Stuck in limbo

  Valença, Portugal
Thursday, April 22, 2004

So I'm finding that I really dislike the transportation system in the northern half of Portugal. My last update was in Èvora, a cool small town east of Lisbon. From there I went north to a couple small towns that are both situated on hills with castles on top (Castelo de Vide and Marvão). Castelo didn't take too long to see then I had to wait a few hours in the afternoon for the bus to Marvão.

Castelo de Vide

I arrived in Marvão in the evening and it's really small so only had a few pensaos to choose from (so prices higher) - I was debating just finding a spot in the castle to sleep, but found a pensao that wasn't too bad for price.

Marvao

Getting out of Marvão proved most difficult. The local train station is about 10km away so you just can't walk and check out the timetable (and the tourist office didn't know), so I took a bus out there in the morning...next train not 'til 5:45pm. So I waited a couple hours in the small town of Beira and took a bus to Portalegre, which is of reasonable size, but their train station is also several km outside of town. I saw they had a bus to Porto leaving in about 45min so I just took that not wanting to be stuck waiting at another train station. I arrived around 10:30pm and thought I saw there was a train north to Valença in an hour so I went looking for food (only had a couple snacks all day...starving). I wandered a bit and caught the scent of grease and found McDonald's - yes, I broke down and ate there...I wasn't in the mood for deciphering menus and only getting tapas. I went back to the train station and saw that the Valença train listed was for an arrival so I had to find a place to stay. Found a reasonable pensao and wandered the city a bit to see squares and churches.

Today I'm trying to get to Santiago de Compostela...not sure if it's going to happen. There was an early morning train to Vigo (changing point for Santiago) and an evening train - information was closed when I arrived last night so didn't find this out 'til this morning. I just took the first train north to Viana do Castelo, hung out a bit then caught a train to Valença right on the border. I was hoping there'd be more buses and trains from here since it's close, but no such luck. No bus or train to Vigo for six hours...and even then not sure about connection to Santiago. But the bus station does have free Internet access!!! :) Woo-hoo!

I think the transportation system in Spain is better so the next few days won't be so bad...but some of the travel times will still be several hours.