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Published: February 10th 2009
Vilafortuny Beach
Just a stone's throw from our apartment...What a holiday! Coming within a hair-width of our lives, Leo and I needed the rest of the holiday just to recover from the flight there. Meanwhile if I was going to be in recovery mode anywhere, what better than your own apartment within a minutes walk of the beach under the warm Spanish sun?
The flight started well, and Leo and I were doing our usual banter about flying in cheap plastic planes, no doubt putting off most of the other patrons, rather than ourselves. Which was all very funny until about an hour into the flight when we hit a severe thunderstorm, turning our sturdy plane into a loose bouy bobbing around in stormy seas.
They had to kill all the electrics, as we were being repeatedly struck by large lightening bolts - a very eerie feeling when the sky outside the plane is suddenly brighter than inside!
Numerous times we suddenly dropped several hundreds of feet, causing everyone in the plane scream - making it rather hard for the rest of us to try and keep calm. The pilot had a hang of a job trying to keep it under control - as he accelerated out
Leo & Hannah
Living the life in Salou of these air pockets, we could feel the intense G-forces causing everyone to loose their stomachs, like on a ‘pirate ship’. It wasn’t long before the about 80% of the plane started getting sick (thankfully, I wasn’t one of them). and the air hostesses were obviously in trained survival mode: Everything will be FINE. … hmm yeah well after the pilot had to abort three landings, and we were still falling out of the sky without any warning - I was grouped in the 70% of people who knew we’re get down, but properly not in one piece.
We circled for other hour over the coast of Tarragona - guessing we’ll make less mess when landing in the sea - then the pilot made one last attempt to land: which we concluded was more to do with the fact we probably had no fuel left, rather than being safe to land... but everyone was ecstatic to be on solid ground, more or less in one piece (or perhaps one + a bag of swaying gooey mess).
Leo and I treated ourselves to a taxi ride to our hotel, and headed straight to the local bars, where I was
still physically shaking from our ordeal, and in much need of a drink. As Leo said: That was more than just a close call.
The next day we had the lovely distraction of exploring the Spanish city of Tarragona. We started the day by heading to the local markets to get some food for breakfast, which we ate in the local park before wandering around the city and heading over to the old town.
We walked along the old city wall, and checked out the large Tarragona Cathedral. The city actually has quite a bit of history, with its own amphitheatre, and various roman ruins. By the time we had wandered through most of these, it was time to head down the coast to Salou.
The rest of the holiday mainly consisted of beach by day, cocktails by night.
Our apartment was located across the road from the beach, in Vilafortuny, so as soon as we dumped our bags, we were straight on to the sand. We spent the next two days lying on the beach, and then wandered along the coast to Salou for dinner to check out the fancy cocktails - making friends with Crazy Eyes, our
new pet parrot. We had dinner at a lovely Italy restaurant that had the best sangria that Leo & I had tasted! A few carafes later, we took a wander down the coastline looking at all the pretty lights and dragged our feet through the warm water.
The following day we thought we’d check out the beaches in the opposite direction, and caught a bus down to Cambrilis. After looking through the little town itself, we grabbed some food from the local diary and headed to the beach again. We spend the afternoon slowly making our way back along the coast, going for swim after swim at each of the beaches until we got back to our apartment at Vilafortuny.
That evening we specifically made our way back to the Italian restaurant just for the sangria! As it was our last night here, we decided to check out a bit of the nightlife, heading to a club with walls made of lights that changed colour. Awesome (even if slightly tacky).
We had set aside our last day to spend at Port Aventura, the local amusement park, which also had its own water theme park ‘Caribe Aqua Park’. We
Cocktails in Salou
Meet our friend 'Crazy Eyez'! spent hours floating around on rubber rings, trying our numerous water slides. I think my favourite was El Torrente, a four person ride in a large ring that turns and spins as you go down a giant hydroslide!
A rather adrenaline packed way to end a lovely relaxing holiday.
Unfortunately the airport shuttled was booked out days in advance (WTF?) so we were forced to (1) eat McDs for dinner (blasphemy) (2) catch a bus to Reus - to find we had missed the connecting bus, so (3) caught another taxi from Reus to the airport, but we got there on time, and even managed to get our oversized bags (with the beach lilo) through security.
I was rather nervous about getting back on the (or any) plane. I had actually spent the last few days considering other alternative methods for getting back to London that didn’t involve flying. However, it was kind of a bit late for that.
As soon as I entered the plane, the garish décor of RyanAir instantly reminding me of the flight here; so when they announced that there was likely to be turbulence on the way, you would forgive me for not being
too excited.
However, in comparison to the flight here, it was fine, and I arrived into London vowing never the fly RyanAir again.
That is until James told me we were flying with them to Sicily next weekend. Grrr.
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adam
non-member comment
wow
wow that looks great I feel like goin to port aventura