It seemed time for another small expedition. We'd spent a very quiet week in Ceret, and we definitely had itchy feet. We'd also made the decision to do as much exploring as possible this year. A few months ago we'd spent three days in Palamos, on the coast east of Barcelona, which we'd enjoyed immensely. We were keen to return to the Costa Brava. This time we booked two nights at Sant Feliu de Guixols, which is a little further south down the coast from Palamos. We have been there is previous years, partly to view the exhibitions on display at the famed Carmen Thyssen Art Gallery.
Unfortunately, this year the gallery is closed due to renovations but the town of St F de G is lovely and encircles a sandy beach. We didn't harbour any ambitions to go swimming in the sea at this time of year but definitely thought we could get in a hike or two.
Leaving Céret at 9.30am, we arrived in Figueres, over the border in Spain, just half an hour later. Again, we'd hoped to visit the Technology Museum in Figueres, which we'd checked was open on Mondays (many museums aren't). However, this week the museum was closed from Monday-Wednesday for whatever reason, perhaps new winter hours, so that put paid to that idea. Not daunted, we found a carpark, wandered into town and explored a completely new area of Figueres, one that we didn't know existed. We kicked off by finding a cafe (of course). The cortados here (like a small flat white) are infinitely more robust than a comparable noisette in France. The Spanish use a different type of coffee bean and more ground beans per cup than the French. John's eyes lit up when he saw that churros and hot chocolate was also on offer. Churros is an extruded pastry which is deep fried, and used to dip into the hot chocolate. The hot chocolate itself is very thick and rich. It's typical breakfast fuel for the Spanish during wintertime.
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| John's churros and hot Chocolate, and my much more conservative cortado. |
Coming from a different direction into the centre of town than usual, we walked through very clean streets full of interesting shops. There is clearly a strong interest in design here, from kitchenware through to lighting. We poked around inside a few, and would love to be setting up a new house here - there is so much choice for well-designed homeware at a fraction of the cost of back in NZ.
I was also hoping to come across some quirky coffee cups to supplement the collection we have at home, a set of which we bought in Figueres many years ago. No luck though. The tourist shops lining the laneways close to the Dali Museum seem to have been completely overtaken by upmarket fashion stores. There was no mistaking that Figueres has really lifted its game, and we were very impressed by how clean and buoyant it looked.
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| A statue of Don Quixote (perhaps!) in Sant Feliu de Guixols |
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| Quirky horse and cow balcony accessories |
John had Googled a small restaurant with good reviews for lunch. We rolled up at 12.50pm, and just caught the staff finishing off their own meal. It opened at 1pm. We were starving by then and they let us in. The meal didn't disappoint.
By 3pm we were off in the car again for the 70-minute drive to Sant Feliu de Guixols. The narrow and often cul-de-sac lanes in the historic centre thwarted both Google Maps and us, so we parked in a large carpark not far from our B&B accommodation. After an easy check-in we did a quick scout around the beachfront. It was getting very cold, perhaps 14 degrees, so not much later on we opted to have an early meal and get to bed early. We had our eye on a tapas bar we had been to before, and, yes, the tapas was really good. Shared plates of chiperones, anchovies and a few meatballs, did the trick.
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| A tapas plate of chiperones (small squid) |
Back to snuggle into bed. The temperatures are certainly dropping. It will be about 7 degrees when we wake up in the morning. When we were in the tapas bar we saw on Spanish TV that the beaches on the northern coast of Spain are coated in thick layers of snow!
