Day 16: Tuesday May 1 2007, Pineda de Mar, Spain
Noon position: 41 degrees 37.385' N latitude, 002 degrees 41.056' E longitude (Hotel Top Paradis Park, Pineda de Mar, Spain)
Bob: A good night's sleep made my throat less sore and in general helped put the world in a better light even though the day dawned gray and rainy. The breakfast buffet had rolls, cold cuts, cheese, toast, scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs, sausages, hotdogs, bacon, French Fries, watermelon, and three types of cold cereal. A lot of that I couldn't eat, but a lot of it I could and so we had a very nice, leisurely breakfast while we considered what to do next. Given the near misses I had experienced while driving on the previous day, I positively did not want to drive around on rain-slick roads. We decided to stay another day to see if we could wait out the rain, and the lady at the front desk obligingly added on another day at the 57 Euro rate, so we retired back to our room for the morning. Monika processed pictures on the computer and wrote postcards for the German folks and I wrote postcards for the American folks. Then Monika knitted and I worked on the journal while we listened to the rain pitter-patting on our balcony, which was very relaxing. The rain let up around 2 o'clock, so we set out with a city map provided by the hotel clerk and proceeded to walk around the city and down to the beach. We had lunch in a little hole-in-the-wall place along the way that served beer and even had a German language soap opera on their TV set. The proprietor, as far as I could tell, only spoke Spanish, but he nevertheless had this German channel on with the volume muted when we arrived. After hearing Monika's accent he un-muted it so that we could watch, but that was decidedly a mixed blessing. The videography was so unsteady that it looked like it had been done with a hand-held video recorder, the dialog ranged from contrived to trite, and the less said about the acting the better, so I suspect he was watching it only because it focused the love lives of several teeny-boppers. Just down the street we found the train station for Pineda de Mar and spent some time examining the local train network, which was surprisingly extensive, ranging from a couple stops past Pineda along the coast to the northeast to several stops past Sitges to the west of Barcelona. Since the network included the airport and riders were allowed to take bicycles with on the train, one way to visit this area of Spain would be to fly into Barcelona with a folding bicycle, take the bicycle on the train to the city or town you wanted to visit, and ride the bicycle to the hotel, pension or campground you wanted to stay at. That would avoid the expense of a car and as long as you were reasonably fit, the combination of the train plus a bicycle would give you a decent range of action for seeing the sights in the area. Maybe next time! |
Monika: Our reservation came with half-board. Dinner last night was nothing to write home about, especially after ship cuisine, but breakfast this morning was quite good and included a machine that made coffee, latte, and even cappuccino. Since it looked like rain and we slept well here, we booked for another night, 57 Euro for room with half-board seemed quite reasonable and we decided to postpone our trip up the coast for another day and declared today a "down day". So the morning was spent writing postcards (Bob) and downloading pictures (me) while watching a thunderstorm go by. Around 1:30 it cleared up and we decided to walk into town. In a souvenir store, I bought a spoon rest in the style of Gaudi and two souvenir sewing thimbles. In a bakery we bought some bread. But then we found a little tavern that also sold sandwiches. We each had a baguette with meat and beer (me) and Coke (Bob). The owner thought I was German and turned up the TV which was playing a German serial about a high school class. After lunch we walked to the train station and found out that Pineda de Mar was a stop on a suburban train from Barcelona. So for next time we know that we can stay relatively cheap out here and get here and back into town by train. After watching a train come by, we walked on the beach along the Mediterranean until we came to the underpass that led back to the hotel |
Bob: From the train station we rambled back to the southwest along a beachfront promenade. A small fishing fleet was hauled up on the beach at Pineda de Mar, probably because the intermittent thunderstorms that day would have made fishing in an open boat too dangerous. But surprisingly we also found a campground situated smack dab on the beach, one of at least three campgrounds in the area. All the campers seemed to be of the mini-RV variety, however, so I don't know if tents were not allowed or just not used. Working our way back to the hotel, we had some strawberries and read a bit to relax. |
Monika: Bob layed down to take a nap, but I wanted to take a picture of a swan who I had seen swimming in a little pool next to the swimming pool. When I got next to the pool and walked across the bridge, the drake got agitated, reared up and tried to bite my toe and I could see why. At the end of the pool in a little hut was another swan sitting on some eggs. Clearly he was guarding them. I quickly left after taking some pictures. Another violent thunderstorm came up from the southeast and we were glad to be back in our little suite, reading, writing, or napping. |
Bob:
We find we need to have days to relax interspersed with our more active days, but the nature of those days changed completely depending on whether we were on the cruise ship or traveling by car. On the cruise ship, the days where we were traveling at sea were the relaxing days while the days we were in port were the hectic, active stressful days. When traveling by car, the days where we drive from one place to another are the hectic, active, stressful days while the days we stay put in the hotel or just see local sights are the relaxing days. Whichever way we travel we seem to be able to take no more than two or three of the hectic, active days in a row before we really need at least one of the relaxing days. I don't know if other travelers also have evolved this kind of rule of thumb to guide their travel planning, but it does seem to hold true for us.
The earliest we were allowed to start eating dinner was 7:30, and although we were Johnny-on-the-spot we didn't finish until 8 p.m., so I had to wait until about 11 p.m. before I could safely sleep. But in the event that turned out not to be a problem because I was reading the last section of Donna Leon's "Aqua Alta", and it was a real page-turner at the end. I just couldn't put it down until I finished it, and by then it was well past 11 and I could finally go to sleep.
Copyright 2007 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt| Prolog | Map of Cruise | Map of Spain | Epilog |
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