Saturday
This morning we finished packing up, caught an Uber to the Valencia airport, and picked up our next rental car. We actually considered taking the train up the coast, but it’s much cheaper to just rent a car and pay the one way fee than it was to buy train tickets for all of us. So another rental car it is! 4 suitcases, 4 backpacks, one roll of paintings … we’re getting better at this!
I packed a light picnic and snacks for our drive, so we didn’t have to stop for lunch on the road. Instead we just drove straight to our new apartment in the little town of Cambrils. The weather has been drizzly and overcast today, so we weren’t up for stopping at the beach or anywhere else on the way. Our apartment is only a 5 minute walk from the beach, but I doubt we’ll end up out there anyway.
Keller took me to the Mercadona grocery store in town to stock up for the next few days. All the grocery stores are closed on Sundays and most are closed on Monday for Easter, so this was my chance to get some food! The grocery situation in Spain definitely requires pre-planning! Not only are they closed Sundays and random holidays, but their hours typically run fro 9am – 9pm. I miss being able to go to the grocery store any time I want like at home. =)
For dinner we went to Dallitaliano. It has excellent reviews online and to our surprise also had live music that evening! The guitarist was wonderful and we were very impressed. He even played “Love Will Keep Us Alive” by the Eagles, per Keller’s request. Keller and I danced together while he sang and the kids watched.
The food was all tasty, but the salads were the stand out dish! We had smoked burrata (with every possible fruit on the side) and a warm goat cheese and walnut salad. Both were delicious! Many of their dishes include homemade pasta, including their raviolis. The kids’ favorite was a goat cheese and caramelized onion ravioli in cream sauce. Yumm!
Sunday
Several months ago, Joan sent me a list of things she recommended doing or seeing while in southern Spain. One of them was a bicycle ride from the town of Cretas. We reserved bicycles for today! The weather was a bit borderline for being outside, but since today was the only day we’d be able to go, we did it anyway. It was about 12*C and overcast, with patches of drizzle.
The route takes you along a former railroad grade down through the hills. Vias Verdes is an extensive biking and hiking trail network that runs all over Spain. This particular route runs 135 km, though we only did a small 22 km section. We started in the town of Cretas where we rented bicycles and then coasted downhill all the way to the former Prat de Compte station.
We crossed bridges, went under overpasses, and through long dark tunnels. One was almost 1 km long! We were very glad for our bicycles’ lights! Since it was mostly downhill, the biking was very easy and not tiring. There were definitely people heading the other direction though, so they had their work cut out!
There were a number of abandoned and falling down train stations from the line. We took several breaks to explore and poke around the ruins.
We had a lovely time on the bicycle trail! Unfortunately my bike had issues with the chain falling off while stopped, but otherwise we didn’t have many problems. There were many beautiful views and photo opportunities. Aside from a few sprinkles early on, it stayed dry too. We were all a bit muddy from the path by the time we were done.
After biking we drove back to Cambrils for the rest of the afternoon. Warm showers and curry for dinner rounded out the day. Biking was definitely one of the highlights of our trip — we highly recommend it, even if the weather is chilly and damp. 😉
Monday
Today we went to PortAventura! PortAventura is a theme park right on the coast in Tarragona. Keller found it long before we flew to Spain, so stopping at the park was high on the priority list!
After looking at pricing, we ultimately decided to spend two days at the park. It is a former Universal Studios park and recently added Ferrari Land with extra rides. Adding a second day was only about 20 euros total, so it made sense. We were also concerned about crowd levels on Monday since it was a Spanish holiday.
Caden isn’t quite tall enough to ride all the big coasters at the park, since 140 cm is the threshold for many of the rides, but he managed to enjoy the park anyway. Kamy is exactly 140 cm, so she qualified to ride anything she wanted to. She set herself a goal to ride everything in the park, so she was motivated to ride each thing.
Fortunately for a change, the weather was actually working in our favor — there was a chance of rain in the forecast and it was cloudy and overcast all day long. The crowds today actually weren’t bad, so we were able to ride a LOT of rides! We started first thing in the morning and had to wait at the gate for the parking lot to open. We were not quite first in line, but we were definitely in the first wave of people.
