I made a gigantic mistake today, and it may affect the rest of my trip. On my way into Barcelona, I stopped for gas. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to grab the wrong nozzle and didn’t notice that I was filling my tank with Gasoil A instead of Gasoline 95 until I hung it up.

There was stop-and-go traffic when I left the highway, and my engine clearly wasn’t happy. It stalled a few times at stoplights. Sitting still while waiting for a green, a scooter came up and knocked my mirror askew (great driving, jerks). Otherwise, it was a pretty smooth ride to the hotel Matt had selected for us to meet. He was already ensconced in our suite, but came down to help me unload and get squared away with reception.

We were supposed to meet a former client of mine and some of her friends for lunch at what looked to be a really nice restaurant, but I needed to hunt down a mechanic and Matt had another phone meeting urgently come up, so we canceled.

As it turns out, there were several mechanics nearby, so I went to one and asked. They were all very busy, with lines of people, but eventually I got to talk to someone. He thinks there’s a chance that if I keep topping up with the right gas, and if I didn’t put too much in (I don’t think I did), then I should be fine. Fingers crossed. And if not, he gave me his card. I was too stressed out to go give it a whirl right then. Instead, I went back to the hotel.

The hotel has a spa area with a large, color-changing jacuzzi, a steam room, a multi-directional shower, and an infrared sauna. I enjoyed the jacuzzi and the steam room quite a bit. I was the only one there.

Then I went back to the room and napped.

Matt had another meeting, in person this time, so he went off for that. I joined him later, at an Irish pub, where I had a burger and fries. 🙂 It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great. It was standard international Irish pub fare.

We were both tired, so we went back to our hotel, where we are spending the rest of the evening lounging around, reading books, and in Matt’s case, watching YouTube videos.

Tomorrow we will meet up with Deniz and Laura at our apartment for the week, a place Deniz selected for its size and proximity to most of the venues we will be enjoying music for Primavera Sound Music Festival. It’ll be great to see them!

I took a break from writing yesterday because I intended to do it this morning. But I didn’t.

Yesterday started with croissants fresh from the camping site’s restaurant, then I went into town for a wax and massage (in that order). I’ve been having some trouble getting a good massage. Or rather, some trouble with getting anything other than a relaxing massage. I don’t need relaxing. I need some work on stiff muscles. Anyway, it was a nice relaxing massage, helaas.

Then I drove to Blanes to enjoy the wonderful botanical garden. More pics than comments here. Botanical gardens are more fun when I go with any of my botany-geek friends. Me, I’m just a gardener. Still, it was a lovely place.

After that, I navigated treacherous roads to get back down to the port, where I lucked out on restaurants (again). I picked one that didn’t have 8 million menus plastered, but only a handwritten one. People were eating there, one table of late middle-aged Spanish people, and they looked like they were taking their time over a really good meal.

Fabulous. The first course consisted of 2 “small” courses: first a tray of grilled gambas and fried sardines:

Then a huge pile of mussels flavored with fresh lime (yum yum yum) – no pic, I just ate them.

Then 2 hake steaks elegantly arranged on a plate with tempura vegetables. Here was their only failure – the sauces that they’d decorated the plate with were definitely not fresh-made, and they could have been.

All this with an excellent white wine.

Dessert was a really nice arroz con leche decorated with drizzles of fruit, then a tiny cake with blackberry ice cream. Then coffee.

I lingered a long time.

The bill came: 21 euros. Damn. That would have just paid for the mussels in the Netherlands. Maybe the mussels and one glass of wine. I was served a whole bottle (I didn’t drink all of it, but I could have – it was left in ice on my table).

After lunch, I walked up and down the beach a bit before heading back to my campsite.

When I got back, I checked out the pool, then read by my tent, then ate yesterday’s groceries, then went to sleep.

This morning, I woke up late, read in my tent, finally got up, made coffee, walked down to buy croissants, and read my book some more. I got a token from management, did my laundry, read my book some more.

When it seemed like lunchtime, I wandered down to the beach bar. This was an excellent idea, but also a very bad one. The only thing that really appealed to me on the menu today was fried calamari with alioli. 😀 But an entire pitcher of sangria, followed by a glass of cava, seemed like a reasonable accompaniment.

To be fair, it took me almost 4 hours to drink it, but I should have ordered more food. I was pretty drunk when I went back to my tent. I slept for 3 hours.

When I woke up, it was time for dinner, and I pleaded a need for vegetables to the friendly bar staff at the camping restaurant. They didn’t really have salad on the menu, but they made me one, and I had bubbly water to go with it. And flan… because one can really never have enough flan.

The only other people in there were a big table of Dutch people. Then more Dutch people came in to play pool. I left when the cook and one of the bartenders from the beach bar arrived and ordered beers.

