Figueres is a fine town. It is host to the Salvador Dali Musuem. He designed the building. It has a large collection of his artwork and his jewelry work as well. When you see his very early work and non-surrealist work, you realize he had an amazing talent. There were a few small paintings in the museum which showed his ability for more mainstream artwork.
All in all it was a neat look into an odd artist.
After the museum we changed our tickets to an early return and headed back to Barcelona to get packed and ready to go before we started the Camino de Santiago. I (Clay) cooked vegetables for dinner and we went to bed. That sums up the day.
But back to the disaster alluded to in previous blog posts.
We had train tickets for 8:20 (2 tickets) to head out to Figueres. We normally walk to the train station. Sometimes we take the metro/subway. Sometimes we take a cab. Obviously it depends on the city and if we are carrying luggage. We also normally leave our apartment with enough time to do two of the three. So if it takes 30 minutes to walk or 15 by cab, we leave 45 minutes in advance in case we make a mistake. That is very early, but the extra time is built in to resolve any snafu’s or blips with bad directions, traffic issues, or whatever problems might arise. Travel is expensive and paying twice is painful.
7:15 AM: We left the apartment around this time and began our walk to the metro station. It was a 45 minute walk to the train station, but we were taking the metro, which should take less than 15 minutes. A car would take 20 minutes.
7:20 AM: We arrived at the metro station and bought our tickets (4 tickets). We went through the gate and began walking. Soon we realized we walked to the wrong subway line and needed to get to the correct side of the station. Of course the only way to do this was to buy new metro tickets because the other side of the train station runs different lines. So we bought another two tickets (6 in total) and walked to the other side of the same metro station. The tickets did not work. They don’t work because even though this is the same station, the R line and the L line use different tickets. This is the first station we have encountered where such an occurrence happened.
Fine. Whatever. Let’s just get on the train. So we bought yet another set of tickets (8) and started walking to the correct train line.
7:45 AM: By now it was closer to eight which was not ideal but not a problem. We could still make it on the subway. And if worse came to worse, we could still get there by taxi. We got on the train and headed off… in the wrong direction. We realized we were on the wrong train before the first stop. The problem is the first stop in the wrong direction was extremely far away. So far away that I realized we were toast because it’s now around 8:05.
8:05 AM: I decided let’s just take a taxi. Odds were we couldn’t mess that up and hopefully we could get close to being there before the train leaves. Also, the next metro train that was going in the correct direction wouldn’t be arriving for another five minutes, and we had messed up the metro so many times I didnt’t want to risk it any more.
If we had taken the metro, we would have likely arrived at the train station between 8:15-8:20. Probably with not enough time to get through security, but you never know. The big downside is the trains in Spain always, always, always left on time.
Of course in my haste, I forgot that the metro was faster than the taxi. So as we hailed a taxi and got in, I checked traffic. It was 8:05 and we were so far away from the train station, since we took the subway train in the wrong direction, that the traffic report says it would be 8:24 before we can could there for our 8:20 train to Figueres.
I (as if anyone is surprised) was lost in a fit of anger.
Our cabbie was driving as slow as possible. I could only assume to further enrage me. To make matters worse the song playing on the radio was none other than Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Life was rickrolling us.
8:29 AM: We arrived at the train station. Between morning traffic (how could there be traffic at 8 AM when no one goes to work until 10) and the cab driver stopping at yellow lights expecting them to turn to red at any moment, we missed our train.
I went to ask the train people what my next steps were. The said, “Buy new tickets.” So we bought yet another pair of train tickets (10).
10 tickets (6 of which were not needed), a 20 dollar cab ride, and untold sums of money wasted on those extra tickets to get to a city an hour away. What should have been a seven minute walk and 8 minute metro ride turned into over an hour of pure hell. And complete incompetence on our part.
We boarded the train separately as we parted ways once we got our final set of tickets. We had been together for the last hour. We each played a part in missing the train and each needed time to recover from feeling like an idiot. If we had been forced to be together any longer that morning, we probably wouldn’t be together now.
cornetravel 
Well… That’s all I got. Something y’all can laugh about in a year/decade or two, maybe. We are so glad the blog is back up. Thanks for the extra effort.
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