For centuries pilgrims have been walking the “Way of St. James” route across Europe to arrive at the cathedral where it is said the remains of the saint are buried. From what I read, this city near the Atlantic coastline of northern Spain to which we took a 4-hour train ride from Madrid, was in the Middle Ages a pilgrimage site as important as Jerusalem and Rome. The purpose of our visit, however, was for different reasons: it was the starting point of a week-long train tour of the España Verde region of the country (next week’s blog post) and because the historic center of town has been selected as a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

Continue reading “Santiago de Compostela in 1 day”

Whenever we have the option of taking just one train to our destination, that’s typically what we do because of the convenience and comfort. For example, settling into your reserved seat in Marseille just in time for a glass of champagne followed by dinner and then stepping off across the street from your London hotel before Big Ben sounds the 10 PM hour can’t be beat. Today’s train had that same Mediterranean origin point but this time we picked it up along the way in Narbonne as it headed south for Madrid where we arrived even before some restaurants had cleared away their lunch dishes. We had two days to explore this capital of Spain and its largest city so we had a very full itinerary. With several hours of daylight left in this “bonus time” on the first day of our stay, we set out to explore the neighborhood right outside the hotel including the renaissance square, Plaza Mayor from the 1600s and just one of the 3 chocolaterias that were within a couple of blocks of each other, yum!

Continue reading “Madrid in 2 days”

We had our second Pfizer vaccination two weeks ago so with a promised effectiveness of 94.6% against Covid-19 we felt comfortable in getting back to our favorite pastime: travel. After all we moved to Carcassonne to have easy rail access to the rest of France and into the neighboring countries. While we wait for border crossing restrictions to be eased it made sense to stay within the “Hexagone” as this 6-sided land is often called. With several direct trains a day and a journey time of only 44 minutes, a visit to Béziers seemed reasonable. Classed as one of the oldest cities in the country, from at least 675 BC, it was time to head to within 12 km (7.5 miles) of the Mediterranean Sea to discover what 2700 years of history has to offer.

Continue reading “Béziers in 2 days”