Tomorrow I’m off to Barcelona, and Matt will be there too! 😀

It is evening as I write this. Looking around me, I see several other solo campers. They are all men, of various ages, all reading books. Until a moment ago, I was also reading a book. There are women here, but they are all less visible, with men, except for the two young German campers in their 20s.

I chatted with my Dutch neighbor a bit this evening. His dog barked all morning while he was at the restaurant for breakfast, but strangely, it didn’t particularly bother me. He says he’s been coming to this campsite for 4 years, and has never seen so many children as this time. Oh well.

Today I drove the very windy route to Cadaques to see the house where Salvador Dali and his wife Gala lived. They started with one house in the tiny fishing village of Port Lligat, but eventually connected seven, and grounds. It is adorable. I loved it.

My impression of the Costa Brava is that it’s wonderful. I’m a bit torn between it and the Costa Verde. Both are full of coves and fishing villages and are greener and more mountainous than the popular sun resort areas of the Costa del Sol and Costa Calida. Both are full of people who seem very patient with my Spanish, although both are full of people with their own language/dialect. No one here seems bothered that it takes me a while sometimes to think of the correct word when I’m trying to express myself. That hasn’t been the case everywhere (to be fair to Extremadoura, though, it was also wonderful – and the people also appreciated my bad Spanish). Here I’m supposed to refer to Spanish as Castellano, though, and I keep forgetting.

Back to the day’s events. I took my time leaving. I woke up to the sound of Brom’s barking (my earplugs were in, so I heard but didn’t exactly startle at the kids, but the dog was closer and louder), then made coffee. I walked over to the restaurant and bought 2 croissants to eat with my cherries. I talked to Matt for a while, and made more coffee. I called the Dali museum and reserved a visit at 16:00. I then called the restaurant next door to the museum and reserved for lunch at 14:00.

I drove to the border with France and back. Just for the hell of it. Then I drove to Cadaques. I parked in the busy square by the beach, then walked from there to Port Lligat. I was early for my lunch reservation, but no matter. I was the only person dining.

Lunch was fabulous, and my waiter was a really young kid who was fascinated that I had been on my motorcycle for almost 5 weeks already. I had told him I was glad I’d planned my house visit after lunch, since I drank so much cava and local wine, and shouldn’t get on my bike so soon, or he never would have known. I sat for a long time enjoying the view from their terrace.

Unfortunately, my house/museum visit didn’t go quite as smoothly. Although I had spoken first Spanish then English when making the call, and I arrived when I was told to (15:50), they changed my time to 16:20 and put me into a French-speaking tour. This was clearly a mistake, because the guide at that time was quite surprised. She explained things to me in a mixture of Castellano and not excellent English, but I think I missed a lot because she spoke a lot to the French people, and I only caught a little of it. There were lots of English speakers in the 16:00 and 16:10 groups (I know, since I watched them go in).

Anyway, I LOVED the house. I want to build a house like this. I loved that Dali wanted to see the first light of morning from his bed, so he installed a special mirror in the sitting room below his bedroom at an angle that caught the first rays and sent them to his bed. I love that the house and grounds grew organically. I love that he bullied the government into declaring the area reserved and not allowing more houses or other developments to be built there. I love the weird nooks and crannies. If I could build my dream house, I would want it to be similar. I have often thought such a thing. Actually, mine would be different. I have drawings and plans. Different landscape, different needs. I plan a series of connected tree-houses and lagoons. 😀 Yeah, when I suddenly become rich because of… ??? still working on it.

Anyway, I liked it. After wandering around for quite a while in the house and grounds, I walked back to Cadaques, had delicious gelato while looking at my motorcycle. Then I suited back up. Other bikers showed up as I was leaving. They were French, but seemed quite surprised by me (?? just based on their expressions… they didn’t say anything other than bonjour and waving goodbye). I drove back to Colera, bought more cherries and more of this yummy dessert thing (not bakery fresh like yesterday, but the same thing) called torta de aceite (seems vague – it comes in a variety of flavors, not all dessert), and had the same dinner as yesterday, so no further pictures, email except for the walk to the harbor at Colera.

Tomorrow’s plan is to pack up and drive to see the botanical garden at Blanes. If I like the area, I will look for camping around there (there are many options). The rain prediction seems to have vanished, which is great. If I don’t like the area, I may still go into Girona for a hotel there I found that has a sauna, jacuzzi, and rooftop swimming pool, as well as reasonably priced single rooms. I could use a couple of nights of a bed. My sleeping mat is 6cm thick, but my neck is hurting from stuffing my hoodie into a pillow case. Also, I could use an armpit wax and a massage. An urban area would make finding those easier. So… we’ll see!

I am not made for hot and dry. I was happier on the north coast and in the mountains. I miss trees. I miss other green things. I need to move on. Last night I spent hours planning several options for today.

