12 May

Joe left Janene sleeping and went out to do the day's marketing, just like a real European. He left the touristy area and found the part of town where the locals reside. There, he bought fruit at the fruteria, bread at the paneria, some juice at a grocery, and vitamin C & cold medication at the farmacia. The fruteria was very crowded, with a line of ladies, each with an assortment of fruits and veggies that the clerk weighed and tallied with military precision. As Joe was standing in line with his strawberries, one pear and single banana, making sure to have his money ready so as to not disrupt the smooth flow of the operation, he started thinking about the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld and couldn't help laughing. The other patrons either didn't notice or just figured, "another crazy American," and he made it through checkout like a local.

After breakfast, we went back to the train station and caught the regional train to Antequera, where we were to connect with the train to Seville. Antequera was a smaller version of Ronda, but without the tourist attractions. We got there a little after 3 pm and walked up the very large hill into town. This was real Spain, where EVERYTHING shuts down in the afternoon. They didn't actually roll up the sidewalks, but they probably have considered it at some point. We picnicked in a little plaza with some Germans, who were nearly the only other folks stirring.

Back at the station, we had to make reservations for the train to Seville. This is apparently a ploy to be able to charge people with rail passes extra money, but maybe the trains are actually full at times. Anyway, getting the boarding passes was like at the airport. The clerk looked at our passes, tapped on his computer, looked at the passes, tapped, looked, made a phone call, looked in a book, tapped some more, made another phone call, tapped again, then handed us our passes like it was nothing at all. We had to pay a whopping 8 Euros extra for the reserved seat. When the train arrived, somebody else was in our seats, but we found others just as good and had a nice ride to Seville.

At the Seville station, we learned that we can't get to Portugal from here, and must go to Madrid first, so we went ahead and made reservations for the evening train to Madrid and the overnight "hotel train" to Lisbon, both on Friday. We then hiked about a 1/2 mile from the station and found a pension (cheap hotel) for 2 nights. First there was no hot water, but the landlord fiddled with the water heater and fixed that, then the room's heater wouldn't blow hot air, but Joe pushed buttons on the remote till it finally started working.

Antequera station

Antequera street

Krasty Burger

busy(!) street corner

back at Antequera station

Train to Seville

Train to Seville