David's Diary: Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Exploring L'Ampolla, Spain

Today was a good school day for two out of three of our students, so with one left behind to do school work the rest of us headed off to explore L'Ampolla. When school is going well, it is great to be able to get out and explore after lunch. Today we are following a walking path along the shore that runs for many kilometers. The picture above shows views looking south. You can just see the Ebro river delta as a thin line in the distance. Behind the delta are a set of inland mountains. The cliffs along the coast have layers and layers of color. While the skies are grey, we enjoy the chance to stretch our legs and explore the area that we are in.

Tied Bow-To

L'Ampolla saw another first for Dragonsinger. Due to the tremendous demand for docking space, few docks in the Mediterranean use fingers as we are used to in Canada. Instead of tying the side of the boat to the dock, you tie to the dock from the stern or the bow. So far, we have only tied stern-to, but in L'Ampolla we have our first experience of tying bow-to. We are glad that in Barcelona we had a pasarell fitted. A pasarell is a boarding walkway that can be mounted at either the stern or the bow of the boat. In this picture, we show how the pasarell is deployed at the bow to let us get on and off the boat. You can get off the boat without the pasarell, but it is a leap of faith whether you will make it on or off the boat when you don't have one. We are certainly glad that we took the time to have one professionally fitted in Barcelona.