After a fabulous weekend with Rosa what shall I do now? Well I have never been to Malgrat de Mar which is quite close and will give me a full house of “de Mars” added to Lloret and Tossa. A further attraction is that Malgrat has a funicular. We have ridden funiculars down from Buda to Pest, up Montjuic in Barcelona, in Bilbao to Artxanda, to Monte Igueldo in San Sebastián and that funny street lift in Lisbon so the funicular called to me. Malgrat is a pleasant sleepy town – at least at this time of year – with a nice church square and a fine beach. One small problem is the railway that you have to cross through an underpass to get to the promenade.
The way to travel!
After a pleasant stroll along the beach coffee called so I made my way back under the tracks and into town. There was a fine modernisme town hall and cool streets with a view of the funicular at the end.
The shady church square
The funicular leads up to a park where a tower remains as evidence of a one-time castle. There were still quite a few steps so I was glad of the initial mechanical uplift. Fine views out over the town and the bay made the journey worthwhile.
And in the square at the foot of the funicular was Restaurant Barrica which provided a fine gazpacho and a large and tasty slice of salmon with asparagus and a good glass to accompany it.
It made for a good quiet morning outing and I got back, parked up arrived at Lloret’s cultural centre in time to watch a youth community group rehearsing on a stage across the brutalist plaza. I mooched into the centre for an evening beer but after an excellent lunch had no further need of food today.
I started out with a few aims: 1: call Rosa to arrange the weekend; 2: find stronger painkillers than paracetamol; 3 buy a USB C double to connect phone to car; 4: sun.
A call to Rosa proves better than expected – she is happy to meet for dinner tonight. I research a few places half way between Lloret and Girona and am delighted when Rosa selects Ca la Manela in Caldes de Malavella. Spain must have a farmacia for every ten people and the first one I encounter is organic/non chemical so I have some potion specially for joints. It has my knee on the packet so I buy it. I do however get plan B at a normal chemist later. Both come in a form I have not encountered before – they are sachets that you tear the top off and suck the contents into your mouth. The cable too is acquired from one of the multitude of phone shops and I have SatNav on the big screen. And there is a hint of sun on the beach at Lloret. So far so good.
Lloret is not for me. The Benidorm of the Costa Brava without the extent and height of the tower blocks. I did find a quite nice church but no casc antic that makes so many towns interesting. I walked the streets filled with gift shops, ceramics and how ever many watch shops. How are the Spanish renowned for a mañana attitude with so many options to keep them to time? And it dawned on me that Lamine Yamal is the new Messi given the almost total absence of other players’ strips parading the promenade and tourist traps. I found a square away from the front for a coffee and another local place for some tapas and then headed out of town for my planned dinner with Rosa.
I had stayed at the Vichy Catalan spa in Caldes de Malavella on my 2017 newly widowed sort-myself-out trip and, while small, it has some fine buildings and a good restaurant. As I was there well before our booking time at 20:30, I was able to explore further and discovered that the mineral water it is famed for was originally discovered by the Romans in 300 BCE. The Roman Baths are free to enter and proved an interesting wander for half a hour with some good multilingual explanatory display boards, charting is uses and misuses through the centuries/until the nineteenth century vogue for “taking the waters” gave the town a whole new commercial life. I think there are half a dozen companies the most famous of which is Vichy Catalan. And despite some very threatening clouds over the mountains I did get some sun with a green tea in the square watching much coming and going of the local populace.
The original sourceConvenient stepsThe sharing bath
There was a convenient free parking space two minutes from the restaurant in which I think I had a quick lunch ten years ago. It seemed much expanded and had an attractive menu from which we were encouraged to order far too much food. On enquiring what the portion sizes were the patron’s hands indicate a cazuela or saucer size. When they game they were charger sized and I am afraid there was some waste of very tasty seafood and grilled vegetables. I think the meal was unique in my history in that we each consumed one glass of verdejo as we both had to drive back.
