Advertisement
Published: August 1st 2010
Edit Blog Post
Dropped off Lynn and Mike at 8:00 for their 10:00 flight to US. It was a good dry run for us. Now we would know where to go for our flight on Friday. We headed off for several days exploring Catalonia. You see "Catalonia is NOT Spain" spray painted all over, signs are in two languages and people speak differently.
Our plan was to follow the expressway along the coast and bypass Barcelona, but somehow we ended up going right thru the middle, but to our surprise it wasn't as bad as one would expect...(for me at least, I think Ruth heard a few choice words). Ruth claims I behave differently when we don't have other passengers.
The coast is as you might expect; a series of industrial and resort communities..until we reached Tossa de Mar, what a delight. We generally stayed to the original part of town up on a hill in a strategic position to watch the harbor. beautiful beach with great scenery, except that the sand was very large grains of sand that made it nearly impossible for Ruth and I to walk; with or without our scandals.
We continued up the coast for more
gorgeous view of the water, and headed for Cadaques. It is said if you have just enough time to see one area of Costa Brava, this whitewashed village around a rocky bay is it. The drive out to the village was thru hillsides with miles and miles of stonewall, hand made 300 yrs ago for the grapes. Hard to believe the effort it took to build all the terraces. It was the perfect town for wondering. Our hotel was again in the old historic area and hard to find with the winding streets. I finally left Ruth in the parked car and ran into the area I thought should be the location for the hotel. Finally found it and got convoluted directions, including to ignore a couple of traffic signs, to find the free parking. We got settled in and saw the notice that the parking area was really a drainage way that became a river in heavy rain.
Ruth tracked down what sounded like a nice restaurant, only to find the city map must had a misprint so we couldn't find it. Ruth, in her usual ability to figure out directions, figured out where it should be and
headed in that direction. Again, we found the restaurant to be closed, but an adjacent one was open and were greeted to come inside. The waiter/owner was very helpful, so we proceeded to order what sounded like an outstanding meal. he spoke great English. Another couple came in and he greeted them in French, and proceeded to describe the meals in French. I don't know how many languages this fellow spoke, but needless to say in was an international clientele. An Australian couple came in and sat next us, so we had a pleasant conversation about our traveling experiences in Spain, as well as, our adventures for our trip down under.
We returned to our hotel earlier than previous nights and realized we appreciated a relatively short drive and early to bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.055s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0347s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb