It was long journey to the train station. I was unsettled. I had a horrible toothache, had slept 2 hours, was really getting tired of Paris and we had no train tickets to leave - not for lack of trying. We had gone to the train station almost daily only to be told we couldn't get tickets. We got to the train station and I tried again to book tickets. I had the rest wait by a train that we would hopefully get on. I had around an hour or so before that train was to leave - plenty of time, right? Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. There were long queues, half of the booths had no one working in them, when I finally got to the counter we had communication issues and a rude teller to boot. Her computer was slow and kept on freezing. Her printer jammed when she was to print my ticket. There were 5 of us, but she could only find 2 seats to reserve. I took them! I heard them announcing my train's departure. I ran like a crazy person. I jumped into the train just as the doors were closing. I knew my friends must have done the logical thing and entered the train too. I finally found them. It was a long journey - we changed trains 3 times because of our ticket-less situation. To make matters worse, we had each parted with 35 Euros to secure the few tickets we were able to. On most other routes, we had been able to use our Eurail passes without having to pay anything additional. This was not the case for trains leaving or getting into Paris.
We finally got to Barcelona in the evening. We were extremely happy to no longer be in Paris! We walked to the beach and went to a bar near our hostel in the evening. It was a lovely hostel. Be Dream hostel at Pep Ventura train station. In a complete contrast to Paris, everyone we met was kind, helpful and friendly. Things were looking up again.
