Going to El Escorial

I went to the Old Town of Segovia early on purpose for two reasons, first, that I would be able to get here early and hopefully avoid the crush of people that I expect to come. That one as largely successful. The second reason was that I wanted to complete touring the Old Town of Segovia early enough that I would still have time to go elsewhere. I have largely completed that as I have arrived at the Madrid Chamartin Railway Station soon enough. I quickly purchased a commuter ticket to go to my next destination. I intentionally grouped these two destination together since they both share the same railway station. The train will be departing in less than an hour so all I needed to do is wait. Then I was looking at the ticket, I noticed that the ticket printed out a different train number – C1. I was confused since I thought I explained what I wanted very clearly and I believe I understood the person at the counter as well.

I ended up taking the C1 train, which happened to arrive. I was going through the route and realized that C1 wasn’t going to where I wanted to go to. I quickly got off the train and head back to Chamartin Railway Station. By the time I arrived, my train had left and I spend another hour waiting for the next one. So what happened? Some folk were kind enough to explain to me that the C1 on my ticket actually referred to the zone of my destination. Destinations of a certain distance would belong to one zone, while destination of another distance would belong to another zone. The zone C1 was the zone of my destination. My ticket would allow me to go to any destination up to the C1 zone. Confusingly enough, the commuter trains here called Cercanias use an identical naming scheme and lo and behold, C1 was one of the train’s codes. The train C1 was going to a totally different place. I finally got on the correct train – C8. This will bring me to my destination. I wasted a lot of time figuring this one out. I hope I am not too late.

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