard, having traveled from Paris by train from 7pm to noon, then directly piled into a crowded van for an 8-hour trip–well, you can imagine how everyone felt, especially the kids, who were amazingly well-behaved throughout.

We expected to just meet and say hello to our cousins (children of my grandfather’s siblings and their families), get a quick bite to eat and then get right to bed. But the cousins, being very generous and proud of their hometown, wanted to take us for a bite to eat at one of their houses, just five minutes away on foot, they said. But the cousins decided on their own to take us on the tour of town just then, without waiting for the next day when we planned, and before we knew what was happening, we had taken half an hour to walk in a very roundabout fashion through the streets of the old town. I was exhausted and feeling sick, but was not in nearly as bad shape as my nephews, who despite their good behavior were starting to fall apart. Finally we got through to our relatives that this was not the time for the tour, and at least the my sister and her kids got guided back to the hotel. My father and I were taken then to the apartment, where we found a several-course meal waiting for us. It was lovely, but we really were not in shape for it, especially not the great deal of wine they wanted us to try. Begging off for a phone call from my mother we were expecting (truth), we walked back to the hotel, unfortunately for me, at a frantic pace (we were late for the call).

By the time we got back, I was practically dead on my feet. Things had gone rather unwell that first day and evening. But fortunately, the worst was over, and the trip got very much better from then on.

— Photos from the day are thumbnailed on the Day 2 Photo Page.

Coming Soon: Day Three, where we actually see stuff.