thetravellingvagrant - Tumblr blog

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

Here's a fuckin' cat to finish.

#travelling #vagrant #travel #photography #pet #cat #simone #stupid

4 notes · View notes

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

Day 14 (and a bit of 15): In Which Time Has No Meaning Any More, Have I Always Been In Torrellano? Will I Always Be Here? (no, and its only been 12 hours)

Today marked the last full day of, honestly, a reasonably sedate and okay trip. My plans were, by necessity, to take it easy and do very, very little of any significant blogworthy interest.

I begun the day by clinging as hard as I could do my private room, which I had use of until noon and which, also, I had really begun to despise. It was cramped, hot and someone had etched a little cartoon monster into one of the blacked out windows, which the hostel had elected to simply cover with a piece of cardboard, haphazardly taped over the frame. It was, though, also the only place I knew where it would be permissable to walk around in just some pants for the next little while, so I stayed.

12 rolled around as it usually does and with it, I bid goodbye to the cleaner whom I had been awkwardly bumping into in the corridor about six times a day, since I arrived and made the relatively brief jaunt to Alicante’s big nice train station. I had booked myself a room in a very expensive yet not even that good looking hotel near the airport, in the nearby town of Torrellano and so, needed to navigate one last bit of Spanish public transport and let me tell ya, this was the most baffling of all.

I had thought that because Alicante is 97% English expats named Terry that it would be a piece of piss, though thisnwpild prove to be my undoing. Or not my undoing - I did do it, but it was annoying, is what I'm getting at.

I approached a ticket machine and pretty swiftly punched in my intended destination. Torrellano is about 15 minutes and two stops away from Alicante and I knew there were like three trains and hour that went there, so you can imagine my surprise when the machine proudly told me, like a child that had painted a nice picture of a horse, that I had missed the only train of the day that was scheduled to visit.

That couldn't be right - Google was telling me an entirely different story and I trust Google with my life, so jog on, machine, actually. I reasoned that it was probably just the train line that owned these particular machines that only ran one journey a day there and tried a different set of machines.

These machines did not operate in English. They said they did - I could pretty the ‘change language’ button, however all that did was change the language of the language select screen and absolutely nothing else, so that was cool.

I stood there, dumfounded, phone in hand, slowly Google translating everything on the screen to figure out what I was missing as a queue of mildly irritated Spaniards formed behind me and eventually figured out, by some - if I may say absolutely incredibly stroke of luck and vagrant’s intuition that the option I needed to press was “simple”, although the process has been anything but. I found my destination, selected my fare,scanned my card and…waited. For ages. Before the machine told me my transaction was cancelled. Well shit. I'd have to try the neighbouring machine. This was my last option before I had to speak to a person, which essentially meant this was my last option before I walked.

I realised, upon using the second machine that what I had been doing wrong was that not only did I have to tap my card on the contactless reader, I also had to put my pin code in, making it a two step verification and security process to buy a train ticket for two euros fifty, which, I will be honest, did seem a little like overkill.

Regardless, I had my ticket in hand and so I sat for a bit, until my gate was announced, then quite easily found Mt correct train and sat on it for a bit until it was time to get off.

Torrellano, I have to say, is a bit horrid. It looks a bit like a nuclear bomb had gone off in it thirty years ago and was only just getting round to recovering.

We don't take kindly to yer types, roun' here.

I sat on a park bench eating a pretty terrible lunch, writing my blog and watching the freaks pass until three o'clock rolled around and I could finally check in to my - and I do have to stress this - very expensive but not even that nice hostel, which, to gain access to, you had to walk through the back room of a neighbouring restaurant in a brazen attempt to cross-advertise and which, surely, is an immediate sign of quality for both establishments.

I dealt, curtly with my first and only unpleasant receptionist of the trip - of course it was the one in the proper hotel - and immediately locked myself in my very expensive but honestly not even that nice room, which has a very expensive and begrudgingly quite pleasant en suite bathroom. It was only Three-ish, but I decided to just hunker down for the night rather than explore the local area and risking all the associated radiation burns that go with such an endeavor. I sat then, until around 10ish, at which point I decided to go to sleep, in preparation for my ludicrous 3am wake up the next day.

