I’m in northern Spain and have to take a train to Madrid to get to a flight. But I arrive to the train station too late at 11:40 so booking is not an option since most places check in are at 12:00 and I’d probably not get in time.
Would it be too dangerous to stay up all night on the street?
Most hotels don’t care, they just book you accordingly by the day … and if there is one hour left in the day, they’ll book you for it as a full day. It also depends on the place you book with and how. If you book through a third party like Booking.com or something you have no choice but to swallow the cost of two days for a one night stay. But if you book directly with a hotel or even a small family run place, you can negotiate something.
Worse comes to worse, you can hang out all night next to a train/ bus station because there will be others there in similar situations and deciding to spend the night there for one reason or another. Just stick close to other travelers and you’ll protect one another. Just keep your guard up because there might also be scam artists and con artists hanging around too … as well as drug dealers, prostitutes, druggies and traffickers.
I did quite a bit of travelling in Europe with my wife years ago and on one trip we got stuck in Milan, Italy without a hotel. We arrived in the city in the fall not thinking that there was any reason to worry … bad for us because it was Europe’s largest furniture show in the continent and everything was booked. It was either wait outside all night or pay for a $800 a night three star hotel. We opted to wait all night.
We thought we could just sit on benches at the main Milan train station all night. We were kicked out at 2am onto the street and there we hung out with other people. The station didn’t open up again until 6am. So we had a four hour time to wait outside with the freaks and ghouls of the city. Milan is a European cross roads and we saw all kinds … desperate African immigrants, middle eastern weirdos, Eastern European cons and drug dealers and Italian street people of every shape, size, colour and type.
It wasn’t that bad though … we hung out with a Sardinian who said he got stuck like this often when he missed the last train at night. He guided us and told us to sit on our luggage and just hang out and we talked and joked all night. A group of us formed and we all sat in a circle on our luggage watching out for one another. We also met a traveling Chinese martial arts group that got stuck and we all spent the night together.
When you’re young it’s not that bad, just find some allies you can trust, keep your guard up, stay aware and you’ll be fine.
I guess if you have to sit on the street overnight, sitting with a whole group of martial artists is the universe’s way of recognizing that it did you dirty and it’s sorry.