transportation timetables for hours, charting the most economical times and locales.
I pored over hundreds of hotel reviews for four different cities. Everything went off
without a hitch. Our lodging was great, and transportation plans were spot on.
Meanwhile, I neglected the week-long trip I would be taking with my little sister and my
roommate through Barcelona and the south of France. I made a few lodging plans and
browsed bus schedules to sketch out a rough itinerary. I figured we could solidify things
when the time came.
Then the time came, and things were as unsolidified as ever. We didn’t know how or
when we’d get from Madrid to Barcelona; Barcelona to Nice, France; and from Nice to
Marseille to catch our return flight to Madrid.
I'm a planner by nature. I'm always the one to take the initiative and plan projects and
trips. I obsess over details and am a slave to Internet reviews. But, as this trip proved,
sometimes it's good to loosen my compulsive grip on control and let things work
themselves out.
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| French Riviera |
Like assuming we could buy Madrid-Barcelona bus tickets for a prime departure time
mere minutes before said departure.
Like arriving in Barcelona at 1:30 in the morning and hauling our luggage through the
city’s notoriously thief-laden streets (we didn’t get robbed, so there’s a nod for faith in
humanity).
Like sitting down at the computer at 7 p.m. on New Year’s Day and assuming it was
possible to buy tickets for an international overnight bus for the same evening.
Like, after realizing that wasn’t possible, scrambling to find any company with buses
headed to southern France, then buying the tickets and deciding to wait until the
morning of departure to print said tickets and look for lodging.
Like buying tickets for a train we could see would be departing any second, and
watching it pull away as the machine spit out our passes.
Like getting off a train in a random French port village without double-checking
because a random man told us that was the place we were looking for.
The whole trip was one beautiful, frenzied misadventure. But what's travel without a bit
of panic?
The only mess we encountered that wasn’t provoked by our own irresponsibility was
a train delay between Nice and Marseille, where we needed to catch an evening flight.
The train ahead of us had an electrical problem and blocked the tracks. We sat stalled
in the train for an hour or more, listening cluelessly to the intercom progress reports in
French, which none of us spoke. At one point an Italian passenger and I were talking, he
in Italian and I in Spanish, about what was happening. Ultimately, the issue got fixed,
we made our flight, and we caught the bus home from Madrid to Don Benito.
Even considering the time and money wasted because of our imprudence, I don't regret
neglecting the planning (although I would like to have some of that lost time back to
visit more of the ridiculously amazing French Riviera). We have a handful of disaster
tales to keep us giggling for years to come.
Here’s to embracing every fiasco as an opportunity to learn or laugh.
Un saludo,
Teresa
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| Sagrada Familia, Barcelona |
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| Gaudi house on the right, Barcelona |
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| Park Guell, Barcelona |
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| Marseille, France, port |
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| Beach in Nice, France |
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| Harbor in Monte Carlo, Monaco |
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