1 & 2-Jan-25 Zaragoza, Spain

Midnight. A new year begins. Now 2025. Fireworks start. At home they last 10 or 15 minutes at most. Seville’s go on for an hour and a half! So much for trying to get to sleep. Unbelievable how long they go on for. And it’s not just the odd firework here and there. No. More a continuous cacophony of whizz. And bang.

Glad I chose a hotel near the railway station. Distinct shortage of taxis. So can walk to catch the train. In the freezing cold. Have I mentioned before how sodding cold it is? Town is eerily quiet. Long queue to get on to the platform. It being a high tech high speed train there’s security checks with tickets being scanned to get to the platform concourse before all luggage is X-rayed on the platform. Then a second ticket check before boarding. Bit of a faff.

Bright blue sky all the way to Madrid. Via Cordoba. Arrive 10 minutes early. Two and a half hour rail journey at 300km/hr. That’s how you do it. Ninety minute layover in Madrid railway station and enjoy the RENFE (national railway) First Class Lounge. Less railway lounge and more like an airport first class lounge. Very swanky. And comfy. And free food and drinks.

Further security checks and luggage X-ray to board the next high speed train to Zaragoza. Blue sky gives way to fog. And freezing temperatures.

Have always wanted to visit Zaragoza since meeting a couple on holiday in Majorca in the 1980s. He Spanish. Who owned a paper mill in Zaragoza. She English. Who looked like Dinah Sheridan.

Like Seville. Zaragoza is eerily quiet. Slightly spooky. Especially with the fog. And darkness descending. Nice to arrive at the Melia INNSide Zaragoza (www.melia.com/en/hotels/spain/zaragoza/innside-zaragoza) for an overnight halt.

But.

Yet another hotel room where the heating doesn’t sodding work. Told it will take time to warm up. But after an hour of sitting in a cold draft engineer investigates. Who agrees with me that the heating doesn’t work. And so moved to a new nice and toasty room. And an upgrade. Little wins Godber. Little wins.

Afternoon departure the following day for train to Perpignan allows for a wander around Zaragoza in the morning. In sub-zero temperatures. Jeez. Thought Spain was meant to be warm. Hence why I’ve only got summer clothing. Which I have been regretting the past few weeks.

Zaragoza busy and back to normal now the holidays are over. Cunning plan is to walk for a bit then pop into a department store to warm up. Because they’ll have heat won’t they. Well. No. Actually. What is it with these Spanish. El Corte Ingles one of Spain’s largest department store chains is freezing cold. Everywhere is cold!

Zaragoza was initially a Roman city called Ceasar Augusta. Its Roman Forum is preserved in a subterranean museum. Which is warm! Finally! One of the original drainage tunnels remains intact. Over 2,000 years of history right there in front of me. Pretty impressive.

Across the square is the Cathedral. Which is spectacular inside and very ornate. Spires soar to the sky. Towering over the remnants of a Christmas market.

Time to travel by train to Perpignan. But first. Taxi to the station on the outskirts of the city. When arriving, taxi had to drop me off on a side road some metres away from hotel entrance and had to walk final stretch because the main road in front of hotel was being dug up. So book an Uber taxi to pick up from the end of the same side road. An amount of time is built into my schedule to get to the station to allow for traffic, accidents and delayed pick up.Cos that’s how I roll. With good reason. Experience, dear reader.

Using Uber I can track taxi’s location live on my mobile phone. Here it comes. Down the main road. See it pause just before the junction. It will then turn right into my side road and drive to the very end to pick me up. Won’t it. Well. No. Actually. I see the car pause slightly as it drives past the end of my side road. As if looking to see if this is the correct side road. Before driving off down the main road. And my Uber tracker updates the route the taxi now needs to take to reach my pick up point. Having already missed it. Estimated time now 15minutes. Bugger. Going to be tight for time now. Can see the taxi being routed around what I assume to be a one way system. And watch as the little car icon moves very slowly.

Sod this. Instead of standing here like a lemon in the freezing cold. I’ll walk down to a junction the driver will have to go past to make his way to my original pick up point. A good few hundred metres away.

Off I toddle.

By now am in direct contact with driver by WhatsApp message. We’ll call him Mohammed. And tell him I have moved to new position here. So just turn right at the junction you are now approaching. I say. As that route is what’s showing on my tracker he should be taking.

But.

Instead.

He continues straight on at said junction another hundred metres or so away. Into another one way system.

I may have uttered some words along the lines of “Oh you flipping idiot!!” a bit too loudly. As I stood on the pavement. In the freezing cold. Fed up dealing with muppets.

And my tracker updates again. To see his route to get to me now is 15minutes.

Sod that.

See a normal city taxi driving towards me. With its John Inman ‘I’m free’ light on. A tall Touring Taurean steps out into the road to flag it down. This taxi’s mine! Mohammed is cancelled. After a lot of faff arrive at station in the nick of time.

To discover train is delayed.