We decided to fly to Madrid rather than taking the train, and were a bit worried about taking our third budget airline. We made it to the airport without issue and got in line with the others – a cut throat group of cutters unfortunately.

While waiting in line at the gate, we noticed someone who appeared to be the TAP bag checker, so we made sure to repeat what we had done on our last flight, keeping our bags out of sight to make it past undetected. We were celebrating as we walked down the ramp to the plane, but stopped when we saw another bag checker with a baggage sizer right in front of the plane door! This was diabolical, as there was no escape and higher pressure just to check your bag rather than try to squish it down to fit in their sizer. We saw some people with smaller bags than us off to the side yet again, but these checkers simply let us walk by undisturbed – we didn’t even need a distraction this time!

We’re not sure how we managed to get this lucky, maybe we just really look like budget travelers and they feel bad for us, or maybe we’re just pros at obscuring their vision of our bags. Either way, we made it onto the plane without issue and settled in for the flight. The flight was going well, and about par for the course, when the inflight service began. We waited until they got to us, expecting peanuts as per usual, when instead we got more Pastel de Natas! It was a wonderful surprise, and definitely skyrocketed our opinion of TAP over easyJet! We landed in Madrid without much fuss, and made our way to the metro happy that our third budget experience was another success.

When we got to the metro we were faced with the most confusing ticket machines we had seen yet, and when we got to the last screen and it said we owed €7.30 PER TICKET we were positive we had done something wrong. We went through the process again only to come to the same conclusion. We figured out that there was a fee for buying a card (they are fancy plastic ones) and a fee for coming from the airport on top of the regular ticket price. We were pretty bummed, but figured despite the high cost we probably couldn’t get to the city center for less money, so we bought them and hopped on the metro.

We got to our airbnb quickly and found that it was in an awesome neighborhood with lots of shops and restaurants and it was really walkable to everything. Our place was tiny as usual, but it was all we needed. We had a little loft area with some cushions and a small table so we made some tea and strategized.

We knew that we needed to buy tickets to Barcelona because our Eurail passes would run out before the day we were traveling, so we looked into how much the tickets would cost… and found that they would be over €100 per person!! We were shocked, and super bummed that we couldn’t use our passes! We started looking into other options and found that the two most viable ones were a long distance bus for about $40 per person, or using an uber-like service called BlaBla Car for about $35 per person.

We started looking into BlaBla Car because it sounded more pleasant to ride in a car with one or two other people than to ride in a huge bus, but none of the rides seemed quite right (leaving too late in the day, bad reviews, too expensive, not enough spots in the car, etc). One of the drivers had a review that someone had left saying something along the lines of “we got in an accident, but it was still a great experience and I would totally do it again! 5 stars!” We’ve never read a review like that before!!

We commited to the bus and bought tickets for 8am on Friday. The bus would take 8 hours rather than the 2.5 that the train would which was pretty painful, but we had to do it!

After sorting out our last transportation, we looked at things that we could see while we were in Madrid and then set out to explore. We wandered around popping in shops and checking out menus to get ideas for dinner later.

We ended up deciding to go to a ramen place that Ryan found on Yelp called Ramen Kagura and we are so glad that we did. It opened at 8:30 and we got there at 8:15 (on a Wednesday) and there was already a line of about 10 people waiting for it to open. We joined, and soon there were just as many people behind us if not more.

We got seated right away, and quickly realized we were probably the only tourists there. Becca got regular ramen and Ryan got miso ramen, with some gyoza to share. It all came out pretty quickly, although not before we saw the other people eating near us order MASSIVE amounts of food. It seemed like every couple each got the largest ramen (twice as much weight as the ones we got) and two or more side dishes! It was crazy, as we struggled to finish our own food. It was all so good, and we had to waddle our way back to the airbnb.

The next day we headed to the train station, trying to use our last Eurail pass day on a spontaneous / free day trip. Once we got there, we realized it was not meant to be. Not a single train leaving the station was available without a reservation, and when we left to seek out how much they would cost, we found huge lines in the ticket offices! So much for spontaneity! We brainstormed what we could do, and realized that our passes got us a discount at the Madrid train museum and Becca was heartbroken that we couldn’t use our last day on our passes, so we decided that a train museum was the next best thing.

First we tried to find somewhere Ryan could use the bathroom and settled on Dunkin Donuts so that Becca could get a donut too! She got a donut that looked like Cookie Monster and it helped cheer her up from the disappointment of the trains.

