From the Mountains to the Sea: The Pyrenees and Costa Brava
April 25 – May 13
Our last few weeks in Spain we planned to spend in relaxation mode. A few days in the Pyrenees mountains followed by two full weeks at a small cove beach in Costa Brava (NE Spain, near the French border). It has absolutely delivered.
Mountain Air
Our drive from Bilbao to the Pyrenees town of Sabiñánigo (it took us the full 4 days to figure out how to pronounce it Sabi-nyan-igo) took us through Pamplona. We weren’t too disappointed to miss the running of the bulls as the whole event just seems wrong in so many ways. Feathers did manage to get in some bull running though.
For our
4-day stop in the foothills of the Pyrenees Michelle’s plan had been to find
some mountain hiking in the area, walking through meadows with snow-capped
mountains in the background. (Al’s plans included booking a place in a golf resort
and playing golf every day we were there….) Unfortunately, Al’s lingering ‘tourist
foot’ injury had other plans. We managed to find some fun nonetheless. We were
mainly just happy to see the sun again after all the rain in Bilbao.
(Al’s been suffering from a little known condition of over touristing. Too many hours driving in a car that is at least two sizes too small for him, and days of walking 14km every day had left him with a cramped back and a strained foot that won’t allow more than a couple k’s of walking each day. So he has been on self-enforced ‘feet up’ time. It seems to be working as he’s starting to feel better.)
We arrived to what appeared to be a post-apocalyptic scene. What had been a fully functioning resort with a hotel, golf course, tennis, pool – the full Monty – was completely deserted. I swear we saw a tumbleweed roll by at one point. The sign on the hotel said that as of March 2020 the hotel was closed indefinitely. The outdoor areas were overgrown, and the wood decks were warped and peeling. Most disturbing was that the golf course was abandoned: not a soul in sight and no evidence of the club house opening.
We couldn’t do a full day hike in the mountains but we could take a drive and try the local hot springs.
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| Ian Fleming would be proud of this James Bond villain’s lair. |
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| No photos allowed inside... |
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| We also had one of our favourite meals to date at the Vinas de Larrede. |
Given the golf
course was one of the main reasons ‘we’ chose this particular town, we were a
little disappointed that it was apparently abandoned. But, speaking with our
host she assured us the golf course was operational and would be open the next
day. There may have been some comments from Al along the lines of ‘yeah right
and I might run a a marathon’. However, to our shock we awoke the next morning
to see someone playing golf.
We had been sitting on our balcony which overlooked wide, flat fairways and it looked like a relatively easy course. Even so, given the foot injury Al opted for el Moto as his transport. One of the fun things about golf in Spain is the myriad of options available for transporting yourself and/or your clubs around the course. Not just a simple hand cart or golf buggy here – we’ve seen everything from electric hand carts to e-scooters to… a mobility scooter with room for clubs? Al couldn’t resist.
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| It felt every bit as dorky as it looks |
And so with
the snow- capped peaks as a backdrop we headed out. By the second hole we
realized we were in for a treat – some of these holes were absolutely spectacular!
There was a point where we were concerned about running out of golf balls, but
we managed to make it with a couple to spare.
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| Simple - just hit from here to there, and then from there to over there.... |
Luckily there are walking trails in the mountains everywhere you look, even directly out from our resort.
We also
visited close-by Jaca which has the ignoble title of “town which has applied
the most times unsuccessfully for the Winter Olympics” (4 – shared with
Montreal, who apparently learned nothing from ‘76). Other highlights were the
citadel and the miniature museum. (Not a miniature museum, but a museum about miniatures
– including a massive diorama of the Battle of Waterloo, replete with toy
soldiers model soldiers of all of the various regiments etc)
The moat holds a herd of deer much to the amusement of tourists (and the chagrin of the deer)
To make up for not having time on our trip to get to the Cheese Route in the Asturias region of Spain, Michelle took herself on a short cheese tour in this region. Luckily for Al this also included some local craft beers as well.
Costa Brava
When we first imagined this long trip to Spain, we had pictured basing ourselves in one place for 6 weeks or so. But the lure of so many great places meant we opted to move around. So we promised ourselves that at the end of the trip we’d have at least two weeks in one place. A small house on the Costa Brava seemed like a plan.
Thanks to advice from our friend Alison (AJ), we chose the region around the town of Begur as our home base. It’s a stunning area lifted straight out of a postcard – cove beaches and emerald green waters. Our spot in the bay of Sa Riera is no exception. All our ‘hard work’ of travelling in the cool, wet Spring paid off with two stunning weeks with minimal tourists and perfect warm but not hot weather, Spring flowers everywhere.
The roads in and around Costa Brava wind like a drunken 18
year old making their way home from the bar at 2am, giving Michelle plenty of opportunities
to get her fill of coastal walks along the amazing rocky coastline, from one
stunning coastal cove or the next. Being Spain there are walking paths
everywhere and many are well marked. As it turns out the so called ‘local
trails’ stay much closer to the coastline than the more traditional routes in
the area of the Cami de Ronda. Over the two weeks she managed to walk from Tamariu
Cove to Pals beach.
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| Michelle’s favourite walk was from Tamariu, through the tiny cove of Aigua Xelida, to Aiguablava |
The next favourite walk was from our beach to Sa Tuna, not
least because both times she did this walk the lunch at either end was awesome.
Even her "least favourite" walk had an amazing view for miles.
We quickly fell into a daily routine along the lines of:
yoga and breakfast on the balcony overlooking the Med, Michelle takes a 1 or 2
hour walk along the coast then Al meets her for lunch by the beach, followed by Vermouth on the balcony with
some cribbage. Not a bad way to spend a couple of weeks.
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We did
manage a couple of day trips in amongst this rigorous schedule.
Ma-Ma-Ma-My Girona
Our friend Alina popped over from London for two days in the sunshine, so we picked her up in Girona on Day 1 of the annual flower festival (Temps de Flors) which apparently is a Big Deal. The festival turns what is normally a fairly small inland town into a teeming mass of tourists for 9 days. We fought through the crowds, saw some flowers, enjoyed some Vermut and more Jamón ibérico…
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| Two Gentlemen from Girona |
Day of Dalí
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| Gotta work on those selfie skills |
Both of us had a pretty kooky experience at the
museum, but neither of us realized that it had happened until after we’d left.
We were enjoying a post-museum coffee (okay, beer) looking through the photos
from our visit when we had the revelation.
Let me try to recreate what happened to us, here with you. In the main hall of the museum, there are a couple of large scale works including one on the left wall. This is one of them, showing his beloved partner Gala looking off into the sky:
We had stood looking at this painting together, and Al had
commented on the fact that the blocks at the top of the painting gave a strong
3-D illusion of looking ‘in’ to the sky behind. Little did we know that this
wasn’t the illusion that we should have seen. Michelle had shot a short video
panning across the hall, and this is what she saw when she reviewed it at the coffee
shop:
And because we’d already left the museum, we weren’t able to go back inside. Luckily, as it turns out this is a pretty famous Dalí painting, and we could find some images online (because, internet) – and actually the souvenir shop across the street had a print of the same painting in their front window. See if you experience the ‘aha’ moment where it turns from a woman to Abe:
Maybe we're the only people who couldn't see Abe. Anyway, we thought it was pretty cool.
I found a pretty interesting analysis of how it works on the intertubes, if you want to do a bit more reading - http://www.scottmcd.net/artanalysis/?p=1131
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| View from the bottom |
Hasta Luego España!
