Wherein our protagonist Jason learns a valuable lesson about shopping around

So I needed to book our train tickets from Valencia to Madrid.  Especially because Valencia's population swells by a million people during Falles so a lot of people will be trying to scurry out shortly after the festival.

So I was about to click purchase on raileurope.com . . .

When I, rather uncharacteristically, thought  "Hey.  Maybe I should look at a couple of different sites first."  After another stop or two, I searched on the very similarly named raileurope-world.com and found the exact same tickets for a fraction of the cost . . .

The difference is just over $125.

Now I think my MUCH cheaper tickets are etched in stone but I am okay with that.

Also let me give a shout out to seat61.com which is the extremely useful website that led me to the second, cheaper tickets.  I really can't overstate how useful this site is in gathering info about and navigating European rail systems.