Homage to Catalonia - part 3

After a few days spent meandering the charming streets of the city, that familiar look in my girlfriend's eye told me she was itching to get to the beach. And so we drove, about 2 hours up the coast towards the French boarder, to Roses (pronounced 'ross-us', with or without a rolled 'r', depending on your preference).

The town is a charming seaside resort, clearly geared for tourists but the crucial difference is that tourists are largely Spanish, with the odd German or French family for good measure. Very few Brits, is what I'm getting at, and I found it refreshing. The family flat we stayed sits about half way the Western most hill, overlooking the town with a sweeping, inobstructed view of the bay, the village, and the first foothills of the Pyrenees looming in the background. The view at sunset was just breathtaking.

And the view at night wasn't bad either.
The town itself has plenty of good restaurants, and plenty of good enough repute for us to be unlucky trying to obtain a table on a Saturday night without booking first. The town is also within a stone's throw of the legendary El Bulli restaurant, one of the few eateries with three Michelin stars in the world, let alone in this part of Spain. It has been voted 'The Best Restaurant in the World' four times since 2000 - this is the standard we're talking here. Needless to say we decided the credit card wouldn't stretch to even bread and oils, and dined elsewhere.

What really stood out for me was the genius of having a miniature golf course on the seafront, which is open until after midnight, with a Belgian beer bar attached for good measure.

Unfortunately the time of year meant the weather, while sometimes pefectly amenable to sunbathing, occasionally turned for the worst. But while my girlfriend has grown used to the view over the years of visiting with her family, I still found myself drawn to the balcony, looking out across the bay. As I said, breathtaking.