NRL Finals and Travel

Today, I was leaving Valencia and having a quick pit stop in Alicante. I'm only spending the night, and in hindsight, it is probably not worth staying anywhere for a single night - especially when the travel days are long. I saw a bit of the town, but nowhere near enough to properly immerse myself in the atmosphere. To make things worse the options for bus trip was 12:45, 1:30 and 2:30. With 6 to 7 hours of travel time, I would certainly arrive late to Alicante. I booked the earliest one I could and sat down at a cafe on my way to the station to watch the first game of the NRL finals for the Broncos. It was a huge game against Storm that would assure us a spot in the preliminary finals. It was a great game, and to everyone surprise, the Broncos pumped the Melbourne Storm and set themselves up perfectly for a solid finals run. After this and my coffee, I headed to the bus stop to begin my journey. I waited around briefly until about 12:30 when I realised that the bus I had booked was scheduled to leave at 12:45 a.m., not pm. To make matters worse, I couldn't get a refund given the bus had already left, and being one of the longest bus trips of the journey, it was also the most expensive. Worse still, the 1:30pm bus was booked out, and so I could only get on the 2:30 pm bus. So what turned into a 35 euro bus trip that would get me to Alicante by about 6 was a 70 euro bus trip that got me to Alicante by about 8:30. Given that I was only staying one night, it heavily impacted what I would be able to see. I always could have extended my stay, but I was short on time to make it to my flight in Porto on the 22nd while still wanting to see Granada, Malaga, Seville, Lagos, and Lisbon. And, to be honest, after I arrived, I wasn't wholly impressed by the little town. I think it is mostly a beach town but I wouldn't have time to see it anyway. So I took the loss, wandered around the town, had a bite to eat, and watched the rugby world cup. It was the first game of the tournament, and it promised to be a good one, as the hosts (France) took on one of the best international teams, New Zealand. NZ have a tendency to fuck it when it comes to the world cup, however, and after this game it seems like they are right on track to do the same again. France battered them, and didn't even let them get a try. I was watching it in a sports pub with a French bloke beside me who was obviously very excited all game. Was cool to watch it with at least a bit of an atmosphere. Anyway, that was the end of a quite boring day, with another one due to occur tomorrow.Leer más