April 18.
Our last full day in Tarragona and we're just kicking back enjoying not having an agenda. With one exception.
I had a massage today in the hotel spa.
I thought a massage might help further along my recovery from the dastardly respiratory bug that has plagued me (us) for the past several days. And near as I can tell it worked. Afterwards I felt quite a bit better after having my muscles tweaked for half an hour.
Anyway, after breakfast we just hung around the hotel until my massage appointment. Afterwards we headed out and this time walked down to the amphitheater located right across the street from the hotel. Well, actually across and down, down, down from the hotel.
Today was like yesterday in terms of crowds and I don't mean tourists but kids/school groups of all ages. Let's say more like herds of children, the younger ones with matching colored t-shirts presumably so the teachers could keep track of them while the teenagers were seemingly left to their devices. Although a number were given projects presumably having to to do with Tarragona's ancient Roman history with groups queuing up around the historical signs scribbling in notebooks.
They were everywhere, laughing, yelling, and just generally carrying on as teenagers are wont to do everywhere I suppose.
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| entrance to the amphitheater |
Aside from the differences in ships you're pretty much seeing what ancient Roman settlers would have seen.
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| ships at anchor waiting to get into port |
From the amphitheater we headed back uphill before going downhill towards the train station making our way to the beach.
Now the one thing preventing easy access to the beach from town are a series of railroad tracks (in fact the train station is located right along the waterfront). So the city has seen fit to build a rather complicated but efficient way of allowing people to get down to the beach with a series of switchback walking ramps across a roadway and then a foot bridge across the railroad ending up at a pair of elevators that take you right down to the beach level. A short walk down the promenade and you're on the beach.
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| note the railroad track running parallel to the beach |
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| down to the beach! |
Susie's singular goal today was to put her feet into the Mediterranean and so she did.
From the beach we returned back uphill to the hotel. Don't worry, we'll be back down this way tomorrow when we take the train to Barcelona. Back at the hotel we had a lite lunch of a cheese board with two glasses of verdejo.
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| all local cheeses, the one in the foreground is a goat cheese and the blue was tasty but incredibly salty |
After a little downtime in the room it was back out to the Rambla Nova in search of gelato, which was not hard to find.
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| NATO's Tarragona headquarters? |
Returning to the hotel we did some work on the computer and then about 7:00pm headed out for dinner. After strolling through the old quarter looking for a couple of recommended restaurants we soon came to appreciate the local reality, as we should have already known, that nothing happens until 8:00pm.
The day before I recalled see a teppanyaki place right on Rambla Nova so off we went. Although they didn't open officially until 8:00pm and we were a bit early there was already a young woman inside and we were seated without a problem.
The food was delicious, very flavorful and just the right amount for us. We shared gyoza con pollo and I had chicken and rice and Susie opted for the chicken teppanyaki. Satisfyingly simple and simply good.
Dinner over it was back outside into the dark and blustery cold air as we wended our way back to the hotel and bed.
Next: Off to Barcelona!
