La Ciudadela

Today has been a travel day where nothing seems to go right! My original plan to get to San Sebastián was to take a train from Barcelona to Zaragoza, spend a few hours there and explore, then take a bus from there to San Sebastián with a very quick layover to grab a snack in Pamplona. The journey started with me missing my train in Barcelona - in my defense, I had no idea that there would be a security line or passport control, as there had been neither in Italy and I didn’t think there would be a difference between the two countries. Fortunately I was able to grab a ticket for the next train half an hour later, but that was just a waste of 50 euros. Once on the train, I decided to check where I would find the bus in Zaragoza. I knew the stop was outside the city in a place called ciudad de transportación, so I was planning to take a quick cab ride over. I plugged the address into maps and realised it didn’t match the map that came with my bus ticket - after a while of confusion, I realised it was in a DIFFERENT ciudad de transportación - one that was 3 hours away from Zaragoza! I still don’t know how this was possible as the ticket I bought was clearly labelled as being from Zaragoza to San Sebastián. I freaked because I had no way to get to this bus stop and I couldn’t buy any other train or bus tickets online - if I use my card on a Spanish site, it makes me input a confirmation code that gets sent to Dad, but this was all happening at around 4 AM Chicago time. I hated the idea of paying 50 more euros for another last minute train, so I downloaded an app called BlaBlaCar that some guys at the hostel had recommended, which is kind of like Uber for long distance trips, except much cheaper - it’s almost like hitchhiking, if you’re doing a long drive you post it on there and people can basically join you and split gas money through the app. It seemed a bit sketchy but I had no other option - since the payment was going through an app I wouldn’t need any codes from Dad. Once I arrived in Zaragoza, however, I checked the ticket booth for how much a ride to Pamplona would be, and it was only 15 euro, but I would have less than an hour to go into town to find wifi and cancel my BlaBlaCar and get back to the station. I walked into town from the station, ate lunch embarrassingly quickly, cancelled the ride and got back to the train just in time. Once in Pamplona I spent way too long on the phone with capital one trying to make sure this problem with the verification codes wouldn’t happen again, but I still had time afterwards to explore the city. It was super nice out and it was a really beautiful town. It had a similar modernity to it as Barcelona but was not crowded at all and had absolutely no tourists - I didn’t hear English once. Now I’m finally on the last leg of the trip: up in the mountains on a bus to San Sebastián!Read more