Interesting travel story. We were going to take the train from Ourense, Spain to Pontevedra, Spain with our bicycles. The night before our train, I happened to look carefully at the tickets and noticed that the only way to take bicycles on the train was for them to be broken down and packed up into portable bicycle bags carried on as ordinary luggage. Of course our bicycles could not be broken down that way. Nor did we have any bicycle bags to put them in, small enough to be ordinary luggage. So we noticed that the train station was open until 11 PM so we walked over there at about 10 PM … but of course the train station was open, but the ticket counter was closed. So the next morning we went early to the train station, and to our dismay, learned that indeed the train we were booked on could not take bicycles, and moreover, all trains of the slower ordinary trains were limited to three bicycles per train. Moreover, all three bicycle spots on all of the trains that day were booked. So we had to figure out how to do it and we had a limited amount of time and moreover it was Sunday and so many places were closed. For example, car rental places were closed. In the end, we decided to leave our bikes in the Airbnb. Parentheses — because it was Sunday we could not get in touch with the Airbnb owner so we just took a gamble and left the bikes in the garage figuring we could say sorry later and that worked by the way. So we took the train to Pontevedra without our bikes. We reserved a car in Pontevedra for Monday. Early Monday morning two of our group drove back to Orense about 100 km and picked up the bikes and drove them back to Pontevedra. Tedious and about $100 of expense, but it worked. Lesson: if traveling by bike and intending to transport them on a train in Spain, stay mainly on the plain?
Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)
Michael Kevane 