Roadtrip day 1 - Surprise!

Guess if we are in Girona, where we were hoping to be? By looking at the picture you might guess right that no we are not!

Everything started as planned. I woke up and saw a beautiful sunrise. We took the dogs out, packed all the rest, packed the car, returned our keys and took off.

We took a nice walk on the beach in Moncofa. Beautiful turquoise water. Back to car and when the car was started it gave 3 different error messages. All telling that the car should be taken to authorized garage. So call to the insurance company, direction where we are and they'll send a tow truck and taxi to take us to the garage. Only taxis don't take dogs on board, so we were hoping that the tow truck driver would be kind enough to let us keep the dogs in our car and us humans on board tow trucks. We were also told that only one person can drive with the tow truck. 

Rafa was a very nice young man and let us all do just that! It was about 30 min drive to the garage to Castellón de la Plana. I take the dogs out, water them, and try to find some shade as it's about 30°C in the shade. The garage is naturally on siesta, but will open in 15 minutes.

Olli-Pekka goes in to the garage with the car and I stay out in the shade with the car. We're all hungry and tired and drained at this point. I wait and I wait. Finally I go inside the garage myself with the dogs. It turns out that we don't have our registration to the car! We have all the papers. We are allowed to drive. Police would not object that. We have a paper we bought the car. We have a paper that we are waiting for the registration. But they can't add the car into their system unless we have a registration with our name on it. So they are not able to type the car into their system.

So. Call to the car dealer. But as it's outside office hours he can't do anything today. Tomorrow he will try to get us the paper by email (don't know if it's actually possible to get it out so fast when in need), we can send it to the garage and they can check what's wrong with our car. It could be something very simple like something blocked as no ones driven it that fast for ages, or it could be something worse. I guess we should take this hotel for another night too or try to find some cheaper accommodation. This we found with the help of the personnel in the garage. And they allow dogs.

So this is traveling. At least we have beds. 3 of which one is double. We also have a sofa set. We have good wifi, air conditioning and breakfast in the morning. Luckily we had only booked 3 hotels in advance as we can't cancel them and they will be charged via credit card. Actually Olli-Pekka called the Girona hotel and they couldn't find our reservation to change the date even when we have a confirmation email. I'm pretty sure we'll still end up paying it if we haven't already.

We do have warranty on the car. And we do have insurance for the car. We don't have travel insurance because it run out in time in Finland, and we haven't taken one in Spain.

Travel done 270km/ 3950km