Tuna
Wednesday 07 May 2014
The Good – I had a big bowl of melted cheese for entre last night.
The Bad – The Albatross’ phone rang at 3.30am. It then rang again at 4.00am, so I turned it off.
The Good – The bank had sent an email to The Albatross asking if he’s been trying to withdraw money in Barcelona without any luck. [He’d forgotten to activate his new credit card after he left the last one in an ATM machine in Colombo airport last year.] After skyping the bank, the nice bank lady fixed it and didn’t cancel the card.
The Good – The Albatross was able withdraw money from the bank. We caught a taxi to the car rental place and picked up our car and were on the road by 10am.
The Bad – Karen (the GPS) wasn’t working properly and wasn’t finding the roads. This was a problem as we wanted to use her to help us find our way around Spain.
The Good – I had loaded the Google maps of our route on to my tablet, so we had some sort of map to help us get out of Barcelona. After about an hour and a half we decided to stop for a coffee and swap drivers. Good news, the service station had free Wi-Fi, so The Albatross downloaded the Spain maps again for Karen. We then were able to load the maps on to Karen in the car park. Excellent, all fixed and we knew where we were going. Back on the road at 12noon.
The “I only drove for 4 minutes”. – That’s an exaggeration, I think it was only for 2 minutes and about 500m.
The Bad – I shredded a tyre at 120km/hr. In hindsight, I think some bastard let the air out our tyre when we were parked at the service station. If it was a puncture, it wouldn’t go flat in less than 30mins and then shred when accelerating on the autobahn. Eventually I realised that we had a flat, the car was making bad noises and the car was jerking all over the road. Glad I kept it on the road and didn’t slam into the metal barrier.
The Bad – The Albatross had to change the tyre on the road verge of an autobahn with cars and truck whizzing past.
The Good – It was on the right hand side and not the left side (road side). Also we had a spare tyre and not a can of goo, the tyre was beyond goo.
The not so Good – The spare, although looking like a full sized tyre, had a big sticker on it saying to only go at 80km/h. So we spent 20km on the autobahn doing 80km/hr.
The Good – Looking at Karen we found a ‘vehicle repair and parts’ shop. Unfortunately this was in a small town and we spent an hour being sent from one place to another. Eventually we decided to head for what looked like a larger city and Karen said there was a Renault shop there. Yah! the mechanic indicated that he could fix the tyre and we were to come back at 3.30pm. This is because Spain closes for lunch from 1.30-3.30pm each day and it was already nearly 2pm. He sent us across the road to have some lunch, skipped the beer this time.
The interesting – We got to lunch just before 2pm and then a whole lot of blokes turned up for a coffee and a shot of scotch as either a chaser or tipped into the coffee. After a couple of ‘coffees’ they were off, somewhere.
The Good – Having had lunch we went back to the mechanic, it seemed that 3.30pm was when the English speaking bloke returned from lunch. After a discussion and agreeing that we will pay for a new tyre, they started. We gave them money (credit card) and then we left (it only took 20 minutes to pay!). By now it was after 4pm, and we’d lost 4 hours. We also have taken off the big yellow ‘Look at Me, I’m a Rental Car” sticker.
The Good – We got back on the road and with Karen and google maps, we headed us south. Taking a right turn we managed to drive through 5pm traffic (trucks) heading from Valencia to Madrid, it eventually eased when we turned left and headed to Albacete. This drive was really pretty, past vineyard, then wheat fields, up though some windy mountains and then out onto the flat. We eventually got to our hotel around 7.45pm. A long day and lots of driving by The Albatross, he did good! We checked in and had a couple of beers and a sit down. Gosh we are tired. Shower, dinner (really delicious) and some wine.
I think we will sleep well.
[Note: The Albatross had a moment about three weeks ago when he was booking our hotel for tonight. He managed to book a hotel in the wrong town, we were planning on staying about 100km away in a smaller town. He also booked the wrong hotel in the wrong town. Although he was looking in the wrong town, the hotel he wanted to book wasn’t this one. But all is ok, we have a lovely large room and comfy beds.]
Good night!