The first option involved an excellent looking campsite which was either a 2.5 hour drive from where I was or was a 2 hour fast drive then a really nice route through some recommended roads and a really interesting-sounding fortified village. The campsite sounded fabulous, too. But when I woke up, all I wanted to do was GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE!

Just to be fair, the place where I would have left the highway was the best-looking area I passed. It probably would have been wonderful. As I approached it, and the hills became green and red instead of white, I rejoiced. You can only barely see the landscape in this picture, but I was yelling and howling with joy as I saw green on hills.

Why do people talk about the south of Spain??? It is SO dry and barren. Give me rain and green. I loved the north of Spain. I loved the north middle of Spain. But when I went south, it became a sometimes picturesque but always dry land. At the coast, it’s full of tourist parks and hotels, but they don’t look very appealing. The prices of everything go up, but the ambience has gone down down down.

I have decided that my best bet is to try further into Catalunya. I am at the border now. There is a nice little beach cove near(ish) my campsite, but the water was too cold to swim here. I went to the pool, also cold, but comfortably so. If you actively swim, you warm up just fine. All of the Dutch people here and the Spanish guy in the maintenance room (only time I saw him, so I don’t know his role) thought I was insane.

weird. I took a really nice selfie at the beach, but I guess I deleted it. 😦

There are LOTS of Dutch people in this site. I am getting bad at Spanish again because I keep having to switch back and forth, and I’m not used to it. There’s an English guy hanging out with the Dutchies, and he keeps saying that I should speak “American,” but I think that’s because he doesn’t understand when the conversation goes into Dutch. The woman running the restaurant thinks it’s funny watching me switch languages and has decided to work with my Spanish, which I appreciate. She has also noticed that my right hand is browner than my left hand. I think I forget to smear sunscreen on the right, since I use the right to smear it on the left. 😀

Anyway, as gezellig as this campsite is, it is NOT what I’m looking for. I will move on tomorrow. Hopefully I will find a good base camp tomorrow, and if not, I will move on again.

Last night was super windy. My tent didn’t blow away, but it kept me awake and woke me up over and over. The alarm went off at 06:00.

Sunrise was lovely, but I watched it from the road. I was meant to be on a boat to Isla de Tabarca by 09:30, getting into wetsuit etc. by 09:15.

Unfortunately, the dive shop didn’t confirm with the water taxi, and he wasn’t set to go until 10:30. I could have slept in.

Still, finally we were set to go. Snorkelling was fun but short, for the same reason. Oh well. It was nice to be in the water, and we saw some fish and sea sponges and sea grass and rocks.

Here’s where our boat taxi brought us. We walked to the other side, near the old prison. We swam out to this rocky mass first.

I thought I’d taken a picture of the prison, but I guess not.

Then we swam on the edge of the very nice swimming beach.

Although it was a short day, I got back to camp exhausted. Sorry this is short!

I took my time today, made coffee and read my book, cared for the bike. The pool opened at 11, so I went for a swim. The dive center emailed, and I’m confirmed for snorkeling tomorrow, but I noticed that my one-piece is see-through in places and my two-piece is really stretched out. Time for a replacement. There’s a Decathlon store in Cartagena, so off I went, via wonderful roads!

I have a new two-piece also with swim shorts, which should be great for the snorkeling as well as general beach and even light laps. I didn’t like any of the lap suits they had.

TripAdvisor led me to lunch, the number 1 rated for Cartagena. My waiter was super nice, and um… I wanted to share dessert with you, but

oh well!

I took the same roads back, stopped at the supermarket and gas station, then dropped everything back at the camping and went to the beach across the street.

I have an early morning tomorrow, so I’ll leave you with that.

Unexpectedly gorgeous today.

Our big goal was to get to Banos de la Encina, a small town with a huge Arab fortress built in 967. We got there in time for lunch, where I enjoyed the local wild rabbit in a delicious sauce. It was a little difficult to eat with all those tiny bones, but our host so enjoyed my willingness that he was really encouraging and gave good pointers. As he promised, the brain was the most delicious, followed in my opinion by the tongue. I couldn’t quite do the eyeballs. I’m not sure I was supposed to.

After lunch, we drove closer to the fortress then walked around it and enjoyed the view. Unfortunately, no one came to open it up at 17:00, as both the sign and the groundskeeper said they would, so at 17:30, after a couple of hours of enjoying the view, we had enough.

We took the slow route to our intended camping site.

In addition to those views, we later went through some windy forest roads, part of another national forest. It was really lovely. Tomorrow we are perfectly placed for making our separate ways, Lynn back to Madrid and then New York, and me onwards to… I don’t know for sure. I think I’m either going to look at some troglodyte villages south of here, or some spaghetti western film sets. Depends how I feel when I wake up.