Mon, May 30 Old Churches and Ski Resorts

  We had the usual sumptuous breakfast buffet from the meat, fruit, pastry, cereal, & cheese tables. The sky wasn‘t looking too threatening so we set off for an area that Bob’s “Finding Birds in Spain” book said would be promising. It was only 30 miles as the birds fly, but in these mountains it was closer to 100 to drive! We drove through several tunnels, one of which was another 5 km long, but fortunately pretty old and free!

We turned into the narrow valley of Val de Boí , and as we approached a large dam, the road got very narrow with few turn offs and some deep drainage channels on either side. Fortunately we didn’t meet anyone coming down. We reached the foot of the dam and scrambled up to the lake and hiked along the very rough trail over granite. The birds were practically non-existent, but the flowers were pretty good, some of which were lovely tiny pink orchids clustered on a stem. The really great find were the shiny black slugs! Similar to the mascot for UC Santa Cruz, the yellow banana slug, but really glossy, about 3-4” long. We even found two of them curled around an egg mass!

But then it started to rain; we had umbrellas and rain coats but started back anyway. With the stony, irregular surface we had to go slowly, but got back to the car as it was really starting to come down with thunder and hail.

We waited a while and finally took off in heavy rain, meeting a couple of cars coming up (why?) and managed to squeeze by them. We turned off towards Boí-Taüll Ski Resort as the rain lessened and stopped in the village of Taüll to visit a World Heritage site: the Romanesque churches of Sant Climent de Taüll and Santa María, both of which were consecrated in Dec, 1123! The first one has a six-story belfry which we felt compelled to climb! We entered the stark and dramatic interior with large stone columns and a few murals and started up the tower. Tall, steep, and wet steps, up six flights!! The bells were lovely and fortunately did not chime, and the view was great! The exhibit in the church said that the churches were originally stuccoed and painted red and white, although I find them lovely in raw old stone. The sun emerged so we walked through the town which has grown in the last decade with many new ski condos and hotels, but they all match the style of the churches very well and the area is very attractive.

We drove up to the ski slopes which are the highest in Spain rising from 6700’ to the highest peaks and saw acres of ski lift chairs lined up for next fall. The birds that in all Spain flee when you look at them, (I suppose because until lately were considered a delicacy) were suddenly acting as birds do at home and we could actually watch them! We didn’t see any new life birds but got good views of several very colorful species such as Red-backed shrike, Citril Finch, Linnet, and Red-legged Partridge. .

We returned to the Parador at about five and relaxed until eight when we went down to dinner. The wonderful vermouth was served to us again and an appetizer of puree of squash soup. I had boar stew and Bob had a good steak with Pommes Anna made with bacon. We shared crepes with whipped cream and xocolat (chocolate in Catalan) for dessert.
For some reason I can't get the vertical photos in correctly@##%#   Sorry!

Sun, May 29 To the High Pyranees

Sun, May 29 The day dawned beautifully clear. After breakfast we took a hike to the village of Peramola about a mile away. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and we didn’t want to waste any sunshine. We walked through oak woodland overlooking a trout farm and wheat fields. This region is also supposed to be known for its truffles.

We checked out at 11:30, and headed northwest towards the high Pyrenees, climbing up mountain ranges and down through multiple hairpin turns. Today is Sunday so we had to compete with motorcycles groups and other motorists, but the scenery was great. The villages are now constructed of very dark stone with slate roofs and tall skinny church towers.

We finally descended to the holiday town of Sort, set along the La Noguera de Pallaresa river with multiple cafes with colorful umbrellas. Truckloads of inflatable river running boats passed us! We turned off to the village of Espot as it is the eastern entry to the national park we want to visit, Parc Nacional d’Aigüestortes (twisted waters in Catalan), and we won’t have time to get back here again. We were looking for the information center to get a map, but, of course, we’re here during siesta, and, as we found out, it’s closed on Sunday, the busiest day for a park! We drove to the end of the road to a car park and a lady stopped us, for we thought, more euros for parking, but, no, she just wanted to hand us a map of the park!

We set off on a short hike along a wonderful level 0.5 km boardwalk that allows handicapped people a great chance to experience these lovely woods. We were beside a rushing, crystal clear stream with a great variety of flowers and butterflies. The view opened up to a grand vista of high spiky peaks, bits of snow. Really spectacular! There was a small herd of shaggy mountain horses and cows with musical bells. Really idyllic! 

