Day 96, 8 October 2012, Lazed in the gardens then got on the fastest train ever to Barcelona & Badalona - We puttered this morning. James hunted chocolate croissants and coffees and brought them back to room. Reading, snoozing, all good stuff. He even found our local grocery store so we coughed up €5 for lunch goods and made our way to the botanic gardens for lunch. Not actually in them because €3 each is daylight robbery - but in the gardens outside the Prado, quite salubrious indeed. Having made enquiries from the English speaking son of the gentleman at the hotel, we now had the 10 minute route back to the station. Wow. Madrid's Puerta Atocha station is like an airport. Incredibly well run, clean, easy to read information boards to find out where your space ship is departing and even a massive garden in the middle with pools of turtles to watch. We had started to wonder if we were in the right place at all. Looks nothing like the grubby and just plain old stations in Australia. Our platform was allocated 15 minutes before the Madrid to Barcelona service at 5 pm was due to leave and we were checked through by the nice people with the barcode reader and onto the most whiz bang train we've ever seen. Space! Comfort! and then, smack on time it took off - from 0 to 160km an hour before we had a chance to watch the display unit showing time-date-temperature and speed. We made it up to 300 km an hour and amused ourselves for quite a whiling just looking at all the traffic on nearby roads that we were overtaking. I admit to expecting G-forces to kick in at any time. Did I mention we had 3G access for the whole 2 hours 30 minute run? Fun started upon arrival at Barcelona Sants when we tried to figure out exactly how to get a train to Badalona - a sea side suburb 20 minutes out of town where our lovely hostess Maite from our home exchange network was waiting for us. Scary stuff indeed. First info counter wasn't for trains, it was for metro. Nope. definitely needed a train. Next counter confirmed platform 8 sold us tickets. Which train should I get? Advised to go to another counter... Should get trains labelled to Mataro. All this, including actually getting on the train, took about 15 minutes.... but it was 7.50 pm and rapidly getting dark and our map ran out at the start of Badalona... planned to get directions at the station. Suffice it to say we miss the iPad immeasurably with it's nifty little way of giving us directions and first priority in Barcelona is getting him to an iPad doctor at the Apple Store. After several helpful folks gave us directions, peskily using their functioning iPhones, we eventually made it to the right street with a huge sense of achievement, but due to it being sooo dark we actually rang the doorbell at street number 3 instead of 4. Fortunately a fellow was coming out and hugely impressed that we'd made it all the way from Australia to an outlying suburb of Barcelona and only missed the target by one door. Our home exchange apartment for the next 5 nights is cute and has a massive terrace for breakfast and dinner and another massive terrace on the other side for watching the sunrise and seeing the beach just five minutes stroll away. Our happiest moment of the entire day was when we found the lift - as 6 floors with our backpacks could have ended the trip somewhat prematurely. Home Sweet Home for the next 5 nights. (Sunset from our living room is pictured).