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Days 1 and 2: Poitiers and Saint Sebastian
Our coach left Basingstoke at 8.30am (BST) on Wednesday morning. Everyone in the group was very excited about going to Spain as for many people this will be their first trip to Spain. People were excited about the celebrations and about seeing the Pope, other people were nervous because they weren’t sure what to expect. Our journey went smoothly; we took a ferry from Dover to Calais and then drove from there to Poitiers where we stayed the night in the Hotel Plaza Futuroscope. Our journey to Poitiers took 13 hours and we arrived at 10.30pm local time.
We left the hotel at 9am the next morning and travelled to Saint Sebastian, which is a coastal town in the north Spain, about 30km from the French border. On the way there, we stopped off at a service station for lunch. While we were there we met another group who were also on the World Youth Day Pilgrimage. They told us that they would be staying in Dax in southern France close to the Spanish border before travelling to Madrid.
We arrived in Saint Sebastian at 5pm and travelled through the town towards our accommodation, which is University accommodation called Colegio Olorain Mayor. The town is very beautiful with amazing architecture and a large statue of Jesus on top of a hill overlooking a sandy beach.
After settling into our accommodation, we went to the Seminary for dinner, where we were greeted by another World Youth Day group from Genoa, Italy. They were all very friendly and most of them could speak good English so it was very easy to communicate with them. We sang songs with them after dinner and then they invited us for a game of football on the beach.
