Roman Ruins in Town and Party on the Kitschy Beach

The next stop on our roving retirement Spain & Portugal tour was Tarragona, a bit southwest of Barcelona. After a little research, I found that Tarragona has Roman Ruins that are listed by UNESCO and I’m all over that. In addition, there is a small beach town a little south of Tarragona called Salou that we check out.

Tarragona Vibe

We stayed fairly close to the historic center and the Roman ruins in Tarragona. The whole town struck us as being very business-oriented. On Saturday, the hotel called a taxi for us so that we could visit the ruins. As we drove through town, we noticed that there was no one around and very few cars on the road. We asked the driver about this and he said that very few taxis run on the weekend because the drivers spend time with their families or go to the beach. This wasn’t the vibe we have been looking for and it was quite a shock after Barcelona. So we focused our time here on the ruins, working, and taking it easy.

Roman Ruins

Tarragona (called Tarraco by the Romans) is a port city in the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain. The city was founded in the 5th century BC, the oldest Roman settlement on the Iberian peninsula. Today there are many Roman sites and an excellent archeological museum sitting on the remains of a Roman Circus.

We started out by the Roman wall and wandered through the old town toward the Roman amphitheater. I have seen many Roman amphitheaters, and there is one her, but it was the Circus that was particularly interesting. The building was used for chariot races and you can see rooms where the drivers would wait. The drivers were usually slaves or low-level freemen, but when they won the races they became very famous and admired. I don’t know what happened to them if they didn’t win. We toured the Circus, the museum, and the amphitheater before stopping for some refreshment.

Later on, we set off to find the Roman Theater and the Forum. Neither site is as well preserved as the Circus or the Amphitheater. The day we were leaving town we tried to see the well-preserved aqueduct, but we totally failed and abandoned the effort.

Salou Vibe

We had yet another culture shock when we visited Salou, which is about 15 minutes south of Tarragona. On our way into Salou, we passed a really cool rollercoaster with a big Ferrari logo on the side of it. It was one of the most unusual rollercoasters I’ve ever seen so we stopped to take a video. It even made the patented Ferrari muffler sound as it took off. Later, on the map, I saw that we were outside of Ferrari World, which is actually next to another amusement park.

With that as our introduction to Salou, we were a little less shocked by the sheer number of people on the streets and at the beach in Salou. There were also tons of shops selling inflatable swim toys and beach umbrellas. It was not too attractive and pretty surprising, nothing like Sitges.

Salou was on a totally different level. There were so many apartment buildings, holidaymakers, and people on the beach. It went on for at least two kilometers. I had never seen so many people and umbrellas on a beach before. It turns out that this type of beach town isn’t unique along the Spanish coast. We have since seen the beach crowds loads of times. Even from the Autopista, anytime you look toward the beach, you will see high-rises all along the Spanish coast.

Food

It turned out that the not so little beach town had lots of good restaurants and we had already figured out the Tarragona didn’t. So we drove to Salou specifically to eat. On our first visit, we stumbled into a little restaurant, La Gaviota, that had a menu del dia with paella as the main course and we both jumped on that. The really cool thing was that they brought us a glass of pink sparkling wine and a plate of olives, breadsticks, and sausage before we even ordered. Dinner included a large salad, a huge skillet of seafood paella, and a wonderful ice cream dessert. We had to take walk just to work off enough dinner before we could drive back.

On our second visit to Salou, again specifically for dinner was to Meson del Segoviano. I ordered Rabo de Toro and Mike had spit-roasted pork. I can’t say enough about the Rabo de Toro, it melted in my mouth and exploded with flavor. At the time, I thought it was better than sex, but maybe not. 🙂 Mike’s pork had delicious crispy skin and tender meat, but I definitely won on the dinner selection that night.

Which would you prefer, Rabo de Toro or Spit-roasted Pork?