From Valencia, I had a train booked at 10:40am, arriving at 1:05pm at Puerta Atocha station in Madrid, then a 2:00pm bus booked to Oviedo, a small city in Northern Spain, from Estacion D’sur station. The stations are a 30 minute walk apart, or about 15 minutes on the metro. I knew it was a bit risky when I booked the tickets, but it was by far the cheapest and fastest option, as my other option was a very expensive high speed train all the way to Oviedo. I know, I know. It was cutting it a bit close with the transfer time. But trains in Spain have a 95% on time rate. 

I got to the station in Valencia with plenty of time to spare, and waited. Only to see the signboard soon change to ETA Madrid Atocha- 11:05. 25 minutes late. That was going to be cutting it really close. I got on the train and waited. 11:05 came and went. 11:15 came and went. Finally, at 11:22am the train left the station. At this point, if the train took the scheduled 2 hours and 20 minutes, I had virtually no chance of making my bus, and buses don’t tend to leave late. Unless they’re waiting for me, apparently.

I looked into changing my ticket online to a later bus, but the next 2 were sold out. I could pay 15 euros to change and arrive at 11:30pm in Oviedo, 4 hours later than planned. I decided to risk it and keep my original ticket. The train did make up some time en route, but not as much as I would have liked. It arrived at 1:35, 30 minutes after it was scheduled, and 30 minutes before my bus left. I walked/ran as quickly as possible to the metro station, attempted to buy a ticket to a station google maps told me to go, gave up and asked an attendant, who told me in fact I had to switch trains and helped me buy a ticket, and ran to the platform. Luckily, it was not a Sunday like it was with my night bus adventures and the metro train came in less than a minute. The next train at the switch came super quick too, and I ran off it as it came into the station.

When I exited the station I looked for sign of the bus station, but saw none. Luckily, in this instance, google pointed me in the right direction. I ran towards the station, with 6 minutes to go before my bus left. My ticket indicated the bus was leaving from platforms 31-38, which I could not confirm on the departures screen, as the screens only list the final destination, and bus tickets have this annoying thing of not listing the final destination, only your destination. I decided not to wait to confirm and ran down the escalator to platform 31, and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my bus waiting. It was exactly 2:00pm. The driver saw me, asked if I was Stephanie, threw my bag below, and we were off.

To be fair, this stressful connection was not nearly my fault, compared to the night bus in Granada at least.

It was a gorgeous bus ride, passing through national parks, right next to the mountains in Pico de Europa national park. Probably the most gorgeous ride in Spain, which to be honest, hasn’t had the most diverse landscape viewing. At one point it started to rain like crazy, to which the man next to me used google translate to explain that the saying in Asturias, the province of Oviedo, is “to get the green you need the grey”. Indeed. It cleared up a little later, until we hit a tunnel, to which the man said “watch”. We exited the tunnel and into a storm. Apparently this was the tunnel that marked the exit of Leon province and into Asturias.

Arriving in Oviedo, after seemingly months of shared rooms, I have never been so happy to see my own room. I had booked an airbnb for 4 nights as there weren’t really hostels in Oviedo, and the room cost less than some dorm rooms. I quickly hit the grocery store for dinner and some wine and spent the night watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the Woody Allen movie centring on Barcelona and Oviedo. This is basically Oviedo’s claim to fame, which is why there is even a Woody Allen statue on the streets. When I woke up, it was 10:40am. My best sleep of the trip I think! The blackout skylight combined with my own room and the cool night made me very happy.

I had thought of taking a day trip from Oviedo, to Picos de Europa, or the northern coast, but decided to just take it easy instead. My 4 days in Oviedo consisted instead of museum and park hopping, hiking a mountain to see pre-Roman churches and a large Christ statue, drinking cider and wine, and just hanging out in my room. Did I mention the days had highs of 26 degrees cooled off at night? Lovely. I also decided to sample the local Asturian cuisine by treating myself to a menu del dia, which I hadn’t had since being with Rita. I had read it was good value, but didn’t really comprehend until the food started coming out. It started with a local cheese plate, with a hunk of hearty bread. I had also ordered what I thought was the house wine, but ended up being a bottle of red wine and sweet fizzy water, which I stared at a while until I looked it up and found the wine and fizzy water were supposed to be combined and drank together, which explained the large glass I was given.

This was followed by a “first course” of beans with saffron, a local specialty. I ate about half of it (in hindsight, too much). The second course was pork with potatoes and salad. When the server finally asked me what type of dessert I wanted, I simply said no. It was crazy. All for 9.50 euros. Good value indeed. Thank god that was the day I climbed the mountain, which made me feel less guilty about climbing into bed after the rather hearty meal.