Barcelona- Day 4 and the Last Day of Summer Travels

On our last day in Barcelona, we spent a considerably time trying to buy our return train tickets to Zaragoza using the Internet, only to discover that for some reason the Renfe website (the Spanish train company site) doesn't take American credit cards. The EU credit cards have a chip in them which our American ones don't -- perhaps that's the issue. After many attempts and some frustration, we wound up purchasing tickets directly at the station which took all of 3 minutes. Live and learn. For the future, the inability to buy online is a bummer as it will require us to go directly to the Zaragoza (ZAZ) Delicias station, and in-person costs slightly more than online purchasing.





Reluctant to visit a museum, Colin and Kelsey were keen on a more kid-friendly activity; their input took us to the aquarium. Even though Barcelona has many outstanding museums including Picasso, Dali and Gaudi to name a few, we figured over the course of the next year we would have several opportunities to check out the other 'must see' items.

Unlike the Boston aquarium that has live, open exhibits, such as the penguins, or shows, feedings and hands-on activities, the Barcelona one is exclusively tanks filled with sea life. In much of it, a moving walkway takes you underneath a large tank with sharks, fish, etc. The extraordinary sea life are swimming above to give the illusion of actually being in the tank. We hope that's the closest we'll come to swimming with sharks...ever!

At 7pm, we caught the fast train back to ZAZ (1 hour, 26 mins), no issues, no hiccups, no delays. It left on time, on the dot. The train was clean and almost luxurious compared to some of the trains we rode in Italy. In comparison to Italy, they validate tickets much like they do when you fly -- even requiring a pass through security. Italy still has a person that manually and randomly comes around to check tickets. We had just commented that a system that verifies tickets before boarding would make more sense over one where tickets are checked haphazardly. Voilà.