Sitges, Spanish Seaside Resort

We boarded the Viking Sea on Tuesday, getting ready to sail toward Stockholm. A potent rain and windstorm was forecast for that night. Sounded better to have that occur while we were still in port, with hopes that the evil weather genies will get this out of their system.

And the weather did deliver as promised. It was kind of strange to wake up during the night and feel the boat moving. Who knew a boat could move around so much while still berthed in a cruise port? When we got up on Wednesday morning, the seas were roiling and the rain was coming down in buckets. We wondered if our planned excursion would be cancelled. Alternatively, we wondered if we should cancel our participation in said excursion. But I got it in my head that even a drippy wet excursion can be interesting, and the rain just becomes part of it.

So off we went on a visit to Sitges, a seaside resort town about 30 minutes south of Barcelona. The weather broke about the time we left the boat.  We walked through lots of puddles and the surf was really high, but amazingly we got through the whole day without rain hitting us.

Sitges was founded in 200BC, so it is a seaside resort with some staying power. It is today considered an affluent suburb of Barcelona. You can live by the sea and get to the city for only 1€.

It’s a busy little town with winding, hilly, narrow streets, with cobblestones and art nouveau houses. There are no particular sights, but just the lingering impression of a bustling seaside town. People going about their business, that sort of thing. Many of the apartments and houses are shuttered at this time of year, but it was described as a party mecca in the summer. From our perspective, that probably means it would be a lot less appealing than we found it.

 

The primary impression Sitges leaves—besides that thundering sea, which shrouded us in sea spray whenever we were within a block of it—was the tile and iron work we could see everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on the ship, we sailed out of Barcelona about 6:30pm. After dinner, we attended the Captain’s welcome reception and got an overview of upcoming entertainment possibilities. The boat was moving around quite a bit, which wasn’t ideal since none of us has our sea legs yet. 

We awoke during the night to the ship swooping and rolling pretty significantly. Went on all night. Let’s just say there are a lot of stashes of seasick bags all over the ship today that weren’t there yesterday.

We are sailing all day Thursday, arriving in Cadiz Friday morning, 618 nautical miles from Barcelona.