I may well have decided to go to sleep, however the occupants of the neighbouring room weren't going to make that easy, staying up, as they did, until 1 in the morning, shouting, banging (doors, not genitals) and generally being as loud and distracting as they possibly could without physically being in my room. It's fine. I would probably only need two hours of sleep anyway.

I awoke two hours and fifteen minutes later in a nightmarish haze of hair, limbs and dry mouth, in a panic, as my phone's alarm went off at the maximum volume I could set, in an attempt not to sleep through it. I peeled myself off of my now very sweaty sheets, hoisted my bag onto my back and, grumbling more deeply and intensely than I have, possibly ever before in my life, set out into the night/early morning.

There were no buses to the airport at this time so I had decided to walk. It was only a 50 minute journey and I'm sure my bag wouldn't hurt me too badly in the process, so whatever. It was fine. Who needs shoulders anyway? Not me.

The walk, I have to say, was the single most terrifying point of this trip. Only the first ten or so minutes of it were furnished by street lights and upon crossing the train tracks leading out of time, I realized I would have to make the rest of the substantial walk in pretty close to complete darkness

How did I not die

…and without a discernable pavement. Excellent.

I took my earphones out, and cautiously, slowly, began trudging along the muddy, grassy verge beside the motorway; a vagrant classic.

Ultimately though, while harrowing, it was fine and not even that bad and frankly, a big fuss over nothing - I have to say that so I don't get shouted at by people who inexplicably care if I get hit by a car - and soon found the departure lounge of the airport.

I had been warned by my ticket to be there no later than 4:30am because “the airport was likley to be very busy”, so obviously it was entirely empty and I breezed through security in literal seconds, with effing she's to spare. That was fine, though. Better early and bored than late and panicking, I suppose.

I sat, then, early and bored, for what actually only ended up being a few minutes, by my gate as the airline (Ryanair again, who can, and this is true, get fucked) began loading us onboard at around five to five, with our estimated departure time being 6am. Or, I say boarded! What they actually did was make us all get out of our seats so we could stand up instead, holding heavy, unpleasant bags instead of laying them on the floor and waiting for nearly 45 minutes until the queue actually began to move. Superb, as ever, O’Leary.

Once - finally - on board, I took my seat next to an okay woman and a terrible man who snored when awake, had warts all over his fingers and rested his arms in his tummy in such a way that when he breathed, the expending fat would push his elbows out over the edge of the arm rests and into my ribs. It's a good thing this flight was only…/Three and a half hours?!/…/delayed to four hours!?/

Four and a bit hours of disjointed uncomfortable micro-sleep and barely cognisant awake bits later and with genuinely slightly sore ribs from fatty wart man's inexplicably respiratory arms, I was in my final destination of the trip, dropping 26 degrees of temperature in the space of half a day in the process.

I'm writing this bit on the flygbuss to Göteborg city, with less than three hours of sleep and a missed dinner and breakfast under my belt, so I feel like this is as good a place as any to curtail the blog for this year - save, perhaps, a small epilogue about the people who annoyed me on the flight home - as the rest would, and I cannot stress this enough, just be a list of the incredibly unhealthy food I would have eaten over the next four days.

The moral, then, of this trip - and each trip *does* have a moral, is quite simply that Ryanair truly can get absolutely fucked in all holes, while trapped in a bin.

#travelling #vagrant #travel #photography #alicante #spain #ryanair #fuck ryanair #even though there was basically no problem this time fuck ryanair

1 note · View note

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

Fanny and wanka

#childish

0 notes

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

Alicante dump 2

#travelling #vagrant #travel #photography #alicante #spain

1 note · View note

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

Alicante dump 1

#travelling #vagrant #travel #photography #spain #alicante #santa barbera

1 note · View note

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

Day 13: In Which I Get Sunburned In December

Today was the only full day in Alicante that my schedule would afford me and, it being the last real location of the trip and a bit shit to boot, I decided to make it a nice, easy one. I was to have a bit of a bibble around a nice beach, then get a souvenir or two and a bit of food, then go home to enjoy my prison cell for the night

Pictured: El Porridge

I was excited to not be grinding myself into a thin paste by walking loads and loads and loads, to be honest, and so I set off into the city with a spring in my step. Metaphorically, not literally, I had neither the requisite energy, nor joy to skip.

