Empúries

Date: 17 Septiembre 2011. The next weekend, I find myself rather dismayed to be on a bus at 9h on a Saturday morning. I console myself with the thought that the ruins we're gong to see (L'Escala, see below) will be one of those surprisingly breathtaking, makes-this-all-worth-it excursions. They weren't.

I mean, I guess they were okay. Not sure what I was expecting from ruins, in retrospect...

Perhaps the real issue was not the ruins themselves (they look pretty legit in the pictures) nor my tiredness, but rather the worst tour guide of all time. In fact, to this date we're not sure if she was an actual guide or a mildly insane woman that we happened to follow around without her knowledge. On most tours I've attended, the guide will stop at a particularly noteworthy location and explain why, usually speaking to the members of the tour group, the thing he or she stopped in front of is so great. This tour guide stopped in some places and talked to them, "them" being the places. She spoke into the depths of the ocean and to the ruins. After three hours of walking behind her, I heard nothing of Empúries and I would direct you to its Wikipedia page for more any information.

After the tour, though, we were scheduled for some well-deserved tiempo libre. The beach at Empúries made the whole trip worth it -- the four hours of driving and the three hours of deathly boredom were afterthoughts as I stared into the clearest Mediterranean waters I had seen thus far.

I wish I had gotten a picture of the real highlight: We swam out to a big rock a few hundred yards from the shore. A group of 20 or so made it out, and we (precariously) basked on its steep surfaces, soaking in the view around us. Just as we got to the rock itself, music erupted from the shore and a group of people in costume began to perform a traditional Catalan dance. Turns out we had the best view.

The ruins were a bit of a bust, but the day was far from ruined.