AlDisneyland
Jan. 2nd, 2008 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fingertroubleSo being in Cordoba of course the first thing you do is jump on a train to Granada to see the world famous Alhambra gardens. Or try to.
There is amazingly only 1 train a day Cordoba-Seville. The train goes through amazing mountain scenery, and apart that they only seem to have two films dubbed in Spanish, Click and Who Killed Harry Crick? (the scriptwriters that ripped the Truman Show seemingly).
Which leads me to a question - why given that a lot of the station have a few trains a day, or a couple of trains an hour, why are stations like Cadiz massive multiplatform expensive productions that would shame most London stations that have trains every few minutes, not hourly/daily? Most of the platforms even at AVE stations are unused. I sense an EEC money scam.
Also they style them like airports, which given the massive production of security, Xray machines, security guards, long lines, and tickets checked at least 2 times by different people; well one gets the sense it's a large job creation scheme, and like British Fail will eventually become totally uneconomic, not that railways ever can be profit making, but given the overstaffing and bureaucracy of the system it feels scarily nostalgic.
Anyway onto Alhambra, to queue and queue and find all the tickets to the garden sold about 10 people before us. What most of the guide neglect to tell you is you need to book MONTHS in advance or chance a ticket in the morning...which of course because of the one train means we missed. Which was the whole point of getting to Granada anyway.
So we are back here today to try our luck in the rain!
There is amazingly only 1 train a day Cordoba-Seville. The train goes through amazing mountain scenery, and apart that they only seem to have two films dubbed in Spanish, Click and Who Killed Harry Crick? (the scriptwriters that ripped the Truman Show seemingly).
Which leads me to a question - why given that a lot of the station have a few trains a day, or a couple of trains an hour, why are stations like Cadiz massive multiplatform expensive productions that would shame most London stations that have trains every few minutes, not hourly/daily? Most of the platforms even at AVE stations are unused. I sense an EEC money scam.
Also they style them like airports, which given the massive production of security, Xray machines, security guards, long lines, and tickets checked at least 2 times by different people; well one gets the sense it's a large job creation scheme, and like British Fail will eventually become totally uneconomic, not that railways ever can be profit making, but given the overstaffing and bureaucracy of the system it feels scarily nostalgic.
Anyway onto Alhambra, to queue and queue and find all the tickets to the garden sold about 10 people before us. What most of the guide neglect to tell you is you need to book MONTHS in advance or chance a ticket in the morning...which of course because of the one train means we missed. Which was the whole point of getting to Granada anyway.
So we are back here today to try our luck in the rain!