When the Spanish Transportation System Gets You Down

In case it isn’t yet obvious, I live in a small town in Northern Spain. A small town where I and others solely depend on public transportation as our only means of getting from point A to point B.

One of the more frustrating parts of this journey is making your timetables add up with what is available to you in order to both work and travel. I ended up living in Calahorra because I couldn’t make my timetable work from Logrono with the few buses that ran from there to Arnedo (where I work.) Even here, being a solid 15 minutes away by car, I still end up with hours to kill in between bus times. It’s a tiny bit frustrating at times.

And if we want to travel by plane, our best bet is flying out of Madrid or Barcelona. I’ve taken the 1:30 am bus from Logrono a number of times in order to catch early AM flights from Madrid. Hop on that bus, try to sleep, and arrive at 6:30 am. Flying out of Madrid isn’t half as painful as flying out of Barcelona, though. There is exactly one bus that runs from Calahorra to Barcelona and it leaves the station at 2:30 am, arriving at 8:30. It will also set you back about 50 euro for your troubles. #nobueno. The trains in Spain are expensive and also come with limitations, a variety of prices from week to week, and book up quickly. And I’ve also had my fun with trains and missing them…

This all being said, most of us have learned to conquer the system, because the other option is not traveling (and what kind of option is that.) The other night a friend of mine was catching the bus from Calahorra to Logrono to catch the 1:30 AM bus to Madrid. We had a #Spain moment and I thought I would share because I found it highly entertaining two glasses of wine in.

#Spain