Spain: Tarragona and the week that preceded it

So last week packed fairly quickly, and was pretty entertaining overall. Monday I had lunch at home, then went climbing in the park, finally met some girl climbers, and exhausted myself. I walked home, and did some things. Tuesday I brought a lunch with me to class and immediately afterwards went to the beach with Ken and Andrew, a flashback to one of my first weeks here, although much warmer. We chilled, and I read for a bit, and we were visually accosted by the following:
-A mostly naked girl (no top, VERY small bathingsuit bottom) doing something kind of like a cross between tai-chi and kick boxing on the beach. Sometimes she dove into the water and then came back out and resumed her half dance/half exercise routine thing. She was very topless.
-A chubby and bearded guy who did something that seemed kind of like Aikido. He repeatedly threw himself on the sand into a roll, which sometimes didn't really work, and sometimes did. He continued in this vein for quite some time.
-A VERY bizarre cross-dressing guy. Andrew's comment was priceless, something along the lines of, "Is that?... That IS a guy. Oh my god." He was wearing a skirt and a shirt, and flat shoes and a straight brown wig, and was probably in his forties or fifties. He just walked along the beach and then off it.
We took the bus back and then I walked the rest of the way home. I think that afternoon I spent some time online trying to organize schedule things, but I'm not positive. Anyway, Wednesday was sort of a repeat of Monday, except after lunch I registered for classes, and got into everything I wanted. I also finally got one professor to agree to let me take a class without the prerequisite, which was nice. After climbing I found out about a place that would repair my shoes, so I went and got that done, and got a replacement pair in the meantime.
Thursday I went back to the park, met up with slack-line guy, who encouraged me to try the bouldering under the other bridge with the sketchy looking handholds. In Spanish they have a different word for this kind of bouldering, called la trecha. Instead of going sideways (traversing) you go upside down essentially, and it's much harder. I, needless to say, did not do very well, and went home kind of early. I think I did some homework, but I'm not positive.
Friday I didn't have class, but I got up early anyway to go to the train station and get tickets for Tarragona that evening. I met up with Dotty afterwards and we went back to her place and worked on our project. I made an outline and got a bunch of information on Spanish music, thanks mostly to wikipedia, then headed back home. I ate some food, packed up, and headed to the train station to head to Tarragona.

