Madrid to Barcelona

This morning we woke at 5:45am, packed up, and departed the AirBnB at 6:15am. The hallway/stairway was very dark once we were outside the apartment. We tried to turn on the lights by hitting a switch in the hallway, but it was actually the neighbor’s door bell! Opps! We hurried down the dark stairs before we had to confront the angry neighbor.

We were surprised to see the churro station outside the Principle Pio station either just opening or still open!  We did not stop to get any though.

We obtained our included Cercanias tickets to Atocha station by entering our train confirmation code into the ticket machine. We jumped onto the 6:32am C-1 train to Atocha.

Using the ticket machine to get our included Cercanias tickets to Atocha station

We arrived to Atocha station with plenty of time to spare. We bought some coffee (€2.1) and large croissants (3 for €2) from a cafe in the station and then went to see the turtle pond in the lobby. Despite not getting much natural light, the many, many (~300?) turtles seemed happy. We especially liked the fake sand beaches in the middle of the pond.

Massive lobby in Atocha station
Turtles and the sandy beach areas
 Katie with luggage, tickets, and breakfast in front of the turtle pond

We cleared baggage security easily. Although the signs claimed things like little scissors were not allowed, ours did not attract any attention.

Our high speed (but not direct) train to Barcelona
Boarding our train to Barcelona

We had booked Turista Plus tickets (79.35€) as they were cheaper than the Tourist class tickets when we booked. This gave us slightly nicer seats that were 3 across in the train instead of 4 across. We had seats 11B and 11C in car 3 preassigned to us.

Our seats were comfortable!

The train had a audio system, although we didn’t check it out. The Avengers movie was played on overhead screens. It had Spanish subtitles, but may have been played in English.

Katie worked on blogging on her laptop while JT tried to work on Katie’s phone. We were disappointed to find the train did not have WiFi.

Katie blogging on the train
Great sunrise!

After dozing off for a bit, JT went to the cafeteria car to get some coffee con leche. Even on the train, it was a reasonable €1.9.

The cafe area on the train

The 3 hour and 10 minute ride went by smoothly and quickly, and we arrived to Barcelona Sants station right on time at 10:40am.

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