Tarragona

Tarragona is a beautiful beachside town about an hour south of Barcelona. IES gave us the opportunity to take an overnight trip there. Gabby and I were all packed and all was well until...


Gabby and I didn't hear our alarms go off the morning of the trip and we overslept and missed our busses!!!!!!

No worries, Tarragona is easily accessible by train and we were able to meet up with the rest of our group a bit later in the day. I got to see the ancient Roman amphitheater where the gladiators fought, that overlooks the sea-- its absolutely gorgeous! Think the Coliseum, but smaller. Same concept. What is interesting about the amphitheater is that it has a small chapel inside from when the visigoths took over the area, and around the smaller chapel is a Gothic-era church. All inside the amphitheater!

After eating lunch and checking into the hotel, we rode the bus to the Santes Creus monastery-- a beautiful building that's been around since the middle ages and is still used for religious services during the year. It has not been inhabited by monks since the 1800s, however. The monastery also has traces of different time periods which is awesome. There are even some windows that are the original gothic stain glass! The monks here lived a very impoverished lifestyle by choice, and could only talk to each other in special designated spots! When they died, they were buried in the cemetery but with no grave markers or anything, there was just a cross to signify that it was a cemetery. They also tilled the land and ate what they produced. At one point the king would come and stay at the monastery and so there was a special room for him. 

After the monastery, which was a half hour ride away, we checked into the hotel and wandered around town for a while before dinner at the hotel. We had free time after, so Julia and I walked down to the (gorgeous) beach, ate ice cream, and hung out for a while. In the morning, we ate breakfast and checked out, and made our way to a neighboring town called Valls. There, we learned about Castells, which are Catalonian human towers. There are actually competitive teams of hundreds of people who get together and climb on top of each other in order to build towers of up to 10 tiers! The top two are always children and there is such a strategy to building these towers. There are different formations depending on the number of people and the height. It is so important to have a strong base, or even up to 3 base levels. Men and women of all ages participate, and we even had the chance to make our own! 

After a lunch stop at a Masia restaurant with typical catalonian food, we were on our way back to Barcelona.