The plan had been to get up at 8am, get fed and ready and leave for the train station at 8.45am to catch the train to Barcelona at 9.30am. Here are the things that caused us to miss that train:
- Meg has a tendency to turn the alarm off and go back to sleep before I hear it, so we got up over 20 minutes late.
- When we got to the train station we waited in a queue at a ticket booth and when we got to the front we found that the man didn't speak English, and were instructed to go to customer service.
- We waited for a while at customer service, before being told by the woman at the desk to go to the room next door.
- That room had a lot of people in it, and you had to take a ticket and wait your turn. We had to wait maybe about 15 minutes.
- When we finally got to the desk, it was half 9, and the man told us the train was full too.
So we bought tickets for the 4.30pm train, and spent the day lounging in Retiro Park reading the Guardian. Today we are going to the train station (a different one, or else we would have done this on arrival) to buy our tickets to Milan for a few days time.
It's definately advisable to book your tickets on arrival in the train station, or if like us you don't arrive by train then make an excursion there a day or two before you want to depart. You never know if the train will have space, if you will need to wait a long time, or if you will simply be unable to find where you need to go.
And the best advice is if you are ever in doubt, ask someone. When we went to the station later to catch the train, we couldn't tell where to go to find the platforms. So we spent a few minutes sat in the customer service booth, before approaching the desk, and receiving a withering look and given the simple explanation that it's upstairs. It wasn't obvious to us!
The train was fabulous by the way, sleek and modern, with a film showing in Spanish (The Nanny Diaries) and reclining seats. So a comfortable train ride later we arrived in Barcelona, metroed our way to the right station, and emerged... directly across from Gaudi's bone house. What a great way to start our time here. I think Meg is a little less excited because she has been here before and see all the Gaudi, but it's all new to me and I am very enthusiastic to see it all.
We found our next hostel without too much traipsing, Centric Point, a huge building with staff who speak good English, thankfully. This time our room is 12 bed, and so far it's all girls. After two much needed showers and getting set up in our room we ventured out to find dinner. The place we intended to go was closed, evidently not everywhere is open as late as in Madrid, though by this time it was 10.30pm, somewhat late even by Madrid standards. We ended up at a very polished tapas place, and went a little overboard because it seemed so cheap. We need to start curtailing our dinner spendings, but it's tough when we just snack all day on whatever we can find.
The plan for today is to go to the Bone House and get our tickets to Milan, then maybe stroll down the Ramblas.
Til the next blog,
Mojo
2 comments:
Hey, I realise it was a while back that you went on this trip but my sister and I are planning to go Interrailing round Europe next summer and so I've been reading this very funny blog :)
Just one question though (for the moment anyways!) - if you had an Interrail pass, why did you need to get train tickets between Madrid and Barcalona? Did the Interrail pass not work for all your journeys? xx
Hi Lauren,
The interrail pass lets you travel free through most of Europe, but in some instances it is necessary to pay extra. Between Madrid and Barcelona the train is a high speed one, so interrailers have to pay a small fee - I think it was between 10 and 20 Euro. We also made sure to book whenever we were taking an overnight train since we wanted a sleeper carriage if possible, this also costed extra - sometimes up to 50 Euro.
We tended to try booking tickets for our departure everytime we arrived in a station just in case. Sometimes this was a waste of time as they told us we didn't need them and got annoyed (make sure you say you are interrail BEFORE giving the details of which train you want to book, trust me). However, we thought it was worth it because just showing up and getting on a train is risky - it might be full, it might not qualify for free interrail travel, it might be the wrong train for your destination or take longer than one leaving later, etc etc. It never took longer than 20 minutes to get tickets and there were often small extra charges to pay, and it gave us a feeling of security. But even if you decide not to book all your tickets on arrival, remember: it is definitely necessary to book between Madrid and Barcelona because it is a high speed train and there is an additional charge. And always say that you have an interrail pass as soon as you reach the ticket desk - they may tell you that you don't need a ticket (it happened to us a few times, especially after we left Spain and Italy).
Mojo xx
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