Tossa de Mar Beach Holiday

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Well, we made it to Spain. After a night train ride from Marseilles to the border, we had a milk-run of a train ride from the France border to Barcelona. It was more like a metro train with all these people on their way to work. There we were with our huge packs, falling asleep on each other. At least we weren´t the only backpackers on the train. We passed Figures (birth place of Salvidor Dali), which was pretty cool. We arrived in Barcelona on August 24th, where it was sweltering hot and very muggy.

We jumped right on a bus to Tossa de Mar; a little coastal village north of Barcelona. It was a beautiful place with small winding
streets intertwining one another, beachside cafes, and an awesome beach with a big fortress (which enclosed the old village) on the south point of the village. It was some sort of stronghold and evidently saw many battles. A lot of the fortress seems to have been destroyed both by war and weather. Pretty cool to walk through it and think of all that went on there. It now has some cool little restaurants and cafes. So we had a beer and snacks where some poor Spaniards probably fought for there lives.

We got a room in a nice little hostela on the beach. We spent the next three days lying on the beach, hiking through the mountains, sampling the cafes and just wondering the streets and checking out the shops. It was really sunny and very hot during our 4 days there. Most businesses shut down from noon until about five in the evening. I am sure that this is due to the fact that everything slows to a crawl when the sun is at it´s peak.

It was a bit of a challenge switching languages. We were getting used to French and kept speaking it to waiters. A few times we didn´t bother switching because they understood our French better than our Spanish! Some of them just spoke French to us when we tried to speak Spanish. I guess we sounded French?

All in all, it was a nice relaxing place. It seems to be a popular tourist stop for Europeans, but we were apparently there at the end of the season so it wasn't too crowded.

Tossa de Mar : highly recommended.

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Photos

The Fortress at Night
Quite beautiful from the beach.

Tracey with the village behind
The view from the fortress.

Cool architecture
Most of the buildings and structures are very old and almost everything is made of stone.

Beach Castle
This is on a smaller beach behind the fortress.

Tracey's new beach towel
There was an ample supply of tasteful beach equipment!

Comments

[anonymous]

Mahoney... you've lost weight!!
J-Man, is that you in the middle of the "Beach" photo wearing only a ball cap and a black spandex speedo!?!?! For goodness sakes Jay-Man, show some common sense... my children might see this!!