Catalonia: recommended towns
 

I have been lurking here for months, and am more confused than every. Need advice for our 14 days in Catalonia this September.

My wife and I are in our 60s. Interested in quaint towns, food, nature, architecture. No so interested in beaches and nightlife.

We will fly to Barcelona and spend four nights, then rent a car. Where do we go after that?

-Madremanya (east of Girona). A friend highly recommends this town. We will spend three nights. Beyond that, I am clueless. I have read about these possibilities:

-Tossa de Mar/ Cadaques
-Montserrat
-Tarragona
-Pyrenees
-Las Ramblas
-Priorat
-Sitiges
Tipidabo

Any thoughts on the above or other locations would be GREATLY appreciated. We probably have time to go to two or three places (in addition to Barcelona and Madremanya).

Thanks!

I strongly recommend that you get a good guidebook to the area, perhaps the <i>Michelin Green Guide</i>. From it, you will learn things like: Tossa de Mar and Cadaques are separately places, the Pyrenees constitute a huge region, and Las Ramblas are a set of streets in Barcelona.

If you are flying into and out of Barcelona, consider putting all of your time there in the nights before your departure -- you'll almost certainly want to be there for the night before your flight, so you might as well eliminate an "extra" change of hotels.

Upon your arrival in Barcelona, go to one of the places you can easily reach by public transportation, so you can delay renting a car until you recover from jet lag. (Many people don't realize that driving with jet lag is just as dangerous -- to you and others -- as driving drunk.)

With a bit of research on your part, I'm sure you can have a wonderful trip to this very interesting part of the world.

Hope this information helps!

Las Ramblas is a single street in Barcelona, not an area. I don't know why people get confused. Raval is on one side, the Gothic quarter on the other. Both are in the Ciutat Vella.

The Pyrenees, in this case the Catalan Pyrenees, or Pyrénées-Orientales, runs from the coast to Andora, not an easy area to cover in two weeks.

If you are interested in wine, as well as food, then you should check out the Priorat, which is in the province of Tarragona. The center of the region is the village of Falset (www.visitpriorat.com).

Depending on when you will be there, you might be interested in the Concurs de Castells (www.tarragonaturisme.cat/en/city-human-towers).

Tossa de Mar is a beach town, however a picturesque one. Since you are not interested in beaches, I would not recommend spending much time there. It is between Barcelona and Madremanya, so you may stop there on your drive from Barcelona to Madremanya for some photo shots and maybe lunch.

After Madremanya, the next logical destination would be Cadaques. Cadaques is a lovely "white town" with a picturesque fishing port, a few hotels (I recommend Rocamar), restaurants etc. In a nearby fishing village (Port Lligat), you can visit the most eccentric house of Salvador Dali, which has been turned into a museum.

Cadaques is also an excellent base for exploring the incredibly scenic coast around Cap de Creus - a bizarre explosion of rock formations meeting the dark blue sea. Only when you are standing at Cap de Creus, you will understand why this stretch of coastline is called "Costa Brava" - the wild coast.

Also from Cadaques, you might visit Castillo Perelada, which is a winery inside a sturdy medieval castle. Perelada is near Figueres, where you find another stunning Salvador Dali museum.

Catalonia is a region which spreads across the border. And the mountain scenery is better on the French side.

Why not doing a daytrip (or an overnight trip) into the French part of Catalonia? There are two picturesque towns right after the border, one is Collioure on the sea (you will reach is by driving the coastal road from Spain into France), the other one is Ceret in a mountain valley in the Pyrenees.

From Ceret, you may drive up the Mont Canigou, the highest mountain in the area (2,784 m / 9,134 ft), on a small scenic road to the picturesque mountain village Corsavy and further up to the end of the road from where you might hike a bit further up.

You may drive back into Spain over the mountain road via Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste.

And Sitges is a small balnear town, with nice beaches, lots of bars, restaurants.
For whatever reason it attracts a lot of homosexuals.

Definetly buy a paper guide and look at a map.

There is a festival in Tarragona from September 14 to 24 called Santa Tecla. It is well worth experiencing a couple of days - the big day is September 23.

But Tarragona is a small city, so maybe that would not float your boat. Its an old Roman outpost with many Roman monuments and ruins.

The Concurs de Castells is in October (every other year) and this year is October 1 & 2. It is hard to get tickets. But if you want to see the castellers (again, well worth experiencing) you can see them in Tarragona during Santa Tecla, or in many other towns and villages.
You can see the schedule here:
http://www.cccc.cat/contents/september-53

If you visit Montserrat consider spending a night up there. The day trippers (and there are MANY) leave and you can have the place to yourself.

kja is right, you should get a guidebook, or click on her name because she was there last year and wrote some good observations and tips.

@ rialtogrl -- thanks for the kind words! :-) But my trip report is NO substitute for a good guidebook!

Thanks for the good tips...you have given me much to research.

kja, a Michelin Green Guide is on the way to me, so hopefully I can reduce ratio of moronic questions.

Robert2533, I suspect the reason "why people get confused" is because when you haven't been to a country place names are mere words...and don't stick in our brains.

traveller1959, thanks for the excellent tips, starting with Cadaques. My wife and I still speak wistfully of the white towns of Andalucia (that we only had time to drive through). It looks like Hotel Rocamar is closed for a major remodel...perhaps demolition. But, there seems to be other choices.

Most intriguing of your comments is the trip to the French part of Catalonia; that wasn't on my radar. You mention that the "mountain scenery is better on the French side." My wife is a great lover of nature, but a great hater of hiking (for me, hiking in the Pyrenees would have been great). So, the drive you suggest is very appealing. Looks like we could do one or two nights in Collioure; Ceret is just 30 minutes away.


Montserrat seems to be on everyone's "must see" list of Catalonia. Maybe take the train from Barcelona for just a day trip (my wife isn't nuts about changing hotels more often than every three days).

Thanks, all!