Rendezvous at Can Tilly

Today we made the trip from Barcelona to the villa 'Can Tilly' in Tamariu. Quite a difficult task, not made any easier by the fact it was the national day of Catalunya and with all the shops being closed we had to purchase food for today yesterday. We had to carry it along with two heavy cases, a big rucksack and the bushbaby. And Orla and the buggy of course. Carrying all this down the stairwell was tough
work indeed.

Thankfully our apartment was close to the Friendly Rentals office where we checked out and ordered a taxi to the main train station in Barcelona to pick up our hire car. I had to queue up for over an hour to do the paperwork whilst Anne and Orla sat in the car. Then we had to drive through busy Barcelona to get to the motorway. That bit was much easier than expected.

We chose the coastal route out of Barcelona, driving alongside the seafront railway. There was no obvious place to have lunch so we got back on the motorway and stopped at a services for lunch.

The drive to the villa was supposed to take 2 hours if we went the quickest route, but once out of Barcelona we had 4 hours to get there so we planned to stop in Tossa de Mar. We had some difficulty parking so Anne took Orla to the beach whilst I found a space and joined them. We had a drink in one of the beachfront bars with a view of the castle then did a bit of shopping. We thought the shops might be shut due to the bank holiday but many were open. Anne needed a sarong and I wanted to buy a couple of lilos for use in the pool at the villa.

It was 5pm by the time we left Tossa. We thought it might take another hour to get to the villa, and that might have been the case had we gone inland and rejoined the fast roads. Instead we again took the coastal route along the rocky cliffs of the Costa Brava, possibly the bendiest stretch of road I have ever encountered. It took us 45 minutes to do the 20 miles until the road straightenend out.

In the end we arrived at the villa at about 7pm, only an hour before sunset. We had seen photos of the villa on the website we booked it through (Vintage Travel) and thought it looked amazing, but actually seeing it for real it was just fantastic, we couldn't quite believe it!

I quickly took a couple of photos before Matthew arrived. Having a phobia of flying, Matthew made the journey by car. We had been receiving texts from him on the way through France, including a stop at the Eiffel Tower. He had slept in his car overnight so looked shattered. But before he got his much needed shower he shared a glass of Cava with us on the balcony overlooking the sea view to celebrate our arrival.

About an hour later Ol, Iain and Matthew arrived. They had flown to Girona and rented a car. I made pasta for dinner, with roasted red peppers, tomatos, red onions and chorizo. We had some of the wine Matthew had picked up on his way through France.

After dinner we checked out the pool. Ol decided to have his first quick swim of the holiday, the rest of us weren't convinced it was a good idea. The rest of the evening we chatted about each of our journeys with a drink on the pools steps.

Here's a link to some more photos of today.