España! A Mediterranean cruise via Roses, Figueres, Barcelona, Peñiscola, València, Dénia, Cartagena, Almería and Almerimar

31st Oct – 16th Nov 2023

Well, after a bit of subconscious delaying, we finally extracted ourselves from La Belle France and gingerly entered Spain. As I discussed previously, despite it being a well known land to many, this is a country of many unknowns to us, and our severe derth of Spanish language skills was the biggest of these. We have now been here for more than three weeks and the list of ‘peculiar things about Spain’ is growing.

The language: Luckily most people speak a bit of English, and this includes all the Dutch, German and Scandinavian travellers that we meet along the way. If not, then Google Translate comes to the rescue. The technology astounds me. I am trying to learn some Spanish with Babbel, but getting understood is difficult with a language where many pronunciations are so different. A ‘z’ is a ‘th’, a ‘c’ can be a ‘th’, but not always. A ‘g’ is a peculiar noise generated in the back of the throat that English speakers would only use prior to ‘hocking a loogy’ and the ‘v’ noise doesn’t exist here, even though they insist on using it as a letter. It is also a language of little ennunciation where words run into each other like babbling brooks. So all in all -confusing and impossible! But we have bumbled our way this far, making an effort where possible, making apologies, accidentally using a lot of French and relying on many gestures. We have fed and watered ourselves, got from A to B, and found places to stay. These are all markers of success!

The Architecture: The ancient buildings and contructions of the people ruling and governing Spain throughout the ages are impressive, but they seem to have lost their way with architectural design and construction planning somewhere in the 20th C. The discovery of the rectangle and the invention of salmon coloured concrete coupled with the distractions of a Civil War and a long dictorship were followed closely by the birth of of cheap air travel and the common man discovering the closely guarded secret that the sun shines most of the time in Spain, whereas in Northern Europe it is mostly pissing with rain and cold. These factors, along with the fact that Spanish people need somewhere to live too, led to the mass building of less-than-beautiful apartment blocks. Spain, generally, has not struck us as a beacon of inspired urban design. (Don’t want to call it ugly, but…)

The daily routine: Confusing. I think the Spanish are a distinct sub-species of human with a completely different circadian rhythmn to most others. Now maybe this makes a lot more sense in the heat of a sultry south-European summer, but we are struggling to adapt to it with the cooler, dark evenings of November. I am not sure what they do in their mornings, what time thay are getting up and having breakfast, but the shops and businesses seem to be open from about 11am to 2pm, then shut for ‘lunch’ for at least 3 hours. Lunch happens mid-afternoon. Then what? A nap? Then presumably one gets up to watch sunset, then goes back to work until 7pm. Then what’s happening for the 2-3 hours before you go out to dinner at 10pm? (My guess is either drinking or shopping). What time do you go to bed and then get up? It’s madness. If we eat out for lunch at 1pm or dinner at 7.30pm we find ourselves eating in deserted restaurants and then leaving just as the early-bird Spaniards are just starting to drift in. I can’t get a handle on it.

Shopping: Pretty much all Spanish supermarkets will have a display of Iberico ham as per the photo. There are a lot of the back legs of pigs being bought and sold. It seems disproportionate to the amount of the other bits of pig available. The Spanish don’t really do hypermarkets. You know, that one mega store where you can buy everything you need. The USA has Walmart and Target, The UK and France has its ‘supermarkets on steroids’. The Spanish seem to have a bazillion small shops all selling a narrow variety of things – sometimes just ham. Great for a local economy, not so handy for a pair of blithering tourists manouvering a sizeable vehicle and just needing to stock up on basics or that one useful thing. Our search continues.

