Adolf Hitler was the Mayor?

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The rain's stopped and we wake to blue skies and sunshine. Issy's now feeling much better so we head off for the small town of Tossa de Mar near the southern end of the Costa Brava. We take some wrong turns and instead find ourselves driving along the foreshore of the much larger town of Lloret de Mar. The waterfront's ridiculously glitzy; it's crammed full of high rise buildings, and looks like a cross between the Gold Coast and Las Vegas. We read that this is one of the most popular tourist destinations on the Costa Brava, which isn't hard to believe based on the number of people strolling along the promenade. Progress is slow. There are pedestrian crossings at what feels like twenty metre intervals and a constant stream of people wanting to use them. There's also a constant stream of people who've apparently decided that pedestrian crossings aren't for them; they just wander out onto the road in front of us at random without looking. The temptation to mow them down's almost overwhelming ....... fortunately only almost.

We manage to find our way to Tossa de Mar and make our way down through a maze of narrow streets to the old walled town above the waterfront. We read that this is the only surviving fully intact medieval walled town on the Catalan Coast, and was built in the twelfth century. We walk along the tops of the walls and then through the narrow alleyways between the old houses inside them. It's all stunningly beautiful. We can't get up to the top of the hill; it's closed off as they prepare for a concert.

We read that in 1989 Tossa de Mar became the first town in the world to officially declare itself "anti-bullfighting". Wikipedia tells us that the mayor at the time was a gentleman named Mr Adolf Hitler. I wonder who edits Wikipedia. I suspect maybe someone who likes bullfighting. I hope they've got a good lawyer. Actually I hope they've got a really bad lawyer. I think they should dress the editor and his lawyer up in red and lock them up in a small pen with a couple of large angry bulls for a couple of hours and see how they like it.

We stroll down into the main part of the town behind the beach. Issy stops dead in her tracks in front of me, and starts drooling. It seems that she's found a Japanese restaurant. She says that we should resist the temptation to eat Japanese for lunch and then starts to walk on. But no, it seems that her urges are irresistible, so we settle in for some hefty servings of raw fish and other assorted Japanese goodies.

The range of tourist nationalities here seems to be different and much more diverse than in Roses. We hear lots of Russian sounding voices (which might actually be Portuguese - we're struggling to tell the difference), and even the dulcet tones of visitors from Issy's beloved Maltese homeland.

We walk up through the backstreets to the main parish church. We read that this was built in the late 18th century, but the interior was largely destroyed in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. It's very dark and sombre inside, and it's not nearly as lavishly decorated as many of the other churches we've seen in our travels. We think this is a good thing.

We walk up the hill behind the town to the Torre des Moros. It's closed, but the views down over the town from its base are excellent. We plough on upwards and then follow a path along the clifftop. The views down into the small cove of Platja d'es Codolar are stunning. We watch on as some youngsters launch themselves off the cliffs into the water. We hope they know what they're doing; we can't see any obvious signs of blood in the water.

We drive back through Lloret de Mar to the Santa Clotilde Gardens. These were constructed in the 1920s by the Noucentiste movement, which apparently sought "intellectual and aesthetic renewal". I'm not entirely sure what that means, but the gardens are nice. They're particularly notable for their lack of flowers, and statues of mermaids. We get great views over the small cove of Cala sa Boadella, which we read afterwards is a nudist beach. Now that I think of it I do remember seeing a lot of people with zoom lenses pretending to take photos.

We head back towards Roses. We see dark clouds ahead of us, and as we drive onto the coastal plain it starts bucketing with rain. We should have expected this. I think everyone knows that the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain .... I hope no one's reading this.

We ate too much Japanese food at lunchtime so we decide to dine in. We warm up the left over bit of the breadstick that we bought to eat at the beach a couple of days ago, and make up some oil and vinegar to dip it in. Gijb left us a packet of chips so we munch into those as well. I'm still hungry, but we've run out of food except for breakfast cereal. I'd be tempted to hook into that too, but then I wouldn't have anything to eat in the morning. There's a spectacular thunderstorm displaying its wares somewhere out across the Gulf so we settle in to watch the show.

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