The metro and bus system in Valencia is amazing and makes getting around the city easy and convenient.  Too bad buying the metro and bus tickets isn’t!  Yesterday we had to go to the airport to pick up my friend Jocelyn who was flying in from Toronto to join us for two weeks.  “A piece of cake”, we said, as we headed to the metro to take us to the airport.  We had loaded our bus/metro card the day before so we wouldn’t have any problems.  We scanned our card at the first turnstile and it beeped red, not allowing us in.  I tried again and the same thing.  “Now what”! I exclaimed.  We tried again, and still no luck.  We figured that our card hadn’t loaded properly the day before so we decided to just buy two single tickets to the airport and figure out the card later.  Easy peasy, we thought!  I put my money into the machine, after getting it to work in English, and my ticket popped out.  Joey put her money in and the machine spit it back our at her.  Second attempt…same thing.  Let’s try a different bill, we thought.  Nope!  Let’s try one more time with another bill.  In went the 5 Euro bill and it worked!  We waited for the change to fall along with the ticket but all that came out was more change than she should have gotten.  Joey put that in her purse and we waited some more.  No ticket, but lots more change came pouring out of the machine like a slot machine in Vegas.  “YOU WON”! I declared and we went into fits of laughter.  I gathered up the change and we got all of her money back plus whatever she got the first time…but, still no ticket.  At that point, the machine started making all kinds of strange noises. I think we broke it!  We decided to try again at a different machine… maybe we’ll keep winning.  This time ,I put in MY 5Euro note and out came the ticket…finally.

Now, off to the airport. We turned around and I immediately noticed why the turnstile machine wouldn’t let us in when we tried earlier.  It was an exit, coming out of the train!!!!  So, all this time, we did have the right ticket and we spent 15 minutes trying to get something we didn’t need.  But, Joey was a winner so all was OK – NOT!

A short fifteen-minute ride to the airport and we had arrived. We have to scan our tickets at every metro coming into the station and leaving the station so we scanned our tickets to go inside the airport, and guess what?  It wouldn’t work.  We were stuck again.  I checked to make sure we were going through the right gate and tried again but nothing.  We stood there looking at each other baffled.  I had an old paper ticket in my purse and tried it and amazingly, it let us in.  We still can’t figure that one out.

We had an hour to wait before Jocelyn arrived so we stopped for a cold drink and then went back to meet her.  I think four planes came in at once because we waited for a very long time before we finally saw her coming through the gates.  We were so happy to see her.  Now to get home on the metro. I tried our tickets and BEEP went the red light.  OMG! I went to the ticket booth where there was actually a person to help us and she checked our card and informed us that we had bought zone A tickets and not zone AD which is the airport tickets.  Thank goodness she could change them for us and away we went again but last night I got thinking through our whole day and wondered if she had just changed three tickets to get us back to our flat or all ten that we had bought.  We’ll know the next time we try to go anywhere but the airport.  Wish us luck!