Tarragona

This morning we woke up early and took a train to Tarragona. Its a city once inhabited by the Roman empire. It still has a huge stone wall encompassing its "old town" and people live within its wall! We visited the cathedral, which was gorgeous (like most ancient cathedrals). We only paid a couple of euro a piece because the main cathedral part was closed for construction, however the chapels still open for viewing were awesome. The tour even had an audio device which told you about each section. We looked around the shops for a while and found Spanish Kinderballs!! Kinderballs are these chocolate balls which have a toy inside! They don't sell them in the states, because kids like to choke. And no, its not the same as a Nestle Wonderball. :P

After our snack we adventered around town for a bite to eat. Heather had some pizza which she claims "didn't taste like any pizza I have ever had!" She loved it! I, however, bought a salmi sandwich only to find it was saturated with tomatos. Yucky! Oh well.

We got to play around the Roman forum, or what's left of it. We speelunked through caves, tunnels, chambers, and floor after floor of ancient Roman stones, sculpture, and architecture. My favorite was the view from the 6th floor. The Mediteranean is so gorgous!!

Following our adventure through the ancient playground, we visited the National Museum of Archaeology. It was 4 floors full of Roman artifacts. Heather looked like she was in heaven, being an anthropologist/archeologist and all that.

Finally we went to the ampitheatre on the coast. This was the least impressive of the ruins. Although all Roman ampitheatres are mind-blowing (how did they move those stones!?), this one was well ruin-ed. It was fun to play around, but hardly worth the 3 euro a piece. Especially after seeing everything else Tarragona had to offer.

We made it back to the hostel about 18:00 and found out our packs had (finally) arrived!!! Everything is in its place and we are super grateful to have our stuff back!

We each ate a Fruit Roll-Up out of joy (yeah, we packed 4 boxes.) Then galivanted around Barcelona to see some famous Gaudi works of art. Our first stop was Sagrada Familia. Its an enormous church deisgn by the artist. They broke ground in 1909 and even after Gaudi died in 1926, they still worked on it. 102 years later and its still not done, giving it the nick-name "The Unfinished Church". It was amazing! I can't describe its crazy archetecture. You should probably just look it up online, or plan a trip to Barcelona to see it yourself! :P

We also saw Gaudi's Casa Batllo, or house of bones. It is simply a house on a main thoroughfair where Gaudi was contracted to decorate the interior of a gentlemans home. The man loved it so much he told Gaudi to re-do the outside as well. Now its an eye-sore next to fancy shops along the Passage de Garcia. We loved it! The outside structures look like bones and its so colorful! The roof looks like a dragon and the whole thing is mind blowing.

We came back to the hostel after our tiring day and spent entirely way to long re-packing our back packs for tomorrow. Mainly because we spent 2 hours bantering with each other and laughing to the point of crying out of exhaustion. It was fun!! Now we're all showered, our packs are ready, and we depart for France tomorrow!!

Even though we have only been here 3 days it seems like a week. We have averaged 3-5 miles on foot each day! At this rate we will be slim & fit when we return to the states. :) Hurray European workout!

Safe Travels,
- Kit & Heather