¡Tarragona y Carnaval!

¡¡Hola todos!!

I haven't even finished going through all my pictures from this weekend (there are over 2,800 pictures...), but I'm going to write my Tarragona blog entry anyways! Woohoo!

So on Friday night I ate dinner early, for Spain, and met the Umassers at the train station, which is conveniently 2 minutes away from my apartment.  Carrie (our coordinator), her husband, Camilo, and her baby, Cora, met us there as well.  She handed out our train tickets and a Bus Turistíc pass for Barcelona.  We got on the train and it left before we had even sat down, but everyone got on alright and we were off!  The trip was decently uncomfortable, but I slept okay even though I woke up almost every time the train made a stop.  Finally, we arrived in Tarragona around 7:30am Saturday morning.  We took a bus into the city and stopped for café and croissants before heading to our hotel.

Our hotel was really nice!  It was right in the main square of the old part of the city.  We stayed in rooms with 2 or 3 people in them and almost all of us had balconies over looking the plaça.

Our hotel!

After a 20-minute turn-around, we went on a walking tour with Camilo, who had lived in Tarragona for 5 years.  The city is absolutely gorgeous and the weather couldn't have been better - not a cloud in the sky and probably 60-65 degrees!  Tarragona is right on the mar (sea), and it has a beautiful strip of beach.  Tarragona was one of the most important Roman cities back in the day, because it's on the east coast of Spain.  The main attractions of the city are the Roman ruins - there is an amphitheater, a circus (basically a race track), a forum, and more.  The amphitheater overlooks the ocean - it was so so beautiful!

El mar y el ampiteatro (The sea and the amphitheater)

Umass (aka us) also provided us with passes to see all the Roman ruins without having to pay out of pocket, so I saw the amphitheater and the circus on Saturday.  And then we walked down to the beach and I put my feet into the Mediterranean for the first time!  It was freezing haha.  Afterwards, we meandered back up to the Rambla (the main street of the city) and had a picnic style lunch.  (We may have eaten before going to the beach, actually. I don't remember.)  After lunch we went to the hotel and then to walk along the old Roman wall that surrounded the old part of the city - it wasn't what I expected, but it was a very nice and relaxing walk.

El ampiteatro

El Cirç (The Circus - I think that's the Catalan spelling...)

La Playa!!

El Mural Romano (Roman Wall)

That night was carnaval in Tarragona - people (especially niños) were walking around in costumes all day, especially as it got later.  At 7pm there was a parade that lasted 3 hours that I took hundreds of pictures of.  A few of us dressed up a bit - I was a pájaro (bird) with a feathered mask and a feathered fan and a purple dress haha.  The parade was fantastic - synchronized dancing, music, laughter, excitement.  We went out for a bit after that, but because we didn't know the city, we failed at finding anywhere good to dance or hang out.

¡Pájaro!

A paint-chip wheel costume!

The next day we woke up early in order to see the sunrise over the Mediterranean, since the sun rises so late.  A bunch of us walked down, but almost everyone pealed off after about 20 minutes (don't really know why...), but Grace and I stayed and watched the sun rise.  It was really nice and definitely worth waking up for, since we only had to wake up at 6:45am.  After Grace and I got back to the room we took a "siesta" until around 11am when we had to check out.  We left our bags at the reception and went to the Roman Forum of Tarragona, which was just a collection of Roman ruins all gathered in one place, basically.  It was pretty cool, but I've seen the the Roman Forum of Rome...

The Moon rising right before the Sun...

Sunrise over the Mediterranean :)

A statue of an activity they do in Catalunya - a tower of people.

Roman Forum

We took it easy the rest of that day before meeting back at the hotel and then walking to the train station to go to Barcelona.  The train ride to Barcelona was about an hour and a half and it hugged the shoreline the entire time - it was beautiful.  I was sitting next to a Catalunian woman who was making what looked like lesson plans, but I couldn't really tell because I can't read Catalan.  The fact that I didn't speak the language was kind of frustrating, because I kept thinking that I'd be understood, but that wasn't necessarily the case.  And it was pretty difficult to read things like menus.  My host mom called me while I was on the train, which was awesome timing, but I was embarrassed to speak Spanish in front of this woman haha.  Oh well, I got through it alright.

Anyways, that finishes up my stay in Tarragona.  I mostly just enjoyed the sun, the ruins, and the sea as much as I could.  I will write another entry about Barcelona in the near future!

*Besos*