As I left the hostel, it struck me that it was really fucking hot, today. Mid-20s hot. And bright. It's a good thing I managed to forget my shades but remember my incredibly heavy winter jacket. Absolutely nailed it.

Regardless, I pressed on with my day, blind and sweating and realized as I traversed Alicante by day that it wasn't *that* bad, here. Yes, it had a sort of…stupid vibe to it, as places often do when populated exclusively by English ex-pats named Sharon, but away from the more jubilant touristy areas, in the (frankly blinding) light of day and without even an inkling to visit a burger king, in which it looked like a dirty bomb has been detonated, the city was alright! Not brilliant or anything; there was still irritations like the absolute blight of leather faced old men, dresses like off duty sailors, walking around narrow, crowded streets at .3 miles an hour, clasping both hands in one another behind their backs

Hurry. UPPPPP.

But a far cry from the place I had experienced last night where I genuinely worried I was going to get robbed, headbutted or coerced into going to a nightclub in the ten minutes I was outside my accommodation.

I made my way through the…slightly unremarkable city and eventually managed to locate one of it's many beaches. It was busy. Perhaps not as busy as, say, a shit aquarium, but definitely enough to make me curl my lip and be slightly surprised, given that it was December.

Scowling, however, I angrily removed my shoes and had an absolutely furious walk across the warm sand which I seathingly enjoyed very, very much.

I then found a nice tree which I say under for ages and ages, listening to a good podcast and nonchalantly burying both my feet in the sand

...Two weeks 'til Christmas!

And then having a bit of a paddle

You're welcome.

As I have no doubt you can tell, I was thoroughly revelling in my easy day, enjoying, more than most things I have experienced and likely will ever experience, the opportunity to have a stress free sit down and a splash. I was having an easy day and no one - not you, not god, not my mum, was going to stop me.

Anyway, then I saw this big cunt and had to climb it immediately

...Well, shit.

Excited to just enough of a degree for it to be a reasonable replacement for actual energy, I began my ascent up the big boi hill, the route up which varied wildly and seemingly at will between tarmacked road, cobbled path and incredibly dangerous crumbling cliff edge, having an excellent time trying - and failing - to attract the routes manky, scabby cats to have a good old rub around my legs or sit on my lap.

This was as close as they let me get.

Eventually, after - it must be said - a *lot* of trial and error, I found myself on the main road up to the top of the hill and the castle which lay upon it. It was then a car pulled up along side me. A man leaned out his window, which is usually always a preamble to a genuinely dreadful thing happening.

“Ello mate, can I take my car up there?”

I took my headphones out of my ears.

“Oh, I have no idea.”

“Ohh, you speak English yeh?”

I told him I did

“Are you from the UK, yeh?” He asked, in a thick Mancunian roadman drawl

“Yeah.”

“You from Manchester, too?”

I told him I was from Glasgow

“Yeh? You don't speak Scottish tho, innit.”

I chuckled, out of awkwardness more than amusement

“...so can I take my car up there, yeh?”

I told him again that I had no idea. I did note that there was a car park right next to where he had stopped which seemed to point to him not being able to. He surveyed the hill.

“...fuck man, that's a lot of walking tho, innit.”

It wasn't. We were very near the top of the hill. Five minutes to the castle, tops. I told him the view would probably be worth it

“Hmm…” he pondered. “Nah, I'll leave it” and with that turned his car around and sped back down the hill, his beats blaring into the distance, leaving me absolutely bewildered to my very core at the whole experience.

Anyway *I* made the effort to walk at a comparatively shallow incline for five minutes and was duly rewarded with some absolutely stonking views for my exertion.

...To be fair, it *was* a lot of walking

I wandered around the pleasingly sparse hilltop - most likely due to there needing to be the slightest bit of effort made to actually reach the place - taking pictures and fighting off the intrusive thoughts demanding to know if I'd survive if I jumped off the ramparts

...Probably not.

But before long had exhausted my interest in being up really high like an eagle or a lost kite and descended down the opposing side of the mound.

The descent was almost as good as the ascent, despite the creeping presence of touristy shit edging in more and more, the further down I went, and offered comparably lovely vistas to enjoy

And soon deposited me back in the city, proper where I limped first to a souvenir shop and then to a big supermarket where I bought some kind of microwavable potato and onion omelette which I actually really enjoyed despite it looking like a fried sick patty and having the texture of a flu sneeze.