We set out for the train museum and when we arrived we found an amazing museum filled with real trains as well as a huge collection of models. We showed our passes at the ticket office and the girl gave us a puzzled look and told us that they don’t work with those passes. Becca is still mad about it because we are sure that they do and she was just confused, but we got a student discount and went to the museum anyway.

The museum was really fun because we’ve been on so many trains over the past 10 weeks! After spending a little over an hour exploring the museum, we felt a bit better about not being able to use our last day and headed in the direction of home and lunch. We found a small taco place and decided to try it out. It turned out they had a great lunch deal, with four tacos, guac and chips, a drink and a dessert, all for under €9! We were absolutely stuffed after eating all that food, and made our way home for a little siesta.

In continuing the theme of great eating, we headed to restaurant called Bao Bar for dinner, being treated to some really yummy bao. Becca got a KFC bao (Korean Fried Chicken), and Ryan got their original bao with pork belly – both having really different and interesting flavors.

The next day we wanted to see the Reina Sofia, an art gallery that was supposedly free for students! We had a quick bite before heading in, and after showing them four different pieces of ID, we had our free tickets! The museum had a very interesting theme, with the notable artists being Picasso and Salvador Dali. The rest of the artists followed the similar odd themes that these two are so well known for, leaving us scratching our heads at times.

The first instance of confusion was the first room we went to see, heading downstairs to find a dark room at the end of the hall, with creepy noises coming from it as we got closer. Becca visably and audibly balked at the room, causing the docent to laugh in empathy with her. Even though she spoke no english she and Becca had a connection – she told Becca through telepathy not to go in the room so Becca immediately turned around and left. We will never know what was in the creepy room, but that is probably for the best. We are still alive to write this blog post.
After that, the art was less eventful, but still interesting despite its oddity. A lot of it was counter-culture, ranging from erratic Russian dada, to modern art. All things considered, we were glad we went, but double-y glad we didn’t pay for the museum!

We spent some time in the garden of the museum which was really beautiful and then walked to see the Palace before heading back to the airbnb. We ventured out again for happy hour (it was from 4-9 pm! That’s what I call a happy hour!) and got €1 tacos and 2 for €7 margaritas.

We spent the evening packing and woke up early the next morning to take our 8 hour bus to Barcelona!

When we arrived at the bus station at about 7:40 am we looked up at the departures board and did not see our bus! We figured it must have a different final destination and walked to some of the platforms to try and figure out if any of them were stopping in Barcelona. When we revisited the board after finding no luck we saw a bus that was identical to our bus, except it said it was leaving at 9 am instead of 8! We decided to walk over to see if it was our bus, but delayed for some reason.

When we arrived we found a bus packed with people and went to the driver to ask, but realized that it was our bus! We got on and got settled in, and the bus left promptly at 8am! So strange. We were happy that we found it in time!

The bus ride was one of the worst travel experiences we’ve had to date. While the bus was on time and the 8 hours were surprisingly not as bad as we anticipated – the only word Becca can find to describe long distance bus travel is lawless. Social norms do not seem to apply in these circumstances. A man refused to give up the seat he was sitting in for a mother and daughter pair who paid for the seats (it was reserved seating) and forced someone else to move so that they could sit together. Also, as soon as the bus started everyone around us began to take off their shoes and socks and a woman sprawled out across multiple seats blocking the entire pathway with her legs making it impossible for anyone to get by her. Also this bus that was supposed to drive us for 8 hours had NO BATHROOM. Not sure how that is legal. We did stop twice for bathroom breaks, but this didn’t make the bus ride comfortable for anyone.

We started off and we both put in headphones to listen to music and podcasts to pass the time. Within 30 minutes of leaving the man sitting across the aisle from us got up, moved the woman’s legs that were blocking the aisle to get to the front of the bus, got a bag from the driver, and then started peeing in the bag. He tried to be discrete, but there is literally no way to do this on a bus. This man ended up doing it three times during the course of the ride which was terrible and we will never be the same.

For the rest of the ride we tried to distract ourselves from the bus ride and the amount of time we were stuck there. When we stopped at the first stop between Madrid and Barcelona someone on our bus was searched for drugs by the police and then returned to our bus to continue with us to Barcelona.

After all of that we kissed the ground when we finally arrived in Barcelona at about 4 pm and took a well deserved nap when we reached the airbnb!