We hiked for a mile more and returned to Espot and found a café where we split a delicious pork loin sandwich, beer and the soggy, very greasy, but really good, French fries they make around here.

The map showed a really winding road, but it had been improved and we got to the ski town of Vielha and our Parador by four.



We have a room overlooking the town, ski condos and Romanesque churches. The valley is called Val d’Aran and still has some natives who speak Aranese, the local form of Catalan.

We weren’t too hungry after our great lunch, but went down for our “welcome” drink in the bar and watched the rain beginning to really pour. We decided to get a small dinner in the dining room, a circular room with great views all over the valley. We were brought a wonderful sweet vermouth for an appetizer, then Bob had a strawberry gazpacho and I had the local Aranese soup of white beans, potatoes, noodles, chicken, sausage, and whatever else the kitchen thought to put it, but it was very good! For dessert we had the local version of floating island with a gigantic bowl of custard sauce and toasted meringue which we fortunately shared!

Sat, May 28 - Further Explorations of Serra de Cadí

Sat, May 28 The early morning clouds cleared off quickly and we had sunshine all day. This beautiful hotel and lands have been in the Pallarès family since 1763. The hotel was started in 1931 by Josep, the grandfather of the present owner, as farming in this area is difficult with drought a common occurrence. The hotel has been a success and the first tourist facility in the area. Wonderful staff and amazing attention to detail!

After breakfast we drove again north to the small city of Le Seu d’Urgell, about 20 km south of the Andorran border. The plan was to drive into the mountains on small roads as we did yesterday, but explore the north side of the Serra de Cadí. We drove into park land and found the north side of the mountain range to be more lush and rolling and heavily forested, as opposed to the more stark and rocky south.

We drove to an overlook of the village of Gósol and a view of Pedraforca, a popular hiking mountain with two peaks. We could see about 20 people on top with our binocs. Cows with their clanking cowbells are all over!

We returned to a small town of Josa del Cadí with an old church at the peak and walked around. The bells chimed once for 1 PM and then again as a reminder two minutes later and then 23 times?? Fortunately a pleasant sound!

We ate some Toblerone, stopped to stretch our legs, and hiked and looked at flowers for an hour. Just beautiful intense yellow gorse, a blue columbine and the last pink peony of the season. We’ve seen tons of peonies fruiting, but this is the only one still flowering.

We returned to the hotel to relax and watched the French open for a while until it was superseded by handball match between Madrid and Hungary.

We found out that dinner is actually being served early at 7:45 this evening so people can dine and then watch the game which starts at 9 PM. We had our regular table, yesterday’s bottle of water saved for us (!) but we were the only ones in this dining room. Next door the room was jammed…maybe they’re all Spanish and want to see the game whereas our dining companions couldn’t care less and want to dine late, as usual?? As usual, we don’t have a clue!

We had another wonderful dinner, nevertheless! We started with a watermelon/tomato gazpacho soup which I will have to try to duplicate. Then I had crumbled sausage with a variety of mushrooms, which RRZ had a small square of chicken cannelloni. For our mains, I had “pieces of veal jaws” in rich gravy on mashed potatoes with two spun somethings on the side, and Bob had slices of pork belly with fruit accompaniments.


For dessert I had cherry soup with a little ice cream and one of the chef’s bread flavored bits of fluff. Bob had apricots with anise sauce. Really good and unique, as usual!

Up to our room to watch the big game….2-1 FC (fútbol club) Barça so far! FCB won! 3-1!!

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!

Thu, May 26 To the Pyranees Foothills

May 26 Travel day, so we slept in and had breakfast at 9. Stephan said his mother-in-law makes the delicious jams and the farm to which her husband and she retired also produces the olive oil. They also own the building that was in ruins before Stephan and Cristina worked four years to remodel it into a restaurant/hotel and rent it from her parents. Pretty neat!


At eleven we finally packed up and left. This is definitely one of the most picturesque and tranquil places we have ever visited and I would love to return. There are plenty of places to explore and things to do around here.

We got onto the Auto Pista 7 and headed south to Barcelona. Bob and Hil had carefully planned the route to the airport and the hotel where Hil is to spend the night before she returns to Tucson, which paid off as it was a maze of highways and big trucks speeding along! A couple of correctable errors and we reached the Renaissance Hotel where Miss Hamlin was greeted as an executive superior person that she is (!) and given a very nice room. We shared a pizza and had cokes and said goodbye to our skillful and calm driver & companion!