Finally, I managed to get back to my apartment - my easy day having turned into a close-to six hour excursion which turned my pedometer red, again - where I ate my sicky dinner and enjoyed the customary nap and nibble before turning in, on preparation for the last day of the trip on which I wasn't just going to be eating nice pizza and tolerating okay friendship in a smelly room with all it's blinds pulled down.

#travelling #vagrant #travel #photography #spain #santa Barbera #alicante #hill #vistas #views

2 notes · View notes

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

I award my time in Granada a 7/10. Enjoyable, though probably, in only the exact quantity in which I took it in; like eating baby bear's porridge.

0 notes

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text

Day 12: In Which I Stare Directly Into The Void For Five And A Half Hours

I was due to leave Granada today, with my bus set to depart at the comfortable time of 2pm. While incredibly relaxed, that did mean that I was sort of left in travel-limbo, with my check-out time of the hostel being 11am and my bags being to heavy and cumbersome to do anything of any substantial worth with what time I had spare.

I clung to my bed for literally every second I could, that morning, only finally letting it go when the cleaning lady entered the room and I had to pretend I was just about to leave anyway. I then turned my key in and asked if I could sit in the common room for a bit which, thankfully, I was allowed to do. Unthankfully, however, there was someone else in the room when I got there. One other person. One other incredibly quiet person, which meant I could neither relax in solitude nor blend into a loud crowd and vanish like a social chameleon with a slightly shorter tongue. No, it appeared me and my erstwhile roommate were to sit in incredibly awkward silence for the next hour. And so we did.

Exactly sixty minutes later and not an excruciating, unbearable second longer, I left. That was the exact point at which the other guy in the room chose to leave, also, meaning we both had to silently, awkwardly exit together. Perfect. What a lovely experience. I bet he was getting the same bus as me, too.

I made the fairly simple jaunt across the city via typically over-subscribed tram back to the park in which I ate lunch the first day I was here and…ate lunch again. It’s a really good park, to be fair - or I suppose it’s actually quite a bad park, but it definitely was close to where I had to be and ultimately, isn’t that the true prize?

After another long, nice sit, I went to the bus station to locate my sweaty, cramped chariot to my next destination of Alicante. I checked the departure board and…it wasn’t up there. Nor was the ultimate destination of Barcelona. No bus on that board appeared to match anywhere I was due to go. Confused, I downloaded all three of the, frankly, useless Alsabus apps to see if they had any information. They did not; neither did my ticket.

With only around twenty minutes left until I was going to be left stranded in - to be fair - quite a nice city I decided to suck it up, as appears to have been my way on this trip and ask at the Alsabus information kiosk, which I approached boldly only for the lady at the desk to see me - physically, actually see me approaching - and pull the shutter down, closing shop for the day. Superb. Looks like I was on my own.

With no alternative now open to me, I decided to throw myself on the mercy of the bus number, which was one of the three pieces of information I had printed on my ticket. Mine was bus number 1.

I found bus number 1 and…it was going to Madrid, not Barceona.

“Maybe it doesn’t say Barcelona because it’s listing the next stop but only the next significant stop, which is Madrid, not Alicante despite them both being huge and also Madrid is in the wrong direction but I presume that means the route just goes through Alicante first and then winds back towards Madrid, before it goes to Barcelona. That makes sense. That is Occham’s razor in action. I am very clever.”

A moment passed

“...No, that’s really fucking stupid.”

I decided, on the off-chance, however, to ask the driver. I approached him and showed him my ticket.

“Is this for this bus?” I asked in my loudest, clearest English

He looked at the ticket

“Si? Es Uno.” he replied, looking at me like I was a big fucking moron who couldn’t identify the number 1.

“Oh, gracias” I answered, adding a little Spanish flourish to the conversation to let them know that I was merely inept in their language, rather than willfully uncultured, before putting my luggage in the hold (for free - fuck you, Ryanair) and taking my place in the queue.

Eventually, I reached the front of what I do have to say, for mainland Europe, was a very neat queue indeed. The driver scanned my ticket and I stepped onto the bus.

“EHH EHH” the ticket-reader screeched, like I had gotten an answer wrong on family fortunes, or perhaps had said something with which Stone Cold Steve Austin had taken umbridge in an otherwise polite conversation.

