Catalunya 2002

Benvinguda!

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07 Sep 2002, Saturday evening:
• Drive north along the coast to Tossa De Mar.
• Pick up some cured ham and reliable cheese. (The joke of the day is Tai mis-hearing "Parma Ham" as "perma-ham". )
• Park for 2 days at the beach parking lot.
• Stay at the Hotel Diana, Plaça d'Espanya 6. Lose track of time somewhat. :)

8 Sep 2002 Sunday morning: (JL has these pics.)
• Miss the Diana's breakfast, so brunch at Es Congere. Medi anchovy pizza!
• Then, mmmmm, the beach in Tossa de Mar.
• Climb up and over the old town's battlements (Mont Guardì) and down to the wee southern beach at Es Codolar.
• Pebbly sand, salty water, and big waves. Warm, warm sun.
• Back to the Diana.
• Joke of the day involved testing all the ancient furniture in the Diana's sitting rooms, and finding the disembodied heads of two people in the Antonio Gaudi-designed fireplace. Very odd, like if the Aliens were sculptors as well as consumers of live prey. :) "This chair is quite farm." Um, what?

9 Sep 2002 Monday
• Catch Diana's breakfast this time. Drive north on the A-7, bypassing Girona and Figueres, stop at La Jonquera and look around for a place to stay or eat. We find nothing, but a cop at the local municipal office gives us a map of the wee town.
• For this region, the Commarcal of Alt Empordà from Banyoles or L'escala on north, you need this map from the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya.
  
  
  1:50 000 / ISBN 4774325295
• We head up the nice mountain road to Cantallops.
  Here you need the Massís de l'Albera map, from the "Els Mapes dels Parcs Naturals de Catalunya" series, also from the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya. You can't buy it on line, as far as I can tell; you have to go there. :) Here's what to look for:
  
  Or get this one, which is "Paratge Natural dŽInteres Nacional de lŽAlbera", also from the ICC.
  
• Stop in Cantallops to get bearings. Head up the nasty mountain road to Requesens. Take wrong turn on the road, leading to a wee adventure in some nice ponds

• Return to the wee car and head back down.
• Plan on a nasty drive back to Figueres, perhaps, but
• instead stop almost immediately at the Hotel Mercé Park in Capmany.
• Lots of huge truckstops here on the N-11 for eating breakfast.
• Dinner in the Mercé Park's restaurant.

• The trails are covered in blackberry brambles. Somewhat yummy, but also very painful. These trails (the ones we found, anyway) are not well maintained, and several times we took 10 minutes or so to travel 10 m, with one person using both hats to hold down brambles and climb through them without getting scratched up. Lifting your legs over high sharp brambles uses muscles you wouldn't use in normal hiking. We both felt vaguely sore the next day... Then I realized what it was.
• "Try lifting your leg way up and forward, like you're stepping over something dangerous."
• "OOOOUCH!"
• We both dissolve into laughter.
• Eventually (a couple hours of dim brambly trail climbing later) we break out of the forest and into scrubby cover. Finally we can see something!

Dinner at Artigas in La Jonquera. This place needs to be in the Lonely Planet Guide.

Crowded fireworks and dancing:

JL and I wandered out of a late dinner in a nice restaurant and heard drumming... and the sharper percussives of gunpowder... and the bright flashes of fireworks! Exploring noise-ward in the little town of La Jonquera, we found a live drumming troupe bouncing around to a bunch of performance pyrotechs... who were doing their performance IN the crowd, on the crowd. It's weird when you can feel the heat of the incendiaries on your face and scalp, a little frightening when whole sections of the crowd are getting pushed one way or another by spigots of spark.

• Miss breakfast again; have café con leche in the hotel bar.
• Drive to the coast along the mountainous spine of the Alt Empordà.
• Lunch in Llançà at Pati Blanc, which is an outdoor cafe the courtyard of a gorgeous old estate.
• Nice wine too.

• And then we drive south, through Cap de Creus Park. If you get a chance to drive the GI 613 and GI 614 road, take it. Exciting.
• Nice photos of the Port de la Selva and the hills directly to the north.