Seasonal sartorial choices and thermoregulation: Now we are on the southern meditereanean coast of Spain in mid- late November and the weather is still fairly glorious. In the past few weeks we have seen daytime temperatures between 23 and 27 deg C and the sun has been shining almost continually. We have been back wearing our summer gear and wearing hats and suncream. The Spanish are in coats, jumpers, boots and in some cases, wearing woolly hats and scarves without looking hot and sweaty. The window displays of all the clothes stores are full of winter gear. Now I do appreciate that these current temperatures are a significant reduction from the 35-45 deg C of the summer days, but is their blood that thin?? And what will they wear when it gets even colder in Jan & Feb? I worry about them.

The Food: This is obviously where I talk about Tapas. What a bloody marvellous invention. Can’t decide what to order off a menu? Doesn’t matter! Order six or seven different things! Not really hungry but fancy a snack? Get a paper cone of deep fried anchovies/cheese cubes/shaved Iberian Jamón. Hungry? Get two or three plates of fried anchovies and then realise that you have eaten A LOT of critters in one sitting. Fancy a salad? Forget it. You can make do with a plate of sliced tomatoes covered with oil and more anchovies and then get on with the real business of eating deep fried things/stuffed things/cheesy things/meaty things. Why are these people not all massive? That would certainly keep them warmer in winter.

Vermouth Rojo: our new favourite aperitif drink – and nothing like the Martini Rosso that we all remember from our teens. Syrupy, simultaneously sweet and bitter like a good marmalade, best served neat over ice with a slice of orange and several anchovy stuffed olives. Delicious and cheap as chips!! Possibly one should only have one before dinner but 2-3 is better.

Driving: I’m not saying that the Spanish are bad drivers, but some of them drive quite differently from us. Nuff said.

Precipitation: Nope

So obviously a reasonable amount of time has passed since we got here, so to try and catch up a bit I’m going to summarize our destinations so far:

Roses:

A tortuous, wiggly and hilly coast road took us across the border (marked by a derelict, grafitti-covered immigration booth) to this coastal town. For some unidentifiable reason it was very busy with motorhomes and all the designated campsites were full so we had one boon-dock night on a back street with about 15 other vans. Safety in numbers. It had a good beach, but was lacking a wow-factor. We walked a long way along the front and back . There were loads of street sellers, with identical stock of trainers, handbags and puffer coats, their wares all laid out beautifully on white bed sheets. Would we come here again? No.

Figueres:

A nice little town half an hour inland from Roses where we came for one reason only – to visit the Salvador Dalí Museum. This was built in a repurposed theatre in the town that Dalí grew up in, and curating it was his final great work before he died. He is also buried here.

“I want my museum to be a single block, a labyrinth, a great surrealist object. It will be [a] totally theatrical museum. The people who come to see it will leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream” Salvador Dalí

It was very busy with many human log-jams and many of the spaces were quite cramped and dark. It was expectedly bonkers with many irreverent pieces of art but interestingly the most impressive and memorable work in the whole place was his 1951 painting: Christ of St John of the Cross, a quite conventional (albeit unusually composed) and reverent oil painting of the crucifiction. I felt less like I had had a ‘theatrical dream’ than I had been to busy souk with a sale on. Good but done once is enough.

Barcelona:

