Tossa De Mar – day 1

We were looking for a romantic weekend break to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and decided the £20 Ryanair flights from Bristol to Girona were a good place to start. Being the end of April, we thought Spain would provide some more reliable spring weather than at home in the UK, despite having an almost perfect day at the Rose and Crown Hotel, overlooking Salisbury Cathedral 30 years before.

Girona is quite some distance from Barcelona so we thought we’d try somewhere closer on the Costa Brava instead. There are a few resorts nearby including Blanes and Lloret de Mar but the one that looked most appealing was the unfortunately named Tossa de Mar. The coast here is a bit more craggy and interesting and Tossa is a small historic town with a medieval castle clinging to a headland. It’s VERY photogenic.

We could have booked rooms at perfectly adequate looking resort type hotels for in the region of £100 for 3 nights but this was an anniversary trip so we plumped for the seafront Hotel Diana. As Diana is my wife’s name, it seemed like a perfect choice.

Originally, the hotel was a Moorish house with a central, open courtyard. This has since been covered over but still runs from the ground floor to the roof. Later redesigns in a beautiful Art Deco style plus a bit of Gaudi-esque embellishment make this a very pretty hotel and perfectly located.

Rather than book through one of the many hotel booking sites, we phoned them direct and talked through the room options. Their top room is the 4th floor penthouse but that has two bedrooms and was a bit OTT for us. We plumped for a 3rd floor room with a balcony and sea view at 108 Euro’s per night including breakfast. The room was simply furnished but perfectly adequate. The balcony and a stunning view were where it really scored.

We had a superb welcome as we’d told them it was our anniversary trip. We had only been in the room ten minutes before the receptionist (We really should have asked what her name was as she was so good to us) arrived with chilled Cava and a beautifully arranged platter of fresh fruit.

The transfer from the airport to Tossa, booked via the Ryanair website, hadn’t been quite as successful. We had to wait over an hour for another flight to arrive before they had enough passengers. Annoyingly, we would have been in time to catch the regular 2:30pm service bus but didn’t realise until it had just departed. The transfer cost £21.66 for both of us. The standard taxi fare to Tossa is 53 Euros or £44 at current exchange rates. What’s more, the bus had to drop us off at the bus station rather than the hotel due to the narrow (historic) streets. Thankfully, this was not a problem for me. I had a map both in my bag and in my head. I don’t get lost easily apart from a few notable exceptions i.e. coming down the wrong side of a mountain in the Dolomites and having to find an emergency hotel for the night!

The view from our terrace

The walk from the bus station down to the hotel, with me carrying both bags, only took 10 minutes, with really interesting shops en-route.
That night we ate out at La Piccola Nestra near the hotel. A lot of the restaurants have nice sounding fixed price menus. Theirs was 12.5 Euros, which included a quarter litre of wine. First course was salad and sardines, which were good but pre-plated and straight from the cooler. OK but unremarkable. Next course was pizza and a cod stew (1 Euro extra), which were both wonderful. Sweet was some very tasty lemon sorbet & coffee ice cream. We could have had some more exotic dishes in retrospect but altogether it was a good 8 out of 10 for the price.
Facts and Figures
Hotel Diana: http://www.hotelesdante.com/es/hotel-diana-tossa-de-mar
Restaurant La Piccola Nestra, Carrer Pou de la Vila

Tossa De Mar – day 2

Exploring the castle was the priority today. The sun was spilling onto the balcony when we woke up. A gorgeous day awaited. It’s a shame we didn’t have tea and coffee making facilities in the room or we might have lingered on the terrace longer. I’m sure we were told we had access to free tea and coffee in the restaurant, but I can’t swear to that. We didn’t try it.

Breakfast was great: It’s part self-service and part ordered via the waiter. As this was our anniversary, we had some cava and OJ and made ourselves bucks-fizz. Wine for breakfast? Now that’s decadent! There’s a choice or red, white or fizzy. I have a very good English breakfast, while Diana had a fresh fruit platter as she’s almost a veggie bar a bit of tinned tuna.

The self-serve part is a bit sparse but some dried fruit and nuts are lovely. There’s a bottle of olive oil and a bowl of passata to spread on bread and put into the rotating toaster. Diana is also rather taken by the chocolate covered doughnuts. They’re far too sweet for me! Tea is difficult in tiny coffee cups but the coffee machine produces some really tasty and powerful wake-up juice. We could have asked for bigger mugs and a tea pot but didn’t, being reserved British types.

After breakfast we take to the streets, which are filling up with day trippers. As we near the castle entrance, it’s thronged with tour groups. We decide to head up the hill alongside the walls instead to a breezy vantage point over a little sandy cove. A JCB digger is busy rearranging the beach. Why it’s shifting the sand, we never do find out.

On this corner of the curtain wall, there’s a low entrance into the inner ward. You almost need to crawl through it. Inside is a really pretty square in front of the museum. The owner of a shop selling pottery and pretend swords was opening up. Heading up-hill was an enticing narrow cobbled street. There is a café’s and a tapas bar on the street but they’re mostly just very pretty homes with leafy little gardens.

