This is one hell of a well designed city. Well, the modern part of the city. The old town (Ciutat Vella) including the Barri Gòtic is anything but designed. Of course it has its own charms. Assume I'm talking about the modern zone for the rest of this.
The buildings have chopped corners at intersections, so each one is a
little public square. Some have things like fountains in the middle.
Crossings are offset a bit from the intersections, too, so turning
traffic has some time to see conflicts on the destination street. There
are well-used special bus/taxi/scooter/bike lanes too. (Lots of
scooters!)
The streets are laid out on a pretty strict grid. In addition to more typical bus lines, there are numbered H and V lines (Horizontal and Vertical?) to help you navigate by coordinate if you're into that sort of thing. (You know I am.) The Metro has a lot of well-connected lines, but the stations are so HOT. Wow. The T never gets this bad in the middle of August - and the outside air has generally been reasonably pleasant here. What's the deal?
Expanding out from the Metro to media distancia, things get more complicated. The Rodalies network is a system of commuter trains to suburbs and more distant destinations. Ferrocarrils is another such network. I could not figure out how exactly they differed. There's also a "Tram" which I never saw in action - possibly a third such system?
The national Spanish railway company Renfe operates the larga distancia trains. Sigh. Maybe Germany spoiled me, but in 2000 I could book a trip from any X to any Y in any small town train station, even including local buses, and even if the trip was outside Germany. In Spain, you apparently can't even get a ticket leaving from the main station in town at the #4-ish station. You have to actually go there. (I'd buy online instead, but that just wasn't working at all.) When I got to the station, the machine wouldn't let me buy the ticket I wanted, so I was afraid they'd sold out! I would have to (shudder) talk to a human. I found that they weren't serving after-today long-distance trains yet, which works on the take-a-number system. And there was a line waiting for the number dispenser to activate for the day. Oy. While I'm waiting for my number to be called, I sketch out alternate plans for the rest of my trip in case I couldn't get to Córdoba on Weds. Eventually I'm called to the window and my train is sold out at the low price (aha) but I can book Turista Plus (like airline "Economy Plus" ?) for 50 additional euros. I'm kicking myself for not booking earlier, but it's worth it at this point.
Actually boarding this train, however, was a dream. The 300 km/h (186 MPH) AVE is the equal of Germany's ICE or France's TGV. Flying across the Spanish countryside (again, I'm thinking of Utah or Nevada) was so smooth that it was actually disorienting to disembark in a different city. How was it possible I had actually traveled somewhere?
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