Tue, 21 Oct 2003

author Liz	location Paris, France
posted 17:00 CET 31/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Espana ( all photos )

Tarrrrrrragona ( 5 photos )
For breakfast on Tuesday, the four of us had coffee in the bar downstairs, accompanied by a few of our 'Magdalena' cupcakes that we had bought many of the day before.
We spent a while working out what to do for the day, and decided to go further north to Tarragona, another town right on the coast of Spain, but still a little way south of Barcelona.
Jonno and Tim went for a walk to find out about a bus that might take us there, but without much success, so we all checked out of the hotel and walked up to the train station.
Here we also had troubles. There were no seats available on the train until 4.30pm that afternoon. It was only about 10.30am, and Tim and I were especially un-keen about the wait after all our other hours spent waiting recently, but we decided that getting tickets for the 4.30pm train was better than nothing.
So, after getting our tickets, we shouldered our bags once more, and started the long walk back to the beach, about half an hour away. Along the way we stopped at a supermarket and got some food for a picnic on the beach, and then we spent the day sitting on the beach, eating, drinking, talking and playing cards.
It looked like it was going to rain, so we walked back to the train station and sat on the platform playing cards. We were also entertained by a cute little dog with huge bat-like ears, and an older man that came and stood silently watching our game of cards over our shoulders, looking as though he would give Jonno a tip on how to win the game at any moment!
The train arrived on time and took us to Tarragona in an hour.
Our plan was to find some cheap accommodation for the night, but after ringing around lots of places, and Tim and Penny walking to hotels near the station, we still had not found a place to stay. We even carried all our bags up to the town centre, high on a hill and overlooking the sea, and had a look all around there for somewhere to stay. But we still had no luck finding anywhere that wasn't too expensive.
In the end, we decided to go back down to the train station, passing all the expensive shops along the way, and catch a train to Barcelona. Luckily, there were plenty of seats, and we caught a train that got us to Barcelona not long after 8.30pm.
The place we ended up staying the night at was the HI Alberg Mare de Déu Montserrat, a bit out of central Barcelona, so when we had to catch a Metro to get there and then walk uphill a little way to find the hostel. It turned out to be a nice hostel, set in an old stone building and beautifully decorated inside with mosaics and coloured marble.
We dumped our bags in the dorm room and then went and caught a bus into town to find some dinner.
It was quite last by now, so most places in the Gothic quarter, where we were looking for dinner, had stopped serving food, or were simply out of our budget. We ended up choosing a kebab place where we had some beer as well and then sat playing cards until they dimmed the lights and turned the music up. So we went to another bar and sat playing cards until the wee hours when they kicked us out.
We caught a taxi back to the hostel, and went to bed sometime after 3am.

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