Via de la plata day 0

The usual planes, trains and automobiles to commence a camino – although not in that order. The morning departure from YVR was the optimal departure time but as it was a leg to Montreal, it meant being treated as a Canadian domestic passenger for the first 4.5 hours. Montreal to Madrid was a step up – although exactly what the meal was remains a mystery. At least it was washed down with complimentary vino, and graced with the visual effects of the Dune movies to date.

The day’s first glitch was waiting to purchase a train ticket to Seville. I didn’t pre-purchase online in case there were flight delays, and I wasn’t comfortable using the airport bus free (and open) wifi to enter all those critical credit card details. As a result I had to join the line in the ticket office at the Madrid train station, and just while i was adjusting to the realization that there were more than 50 people ahead of me in the ‘please take a number ‘queue, the reservation computer system went down. I added a couple of ‘just’s in there as my destination was Santa Justa station in Seville.

Eventually everything started operating normally and I was hustled onto the 1pm train, and barely had time for a coffee and power snooze on the train when it arrived in Seville. Stepping from the AC train environment to a 34⁰C Seville afternoon was a bit of a shock to the system. A couple of weeks ago it was over 40⁰, so I’m happy that it’s cooled off a bit. Some early morning starts are in my future.

I walked the first 1.4km of the via from the Cathedral to the Triana neighbourhood (where I’m staying), purchased a 100GB tourist SIM card for a mete 15€ (more mobile data for a month than I normally use in a year!), but had issues with extracting money from the bank machine. Susan helped connect me with our bank in Vancouver pool -who don’t use anything other than the traditional land-line technology – so we’ll see if the situation has been rectified tomorrow. I don’t think my 50€ note will last too long.