Higher up, the castle grounds open out. There are picture-perfect walls, turrets and a couple of old cannons. Right on top of the hill is a lighthouse with some sort of audio-visual display plus another café. This one has views over the ocean. There’s also a rather scruffy little cat that Diana starts to feel very sorry for. It’s meowing at no-one in particular.

Back in town, we search for somewhere to have lunch and stumble on a pretty decent supermarket. We decide we’ll have a picnic on our lovely terrace instead. I picked a smelly sausage and some local beer. Diana agonises over a small bottle of Limonella and some nice muscatel wine, neither of which she put in the basket. She went for some cheaper muscatel and a bottle of cava instead. The cheaper wine is horrible and ends up going down the sink in our bathroom. The sausage looked nice too, being attractively covered in herbs but that goes in the bin. It’s like eating a greasy cold sausage that has been accidentally covered in pine needles and grass cuttings. Yeuk!

That night we ate at The Restaurant Marinero, just round the corner from the hotel. The fixed price menu was 13.50 Euros with no wine but the food here was much better. I had a large portion of fisherman’s mussels, which were superbly tasty and another local fishy speciality but I can’t remember what it was called. Diana had a very good avocado salad and an even better pizza. We finished with ice cream again. As Diana has an aversion to anything containing butter, which she seems to be able to taste at one part in a thousand, we tend to go for safe options. The cake and flan options looked good but they’re too full of stodgy carbs anyway.

After the meal we chatted to the Spanish ‘greeter’ working the street outside the restaurant. He’s a very nice chap but is shivering with the chill cloud-free night air. He said he was coming to the end of his shift, which started at noon. As it is approaching 11pm, that’s a long day and presumably even longer in the summer months. He said his wife and grown up daughter live in Glasgow and were visiting later in the summer. Apparently, they met in Mallorca 30 years ago.

Facts and Figures

Restaurant Marinero, Carrer Mar.

Tossa De Mar – day 3

It’s bright and sunny on our terrace again this morning. After breakfast, we decided to take one of the boats up the coast. There are little glass bottom boats that head up the coast and drop you off at a little beach or there’s a big flashy catamaran that go down the coast to Lloret de Mar. The little beach looks lovely, so we go on the smaller boat.

We left at 11am and the boat goes in and out of several coves and caves before dropping us off at Cala Giverelo. The headland is covered in little bungalows that are part of the Giverola Resort Hotel. Their beach-side café/restaurant is lovely and available to boat passengers for lunch, which is exactly what we do. We only have a plate of ‘pommes frites’ each, but as we don’t usually eat chips, it’s quite a treat! It’s an idyllic spot for a swim here but the sea is still a bit chilly this early in the year. If it was July, I’d bring snorkelling kit.

Cala Giverola

When we left Tossa, a bulldozer had been rearranging the sand (very gritty coarse granite that’s quite difficult to walk on) on the little beach in front of the Hotel Mar Menuda, just north of the main beach. Just like the JCB moving the sand on the little beach by the castle, the purpose isn’t clear. When we return at about 3pm, the bulldozer is still going.

We’d spotted a Mexican restaurant earlier in the day but that hadn’t opened for the season yet so we wandered around by the old church looking at menus. Most of the restaurants are clinically cosmopolitan. Smart and chic but boring! We found one, Dino’s, which was altogether more cluttered and interesting. It turned out to be a great choice. We only wanted pizza and what they provided fitted the bill nicely. Mine was a spicy ‘picante’ pizza, while Diana had a veggie pizza with no cheese. This is another food foible. Most cheeses, unless they’re very mature, taste buttery. She puts parmesan on pizzas instead.

Facts & Figures

The boat trip costs 15 Euro’s but we were given a 10% off voucher by the hotel
Pommes Frites at the Giverola Resort beach café were 7 Euro’s
Giverola Beach Resort: http://www.giverola-resort.com
Pizza at Dino’s are about 8 or 9 Euro’s
Dino’s http://www.dino-tossa.de

Tossa De Mar – day 4

It’s a bit warmer in the shade today but it’s hazy too. The breeze is easterly rather than westerly, which seems to make a difference. For breakfast I have a mixed cheese and cold meats platter, which is fantastic. Diana has a fruit platter as she has had each morning but this time just melon and strawberries.

We’re off home today but the flight is at 16:15 so we check out and have our bags locked in a special luggage room by reception. We had walked up to the bus station the day before to check bus times and talk to the staff in the tourist office but connections don’t work out. There’s an early bus and one that arrives too late for checking in. We looked at going to Girona to explore the historic town there or catching the boat to Lloret but times didn’t work out for us so we booked a taxi back at the hotel instead.

We walked up to the castle again and found some alleys we’d missed before. We’re not very good at relaxing but 3 days in the sun had worked wonders and we spent some time just sitting, chatting and watching the world go by.

We had lunch on the terrace of the hotel. The roof above the restaurant has some smart and comfortable seating for guests. We had a picnic there while watching people wander along the seafront.

Soon enough, the taxi arrived and we were whisked off to the airport. It’s only a small airport and seems to be used almost exclusively by Ryanair, who, despite their ongoing bad press, were very good.

Before long we were back at Bristol and on our way home.

Facts and Figures
Ryanair flights £127.62 for both of us
The Forge car park £21 http://carpark.forgehotel.co.uk
Transfer to Tossa de Mar £21.66