It was a lovely evening catching up and making plans for the weekend in Girona. As a conceptual artist, often waiting for the next commission, Rosa is taking a sabbatical into the world of work with a 10 till 2 and 4 till 8 Spanish hours job which she finds wonderfully liberating being allocated tasks and timescales to achieve. Fortunately I did have a glass of last night’s Ramon Bilbao to render the evening a bit more normal.
Some time ago my friend Rosa, now located in Girona, and I agreed it would be nice to meet up and that the next weekend when we were both available was 19/20 September. Shortly after fixing this, the Guardian Escapes promo offered me seven nights with flights and a hire car for £900 in Lloret de Mar which is less than an hour from Girona.
Just before my departure it transpired that the only day I could meet Daisy and Jerry visiting London from Boston was Tuesday 15. We had a lovely catch up over lunch at the Union Club which Jerry was amazed to find not filled with ancient men with monocles and moustaches – what a disservice films have done to us! We then strolled through Covent Garden to the Sir John Soane Museum to see an exhibition by a Dutch artist I didn’t know. I still don’t as it was closed. However the Hunterian Museum on the opposite side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields was open and proved fascinating and among the many amazing specimens the Hunter brothers collected, it had a modern day area with a film about knee replacement surgery, highly recommended by a former train driver who had had both hips and knees replaced – one down three to go for me! We then went the the Bridge Theatre to see The Orestaia Simon Stone’s riff on Aeschylus. What a piece of theatre! The obligatory glass box set here worked well to contain the pent-up familial emotions on display. Much of the script is produced during rehearsals which the actors interviewed on the Bridge website found equally confusing, stimulating and liberating. How quickly can three and a half hours pass? Very, when the acting, staging and concepts are this good. Brilliant theatre.
Now to the next day. Up early, walk to Lee Station with carry on suitcase and rucksack, bus from London Bridge to Liverpool Street, Stansted Express to the airport all went swimmingly. Except that the toll on my arthritic knee with added burden was considerable, such that I asked Ryanair staff if they could arrange for assistance for me at Barcelona and on my return. A wheelchair, while denting my pride, might get me through the labyrinth more quickly. Part one of day highly satisfactory.
The flight arrived slightly early but no assistance was waiting at the airport. Kind passengers helped my with my cases up the ladder at Stansted and on the ramp at Barcelona. We enter passport control where the content of about a dozen simultaneous flights must have been congregated I use the word carefully – literally thousands of passengers. I accosted an agent, showed him my assistance confirmation email and he jumped me up the queue with a few askance glances but because I was accompanied by a hi-viz jacket wearer it was generally accepted. So my expedited passage through the passport control hall only took ONE HOUR AND THIRTY minutes. Chaos doesn’t describe it. Then the instructions for getting my hire car were incorrect but the dispatchers were immensely sympathetic and helpful. RecordGo rental strong recommend. Sadly I need a double USB C cable to use my phone through the car display, but I set off along the Ronda Littoral through seafront Barcelona with fond memories of many past visits and the happy prospect of some restorative sun on my knee. Part two mostly bad with an uptick at the end.
Short lived. As I reach Barcelonetta the heavens open and the remainder of my ninety minute journey are with wipers at full blast and there is flooding in the many tunnels along the route north to Lloret. We got lucky up here as this morning’s TV images from Valencia demonstrated. I found the hotel first go and luckily it is right opposite a Parking so no more stress there. As it is a hotel largely used by package tours like mine despite its misleading name of The Fifteenth Boutique Hotel it is not what I would normally have chosen. It has a lift, and complete miracle 358 is the first on the right out of the lift. Dee and I used to joke that receptionists had been persuaded always to situate us in the room furthest from the lift. Room 358 is spacious and comfortable with a balcony looking over the pool. After a fairly onerous day, I decide to eat at the hotel rather than exploring in the dark with a few spots of rain still falling. Dinner is a buffet with cuisine from all over the world – none of it done with any finesse. The upside was that they had a bottle of Ramon Bilbao Rioja with which I am perhaps too familiar, but it rounded the day off well. Hasta mañana!
