Port of Adventure

We go to Alton Towers at least once a year, usually by saving up coupons out of the Sun newspaper - Unfortunately this means we have to buy The Sun for a few weeks a year, but it is worth putting ourselves through that to get our tickets. Plus the rabbits don't really mind what we line their house with. They might seem a bit angrier with us, but that is most likely just in my head.

The point is theme parks are fun, especially the rides - Wait the rides ARE the fun part, I don't think anyone goes to stand in queues and eat overpriced food, I can do that at home, I just need to go to Marks & Spencer close to Christmas.

Ooh penny arcades, they have them too, they're good! That reminds me of something else that happened in Ireland... But we're not on Ireland now, that was the last entry, now we're in the summery part of 2012 and we're building a holiday based around the enjoyment of roller-coasters, we're going to Port Aventura in Salou, Spain.

As it turned out going to a theme park didn't constitute a complete holiday plan, so we decided we would spend a few days in Barcelona before continuing on to Salou, now Barcelona has a really good public transport... wait I think I've covered public transport systems once before.

It rained a bit while we were in Barcelona, which dampened our enjoyment a little bit (no pun intended), but we still managed to get around to see all the important bits, like the Sagrada Família, will they ever finish this thing?
And this giant glass penis, that’s one of Barcelona's main tourist attractions right?

After a few days of drizzle and phallic buildings, we felt we had seen enough of this historic city and it was time to move on to the 2nd part of the holiday, we took the train to Salou, where unfortunately it was also raining, absolutely pouring down, you could barely look outside without getting soaked. On the end of that first day, it seemed like it was never going to dry up, it looked like Port Aventura was going to have to wait.

The light seeping in around the curtains the following morning told a different story though, it was glorious and clear, like the rain had never happened, so after a chance discovery of the children’s cartoon Phineas and Ferb, this would become day 1 at the theme park.

Probably the highlight was the new ride 'Shambala' which is meant to be like the Himalayas, so is an up and down sort of roller-coaster, the most interesting part being the first time we went on, we sat down, this little disk came down over our laps and we wondered where the rest of our harness was, the bit you normally have over the upper part of your body, making you feel safe and secure, what the hell were these?

What was quite nice was they had all the halloween stuff out, so there were giant pumpkins, skeleton horses and costumed characters all around who walked through the park in a halloween parade at the end of the day.

After the 2 days at Port Aventura, we had few more days in Salou, where there was sunshine, a bit of seaside and a load of bats.

We're almost up to date now, the next holidays to write about took place in 2013, maybe I'll be able to properly remember them. Lets find out.