Sunday, August 23 - Mataro, Spain

Today we had a quicker start to the morning.  We were up, had breakfast and were at the tourist office by 9:45 for  10 a.m. tour of the city.  We figured the tour would only be in Catalan again but we really wanted to see inside one of the buildings and thought this might be our only way to do so without paying $45 euros for a group tour.  Our two-person group just wasn't big enough to afford that fee.  As it turns out, the tour wasn't going to that building anyway so we didn't join them.

So, what do you do when you are up and ready to go to the beach after your tour but you don't do the tour?  You go to the beach.  We were down there by10 a.m.  I read for a while and watched the waves.  It was quite windy and there were some big waves coming in.  There were still lots of people on the beach but not many were in the water, or at least not very far into the water.  

There are lifeguards all along the beach and they do a great job of watching what's happening.  A couple of times I heard them yell something at someone and once they came running to help a child in distress.  He was conscious but he did spit up a lot of water and was sick after that and they gave him oxygen and stayed with him and his family for quite a while.  Eventually they took him away in the ambulance so I guess they were quite concerned about him. 

We had lunch at one of the beach cafes at some point in the early afternoon.  Eventually I had had enough sun so I left the beach and found a comfortable bench in a shady area up on the promenade and I sat there reading for several hours.  I then called it a day and walked back to the hotel to shower and change.  I probably read or blogged for a while and then it was time for dinner.  So where do we go?  Back to the beach of course, and we had a great dinner (albeit somewhat expensive!!) at a restaurant overlooking the water.  Then it was back to the hotel and the end of another tough day.