So, we’ve been learning a lot about how to travel in Europe by gallivanting around and getting it wrong.

For example, we spent all week trying to buy train tickets to Barcelona for the weekend.  We USED to be able to buy these online with our credit card.  This time, we kept getting an error that our transaction could not go through.  Calls to our credit card company indicated that the transaction had never even been submitted to them.  Combine this with the fact that a normal experience on the Renfe website is a minor nightmare: it can’t remember what language it is using, and it constantly forgets your search results.

After a lot of growling and gnashing of teeth, we did some searching around to figure out what might be wrong.  And we found some enlightening and colorful descriptions of the Renfe website.

Trip Advisor says: “The website is a bit surreal. It is like Alice in Wonderland, where nothing seems to be what it really is.”

Other sites indicate that things will work and fail to work apparently randomly, so don’t take it too seriously.

Additionally, it turns out that Spanish credit cards actually have more security features than American ones.  Sites may just blindly try to communicate the Spanish protocol to your American credit card company and get confused.

New solution?  Just walk down the street to a travel agent and pay a 2€ fee to have them buy and print the tickets for you.  Yes, a travel agent.  You remember those.