My wife and I are planning an extended<BR>trip to Sitges in March.<BR>Has anyone any info/tips about this town?

it is a lovely beach town south of barcelona very well connected by train to the city and south.<BR>very popular gay community .. artsy and crowded in the summer.<BR>if you get decent weather.. ´sound nice.<BR><BR><BR>

Yes I've been to Sitges, very nice, many shops, restaurants, cafes, narrow pedestrian streets. We have always talked about going back for an extended vacation, sounds like fun. Let us know what it is like in March, we were there in October and it was already off-season judging by the number of people around.

Spent four months there in the mid-eighties. It was November through February, no snow but the weather was cold the way Northern California can be cold in winter. Sitges was one of the few towns I saw on the Costa Brava that was not totally overrun with huge resort hotels. The little streets running to the beaches in the Old Town were charming, as was the cathedral.<BR>Easy train access to Barcelona - I used to go into town to shop for produce at the big farmers market on the Ramblas at least twice a week.

We stayed there for about a week, loved it. While it's true it's very tolerant toward gay people (unusual in Spain, it appears) it's also a big family town, quite comfortable. Sitges hosts one of the premier film festivals in Europe in the late summer. There are some good art nouveau buildings scattered around. We stayed at the Hotel Santa Maria on the central waterfront; comfy but not fancy, good busy restaurant. Not a bad base at all for Barcelona, although watch the times for the last trains back.

Jon,<BR>We like Sitges very much and have friends, 2 artists, who have lived there for years, enjoying the "with it- arsty-non conventional" atmosphere. It has attracted artists and intellectuals for years, as it has many festivals: theater, cinema, grape harvest, a Bcn-Sitges intl vintage car rally in March, in Feb. the most outrageous Carnival in Europe, a beautiful Corpus Christi celebration in June with processions and streets spread with intricately designed floral carpets, plus several universities hold summer seminars there. <BR><BR>As everyone has told you, it's a vibrant, lively, prosperous, sophisticated seaside village (like a little Bcn on the sea) with plenty of tapas bar and great food (Maricel on the waterfront with Catalan-French cuisine, and Cal Pintxo next door). <BR><BR>As John says, even though it's one of the major gay summer resorts of Europe, families can feel right at home there too. Plenty of lodging for all budgets. A few hotels close Nov-March, but I think the Santa Maria doesn't close until mid Dec. <BR>www.lasantamaria.com <BR>It's recommended in the Sawday's "Special Places to Stay/Spain", a very dependable, affordable hotel guide. <BR><BR>From Sitges it's an easy trip to the wineries of the Penedes, like the Torres in Vilafranca or the cava (Spain's bubbly) cellars of Codorniu or Freixenet in Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, plus the Cistercian Monasteries of Poblet and Santes Creus. Plenty to see, including the Roman ruins of Tarragona, an easy train ride away. <BR>