La Costa Brava

We headed west to Spain and next camped along the Costa Brava (the “rugged” or “wild” coast), which is the northeastern coast of Spain just south of Barcelona. We camped at a site called La Gaviota near the village of San Pere Pescador on a wide expanse of beach which is part of a national park and a huge kite and wind surfing area. This was probably our favorite campsite, both for its location and its amenities. It was much like a small resort except, well... everyone sleeps in tents or motorhomes/trailers and shares a public bathroom and showers, ok, not that much like a resort..... But anyway, there was a quite nice pool complex, a good restaurant and bar, and they even offered spa treatments such as massages and pedicures. There was also nighttime entertainment- a DJ/disco on Friday night and a band playing American oldies on another night, which, of course began at 10pm and rocked (very loudly) until midnight. Luckily, we were able to get Linnea and Aaron to sleep by about 9:30pm so they slept through all of it. Loads of kids were up through it all, and we wondered how they could handle it until we figured out…the siesta!

During our week there, we spent four of our days at the beach and pool and two exploring the area. The weather was variable; it rained a bit and temperatures were quite a bit cooler. One day, we drove up to Barcelona and met up with our friends from England, Tammy and Chris Collins and their four boys, who were there for a day prior to departing on a cruise. It was quite hot (as it always seems to be when we go to a city), which makes the drive and walking around with Aaron and Linnea not quite as nice but we managed. We visited some sites had a nice lunch of various tapas in a plaza, following which the two sets of twins tried to earn some money by singing and dancing in the plaza with a cup for tips (they did not do so well). We headed out toward our car on the metro and, as we were getting on a man grabbed Linnea’s arm and seemed to be rushing us onto the train, saying something about getting her to a seat in Spanish. Meade had her other arm and we were both a bit confused about what the hell he was doing. Sure enough, Meade was pick pocketed while we were focusing our attention on Linnea, and, as the doors closed at the next stop, the man hurled Meade’s wallet at him (he caught it), minus the 150 euros (200 dollars) that had been in it. We then went to an ATM to try to get money and it ate our debit card. Needless to say, we ate a croissant at the train station for dinner and got the hell outta there.

We also visited Cadaques, a picturesque, whitewashed village with cobblestone streets where Salvador Dali lived much of his life. In Cadaques, we wandered through the meandering, narrow alleyways and snacked on calamari and sangria while trying to avoid the intermittent downpours.

Aaron and Linna had their 5^th birthday while in Spain. At their request, we stayed at the campsite all day and played games, swam in the pool, and went to the beach. It poured rain and then cleared (as it tends to do) and we had a nice dinner at the campsite restaurant including many of Aaron and Linnea’s favorite foods- mussels, clams, calamari, French fries, pizza, and birthday cake made just for them by the local bakery.

On our last night at La Gaviota, we had a fabulous evening with a British/Kiwi couple and their 6 year old girl twins that we had met a couple of days earlier. They live in France, and have lived all over the world, very cool and interesting people. They were the first English-speaking people (well, as a first language) we had met in a while and the kids were thrilled to have new friends. The (2 sets of) twins stayed up until 11:30pm and had a great time running around the playgrounds and eating ice cream in the dark (a novel thing for them!). We were finally on the Spanish schedule, just as we were about to leave……..You can imagine how the next morning went when we all had to pack up and depart early for a 5+ hour drive to France....

You may think that the campsite was full of Spanish families but no, in fact, like everywhere else we have been, it was full of Dutch people. Nearly every car and motor caravan has a Dutch license plate, the staff all speak Dutch and when there is a kids club, it is full of blond Dutch children with Dutch teenagers as the leaders. I think that Holland must be completely empty, aside from the tourists. As far as a culture of people to spend a lot of time with, I think that we could do no better than the Dutch, so we are not complaining, just kind of amazed.