Day 3: Mataró to Tarragona

This should be a short blog entry. It rained. A lot.

My plan to get better photos of the basilica in Mataró didn't pan out. The sky was extremely gloomy and there was rain. I did pop into a bookshop, though, and found tonnes of Asterix books in Catalan ... but the multiple attempts at trying to get everything into my backpack earlier caused me to know that I wouldn't be able to fit any more books anywhere. I did think about throwing away some of my clothes, though!

The wind and rain meant that there was no point getting a photo of the beach, so sped past the gloomy scene and into the train station, where I purchased a ticket to Sitges. Unfortunately, there was no information on which train I needed to get on, so I had to ask the lady at the ticket desk. I suspect that somewhere in there she told me I needed to get a connection at some point, but I wasn't anticipating that because the journey was just down the coast. Anyway, I ended up back in Barcelona, so clearly I needed to get off at some point!

I'd made a decision already to change my plans and skip Castelldefels, since my guidebook didn't make it sound too worthy of a stop and there was a lot to fit in. Unexpectedly back in Barcelona, I skipped it again. It wasn't worth trying to fit in Sitges and Vilanova i la Geltrú, since both were beach locations and the sky was emptying, plus my notes weren't clear on how to get from Vilanova to Tarragona ("According to Google, there are buses from ..."). A machine indicated that there was a train in a couple of hours' time, so I exited the station and decided I'd have some fun browsing for books in the Fnac bookstore, even though there was no room in my bag. I'm sure things are sent to taunt me! There were Asterix stands on display and loads and loads of the books! Gah! I managed to find a nice, pristine copy of Eye of the Needle in Spanish though, so bought it anyway. They didn't have it in Catalan. Somehow I squeezed it into my bag.

Well, this is my only photo of Barcelona today. I needed to escape the rain and get food, and I didn't have much time because I realised my train was leaving from another station:

And before too long I was on the train to Tarragona, hoping for some better weather. I had an amphitheatre to see!

This was Tarragona:

I spent some time in my hotel and could hear the torrential downpour getting heavier. I needed to get some food and by 18:30 the rain hadn't abated and so I had to brave this to track down somewhere to eat:

I was utterly soaked to the skin, so haven't seen Tarragona at all. The forecast shows a 20% chance of rain tomorrow, so fingers crossed I'll get to see the amphitheatre before heading off to Valencia. I think I'm going to skip Castellón, which I had sketched in. The guidebook doesn't really sell it, and I need to make sure I give Tarragona and Valencia a chance.