Day #2: Twenty-nine hour journey back to Spain!

Hello from Palencia, Spain!

No, it wasn't on the itinerary but we are here anyway!

We had planned to be further down the road on the expected second 2.5 hour train trip across the west of Spain but it just didn't happen. We had booked a hotel tonight in Ponferrada, but planes, trains, delays and cancellations prevented us from making our goals. So we had to pay for a second hotel for tonight. But after being awake for 30 hours, we don't mind  camping out here. Well, it's not exactly camping out...it's a Marriot. Nothing says "welcome back to Spain" like Señor Marriot. 

We found out Tuesday night that our Wednesday afternoon flight from Detroit to Newark, NJ was cancelled due to weather. We called United and booked an earlier flight. Thank you to my wonderful nephew, John, for being so flexible and changing his schedule to accommodate being our chauffeur to the airport. Then that flight was delayed until 8:00pm and we would miss our connecting flight in jersey to Madrid, Spain. 

Fortunately the good people at United airlines diverted us from going to New Jersey to going straight to Paris, France!  Needless to say, we missed that bad weather in Jersey!  From Paris we had a 2 hour lay over to Madrid.  When we got to Spain we found out that today is a national holiday (like Labor Day but without the parades). All the trains to ponferado were sold out. Bummer. 

Luckily, there was one pokey slow train that the Spaniards refuse to ride so we boarded that half empty train for 4 hours (normally a 90 minute trip) to reach this town of Palencia. I've noticed that there are no Americans here and even less tourists. 

So we checked in and went across the street to get some dinner. It was a busy bar with friendly locals. A nice lady saw me taking pictures and offered to take our picture. So here we are celebrating our safe arrival back to the Camino. 

Tomorrow we have train tickets to Ponferado where we will start the Camino trail on Saturday morning. 

Thanks for following our blog. It's really fun to know our friends and family care enough to go on this Camino with us. 

Buenas noches,

Mary & Sam