A TRAVEL OF DREAM ON THE TRANSCANTABRIAN TO WELLCOME THE 2000
SARA SANTAMARIA ARRIBAS
For those people who want to enjoy a different "New Year's Eve" as spectacular as deserves the waited and feared year 2000, the Transcantabrian train offers this year a travel to remember for ever. It is a FEVE's (Spanish Railways of Narrow Lines) tourist luxury train, which will do its usual journey, since the 28th of December to the 4th of January between Santiago de Compostela and Saint Sebastian crossing the North of Spain. But when the 31st of December arrives, it will stop to enjoy this date and part of the following day at the marvellous Cangas de Onis Tourist Hotel.
The Transcantabrian train, when it run near San Antolín beach, in Asturias.
To this luxe hotel, placed in one of the most beautiful fields in Asturias, will arrive the train the 31st of December at lunch time where the travellers will eat a light lunch which would allow them to savour the delicious meals which will serve on the dinner. After the lunch, the travellers will have free time to wear for the waited dinner of "New Year's Eve". in which will be able to enjoy the fantastic dishes which will be served on the dinner to say goodbye the old 1999 and to say hello with renewed vigors the year 2000. That dinner will be made up of the following meals: Crunchy of prawns and seaweed, delights of scallops in thin paste, ham of duck with froth of foie, bits of salmon with shelffish in eneldo oil, soft cream of red cabbage with pine kernels and oysters, lobster with frothly sauce of cider and medallions of pixin, glazeds with taste of oricious, sherbet of pomegranates in champagne, "tournedo" in honey of truffles with vegetables and "bienmesabe" of chesnuts, marzipan and toasted yolk with jelly of fruits, christmas cakes and coffee. All these delicious dishes watered with Rueda white wins, Marques de Caceres Reserve 91 red wins, Codorniu brut Anna champagne and some chosen liquors.
At midnight will be served the typical twelve grapes and after the peals, a great party to wellcome the new year, New Year's Eve party during that will be offered free bar to all the costumers, as repaired "garlic soups" to continue enjoying the night and, at dawn, a hot chocolate with fritters and "sponge cake of the convent". All of this without hurry, because that night the travellers will sleep at the Tourist Hotel, and the train won't leave until after the lunch of the day 1st of January.
The first day of the new year, after the lunch, the passangers will go into the Transcantabrian, which next year it is the 17th in gear. In the train the costumer has his or her own space specially designed for the rest and the intimacy, and the user can choose a suite or standar room, however the traveller can sleep confortablely beacuse at night the train stops at the station. Each room offers to the costumer a gift made up of bathrobe, slippers and toilet case with all the necessary to the bath.
The suite rooms were introduced into this train in 1998, to make much confortable the travel to the passangers. Since the first day the costumers have recieved very well the newness. Each room has a big bed, an small bar, a wardrobe, a bureau and a telephone. Moreover, it has a private bathroom with watersauna and vapour bath, and hair drier too. In the other side, the air conditioning and heating with individual regulator.
The standar rooms, with which that train started its services in 1983, have been remodelated this year, because of next year will be a refirst use of these rooms. Each one has a capaticity of two people in bunks. It has a bath, wardrobe, telephone, hair drier, air conditioning and heating.
Futhermore of these suite and standar waggons, in which the traveller sleeps and enjoys his or her intimacy moments, the train has four waggons where the costumers can talk, play cards, read books at the library, meet other passangers, have a coffee, or even dance at the pub waggon in which each night there is music in live.
Salon wagon.
The travel on this train is eight days and seven nights long and it travels from Santiago de Compostela to Saint Sebastian or vice versa, as the place chosen by the costumer. From this train, designed specially to the tourism of quality, is obtained a marvellous and beautiful view of the "Green Spain". The travel has as objetive to find the cultural heritage in Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and Pais Vasco, where the passangers will be able to visit, among other places, Santiago de Compostela, Ribadeo, Cudillero, Gijon, Lanes, Cangas de Onis, Covadonga lakes and montains, Santillana del Mar, Comillas, Santander, Laredo, Bilbao and Saint Sebastian.
The lunchs and the dinners of the journey will be done at the best restaurants in the Spanish North (many of them are Tourist Hotels), where the travellers will be able to savour the best products in this country. The breakfasts (free buffet) will be served on the own train. In the other side, a bus will be used for short travels and trips. In the nights the train will stop at the station and the passangers will be able to sleep confortable.
View into the bedroom-suite.
The Transcantabrian was borned in 1983. A group of experts belonging to FEVE company wanted to create a different idea: to put in service a train with the same confort and exoticism as the Orient Express or the Transiberian into an special country and with a different rail: the metric rail. It was the First Tourist Train in Spain. The difficult designs across which goes the train are possible thanks to one metre of rail-width that FEVE has.
This train travels since the end of May to the first of October, time during which each week are done the journeys between Santiago de Compostela-Saint Sebastian and vice versa. On the rest of the months, the Transcantabrian travels in special ocassions as this "New Year's Eve" or is hired by group of people to travel.
On this year 1999 it has been broken all the occupation forsights because there weren't any seats before the open of the regular season. This train counts on a maximum of 48 travellers, distributed in double seats, who are served in each travel by eleven professionals. FEVE's criterion in this way is to get the confort and the quality of service for the costumer to the detriment of the number of passangers, quantity that in no case the enterprise thinks to increase.
*For much information, the Transcantabrian has put in service an information telephone 34 91 553 09 11 or 553 70 00, or information fax 34 91 553 91 97. Go
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