Tarragona/Catalonia, May 31

 Today we visited Tarragona, Spain, a smaller town about 50 miles south of Barcelona. It is being developed as an alternative cruise port due to the overly busy traffic in Barcelona. They recently added 2 more cruise berths to the original 2, but today ours was the only cruise ship in port. Lots of commercial ships and ferries and private yachts and boats on hand though,

as well as giant piles of coal ready for export.

We got a cab to the city center and explored. There is an original Roman amphitheater historical site with half the original 12,000 seats intact, as well as archway and inscriptions from 200 AD.

They've documented the whole history, including the ousting of the Roman's and establishment of a Catholic church and graveyard in 700, right on top of the theater floor.

An adjacent site shows the location and layout of the Roman Circus here two millennia ago.

Tarragona is the center of Catalan culture, which is an ethnic identity encompassing the central coast of Spain, and also part of southwestern France. There is a separate dialect, words are spelled in a variant of Castillian Spanish, and food culture relies strongly on seafood and wine production. Lots of notices about upcoming wine festivals, and all the local vineyards participating, are found everywhere.

The ampitheater site is close to the beach, so we walked across to the imported sand ("Miracle Beach") and watched a few hearty souls swim in the 65 degree water.

Next, we walked to an old seawall with small caves

and beautiful pale blue water, and we admired the sea views. We made our way back to the city center and had a mediocre lunch with terrible service, but nice scenery and good mojitos.

We explored a little more of the town, though there weren't very many other points of interest, except a coffeeshop named in my honor

so we grabbed a cab back to the ship.

Dinner was again adequate but not exceptional. Mussels, goat cheese salad, pork shoulder, short ribs were all pretty good, but cannelloni with spinach filling were not. To say the dining room food is inconsistent would be an understatement.

We all went up on deck for sunset which was pretty albeit a little murky and cloudy,

with a cool breeze blowing again tonight. This cruise is much colder than our last MSC cruise of the Caribbean, that had balmy and humid evenings in most locales. Who knew the Mediterranean would be so chilly in late May?

The evening show included all 14 performers on the ship in song, acrobatics, dancing, juggling, and aerialism. The finale brought the ship's directors and the captain on stage for a rousing conclusion. I'm thinking maybe the crew changes in Valencia tomorrow. On our way there now! Sarah and I played Name that Tune with songs by ABBA and the Beatles and got 7 of 10, losing to a team that got 9. Better luck tomorrow. 

No icebergs yet!

Adios!