Birds, fish & tapas

This morning we ate breakfast in Can Mas in the dining room - lots of other little groups there too, mostly British, mostly looking like bikers or walkers. We had ham, cheese, bread, pears, some other sausages (one of them may have been this "foie mi-cuit" that we keep seeing everywhere. They had jams that may have come from their own orchards (would have asked but the proprietress was running around trying to serve breakfast to everyone and I never saw anyone else there helping her). We tried the tomato and melon jams. The people next to us made sandwiches for their day's bike trip. We managed to hit the road by 9:50, and walked back down to the coast.

We passed through the town of Sant Pere Pescadore (just past where we had dinner the night before, at Mas del Joncar). We bought bread at a bakery (for today's lunch, or tomorrow's) as well as some water, and did a little looking around town. We saw the first black people we'd seen around here.

The main attraction of today's walk was the trek through the national park Aiguemolls. We saw a lot of ducks, a couple herons, and a lot of fish in the water. Most of these we saw from the nicely placed blinds: most of the trails are away from the water, but the blinds are right on the water, and people do their best to be quiet in them.

We would have gone into the visitor center at El Cortelet, but it's closed between 2:00 and 3:30, and it was 2:45 or so when we got there.

After the park we walked past apple orchards to Castelló d'Empúries, a medieval town (boy, are medieval streets narrow). We had a little bit of trouble figuring out how to get to our hotel, but Steve had provided us with an informational brochure from the town and it was very helpful. It was about 4:15 by this time, and we had (again) failed to eat any of our lunch.

Finally at around 5 pm we had "lunch" at Bar J.R.: beer (Linda had a pilsner (?) called B... and Lisa had a Bock Damm (dark). To eat, we had "boqerones con vinagre/seitons amb vinagre" (anchovies marinated in oil, vinegar, and garlic) and "Popets a la seva tinta/Pulpitos en su tinta" (baby octopus in its own ink). Both were excellent. after our tapas, we strolled around the town: looked at the cathedral, the city wall, the moat (more damp than wet these days), and the Jewish quarter. There are supposed to be two synagogues but we never could find them.

Tomorrow we will be collected from Casa Clara at 9 am and taken to Platja Canyelles. Tomorrow's walk is supposed to be tougher, and longer than what we've done so far: 16.7 Km and involving ascents. A good thing is that when we get to Cadaques, we have the next day off.