Spain’s second biggest city. Well known to many. We spent six nights in a beach side campsite about 12km south of the centre. Our stay was so long as we wanted to visit the Sagrada Familia and the next available tickets were further into the future than expected. Poor planning by us but not a bad place to hang out. Easy bus ride into town and we went three times. Highlights? Beautiful buildings to gawk at whilst strolling, whether Gaudi or not, captivating Gothic Quarter with countless narrow, dark streets to explore, handsome waterfront with impressive super yachts, hidden squares full of restaurants, fantastic, vibrant, covered market stuffed full of meat, cheese, tapas, vegetables, fruit and wide-eyed tourists like us. Campsite right on the beach. Lowlights? Beachfront campsite also at the end of the runway of Barcelona airport, so a trifle noisy. La Rambla. Nothing really to see here except all the tourists who have come to see what is here. It’s just a busy pedestrian street. Sagrada Familia. Don’t get me wrong. This completely bonkers, legacy(/vanity) project by Gaudi is impressive and worth a see, but it costs an arm and a leg to get inside, which didn’t really seem worth the money. The light was beautiful, as were the columns and internal structure, but it was heaving. All my photos are orientated upwards so as to cut out the hoards. Oh, and despite the recent international news to the contrary, it is still far from finished. I think they were hoping it to be done by 2026, the centenary of Gaudi’s death, but apparently due to the ‘delays caused by Covid’ (you can’t use that as an excuse- you’ve been building it for 144 years, people!) it may not be 100% finished until 2040. Food and drink highlight? La Plata, a tiny, 75 year old tapas joint that featured on Antony Bourdain’s show. Here we ate the aforementioned mountain of deep fried anchovies and were introduced to red vermouth whilst standing at the bar because it was so busy. It is an institution. Would we visit Barcelona again? Hell yes!

Peñiscola:

A town with a slightly risqué name if you don’t pronounce it correctly, which of course we alway do…! Another small coastal beach town, but this time with some charming bits in the form of an old town built on a rocky knob (careful…), an impressive castle built atop that, a small fishing port and a long beach with a holiday resort. Two nights here gave us plenty of time to explore the old town and the photogenic castle which was built as a fort by the Knights Templar- a very wealthy and educated organisation of warrior monks. In the 14th C it became the residence/refuge/prison for Pope Benedict XIII making Peñiscola the third papal seat of the world behind The Vatican and Avignon. True story. At 4pm a siren heralded the return of the small fishing fleet and the promise of being able to buy fresh fish off the dock, but it transpired that the siren just summoned a gaggle of people to gather to take photos of crated fish that were then whisked away to the commercial market. A deserted bar on the walls of the old town made a great vantage point to watch sunset over the hills with a beer. A bike ride around to the other side of the bay showed us that the resort bit of town was nondescript, although the beach was nice. Would we visit again? Probably.

València:

Spain’s third biggest municipal area and Europe’s 5th busiest container port doesn’t have a classic waterfront, what with the ships and cranes and everything. The city created a 9km long, thin urban park when the river Turia was redirected in the middle of the 20th C to combat the constant flooding. The river was converted to green space and it was a genius idea that they have executed brilliantly. València is the birthplace of paella and we managed to squeeze one in along the way. I have learnt that true paella should contain no sausage or seafood but can contain plenty of chicken, duck, rabbit and even snails. It should be baked no more than 2cm deep in its traditioanal flat pan in a hot oven until there are plenty of crispy bits around the edges and on the bottom. Also, paella is only served at lunch time. In the evenings one can eat Fideuà, a dish a bit like paella, but that contains seafood and vermicelli in place of rice. So not like paella really except for the fact it is cooked in the same pan and the crispy bits are just as important. We managed to squeeze one of those in too. Our camp here was about 8km out of the city and situated on both a bus route and a great cycle path that went along the beach and then into the city too. On our cycle into the city it became obvious to us that one section of the beach dunes was attracting the presence of a disproportionate number of single men. Some with no clothes on. Even in November one can get an all over tan here and then find plenty of like minded people to show it off to. At least that is one explanation for what was going on. Valencia had its fair share of old buildings to appretiate with the addition a trio of quite left field modernist constructions at the end of the Turia Park: an arts centre, a science centre and an an aquarium. These are co-located on a magnificent plaza and are a feast for the eyes. Vàlencia or Barcelona? Barcelona takes it for us.

Dénia:

This was a place plucked from the ether as a stop on our way south. We knew nothing about it but it turned out to one of our favourite places so far. Smaller than the big cities, but so much more than being the most northerly holiday resort of the Coasta Blanca, it had an amazing marina, a great beach and promenade, a ferry port servicing the Balerics, an unassuming but well preserved old town and an imposing ruined castle looking down on it all from its rocky outcrop. We only had one night here, our stop being a municipally sanctioned ‘park up’ area in an empty lot near the beach that was home to about 50 campers. We wandered all about, up the rock and down the prom and sneaked in a sunset drink at the marina. Not too shabby. Would definitely return.

