Apparently, It's Not An Adventure Until Some Things Go Wrong

As I have stated before on this blog, my friend John Passacantando has a great saying about travel – “It’s not an adventure until the first thing goes wrong.”  Well, after Saturday’s escapades, in this case we need to replace “the first thing goes” with “some things go.”

Oh it’s madcap now, but at the time, neither of these experiences was particularly funny.

The first was the normally simple act of trying to retrieve the rental car from the underground lot in San Sebastian.  It was a rainy day in the jewel of Basque Country, but I had brought back one of the best baguettes ever (still warm!), and some croissants.  We had that with leftover ham and cheese from the day before.  Of course, with the rain we ate in the kitchen.

We did have success the second time we walked over to an outdoor store in the old city.  The first time (9:45 am) we learned it did not open on a Saturday till 10:00am.  The second time the door was open but the lights were not on.  The store owner scrambled to open when she saw us coming, and Carol successfully purchased a rain cover for her backpack (here, Monday morning, it sounds like we’re going to need them in the rain).

Carol headed left back to the apartment to bring the bags down, whilst I went right to get the car.  I watched about 15 surfers in their wet suits attempting to catch two foot waves in the rain.  It might not have been Beach Boys material, but at least they were out there.

I stuck the parking lot ticket into the machine, and put my credit card into the slot.  The screen displayed instructions that I could not make heads nor tail of. Every time I pushed a button, no matter which one, it cancelled my card.  Well, that’s a bit of a panic.  Suddenly I was wondering how I would get the car out of the lot.  I finally retrieved the lot ticket (somewhat by luck), and headed over to the cashier window.

The signs all said there was someone there 24/7.  Except not true.  Carol called, having seen my panicked texts.  Then I push the help button, and the guy comes on the speaker in rapid Spanish.  He spoke better English than I speak Spanish, so he figured out and switched to that.  He told me to call him from the cash machine.  I didn’t know what he meant.  He cut off our conversation.  I wandered off in a different direction, and found a cash machine (all of this could have been avoided if all the machines took both cash and credit).  Problem solved, despite the best efforts of the garage to give me a heart attack.

The drive to Bilbao was an uneventful 75 minutes.  Through the rain and clouds we caught glimpses of Basque beauty in the mountains.  The land is reminiscent of Switzerland, very green with occasional farms and homes.

We were able to check in early to the hotel, so we took our bags up to the room, then went to return the rental car.  Driving in small European villages means tiny roads with little traffic.  Driving in any European city means tiny roads with lots of traffic.

Our GPS took us faithfully to the one address we had from Europcar.  Turns out that’s not the address of where to return the car at the train station, it’s just the front of the train station.

While Carol took off on foot at my urging to find out where the car needed to be returned, I hid inconspicuously in a short taxi line in front of the train station.  Eventually a cab told me I had to move.  Well, I assume that’s what he said.  I politely, yet frantically asked him where Europcar return is, but he did not know English.  I pulled out of the spot and started heading, well, I don’t know where I was going.

Carol called with an address that apparently is the most guarded Europcar secret in all the land.  It is probably easier to hack their website or credit card operations than to find out where to return a car at the train station in Bilbao.

She confidently told me, based on what her spies at the Europcar office (not where cars are returned though), that I would have to cross the river twice to return the car (we were blocks from the river, so that seemed all Chevy Chase National Lampoon’s European Vacation – no comments please).

The good news is, my GPS showed a route without any river crossing.  The bad news is, it involved many, many turns on tiny streets.  For a while I wasn’t moving, because traffic was so bad.  Once I got past that choke point, there was very little traffic.  However, there were plenty of red lights and little room to drive.  By my count, which could be low, I only took one illegal left turn (no traffic coming in either direction), and ran one red light (they don’t give you much warning on yellow lights here).

After pulling into a post-industrial wasteland, I drove around a parking lot for a while before, tucked away behind some trains, I found the Europcar parking lot.  Meanwhile, Carol was endeavoring to end up at the same place on foot, and the walking directions were just as complicated, if not more so because it was raining.

Before she got to the station, I marched in, found the hidden Europcar storefront, burst in, dropped off my keys and paperwork, and marched right back out without saying a word.  I did not want to be the ugly American, and besides, who knew if the poor woman behind the counter was fluent in American curse words.  Because at that point, that’s all that would have come out of my mouth.  I am pretty sure neither she nor Europcar would have cared about my righteous indignation.