This morning we woke up in Lourdes—but tonight we’ll be sleeping in Zaragoza, Spain. I don’t know why I decided to wear this particular T-shirt, but at breakfast, I challenged my sisters to identify the music. My sister Margo correctly identified the composer as Bach. I was sure that my organist companions knew what the music was since they (and I) all play it—but they were stumped!

The music fragment was from Bach’s Passacaglia, BWV 582. That led right into a comment by Margo to say, “I bet everyone knows the next song, and why don’t we all sing it together?!” Huh?

I had to admit that I was completely in the dark as to what they were going to do. Later my tour companions sang the same song on the bus!

(To be honest, I made them all sing it a second time since I wasn’t ready with my phone fast enough!)

Today was a travel day and another 7-8-9 day meaning 7:00, wake up call; 8:00, breakfast; and 9:00, board the bus. We had to have our luggage in front of our hotel rooms by 8:00 am. I however, have been on a different schedule for the last few days: 3:00 am, wake up and look at my phone; 3:20 am, decide going back to sleep is impossible so I may as well write my blog!

Our first stop was quite involuntary! A policeman boarded our bus to check that all the paperwork was in order. Manuel asked everyone to check that their seatbelts were fastened, since it’s a law in Spain for bus passengers to buckle up. Wearing face masks is also mandatory on all public transportation, and even this private charter falls under those rules. By the way, you can see that we have plenty of room to stretch out on this bus since there are only 15 of us plus our tour director, Manuel and our bus driver, Oscar, who will be with us for our entire Spain segment of the trip.

As we started out, we could see the Pyrenees in the distance and soon we would see a change from the flat, green land of France to the more hilly and dryer Spain. We passed through the Sonport tunnel, 5.2 miles long, which seemed like forever!

And now we are in Spain!

Manuel wanted us to see a huge railway station that sits empty, called Canfranc Estación, which developed with the establishment of Canfranc International railway station to serve railway traffic across the Pyrenees. (Wikipedia) Trouble is, the station was built for transfers between Spanish and French trains, which used different railway gauges. The line was closed after an accident on 27 March 1970 destroyed the bridge at L’Estanguet, and the French side of the station was abandoned and fell into disrepair.

We took advantage of the stop to take another Three Sisters photo.

It was already 1:30 pm so we stopped at a very small town called Jaca (pronounced with a silent but guttural “h” sound).

Unfortunately the majority of the town closed from 2:30-4:45 pm for lunch and siesta, and we missed going into the chocolate shop which had some tantalizing displays!