Roses, Cadaques, Capmany

With all my travels, I've observed that my husband and I have a remarkable ability to pick vacation dates that coincide with unexpected national holidays. Despite checking reliable blogs and travel guides, nothing, including AI, seems capable of predicting this ahead of time. Perhaps I'll create a site for that one day. Or maybe you should.

This occurred multiple times around Pasquale in Latin countries, including a grand festival in Capri honoring the island's saints, Holi during a mission trip in India, large Chinese festivities in Malaysia, music and midsummer celebrations in Vienna, and this instance, the Celebration of St. John the Baptist in Spain. Once we understood why things seemed a bit chaotic, we discovered that the St. John celebration was akin to our Fourth of July and New Year’s party combined. With this realization, we had ventured into the heart of the madness: Roses, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona.

It is only about 20 km from the border of southern France and the French Riviera. It is a gorgeous depiction of Mediterranean coastline which includes rocky cliffs, beautiful beaches, some Clear water, some bright blue waters and excellent fishing if you are inclined. There is an endless amount of snorkeling that can be done as well as other water sports.

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Why Roses? I actually just did an eeniemeenie on the map of costa brava and ended up on cap de creus in between cadaques and roses. There appeared to be an abundance of activities and potentially quiet beach time as well as very highly rated restaurants and roses so that was our decision.

But, I always look up my decisions post-choice. Previously Rhodes during Greek era, it has been an important port and safe harbor during times of conflict as well. Having very strong Catalan roots, it is a wonderful representation of costa brava in every way.

But wait, who loves Salvador Dali? I do! And his museum is on the way in the town of Figueres.  It is very hard to miss. Salvador Dalí was a prominent Spanish surrealist artist known for his eccentric personality and striking, dreamlike imagery. Dalí's work is characterized by bizarre elements, often exploring themes of dreams, the subconscious, and the irrational. During the pandemic, I painted a self portrait in his style of weirdness as a challenge with my mom for self portraits. Mine was very weird, hers was renaissance.

• Surrealism: Dalí was a leading figure in the Surrealist movement, which sought to challenge conventional perceptions of reality.

• Symbolism: He often incorporated personal symbols, such as ants, eggs, and distorted figures. Also, a lot of misplaced and not anatomically possible phalluses, oddly shaped breasts, and a disturbing amount of sketches with people being urinated on. ( I should be cool with this given my job, but for real, it is weird)

Ok, but really, go see the weirdness. So odd.

Roses have arrived!

We decided to stay at terraza spa and hotel located on the main boardwalk, after weighing the lively boardwalk atmosphere against the serene, breathtaking views in the surrounding hills. The hotel is centrally situated and quite charming, with most guests appearing to be retirees looking for some well-deserved relaxation.

Upon arrival, we took a stroll along the beach and planned our evening. We dined at a beach restaurant named Xiri-Akells

You really should visit. Honestly, I hesitate to share this because I want to ensure I have a spot when I return.

We enjoyed pulpo con patatas palmanier and padron peppers (similar to shishitos, but quickly cooked with olive oil and salt), along with a couple of very strong mojitos on the beach. It was perfect in every way.

Our first full day and roses was preplanned as a Catalan cooking class with chef yves Nicolier Sandrock.  Yves hails from Barcelona and lived there for quite some time until recently when he decided to move his business to a 1600s massive villa with a castle tower in Capmany in the province of Girona.  The large villa area sleeps to up to 20 people and it’s called eL Fort in case you have a bunch of people that you would like to come visit and see gorgeous wine country amazing farm scenes with the beach and water only a short drive away. El Fort

The experience came highly recommended as an excellent at home chef but since we did not have a private accommodation, he agreed to have us and the family come out to his house to cook. Both us and the other family were staying within roses and because of that, he also offered to give us a market tour of the Mercat de roses so that we could buy our ingredients. One word of wisdom here: if you are within a 15 to 20 minute walk of the market I would highly recommend that you walk it and not try to drive and park either that or secure a taxi to get you there. Parking is literally impossible and requires a small miracle in order to find a spot that even secures a very tiny car. Once I finally arrived, however, the market was absolutely perfect. Not too big that it was overwhelming to go through, but also not so small that you couldn’t find a little bit of everything that you would want. All of the ingredients were fresh, handmade by local artisans and farmers, and there was a cooking section with all of the proper paella pans and giant rice pan that one could dream of.

