Saturday, September 26th - Salou, Spain

I definitely slept in this morning, but then I didn't go to bed until after 3 a.m. so 7 hours sleep after that was sure to mean that I'd be getting up late.  As it is indeed Saturday today, my main touring goals are this evening as they are only open from 6 to 9 p.m.  I would have to leave about 5 p.m. to walk to the sights and since, by the time I finished breakfast it was already after 11 a.m., I didn't have much of the day to worry about.

I decided I should do some cleaning around the apartment so I swept the floors.  Even though I clean the sand off my feed each time I leave the beach, it is amazing how much sand follows me home.  I also tidied up the massive amounts of paper I have in the living area - maps and brochures for Salou and some of the surrounding towns that they think I should go visit, plus similar documents from other places I have already visited but still haven't completed the blogs for.  I think most of them are at least now in some semblance of order.

I went to the grocery store to get more bananas and cheese and a baguette to go with my salad for my mid-day meal which was about 3 p.m.  The salad was great with lettuce, carrot, tuna, cheese, cherry tomatoes, melon, salt and pepper, and probably something else I'm now forgetting.  The baguette dipped in some olive oil was also good but instead of the more popular choice of wine, I had water.  Before and after lunch I did some computer work and pretty soon it was time to leave.

Around 5 p.m. I was off to the Roman ruins again, this time on the right night.  I wandered the streets and made some stops along the way but arrived about 6:50 and joined some others waiting on the benches outside the complex.  Our guide arrived and opened the facility for us.  Because of the mix of people in the tour, 9 of us in total, she did the presentation in both Spanish and in English.  This surprised me in two ways: one, we are still in Catalonia so I expected Catalan for sure and two, any other tours have not included English at all but generally Catalan and Spanish.  Anyway, she went through everything twice and did a great job of it.

Although the sight is called Barenys Roman Villa Archaeological Park, there really is no villa or home on the sight.  They assume the owner's home must be nearby but it's probably under one of the apartment buildings that were built in the surrounding area.  It was when they were excavating to build another apartment that they found these ruins so this one area has been preserved but the rest has been or will be developed.  From the excavations they know that the facility produced wine and ceramics, and they know it was operational from about 1 BC to 1 AD.  It always amazes me that you can still actually find anything so old and prove it is from that period.

The first thing we saw were the canals to bring fresh water in.  As she was explaining in Spanish I thought I understood what she was saying about the flow of the water.  The land definitely sloped up to the right so I thought she was saying that the water flowed down in the other direction.  In fact it was just the opposite.  Even though the land sloped up, the slope of the canal went down so the water actually did run to the top of the hill.  It was gathered in a square well or reservoir at the far end (top of hill) and from there it could be taken by bucket to wherever it was needed.  The whole canal and well system is open now so we can see it but would have been covered in Roman days to ensure it stayed clean.  It was also interesting that her English words for well or container or anything that held something else was receptor or receptacle.    

The next stop was at the stone press used to crush the grapes.  There were several big stones, well rounded and with holes in the middle.  These were moved either by slaves or by animals so the grapes were crushed between them and then there was another canal that allowed the grape juice to run into a nearby tank built into the ground.   The tank was built of bricks but covered in bits of fired ceramic tile so the tank was waterproof.  It had a slanted bottom leading to a lower central pocket so sediment could settle to the bottom centre.  Then the clear juice could easily be removed from the top of the tank and moved to the retainers in another room.  Each container held about 800-1000 litres and the archaeologists believe there were 20 to 24 in this room so it was obvious it was not just for one family, but rather for production and sale.  The wine stayed in the receptors for 1 to 1.5 years at most.  They added different things like honey or fruit to the containers to stop the fermentation, and the wine was apparently very good.  Even the Italians liked it and said if you couldn't get a good Italian wine, buy the Tarraco wine from Spain.

While the current remains are some distance from the Mediterranean Sea, back in their day the Sea was much nearer and the wine was likely shipped all over the world (or at least those parts that were known at that time).  The facilities in the ruins show that the same place also made the ceramic amphorae used to store and ship the wine.  The one we saw was 3-4 feet high with a narrow mouth and two handles at the top.  Below the neck it broadened out but then tapered to a rounded point at the bottom.   While it seemed like an unwieldy shape to me, our guide explained that the bottom made it easy to stick in the sand while waiting to be loaded on a ship (or after being unloaded).  It also made it very easy to load on a ship because at the bottom of the ship there would be nets and the amphorae would be placed at the bottom with their blunt pointed ended through the net.  Then when they had crammed as many in as they could that way, they would place another layer above them with their pointed ends going between the lower amphorae.  That way, no matter how rough the seas got the amphorae would still be fine.  Apparently some ship wrecks still have the amphorae intact at the bottom of the ship.  

The amphorae were only built to last for one storage/journey.  As soon as they were received at a home they were poured into something more easily handled and then discarded.  There is a mountain in Rome built of nothing but broken pieces of amphorae.  In other cases they were used for burial urns for small children by breaking the necks off the amphorae and putting two of them together.  And lastly, they could be broken up and recycled as lining for wells to make them water proof like the juice well here at the ruins.

