I went to sleep early the night before (~9pm aka 21:00) because I was tired and because I didn't really realize that Free2Z Live (our weekly call at 5:30pm PST, 8:30 EST, 00:30 UTC, 21:30 Brazil ... ) is at 02:30 in the morning in Barcelona. But, I'm a man of consistency. My weekly meetings are set in stone. So, I woke up at 02:20 to take the call. Luckily Spain is known for its strong coffee. And, I had a good plan. We were going to walk up a couple of kilometers to the hilltop hermitage of St. Vicenç del Castell and see the sunrise. We had a great Free2Z Live as usual and had a wonderful little hike. The sunrise marked the true beginning of our journey.
Spain is so filled with wonderful sights like this - too many to document so thoroughly. I would be uploading pictures all day and night to try to show you. This beautiful location is just par for the course. But, to me, it was a very special place and special moment.
We hiked back down (~2 km). We listened to Manu Chao's classic album Clandestino on the way back to the hotel to check out.
We had brought some Zote (central american laundry detergent bar) as recommended by birdify. It was just one of the little synchronicities that were starting to accumulate - birdify had mentioned it in passing and we just happened to walk by it in the local Mexican grocery back home. We had accumulated a lot of dirty clothes for such a short period of time. It took quite a while to wash them all. We were going to have to be more thrifty with our clothes. I've always had a healthy respect for the Guatemalan women I saw washing clothes in Lago Atitlán and that only increased this morning. But, all the clothes got clean and smelled great. We laid them out all over the inside of the campervan to dry. Vale!
Pau Casals
Now to set off on the road for real without the safety net of the hotel! The true adventure begins! The idea was that we were going to meander south slowly and thoughtfully towads Andalusía, following our noses. Alhambra figured prominently in our overall plan - go listen to some Flamenco and Castillian Spanish. When we were listening to Manu Chao and charting our course towards anywhere south on the coast, I noticed a familar name: Pau Casals! My favorite cello player was born in Catalunya! Cool! Let's turn that on and head towards his birth place.
We wound through exquisite mountains and wine country really enjoying the sights. There are so many places named after Pau Casals. I pondered the idea that we might navigate towards them and make that a sort of theme: bounce around to places named after famous musicians from the areas we travel. We set intermediate courses to different places named "Plaça de Pau Casals" - there are quite a few. This idea really worked out on this day. Good times. We ate some absolutely delicious food. 3 courses from El Ménu del día: croquetas, sirloin and sorbet for about 22 Euros. We were becoming filled with gratitude. We must be the luckiest people on the planet. I reflected how I had worked continuously for more than 15 years with only a couple of vacations that were half the magnitude of this.
El Castell de Subirats
Catalunya means land of castles and it fits. Everywhere you look there is a hilltop castle. As we wound towards the coast, we saw one such castle and decided to take a little side journey to see it: El Castell de Subirats.
The castle was so cool. The view was amazing.
People have asked me if there are a lot of tourists. One amazing thing so far has been the absolute lack of tourists. I can't really explain it. Already on day one, this is one of the coolest places I've ever been. But, there was not one single person there at Castell de Subirats. The large parking lot that could fit maybe 100 cars was completely empty. We had the place totally to ourselves. Even better!
We could have easily popped the top and slept there but we ran out of water. We decided to search "camping" so we could maybe fill up the van's 30L tank and get fully recharged. This running out of water business was becoming a little too frequent. The sun was pretty brutal. It was hot. It was starting to get a bit late. Let's go fill up?
Francás
There were a ton of results for camping on the coast near Francás so we proceeded. We stopped at one and it was like a tourist water park thing. Sounded fun but the first one was completely full. Hrm. The guy at the counter showed me a map that must have had 200 spots and said they were all full for the next two months. I guess we had found the tourists. There were maybe 20 other such places. Okay, we had found a touristy beach spot for sure. But, did we want to drive and call around to see if we could get a spot? Nah, not really. These places were a little too polished almost like a Disney Land, Six Flags or "White Water" (if you're from the Atlanta area). We went towards the beach to get a little food and saw a big empty parking lot with 1 person in a camper van and decided to follow along and stay the night there. I'm really liking how Spain is pretty relaxed about letting people stay overnight in camper vans. It's sort of strange that in a lot of villages it's very hard to find parking but then you will stumble upon a parking lot that is complete empty, free and has no problem with camping. Another plus!
That night as we tried to go to bed it was hot and humid 80+ degrees at midnight. Ay! We burned some diesel for the air conditioning. "I don't know about this." We downloaded a weather app to see what temperatures around Europe were like. HRM. We were heading towards an even hotter place and we weren't able to sleep in the heat and humidity where we already were. Me and my son have a bit of Jewish and an unconfirmed splash of native American genes but, for the most part, our heritage is from the icy northern extremities - Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Holland, etc. We decided that we might want to change course. We thought if we ever start a banda mexicana in the PNW we might call it "Los Güeros del Norte." Looking at the map of Europe, we even started to consider making a dash for Scotland or Norway to see where some of our ancestors came from and take advantage of the cooler climate. But, we noticed that the Northern coast of Spain was a whole different world temperature-wise.
Jonathan had written a piece on Santiago de Compostela, my extremely well travelled friend had mentioned that we might want to head to the northwest and said that we might not want to go to Andalusía at this time of year, warning that it will have "Desert vibes." OK, it was decided. We can't take the heat we are going to get out of the kitchen. Tomorrow it's off in the general direction of Andorra to see where that leads us. Perhaps we will go counter-clockwise instead of clockwise!