To celebrate our wedding anniversary we booked tickets to see one race during the America's Cup final - we had such a great time the last time we went we thought we would see the final too!! This is a long story so get a cup of tea (or preferably a beer or glass of wine)before starting!!!
We decided that a day trip would be fun - it would be quite a long day but we duly logged onto the Renfe (spanish rail) website and booked our tickets - we would be leaving on the 08.30 train and coming back on the 20.31 train !! It was an early start at half six but we were very excited so set off down the road to Elda station.
We got to the station in good time and enjoyed a coffee and brandy before going to the platform. We waited for the train and saw one arrive at the opposite platform - 'what if that's our train' I said to Nigel - but we knew this couldn't be right as we'd done the trip before so we were confident we were standing on the right platform. We carried on waiting and the announcer announced the other train - mentioning Valencia - I started running but Nigel held me back and we asked the other people on the platform - Oh no they assured us we were in the right place. In due course our train pulled in and we got onto it .... as soon as we got on board a sinking feeling overtook us - this was not the right train at all .... this was confirmed by the guard - luckily it was only going as far as Alicante so we had a terrible half an hour standing on the train waiting to decide what to do!!!!
At this point I should explain something that should exonorate us a little - the Spanish rail people always make sure they tell you where a train has come from - as well as where it's going to....so we were on the train that had come from Valencia - not the one going there.....
hmmmm....now we had tickets for the boat at 13.40 and it was now 9am - we were getting pretty desperate as we ran to the booking hall at Alicante as we thought we might not make it in time - luckily there was no queue and we managed to change our tickets for a new train departing at 9.25 from Alicante (just another aside - they only charged us 10euros for the new trip - in england I am sure we'd have had to pay the full fare!)
OK - back on track - we got onto the train and breathed a huge sigh of relief - we would now get to Valencia in plenty of time for our boat trip so we were ready to re-start our day and had a good old giggle about everything.....
We got off the train and headed for El Corte Ingles to pick up our tickets - this was fine as we'd done this last time we were here. I went to the desk only to be told that as it was the day of the trip we needed to collect the tickets from the port itself (no problem - only 10 minutes wasted!) - so she gave us a map with the details. We headed off and jumped into a manic Taxi to get down to the America's Cup port - even this was interesting as the level of police and security was much more significant than last time we were there - there were police at every major interchange and we saw them stopping quite a few cars in the 10 minute journey.
We went straight to the place where we should collect the tickets - only to be pointed on somewhere within the port itself....I went off there while Nigel organised a couple of beers for us .... passing through the significant security checks on the way I headed for the ticket collection point - but oh no, this wasn't the right place to collect the tickets either - I needed to be on the north side of the port nearer to where the boat departed. With a heavy heart and just a little frustrated I went back to join my husband and my beer and we had a brilliant set of tapas before we headed off again!!!!
Around half an hour later we finally had the tickets in our hands and could relax....we went to check out where the boat would go from and got a beer overlooking the harbour - we watched the america's cup boats leaving and the massive crowds all waving them off. The atmosphere was exilerating, there were so many people all cheering and shouting. There was quite a friendly rivalry between all the supporters of the Swiss Team Alinghi (the holders of the cup) and the New Zealand Team (the challengers) - this made for a good laugh....
We queued up at around twenty past one and finally got on the boat - we were still laughing over the train journey and the ticket hiccups and very excited to finally get out. Now this is where the fun started - the water was quite choppy - luckily we got seats outside on the front of the boat and we motored on to the start line - we got there about half past two - just half and hour before the start. We were amongst hundreds and hundreds of boats of all shapes and sizes so there was plenty to watch without the race....
Three o'clock came and went - no news of the start time - someone said the whole race may be postponed due to lack of wind so we waited and waited (at this point we're starting to think it's not our day!!) - then the news came - they would start at half four - we all cheered as the boats approached the start line and appeared to cross over - but it didn't seem quite right and it turned out to be a false alarm so they stopped racing to change sails - new start time 5pm....
Now at this point - bear in mind - the race should last around one and a half hours we weren't particularly worried about timings later on that evening at the start. It only became apparent what a predicament we may be in once the first out 'lap' had been done and the boats turned - they were taking much longer than normal because of the lack of wind!!! So - we're on a boat - watching other boats and starting to realise that we might not have much time to make our train - certainly not to enjoy a beer or relax on the beach as anticipated. The race was very exiting and finally finished extremely closely with the New Zealand team winning...being in the flotilla was brilliant .... all the boats were hooting and everyone was shouting support.
Now our boat must have been the slowest spectator boat of all - we were behind everyone and frustratingly slow - we'd been on this boat now for over 5 hours and the novelty was starting to wear off!! We worked out our timings when the race ended and we knew it would be tight but were confident we would make our train.....now on the boat travelling into port behind hundreds of others (this was the boating equivalent of the M1 Northbound at 5pm on a Friday)....we started to realise we would have to run for a taxi...
We got off the boat as quickly as we could and out of the port (we knew we'd never get a taxi amongst the crowds there)...next we walked as fast as we could to a major street - a policeman told us the best place to get a taxi from and then began a half an hour wait. We finally got a taxi at 8.15 pm - now our train (remember) was due at 8.31pm - we asked the taxi driver if we would make it .... he wasn't sure ... hmmmmmm
We can honestly say we've never experienced a car journey like it - there were two things that we thought of after we had got safely out - one was the knight bus journey in the Harry Potter films (especially the bit where the bus squeezes between two others) - the second was the car chase scene in the film Ronin.....I can say no more but if you've seen them then you'll know what I mean!!!
The taxi pulled up near the station at 8.27 - and we got out and ran for our lives - Nigel even took his flip flops off to run faster .... very very funny thinking about it afterwards .... we managed to locate the platform and threw our bags into the x-ray machine .... we ran to get our tickets checked - only to notice (and believe me we didn't notice this until we stopped running!) there was no train!!! It was 5 minutes late - we just had time to collect our thoughts before it pulled up ....
Now apart from the fact that the train was delayed by half an hour on the way home we had an uneventful trip back - seated in row 13 !!!!
What a day!!!
