Day 8 - Travel by car to Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava

---

So we have our entire life packed back up in our 9+ bags and Brian is walking to the National car rental office to pick up our rental car. I asked Brian if he'd ever driven in a foreign country...he said, "Yes, I drove a scooter in Vietnam", um yeah I don't think that counts! Jenn highly recommended getting the GPS, because it is very hard to get around, especially in the area she lives in. The houses are in a neighborhood where every house has a little wall around it. Every street looks the same and the streets are poorly labeled.

So he gets the car and tells me that there are no more GPS units, she said everybody wants the GPS and they ran out. Uh oh...I am thinking how screwed we are, Brian thought to Google map directions to Jenn's then Jenn's to Tossa de Mar and print them in the hotel lobby. This was a great idea, except that the streets in Barcelona are also poorly marked. So I took the hotel map and highlighted the directions to the freeway. At the last minute, we decided not to go to Jenn's house first, I thought no problem, I'll just cut out the parts of the printed directions that don't apply...WRONG! We got SUPER lost. We drove back and forth on the toll road trying to find our exit with no luck....we paid 12 euros ($18) in tolls and gave up. We had to call Jenn and she had to type it into her GPS and we had to follow her to the freeway that we needed! It was a mess and sucked up 1/2 the day.

We finally go to Tossa de Mar at about 4:30pm and it was beautiful! There is an old castle on one side of the bay and our hotel on the opposite side. We had the perfect view! We had to stop and ask the mossos (police) how to get to our hotel...we got lost again! I asked in spanish and surprisingly understood her response! Our hotel was located *right* on the beach! It was a little Best Western that was about the quality of a Motel 6. It was clean, so we didn't care....we were on the beach and the sun was out. Every time we heated Jake's water to heat his bottle the circuit blew, the front desk lady told us were we could flip the switch...it was in a cabinet above the closet. We got settled in and put on our swim suits and headed to the beach.

We had bikini's at the beachside cafe, 3 cold beers for Brian and a couple of Coke's for me. The Coke in Spain is also made with Sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. The sun was out, but it was a bit breezy. We enjoyed the sun and hopped for more of the same for tomorrow!

We decided not to explore the castle until Jenn and her family came to join us. We wandered the towns charming little shops and restaurants. We had dinner and had chicken kabobs, grilled prawns, pan de tomate (french bread drizzled with olive oil and salt rubbed with tomato).

Overall we has a great day...just no photographic evidence!!!

---