The largest room at the ruins was the ceramics workshop with five rows of eight pillars each.  It was where the amphorae were built and they also did ceramics for other purposes such as construction.  The possible ones we saw were the curved tiles used for roofing houses.  There is not much left of the ceramics workshop, which was apparently once two floors, but the oven or furnace is right beside it where the ceramics were fired.  The oven is a round shape with two floors.  Of the bottom floor all you can see is the entrance way in.  This was where the slaves would keep loading firewood to keep the heat in the furnace.  It had to be at approximately 1,000 degrees for a whole da to complete the firing.   it would have been very hard and hot work!

The upper level of the oven had holes in the floor and I thought that was to put the pointed end of the amphorae but she quickly squashed that idea.  The holes are just to let the heat into the oven section.  The amphorae or other ceramics cannot be places directly in or over the holes or they would block the transfer of heat into the oven.  At present, there is very little of the upper section remaining but it was apparently like an igloo on top or a round mound.  There was never a door into the upper oven at any point.  With a door they would have had to wait too long for the door and the inside to cool to get the ceramics out.  What they did instead was simply knock down a whole section of the wall, let the heat out quickly, remove the ceramics, load in new ceramics and then build the wall up again.  This process allowed them to turn over the oven contents much more quickly, which aided production greatly.  Despite the fact that the mosquitos were horrible and I got bit dozens of times during the hour, I really enjoyed the tour and found it very interesting to hear how much some things are done similarly and some are done differently and yet so simply compared to current processes.  

I walked from there to the Old Tower.  It was built in 1530 to protect the coast from pirate attacks.  When I first went by on my way to the Roman ruins, there was a wedding going on.  By the time I got back the wedding party was gone so I went in.  The tower on the outside is plain light coloured brick and stone.  The tower is only about four storeys high with small windows on all sides.  The house adjacent to it is two storeys and also very plain on the outside.  The only decoration on the outside wall was over the entrance gate and there are two heads on each side.  It would have been nice to know what they each meant because they were quite strange.  The front two could be considered happy and sad.  The inside two had one biting his tongue and the other one I wasn't sure what it was about.  Strange, is all I can say.

On the inside, they have remodelled and it is now a gallery.  The current exhibit is definitely contemporary and definitely not my style.  It was made up mainly of clothes or clothes pieces made into art.  For example, many different shirt collars put together as if they are ribs in a human body.  Strange.  However, the interior of the building was neat as the ceiling has dark wooden beams and stone arches, and the windows show that the walls of the tower are at least three feet thick.  The stones, dark beams and dark wood floors against the white walls make it look very elegant. 

The next stop was the old train station.  The small old two-storey orange building with grey trim says Salou on the side and it is now a school or pre-school.   It is right across from the current train station, which helped with the transport of goods between the two stations.  It opened in 1857 and ran between Reus and Salou until 1975.  An old train engine and a caboose sit outside the building, and remnants of the narrow gauge railway are still in the pavement beside it.  

I just happened to go wandering the streets a bit more and came across the Church of St. Mary of the Sea, a church built originally for seafarers and fishermen.  It wasn't supposed to be open at this hour but obviously they had just finished a service so other tourists were going in and I decided to join them.  Built in 1766, the exterior of the church is yellow or yellowish beige, and quite plain and simple on the outside - looking rather Baroque in style but what do I know.  It has one tower which includes a level for bells and a higher level with a clock on each side.  The inside is white with light pinkish hues and with paintings and murals on the walls.  The central painting above the altar is large and bright and colourful and yet very tasteful at the same time, so that the whole church looks very calm and peaceful.  

I then walked home along promenade.  That meant I walked past the Harbourmaster's Office.  This 1820 building was an important part of the Port of Salou.  At one time it had a drinking fountain for people and a watering trough for horses.  Now it has a pharmacy and some restaurants / ice cream parlours in the bottom - but the building is still very stately.  As I went past it had the full moon shining through the palm trees above it and looked especially nice.  Behind the harbourmaster's office is the dock and harbour.  At one time it would have had just fishing boats and commercial vessels in it but now they are almost all pleasure craft.  At the one corner of the walk around the pier there is a statue to the fishermen with a person repairing or gathering his nets.  The harbour kind of divides the beaches in Salou.  The larger and busier one, where the large promenade and fountains are goes to the east.  The smaller and quieter one (the one I like) goes to the west of the pier.

It was a lovely night out but there were not as many people out as last night.  It was only about 8:30 so perhaps more would show up before the 9 p.m. fountain show.   I wasn't staying around for it again tonight but I might catch it again next week.

It is a weekend and I do have to note that some people have returned from the city to enjoy a weekend on the water.  There are people in buildings across the street from my apartment supposedly just for the weekend.  I actually like it much better when they aren't here.  You forget how narrow the streets are when all you see is the tops of the green trees.  Now that I look at people on balconies behind the tree tops, it suddenly seems a lot narrower or more crowded, although it's still just lovely.

I went back to apartment and did a bit of computer work before turning in for an earlier night, especially when compare to last night's 3 a.m. bedtime.