Beginning of Week 2: Transportation

We are using the facilities of Tarragona’s public university, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, whose campus is split between two areas of the city. Our dorm, Sant Jordi, is near the center of the city, but we take classes about 3.5km (2.2mi) away at the university’s Centre de Transferència de Tecnologia i Innovació. Technically, it’s a walkable distance, but not in this weather. The best way to get there is by the public bus, as there are bus stations conveniently located right near our dorm and our classroom building. It’s about a 15 minute bus ride, and we were all able to get student bus passes that give us up to 100 trips in 30 days for only 23 euros.

There are plenty of pros for taking public transportation. The bus is air conditioned, which is a nice perk. I’d say they are cleaner and feel safer than the MBTA buses. Also, I often find myself striking up conversations in Spanish with the locals while riding the bus. I’ve been asked three times now if I was from London – I guess they must get a lot of British tourists and can’t differentiate between our accents! Or maybe I just look British? Who knows.

The only con I can think of is that waiting for the bus can take a while, depending on what time you get there. However, the maximum amount of time that I’ve waited in the morning is about 10 minutes. So that’s not really anything to complain about.

The only other type of public transportation that I’ve taken was when we took the train to a neighboring town on Sunday to see a castelling (human tower building) competition in Torredembarra, Spain (side note: this is a really crazy sport that’s unique to the Catalonian region of Spain. I’ll mention more about this in one of my next posts). We took the train for two stops from Tarragona to Torredembarra, which was about a 15 minute ride. The train was pretty nice, and only cost 2.85 euros each way. We plan on traveling to a few other nearby towns and cities to explore in the next few weekends.