Some visuals

I’ll kick things off with a picture, because my blog is looking a little wordy. Here’s a little bar/steakhouse that I happened upon while wandering around this weekend:


Chcck out the upper left, you can barely see it. Yes, yes, they proudly serve steak from Missouri. Is US beef that good?

While I’m being visual, here are another couple of shots that I liked. This street was just kind of cool. On the left is a stone brick wall that is actually part of one of the old Roman buildings. On the right is an apartment building, of a pretty typical style. Tarragona pretty much falls in line with a lot of other European towns—relatively narrow streets that look even narrower because all of the buildings are 5+ story structures, with stores on the bottom and apartments up top.

Here’s another view from the same general area. On the right you can barely make out where it says “Circ Romà.” I haven’t paid to go in yet so I don’t know all the details of what all the buildings are, but it’s old, and a world heritage site.
Just around the corner from there is where I had a fun encounter on Saturday. I was sitting on a park bench overlooking the old Roman amphitheatre (which you can see in my Picasa album), listening to a podcast, when an old man rode by on his bike. He tried to get off but had a little trouble and fell onto the bench, but I just assumed he wasn’t good at riding a bike and didn’t think much of it. Five or ten minutes later though, he asked me (in Spanish, of course), if I was listening to music. I told him that I was listening to a lecture someone recorded, and he said he had asked because it looked like I was looking at the ocean very intently. He also asked if I wanted him as my boyfriend. I just laughed, a little wary about this weirdo, but I hadn’t talked to anyone yet that day so I welcomed the conversation and the opportunity to practice my Spanish. Plus we were in a completely public place and he didn’t seem aggressive or anything.

We kept talking, and finally he admitted that he was just at a party and had been drinking wine, therefore he was “quite happy.” I asked him when the party had ended, and he said about an hour ago. It was just around 2:00 p.m. at this point. We talked some more, about nothing really, when two girls about my age walked by with photography equipment. He told me that he didn’t think they were Spanish, and I told him that I thought they were, because they were speaking Spanish. Then he said, “no, no, their pants are too weird.” They were wearing flowy, hippie-ish pants, but I really wouldn’t have thought twice about them myself. So he asked them, first what they were taking pictures of, then where they were from. They told him a town close by here, and then the three of them switched to Catalán. After they walked away, he told me that he had been wrong; he was convinced they were Arabic because of their pants, but then again, he wouldn’t have guessed I was from the U.S. because I had dark hair.

By this point, I was kind of getting bored and weirded out so I was getting ready to get up an leave, when he asked if I would hold his hand. Well, that made my decision easy. I told him no, I didn’t think that was a good idea, and that I had to go. “To go eat?” he asked. “Yes, to meet people to eat,” I answered. “Ok, well enjoy your meal,” he said, and didn’t seem to care when I walked away. Haha, wow, what are the odds that of the like 5 people that I’ve had true conversations with here, 2 of them are crazies?! I know there’s a chance that I’m going to get a lot of warnings, particularly from family, after sharing this story, about being safe and wary about people I meet. But really, the same thing could definitely happen in the States (Central Square, anyone?), and I’m pretty sure the guy was just drunk and loquacious. I never felt truly threatened, and I have a pretty good gut sense, and at least I was entertained for part of the afternoon.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Nothing new to report, really, although I think I’m going to go to Valencia tomorrow. It’s a little over 2 hours by train, so I figure I’ll just go for the day. I’m also looking into the bus, because I hear it’s cheaper and sometimes faster. I don’t have anything else to do, and at least I can see if it’s worth visiting for an extended period of time later on. Plus, despite their fame in the orange world, Valencia is apparently where paella was invented, so hopefully I’ll get some good eating in. I would have gone today but a lot of museums and things are closed on Mondays, so I decided to put it off. ¡Hasta luego! (Ok, I might be a little obsessed with having figured out how to write all the accents on my own computer.)