Days One and Two

So the journey to Madrid began on Wednesday 10th August 2011, my 25th Birthday. My present was to travel alone for the majority of the day. I left Swansea at 8:30am, travelled down to Dover and arrived at the port at about 3pm. I waited in the travel office until just before 5pm when I boarded our coach. The group were fantastic and sang me Penblwydd Hapus i ti, gave me a birthday cake and I had a seat decked out in Welsh bunting.

We then proceeded to the ferry and I spent my time offering around my birthday cake. The crossing was a little rough and we couldn't walk in a straight line for love nor money. We eventually got to Calais and then spent the night travelling through France.

During this time we said a 'cheeky decade' of the Rosary, followed by 2 quizzes, and then watched 'Up'. I'd never seen it and I was glad we watched it though it did make me a little sad thinking about my Nanna.

As we travelled around Paris we got stuck in a fair amount of traffic. but we did get to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. We had a pit stop so people could get ready to sleep from 12:30 until 7am. I managed a few hours but not much really. We then had breakfast, and here we met some German pilgrims, and the priest from their group came on the bus and gave us a blessing in German. We watched The Incredibles, and had another stop where we met some more pilgrims, this time Slovakian and French.

We finally got to Valladolid at 2pm just as forecast. We ended up with a great bus tour of the city whilst we tried to get the coach into the street with the hotel on. In the end the coach was parked up at Plaza San Pablo and we walked from there. Group One was the first to go and we had no idea where we were going, so we asked some people and found our way there. Embarassingly we were right outside the hotel when we asked some people.

And so we made it. Anne-Marie and I got our key and headed up to our room, showered and settled in. We did some travel washing and then made our way to the foyer to meet our groups.Once our group was all there we went for a walk around, a few of us went into the Cathedral, and a few others went to a bar, where we joined them later. The Cathedral was quite plain

inside, aside from the altar and the banners that they had hanging in homage to all the World Youth Days. We then rejoined the others got our drinks and free popcorn and sat outside and watched the highly entertaining car lift that

would not work for this lady.

We made our way back to the Hotel and from there we went to the English and Welsh College with Leeds and Middlesborough Dioceses, for Mass. It was beautiful in there. I joined the music group for Mass, which I was glad of because it was a bit more spacious over there. A few people had to leave because they felt ill and it became clear we were really going to have to drink a lot of water.

We headed back to the hotel where we were fed. I had consumee, I'm pretty sure this was chicken stock, tuna fillets, which were really well done, and chips, and then some ice cream cake thing. We had to stay behind for a short meeting about tomorrow, and then headed to bed concluding our first 2 days travelling.