Wed, May 25 Back to the Coast

May 25 We managed to get up at seven and joined Hilary for a walk around town to one of the old stone bridges that crosses the Muga river - another lovely sunny day!

After breakfast we drove back to the Cap de Creus coast to explore it further. We drove up to about 1600’ and parked and walked along a smooth paved road a short ways to Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes, a beautiful structure set by itself in the mountains above the coast.

Legend says that it was first a temple to Aphrodite, and back about 610 the hiding place for St. Peter’s head and right arm when Rome was being attacked. The monks who hid the relics forgot where they put them, and so founded the monastery to appease the Pope! Over the centuries it was built up very slowly due to it’s isolated location. By 1800 it was pretty much abandoned and left to ruin until the late 1990s when it was beautifully restored and has since become another UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As a bus was disgorging a large number of tourists we opted for climbing an additional 550’ to the very peak and the crumbling remains of the castle of San Salvador. The trail was very steep and completely overgrown in some places and full of scree in others so it was quite a scramble, but we made it to the top with views from the snowy Pyrenees to the NW, north to France, and south almost to Aiguablava. Half a tower and a few walls are the only remaining bits of the castle but it was quite beautiful and surrounded by lots of wildflowers.

We made it down and toured the Monastery and saw a video, in French, about the centuries it took to build it and various people who lived here.

We found a hidden fancy restaurant on the south side of the Monastery (!) but didn’t feel like spending 30€ each for lunch and drove down hill to the lovely whitewashed seaside village of El Port de la Selva where we split a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches and ice cream.


We continued south to the beach city of Roses and spotted the sign to El Bulli, the famous *** restaurant of Ferran Adrià, the chef whom Gourmet called the “Dalí of the kitchen”! He’s only open six months of the year and will start next week. We drove 4.5 miles on a winding road looking down on beautiful beaches and rocky points until we reached a really tiny beach town and there was a fence and the entrance to El Bulli. We leaned over the fence and could smell something wonderful cooking. We figured he was practicing for the upcoming season and we had, at least, consumed a few million molecules of a typical 300€ meal there!

We returned home to Torre Llaurentii at 4 PM and relaxed on the terrace for a while, listening to the wonderful church bells that ring on the quarter hour and then four time on the hour, followed by the hour chime and then two minutes later, the bells ring out the hour again, in case you miscounted the first time! It’s a lovely sound and I’ll miss it.

We went down for dinner at 8:30 and had the wonderful gazpacho soup again, followed by a tomato and mozzarella cheese salad, and then Hil and I had a fava bean, pea, mint, blood sausage, ham and anise stew! Cristina grew up nearby and is a self-taught cook and very good!