I met Anna at the train station in Tarragona around 7:45 pm that evening. The town is about two thirds of the way to Barcelona from Valencia and is right on the coast. It was once a major Roman city, and still boasts parts of the original Roman wall, an aqueduct, the amphitheater, the circus, and lots of sculptures and ruins. Anyway, Anna and I spent the evening walking around and talking and seeing things. It was fairly nice out, and we only had our backpacks, so it was pretty chill. We eventually went back to our hotel to drop our stuff off, then headed back out for dinner.
Cheap and hungry as we were, we decided to get kebaps and gelato, the second part of which we failed at, but made up for the next day. Back at the hotel sometime after 11pm or so, we decided to take advantage of the free wifi and call people back home. So we proceeded to try and call Mike, who didn't answer, and Jon, who did, and didn't realize it was us for a while. We also got ahold of Meaghan and convinced her, Max, and Erica to get on Skype so we could call them.
They didn't really like Skype so we eventually got the ivideo thing to work, but not very well, and had a little three-way chat going with Andrew in London as well. Technology never ceases to amaze me. Soon Max and Meaghan and Erica had to go do fun things, so they left and Andrew called us back on Skype, which worked much better, since we could actually see him. Some time later Anna and I realized we should probably figure out what we were going to do the next day, so we spent some time looking at a map and things.
Sunday we got up not too late, took insanely long and wonderfully hot showers, packed up, dropped our bags off at the front desk, and set out. First stop: archeological museum, or one of them. Well, that was only after we stopped at a patisserie and got delicious chocolate pastries for breakfast, as well as a bag of cookies for later, which we did indeed consume throughout the day. We only got a little lost on the way to the museum, which was pretty small and under reconstruction. It was still kind of cool though, and we got a student discount.
Second stop: the aqueduct. It's a little ways outside the city, but we read in Anna's guidebook that you could take a bus from a particular stop, so we went there. The bus number we were looking for didn't stop there, so we went inside a store to ask, but the lady there didn't know. She did point us in the direction of an information center though, so we walked there next. Unfortunately the information center was locked and closed, and no one was there, so we were decided to go to the bus station next door. The bus station, however, proved equally useless, since the buses were long distance, not city buses, and there were no maps anywhere.
At this point we decided we might as well walk, so we set off, not deterred by the slight drizzle. On the road there, we fortunately passed a kindly old man waiting at a bus stop, and he told us the bus was coming and would take us to the aqueduct. I say fortunately because we realized in the bus ride that our walk would have been fairly unpleasant on the side of a highway with no sidewalk, and pretty darn far.
We took a walk in the woods around the aqueduct, and it was awesome. The aqueduct itself was pretty huge, and perfectly maintained, and we could cross over it in the little trench at the very top the water used to flow through. It had stopped drizzling, which was nice, and we had a good walk on an easy trail through the woods, passing several monuments apparently dedicated to the Day of the Tree. I think this day should be reinstated, unless it is already a day and I just didn't know about it.
Anyway, later we caught the bus back into town, which fortunately dropped us off right in front of the market, which is where we were headed. We got bread, chorizo, strawberries, and kiwis, which has become a custom I am very fond of, and headed back out again to find a place to chill for a bit. We were a little tired, so back in the old part of town, a stop at a cafe was in order.
We found one and proceeded to plan our summer travel on the back of a receipt and a napkin. We both got very excited about where we're visiting, and I even managed to get excited for next year, when I will be back to real work, and applying to places, and whatnot. I think I spent quite some time recommending books to Anna as well (The Alchemist, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
Anyway, afterwards we set back out to see the cathedral. IT WAS AWESOME. I have seen my fair of cathedrals, and I guess this one was much like the others, but it had the added benefit of having an absolutely gorgeous and large courtyard with a fountain in the middle, sweet architecture, and a fairly expansive museum with lots of gold things and old things, which we touched.
I think after the museum we decided to hit some more museums after eating lunch. We finally found a dry place to sit, since everything was still damp from the drizzle which periodically punctuated our day, and ate. It was good times. The next two museums were right next to each other and displayed mostly old roman things, like statues, and artifacts, and mosaics, and rocks. We climbed something that was very tall and gave a good view of the city and the Mediterranean. We explored the old circus, where they once had chariot races (and the occasional public execution apparently), and saw lots of pillars and arches.
Afterwards we walked some more to the old Roman wall. On the way we stopped in this tiny little place that was home to a miniature of the Roman city, aqueduct and all. It was really cute, and conveniently located next to the wall we then proceeded to climb. It had some canons, trees, good views, lots of old rock, and a pretty sweet path. We took some peoples' pictures, and they took ours. We exited not really knowing where we were, but managed to walk until we did know.
We stopped by the amphitheater next, but rather than paying to go in, walked around and outside it and above it, getting a pretty good view of the whole thing. By this time it was around 6:30 or so, and I only had a couple of hours before my train back home, so we headed back towards our hotel to pick our bags up. We sat for a minute there then went to the train station to sit and wait, since we were exhausted and seen just about everything we could.
We ate our kiwis using Isaac's knife, which was still in my backpack, and they incidentally didn't confiscate (I was grateful for that, since I'd forgotten it was in my bag), and then said goodbye as my train pulled up. The train ride was pretty quick. They played Nim's Island in Spanish on the TV, which was actually an excellent film and I understood the whole thing even in Spanish. It helped having the subtitles as well in Spanish.
Anyway, today, Sunday, has passed fairly uneventfully. I spent the morning working on my project, and discovering that writing in Spanish is not that hard, so long as you don't care about silly things like grammar, or spelling. I abandoned my plan to go running since it's gross and cold outside, and rainy, and instead read a lot of my book, had like four meals already, and skyped home. I have only about a half hour until dinner, then I can kill some more time online, then bed, and another week starts tomorrow.

Thanks Anna for an awesome weekend in Tarragona, and for making me super excited about summer travel, and working at NIH, and other things! :)