Our plan for the lunch was to make a squid and cuttlefish black rice, a meatball recipe using a Sofrito base and both pork and beef, a selection of local sausage, a grilled fish, in this particular case it was a local variety, Seabass. Well, I won’t post the intricacies of the recipes here, but I will say is that Yves has a beautiful outdoor kitchen area set up that is very comfortable. He has local wines that are natural, and a couple of really Clever cats on the property that like to hide in trees. Everyone got to do their part facilitating a class that was facile to follow along . As always, I recommend cooking classes anytime you go to a country that you have not been before. food is culture and culture is food.

(This is why I completely disagree with people who decide to go to foreign countries and then just sit in an all inclusive that makes you feel like you’re at home. What’s the point?

Just go to Cancun to do that if that’s what you think is the perfect vacation. ) Steps off soapbox

whether it be a local art group or buy a ticket to a concert locally, if you’re going to a new place, you should at least make a small attempt at immersion. The Spanish are very, very good at making you feel like you’re at home.

Fast forward to our return from cooking class, we had quite the adventure. The road that we had parked on was one way so I went the other way assuming that the GPS would accommodate. The GPS did accommodate, however, decided to take us on a tractor trailer path for 6 km down the side of the mountain. Normally, I would’ve been alarmed if I hadn’t been traveling a lot previously, but this was just another little bump in the road (pun intended) compared to other adventures. Was this smart? Meh. But it wasn’t as bad as the road in Aruba or the tunnel in Italy or the desert ride in Myanmar, or the off-roading on Crete. Or that one time that I flew with chickens in South America. I may have caused undue trauma and white-knuckle fear to my mother in law, but Google maps did not fail us.

Typically, I don't recommend visiting the same restaurant twice, but I made an exception this time because our previous evening with the peppers and octopus was exceptional, and we really wanted to enjoy one of their perfectly crafted Mojitos again. On this visit, we shared a lamb burger with roasted eggplant and goat cheese, along with a delightful burrata salad featuring pickled and regular tomatoes, all topped with a delicious honey peach dressing. Due to our exhaustion from the heat and activities, we slept wonderfully that night. Everyone who knows me is aware that I rarely sleep. (Like right now... I should be sleeping because a 7am clinic is tough, but here I am blogging).

A note on sunbathing: For Americans, in case you weren’t already aware, many beaches in Europe are topless for women and this is perfectly OK. Please do not clutch pearls or stare. This is a norm. There is literally nothing wrong with going topless and if not for worry of peeling tattooed skin, I would have done the same. The girls have seen no sun since my mastectomies and I wasn’t about to burn the dragons.

trip to Cadaqués: a charming local fishing village that is reminiscent of the Greek coast. In order to get there you have several different options, including taxi, which usually takes 20 to 30 minutes, or bus, which would take 30 to 40 minutes, or you can get on a catamaran or a ferry and cruise around. We opted for a boat Which was admittedly last minute.

When I contacted the tour operator, they informed me that we would be stopping in Cadaques for a while to explore the town and enjoy the charm of the old fishing village. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Once we boarded the catamaran, we noticed everyone else was in swimsuits, indicating there was no plan to stop in town. Despite not being prepared for snorkeling, the ride was still very pleasant. We did reach Cadaques, but someone simply announced our arrival before we moved on and returned. My main issue with this tour, which I will detail in my review linked below, was that they were supposed to bring us back to the same dock we departed from. When traveling with an older person, it's crucial to know what distances are manageable. My mother-in-law is in great shape, but if she needs to walk extra miles, we need to be informed beforehand. Unfortunately, they dropped us off at a dock called Santa Marguerite, over a mile from our hotel and in the opposite direction from our original departure point.

This presented some difficulties with having dinner and also making it to our fireworks boat, which we ended up missing mostly because the directions to get to the fireworks boat were absolutely horrible. I don’t have a solution for these issues unfortunately, as I have found that instructions on Viator and similar are often not clear and there is a small amount of luck that is involved with actually finding your group. Fortunately, for us, our hotel was right on the boardwalk, with a balcony facing the ocean outside of our room. The hotel had live music Motown style and cocktails so we basically changed into our pajamas and hung out on the balcony to watch all of the fireworks.

Because I don't recommend the tour we took for above reasons, here is a link to tripadvisor in general for cadaques.

perfect dinner find: EMPORDA 

Specialties here include a wide variety of grilled meat and seafood options and some really interesting places. You will have to look in my pictures to see exactly how interesting this is presented.

It’s like having a giant tower of kebab put in front of you. The decor and the view were absolutely incredible and staff is excellent.

An Aside on fireworks practices in other places:

A word of warning in general about the festival. I would love the census for ER regarding missing limbs and having no longer identifiable fingers. There’s no attempt whatsoever at keeping the fireworks within safe distance from other people and children. Dropping very large fireworks in tubes within feet of playing children, for example. This is really my only main critique of the things that I saw, knowing the damage that fireworks can do.