The driver looked at his machine.

“...Alicante?” he asked.

“Si?”

He said something in Spanish which I did not understand, though instinctively knew meant that I was on the wrong-ass bus. I told him I didn’t understand. He repeated it again in Spanish, this time more patronising, like I was the idiot. A passenger behind me translated.

“He is saying platform 20”.

Right. Okay. I quickly grabbed my luggage out of the hold and sprinted (sprant?) to platform 20, where the bus wasn’t - It was at 19, instead - starting to realise why Alsabus has such terrible reviews, as I went.

I stood in the now incredibly short queue for bus 52 - not bus 1, it should be noted - which, as it turned out was the correct one and took my seat literal seconds before the thing pulled out of the station. Incredibly irked at Alsa as I was and in particular that one driver who cost me seven minutes of time I only just barley had at my disposal, waiting in the incorrect queue at his say-so, I was at least on the right bus, which was the longest journey I would have to undertake on this trip and also the most expensive and difficult to reschedule, so ultimately would describe myself as tipping more towards relieved, than furious. Plus I had a window seat and that was lit.

The journey, though weirdly arduous for only a five hour excursion, passed almost entirely without incident. I don’t even think I moved for the entire thing, if I’m being really honest. I wrote blogs and listened to podcasts until around six thirty. I was due to arrive at 7pm and my hostel had sprung on me, a day prior, that their reception only stayed open until 8 and if I arrived after that I’d have to pay a 15 euro surcharge which they did not mention on any of their literature and which I’m fairly sure is mildly illegal to do. Regardless, I was to arrive at 7. So it was fine.

Until we hit the traffic jam, which set us back by 20 minutes.

“Okay, it’s only a 20 minute walk to the hostel, that’s fine, I’ll still make it before eight” I reasoned to myself, before I realised that we had also been running behind schedule even before we hit traffic. Rad.

We arrived in the city slightly closer to eight than seven which meant, far from the leisurely stroll to my next accommodation which I had envisaged, I faced, instead, a sweaty, wheezy walk/run/skip through the centre of town, which was good and also ideal.

Fortunately, though, I once again made it to my destination with literal minutes to spare and, while quite annoyed again, was quickly pacified when two people who were in front of me in the queue to check in were moved aside by the very friendly receptionist to bring me forward because I had a reservation and they didn’t. Good logistics go a long way to calming me down in almost any circumstances. They’re like incense to me.

And let me tell you, it was a good thing that I got seen to first as the two girls and one guy who stood before me in that queue continued to have a blazing row with the receptionist or possibly just among themselves that I could hear, at least, for the following 25 minutes. Seemingly upset that the hostel was too expensive and that the receptionist wouldn’t allow them to book a single room for three people.

They were still arguing by the time I left to get dinner on my second lovely cheat day of the trip which I spent going, again, to a nearby Burger King. Everything else in the area as listed on just eat looked absolutely horrible. Sue me.*

*to be fair, the Burger King was also horrible and had been described as “literally the worst Burger King in the world” by no less than three google reviews out of the first five.

I trudged back through Alicante which did seem sort of horrid - I noted that it felt like Glasgow at 2am on a Saturday, when in reality it was 8:30 on a monday night; christ knows what it would be like at a weekend and I was glad I wasn't going to find out - and eventually re-reached my hostel

The girls and guy of earlier argument fame now stood outside the building a full hour later than they first entered it. One of them was crying profusely and making unintelligible howling noises. Fuck knows what was going on there but it absolutely did match the vibe of the city, so points for that.

Unwilling and unable to help and unhappy at the thought of my milkshake melting, I passed them with a raised eyebrow to acknowledge that I had also passed them earlier - which seemed only polite - and went inside to eat. From my room, as I did, I *think* I heard them come back in and eventually manage to book a room or two for themselves. Possibly. I’m not sure. I had my earphones in and didn’t care, so it could have gone either way, to be honest.

With all the processed gristle and drama I could stomach now nestling in my stomach/psyche and without having had my customary afternoon siesta I decided that I was too exhausted to do anything too substantial and so fucked myself straight to bed, fairly early, and done a big, rubbish, inadequate, disjointed sleep. Luxury.

#travelling #vagrant #travel #photography #bus #spain #granada #alicante

1 note · View note

thetravellingvagrant · 4 months

Text