Stranger in a Strange Land

Lesson of the Day

Alright, here is today's lesson, important for anyone in an urban setting: do NOT try to walk from one metro station to another unless you are POSITIVE you know how to get there, or you have a very detailed map with compass.

Yes, in fact that does come from personal experience... Today I was trying to get to the next metro station down from my school, and it seemed such a shame to use one of my metro trips to get there when I just knew it had to be around the corner. So anyway I set off alone, without my handy pop-out map that I usually carry but had the misfortune to forget this morning. For anyone who has ever witnessed my hopeless sense of direction in action, this was a recipe for disaster.

I definitely wandered around for an hour, practically in my own neighborhood, going back and forth at least twice between the same two metro stations, neither of which, obviously, was the right one. Fortunately the problem was not that I did not know where I was but rather that I did not know where the other station was, so I was able to find my way home when I decided I had had enough adventure for one morning. So, in summary, I never found what I was looking for and nearly starved to death for lack of cookies to replace the energy my aimless wanderings required. ::sigh:: On consulting my map once I got home, I discovered that I was in fact walking in the wrong direction, east instead of west. No wonder I couldn't find it!

So the moral of this story, of course, is to just get on the metro to get to an unknown station - the trains actually go straight to them!! Anyway, I am [supposed to be] working on a paper at the moment, so my extremely tardy post on Valencia, as well as the one on Lisbon from this past weekend will have to wait just a little longer. I promise they will be soon - I have lots of good pictures!!

posted by Kendra @ 1:40 PM