When we finally escaped Barcelona, it was actually a nice drive down to Torre de la Mora - maybe it just seemed that way compared to the maze of Barcelona's streets. In any case, all concerns were forgotten when we got to Torre de la Mora and made our way to the beach.
We had flirted with buying towels in Barcelona, but anything called a beach towel was around 40 euros. We figured we'd just buy a towel or two at the beach - what beach doesn't have a little dive/swim shop nearby?
Well, Torre de la Mora has a swim shop, but if you get there between 2 and 5pm, it's closed for siesta. So when we got there, Alison wakled up the hill to look for a towel, with mixed success. To make a long story short, we now own a Ben 10 serape made out of terrycloth.
In the meantime, Vernon was swimming with the kids. The water was quite shallow for a long way out - at least 50 yards out. Here he is with Cielo as she practices body surfing.
Alison did get to swim, too, although she has since observed that another good idea for a trip would be staying at the town of La Mora for a week or so. Here she is in the water with Eero - that's Cielo on the far left.
Eero eventually got tired of swimming and demanded to be buried in sand.
"Torre" means tower in Spanish, and you can just make out the Torre de la Mora on the hill in the background here (to the right of the guy in sunglasses).
After the beach, we pressed on to get to the town of Tortosa and its Parador (or castle converted into a hotel). Eero liked the balcony.
But the view over the parapets was pretty good, too. The kids only half believed these were real cannon.
A view over the wall.
And a look down at the Cathedral de Tortosa and its flying buttresses.
The next day, we walked around Tortosa for a while, including along the Ebro River.
There were plenty of fish in it.
This was not a good day, grumpy-wise. Eero and Cielo each had their own meltdowns as we poked around town. Here they are during a grump overlap.
This was the back side of the cathedral, as we walked around trying to find the entrance (eventually we did, just as it closed). That lump in the lower left is Cielo with her red hat on.
The cathedral looked pretty nice even from the outside.
There were other sights to see, like this free standing wall.
