When it comes to transportation here in Spain, I am cursed. I was going to write this blog entry last week, but didn’t want to jinx my trip to Rome (which I just got back from), so I held off. Maybe if I had written this before, things wouldn’t have gone the way they did…
So when I arrived to Spain on September 20th of this year, I made a deal with myself that I wasn’t here to save money, rather to have enough to survive the year until I could go back to working in the States. So, this meant that I also told myself that I would take as many opportunities as I had to travel.
My first trip outside of Navalmoral was to my orientation for the program at the end of September. I had bought an “ida y vuelta” ticket for a fixed price and took the bus into the city. At the end of the few days there, my “tutor” from my school in Navalmoral had shown up for the last day and offered to drive me home. No big disaster, if anything, a little more comfortable…but I did lose some money on my “vuelta.” But no big deal…
The second trip I took was when I decided, spur of the moment, to go to Salamanca with a friend. On the return from Salamanca (read that trip’s entry for more detail), I somehow slept through the two alarms I had set, missing my bus back to Plasencia, and thereby missing the ONE bus that went from Plasencia to Navalmoral that Sunday. Luckily, Sara’s “tutor” had been in Salamanca that weekend, drove me to Plasencia, and got me there with seconds to spare before the bus left for Navalmoral.
Next came my trip to Venice. I had planned to take the train into Madrid, but arrived almost half an hour early to the station to find out that the ticket office was closed. I ran to the bus station and was able to get a ticket for the last bus out that was leaving just a few minutes later. Then, after the weekend of gondolas and gelato, the five of us who had gone took the shuttle to the airport from the city center, only to find that at 1.30am, the Venice airport was closed and locked for the evening. It was freezing outside. Only by the help of a maintenance man were we able to escape the cold and spend the night on the airport floor. Finally, when we got into Sevilla, try as I might, there were absolutely no buses left that would get me back to Navalmoral that day. I ended up going with a friend to her town and spending the night there. In the morning, I went to the bus station, ready to get the direct bus to my town that I had looked up the night before online. However, the bus never came. I waited for almost one hour before a bus pulled into the small town bus station. It was going to the big city a bit north of my friend’s town. I blindly bought a ticket and got on, hoping I would find a bus in the city that would take me home. By the grace of God, I did.
Then, during my second trip to Salamanca, the bus ride to Plasencia that should be 45 minutes, took me over 2 hours because the bus stopped at basically every pueblo town in Extremadura. The only reason I was able to catch the bus (minutes to spare) to Salamanca in time for my concert was because I had the coolest bus driver ever, who definitely broke some traffic laws to get me to the bus station on time.
Finally, this past weekend I went to Rome (blog post to follow on this fabulous trip). My friend and I arrived to Madrid separately, planning to meet up at the airport. She had arrived around noon for our 5.00pm flight. She camped out at the gate until I got there, around 4.00pm and was told to go to the gate she was at. About 45 minutes later, we realized that the gate sign (that had said “Lisbon” for the past 4 hours) still hadn’t changed to “Rome.” My friend went to ask a man at an info desk and he told her that our gate had changed, the flight was on final call, and for us to run. We RAN through Barajas airport, out of breath by time we reached our gate, basically in another terminal as the other. When we did get there, no one was there to let us on the flight. We still had 8 minutes until the flight was supposed to leave. We could see the plane. We could see the pilot. But try as we might, no one could help us and we were on the verge of crying as we watched our flight to Rome take off without us. We ended up having to pay 110 Euros extra to change our flight to the next day (no travel insurance, the joy of RyanAir) and had to spend the night in Barajas airport.
I am definitely cursed. Hopefully by writing all of this down, my luck will change. Seriously, nothing can be worse than the night we missed the Rome flight. Luckily my friend and I were very positive, drank some beer and wine, and ended up having an incredible weekend in Italy!
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