We headed west on the A2 until we reached Cervera where we turned north on smaller roads, through large sweeping wheat fields at an elevation of about 1500’, and then continued up into the foothills of the Pyrenees. At the end of a narrow lane at 2000’ we found our lovely next hotel, Can Boix, a 41-bed hotel overlooking scenic forested hills and fields. We relaxed and watched the French Open for a while and walked around the grounds. There are big thunderheads hanging over the mountains and the weather report predicts rain, so we shall see.

At 8:30 we went down for dinner (we have half board: breakfast and dinner included, which means a limited menu) and were blown away! We were brought complimentary appetizers of a slice of broiled octopus sitting on a puddle of mashed potatoes with lemon foam on top and a mysterious black crumble next to it which turned out to be a wad of bread soaked in octopus ink. Amazing! Next Bob had a cod sashimi with passion fruit and arugula salad while I had a small dish of rich mushroom risotto. For our mains I had hake with greens in a garlic sauce and Bob had roast kid with olive oil mashed potatoes. For dessert I had watermelon with basil granita (one of the best desserts I’ve ever had!) and Bob had frozen fig mousse on a chocolate biscuit. One of the most photogenic meals I’ve ever had…and I forgot my camera. There’s always tomorrow!

It’s raining now, so we’ll see what we can do on Friday.

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!

　

　

Tue, May 24 A Visit to Dalí's House

Tue, May 24    We didn’t get up in time to walk around town, but managed to get downstairs for our scheduled early breakfast at 8:30. Stephan brought us warm halved baguettes with small tomatoes to rub on them with olive oil, the traditional way to eat bread in Catalunya. He also brought us salami and Serrano ham, cheeses and fresh squeezed OJ and home-made fig jam!

We set off at 9:30 and headed to the coast and a rugged neck of land that is the eastern most point in Spain. We drove through rolling agricultural land until we suddenly started driving up a steep mountainous road and got to over 1000’ to a windswept land of low gorse-like shrubbery with white rock roses, yellow poppies and low pink lotus. The famous tramuntana winds were blowing a gale, but the temperature was in the 80s, rather like our Santa Ana winds in Santa Barbara.

We reached the coast at the old fishing/artists’ village Cadaqués, a town of white-washed tile-roofed buildings set among jagged rocks and headed to Portlligat in a cove north of town, to find Casa Museu Salvador Dalí. This was the artist’s and Gala‘s (his wife) house, now a museum. It is very carefully and strictly run! We had to make a reservation on line for a particular time, in our case 12:30, be there to pick up our tickets by noon and had exactly 30 minutes to tour the house and a few more to see the garden and pool. This works quite well as it allows only eight people inside at one time.

We entered the house to be greeted by a stuffed and well-decorated polar bear and then saw the large library, bookcases everywhere and throughout the house in ingenious built-in shelves. Then we were taken upstairs and saw his workroom, a wonderfully lit space with the arm chair from which he always painted and an clever slot in the floor into which his large canvases could be lowered and raised so he didn’t have to stand up to paint! His last unfinished painting is there also. 

We continued into his bedroom with a mirror in the wall so he could see the sun rise from bed…and be the first person to see the sun rise in Spain! We entered the Sala, an oval room which when you stand and speak in the center of it, your voice echoes all around. We went out to his garden and saw one of the famous eggs and finished with his phallis-shaped pool surrounded by fantastic decorations.
  It was quite a trip!

As we walked back to the car we stopped at a beach shack, with full bar, of course, and split a delicious bocadillo of pork loin and a plate of French fries. The wind blew dust all over everything, but it tasted great anyway.

Hil drove us to Cap de Creus, a very craggy cape of land where the rocks have been carved into amazing shapes by the winds. We hiked a ways in the blasting wind, looking down into bright blue bays and sat in the shelter of the lighthouse for a bit before returning to Sant Llorenς for a rest.

  On the way we passed another few miles of prostitutes stationed by their umbrellas. Hilary heard that the government has ordered the women to wear fluorescent green vests for their safety as they wait for customers on the busy highways, not that we saw anyone doing that, but it‘s a nice idea! What a country!!

Hilary and I took a walk around town, admiring the flourishing small garden plots that surround the town walls and moat, most being tended by the older people of town. The young may have fled to the big city, leaving the town to their grandparents and second homers.

We had another pleasant dinner outside in the warm evening of fennel soup, Caesar salad, roast chicken for Bob and me and steak for Hil. Stephan and his wife are extremely nice and helpful; this is a wonderful place in which to stay.