Cartagena:

We skirted past the delights of Benidorm and Alicante and headed onward to Cartagena. This strategic port town with a huge historical back story having attracted settlement and seafarers from the times well before the Roman Empire decided that it was a good spot, through to the present and it now being the site of a major naval station and small cruise ship port. A bus trip from another out-of-town pit stop took us into the city for our usual mooch around. The city is not quite a picturesque as we had expected and although the waterfront was easy on the eye we had to dig deep in amongst the shopping and back streets to find the interesting bits of history. After a slightly disappointing visit we decided to head for home by getting on the right bus but in the wrong direction. A rookie error which was not a disaster but might have contributed to our Cartegena disillusionment. We will not rush back.

Almería:

Our roost here was a public, barrier-controlled carpark on a wide sea wall in the heart of the ferry port in the downtown of this city of 200,000 people. Almería sits between the sea and mountains and is overlooked by its imposing Alcazabar, the second largest Muslim fortress in Andalucia. (The Alhambra in Grenada has top spot.) Our car park was tolerant of overnight campervans and was a very handy location from which to explore the city and the end of the sea wall gave us a great vantage point for views of the sunset, the harbour master’s tower, the resident band of ferral cats and the comings and goings of the ferries. It was understandably, and expectedly, noisy and bright thus ensuring a one-night-only stay for us and most others. We spent our day here with a visit to the Alcazabar which was a delight. The slightly arduous climb up the hill was rewarded with amazing views down over the city, port and sea, and the place itself was well along the road of being lovingly restored. Weirdly we got in for free having given our nationality as ‘New Zealanders’ at the ticket office. It was the same for the Americans behind us. We didn’t stop to ask who did have to pay, but I have a sneaking suspicion that being ‘British’ might have cost us something. After exploring the Alcazabar we wandered into town, which had a charming old district. The impressive Cathedral was unfortunately shut for siesta, conjouring up a image of a priest locking the door then having a little lie down on a pew. Would we come here again? We would stop if we were passing through.

Amerimar:

This small, purpose-built resort town, complete with identikit apartments, huge marina and the obligatory golf course, is a mere 40km from Almería and was founded by a businessman called Agustín González Mozo sometime in the 1970s. (Apparently the Spanish for ‘founder’ is ‘fundador’, which is an excellent word and should be the descriptor for something far more jolly. Like a rodeo clown.) Anyway, we fancied a few days of quiet and calm, and a break from sightseeing, so the marina-based park here was perfect. Our view was a very fine sailing yacht, a lighthouse and a beach, and our German neighbour had a very sweet d0g called Barney who we had plans to kidnap. The relentless run of consistantly sunny days was briefly interuppted with a bizarre day of thick fog which mattered not a jot to us as we were going nowhere. This area of coastline apparently boasts the most hours of sunshine (3000 per year) in the whole of Europe and has an average annual daytime temperature of 20 deg C. These stats contibute to reasons why this area is also a massive growing area for fruit and vegetables. These are all cultivated under shade cloths in irrigated plastic growing houses that cover thousands and thousands of acres of the land. It is not pretty, one questions where the water is coming from and where all the plastic goes to, but I guess the people gotta eat. When you buy out of season produce in Tescos and it says it comes from Spain. This is that reality. No plans to return, although could think of far worse places to hang out over a winter.

So that is the story so far. The Spanish Med has delivered us nearly constant sunshine and autumnal warmth in a variety of mainly coastal historical towns and cities. We hadn’t foreseen that this trip would mainly be about urban exploring, but it has transpired that this is what Europe delivers best. This is a great time of year to do it.