Fri, May 27 Exploring the Serra de Cardí

Fri, May 27 - We got to the dining room at 8:15 and were the only ones there to enjoy fresh fried eggs with mucho very thin, delicious bacon, home-made yogurt, pastries, etc.
 
We set off north, past a reservoir and along El Segre river. It was overcast, but we could see a little blue, so we were hopeful of being able to hike in the Parc Natural in the Serra de Cadí, a mountain range in the southern Pyrenees. We drove through several tunnels which the Spanish seem to be masters at building and then drove east along the north border of the range.



We entered a tunnel that extends 5 KM with five emergency exits. Quite an experience, and it cost a hefty 12€, but it must have been something to build!

  We turned off onto a small road and drove up to a mountain pass, Col de Pal, at 6900’ where we were above the tree line and would have liked to explore, but the fog and rain closed in so we headed back to where the weather was better, stopping at a trail head with an information board describing the Crossbill, apparently a local bird specialty.

We’ve seen them before, fortunately, as we didn’t see any this time, but there were fantastic flowers: intense blue gentians and we did see a very cute chickadee, the Coal Tit, and RR saw his life Citril Finch.

We continued the circle heading west through spectacular countryside on a very winding road full of switchbacks and elevation changes. Occasionally there were very trim little alpine villages with cow herds and walls of grey stone.

We arrived back at our hotel at five and took a hike up above the hotel along their water pipe which drains the stream into a large cistern. We saw some small orchids and other flowers. The canyon is made of red rock and looks very much like the southern Arizona mountains with oak and pine woodland.

We returned to our room and could see cars pouring in, including a Porsche club. I’m glad this wonderful hotel seems to be full on the weekends. We checked Hilary’s flights on the internet and found that her noon-ish flight to NY didn’t take off until 5! So she will miss her connection to LAX where she was to spend the night before taking an early morning SW jet to Tucson…What a mess!

As the hotel seems to be crowded we went down to dinner right when they opened at 8:30 - amazing how we’re getting used to easting at these hours!

The same nice staff were there this evening. Our waitress speaks excellent English-don’t know what her first language is - and she tried to help us interpret the English translation of the menu. We got the Spanish version also but that didn’t help as that had been as badly translated from Catalan as the English!

Anyway the appetizer was a ravioli of clear gelee and black caviar next to a mound of cod foam with a wafer of something good.

Next we had pea soup with mushrooms and a composed salad. Bob’s main was ahi with two cellophane bundles of ratatouille and I had a piece of bass with two kinds of chutney.

  For dessert I had a wonderful green apple soup with a ravioli of cooked apple slices surrounding a dab of chocolate mousse. RR’s was paper-thin slices of pineapple with a mound of intense berry sorbet. The wine steward is very attentive and we don’t dare pour the bottle ourselves, but tonight there were so many guests that we managed to sneak in some helpings of our wine when he was out of the room!

Decafe espresso and back to our room at 10:30.

News flash: Hilary has a Delta flight to LAX and has been upgraded - Way to go!!

Tomorrow evening is the big fútbol match between Barcelona and Manchester United, in Barcelona. Needless to say, all of Catalanya is excited and there is a notice in the lobby (in Catalan) saying, we think, that dinner will be postponed until after the game..who knows when that will be!