Barcelona Day 6: Terragona

We felt like we had seen all of Barcelona and walked almost every street there was to walk.  What a great way to see this city, we would have missed so much had we not walked the streets.  I don’t know that we ever got our bearings in the Gothic quarter even with all the walking.  If we saw a shop or restaurant we were interested in, we had to stop then and there because we would never find our way back to it later.  We would have missed way too much of this city had we driven from location to location.

On our last day we wanted to spend a day outside of the city. We chose to take the train, a form of transportation we hadn't experienced yet in this country, along the coast to Terragona.

After a whole week in Spain, Eric was feeling pretty confident with his language skills and didn’t think the train station would be a problem.  It was rather comical when we found the only ticket machine we could use was in Catalonian.  After a frustrating ten minutes we had to ask for help, something Eric hates to do, but we finally had tickets in hand and still plenty of time to catch the train we wanted.

Looking over the town of Terragona to the sea.

Terragona is a quaint little town, it gleams on the Mediterranean coastline with little whitewashed  buildings, beautiful gardens and charming little shops.  The cobblestone streets wind their way up into the hillside overlooking the bright blue sea and taking advantage of the breeze passing off the water.

A hillside of cute shops and restaurants with winding cobblestone streets leading to the cathedral sitting above the town.

We enjoyed a fabulous fruit smoothie while walking through the Roman ruins and gardens. We saw a well preserved Roman Coliseum and Circus and visited what was rumored to be the summer home of Pontius Pilot's family and where it was believed he was born.  

Eric at the Roman Amphitheater

The Pilot summer home sitting above the Roman Circus.

Hipolito's sarcophagus was displayed in one of the history museums.  It had been found in the sea near Terragona.  The bas-relief sculpture depicted his mythological story of Hipolito's story:  The son of Theseus who was killed after rejecting the advances of his stepmother who in her spurn convinced Theseus that Hipolito had raped her.  Theseus then used one of his three wishes from Poseidon to curse Hipolito.  Poseidon sent a sea monster to terrorize Hipolito's horses, who in their fear dragged him to death. I wish I had gotten a picture of the side that depicted that part of the myth.  It was too hard to get with the lighting.

One of the best meals we had was in a plaza in this cute little town.  We didn't know for sure what we were getting, but when it came we were pleasantly surprised.   

 I loved the olives while we were in Spain. I wouldn't eat these in the states, but they were delicious here.  The tomato and feta salads with olive oil and balsamic was also a favorite!  Mmm, the salmon I had at the taxidermy shop was divine too.  I guess we had a lot of good meals - I'm just not a tapas fan.

Our time in this little town was too short.

The beach was magnificent!  Had we known better, we would have spent a few days enjoying sun and sand here before returning home.  This little side trip was definitely worth the headache of the train station.  It was a great way to end our Barcelona experience.

Though all was not said and done...here is what we had to deal with at the Barcelona airport:

No wonder we couldn't find our flight information to Philadelphia, PA!  We were looking under "P" not "F".  Not even Eric's knowledge of Spanish wasn't going to help us with that one.  What an adventure!