We started with waiting for Furious Bacao — a wing roller coaster near the front. PortAventura staggers opening times for their big rides, so our first options were pretty limited anyway. We were early in the queue, but Bacao was having technical issues which delayed things. Ultimately, the three of us were able to ride it. We didn’t like the ride! It was super rough and uncomfortable.
Throughout the day we rode many rides! Keller’s favorite was Shambala (long, fast, tall gigacoaster), Kamy really liked Dragon Khan (with 8 inversions!), and Caden’s favorite was Tomahawk (wooden coaster) and mine was Stampedia (wooden dueling coasters).
We rode bumper cars, spinney rides, and drop towers. The kids did all the small kids rides like Magic Fish and the flying kites. We ended the day getting wet on Angkor, Tituki Splash, the Silver River Log Flume, and the Grand Canyon River Rapids.
We managed to walk all around the park and racked up 22,000 steps, almost 10 miles! We were all pretty worn out by the end of the day. We went back to the apartment, changed into dry clothes, and I cooked dinner. Our plan is to do the last few rides we skipped and re-ride favorites tomorrow.
Tuesday
We were back at the parking gate for PortAventura by 9:30 in the morning. The weather is much clearer and a bit warmer today, so we wanted to hit the ground running.
It is MUCH busier today! There are a lot more French speaking families around us, so some online research determined that most of France is on their spring break currently. So yesterday we had some holiday crowds from Spaniards who stayed home during their Santa Semana break and this week we have the French!
First thing, we hustled back to the Sesame Street, Street Mission. The line was really long all day yesterday, so we figured our best bet was to do it very first. The ride was actually really cool — a dark trackless ride with excellent 3D effects. Plus it has a shooter element where you collect cookie pieces to figure out where the giant missing cookie went! Keller topped everyone on scores, but I wasn’t too far behind him. 😉
Next we went over to the Ferrari Land portion of the park. Our tickets allowed us one day at Ferrari Land and two at the regular park, plus FL opened 30 minutes after PortAventura. The lines for rides were already really long! We stood in line for a driving ride (similar to Autopia in Disney World) but the line wasn’t moving at all, so we bailed and stood in line for Red Force instead.
Red Force is a super fast coaster launch that tops out at 180 kmph, goes over a tall loop, and comes back to the station. The line was moving, though not very quickly. We all felt the coaster was just okay — it had a bad vibration as it was getting up to speed and wasn’t very comfortable to ride. Oh well!
Next Caden wanted to do the Junior Red Force coaster, since he wasn’t 140 cm for the big one. Kamy rode it with him and they said for a small kiddie coaster it was pretty good!
We walked through the Ferrari Gallery and then stood in line for the Soarin’ type ride called Flying Dreams. It was pretty good, though we jokingly called it the pre-show ride since there were four different holding areas with pre-show screenings.
We decided to go back over to the main part of the park for the rest of our day and do some re-rides. This time we split up — Keller and Kamy went to Dragon Khan and Shambala, while Caden and I did the small bumper cars, Tomahawk, Magic Fish, and the Dino Escape 4D.
We were all a bit tired by now, so we joined back up to ride Stampedia together as our last coaster. Our blue coaster didn’t win this time, but we still enjoyed the ride. We still had a little time before the park closed, so to finish off our theme park we returned to the Street Mission ride.
Overall, we enjoyed PortAventura. There were numerous fun rides and most of the coasters seemed in good condition. There is definite room for improvement on park management though — most rides seemed understaffed and made loading and unloading very very slow at times. The longer wait times on Monday were draining too. Monday we had average wait times of 15-20 minutes, while Tuesday was 40-60 minutes. It made a HUGE difference in how many rides we were able to do and how much fun we had. Here’s to traveling on shoulder seasons!
We headed straight to dinner and returned to Dallitaliano. We ordered the same salads again and changed out the pastas. The food was good, but maybe not quite as special as Saturday night. Then it was back to the apartment to pack up and read out to Barcelona tomorrow!