Visite des Plages (Tour of Beaches)

Today (Thursday - sorry for the delay; I had issues downloading pictures earlier) was beach touring day. I probably should really have named this post “Tour de Playas” (Spanish) since most of the beaches I went to today were in Spain. I started out by driving from Amelie, France to Roses, Spain. Roses is a small beach town and there is really nice beach right in the middle of the town. It has soft wet sand all across the beach and a gentle slope from the shoreline – meaning that even I could still stand with my head above water about 50 yards off shore. There was good breakwater from a marina on one side and rock peers for fishing on the other side. So, the water was very calm. Before swimming I stopped at a coffee shop in Roses where I ordered a Spanish Coffee. Either Spaniards do not call Spanish Coffee “Spanish Coffee” or Americans just made up the drink and named it Spanish Coffee because they do not serve Spanish Coffee in Spain! But this shop did make an exceptional latte.

 

From Roses I drove up the Coast a ways – amazing views! Then up a windy, steep mountain pass that separates Roses from Cadaques, Spain. At the summit of this mountain road is a winery named "Perfita". I stopped by just to take pictures of it because it looked so pristine.

Then it was down the other side of the mountain to Cadaques.  Cadaques is absolutely beautiful. It was where Salvador Dali made his home. I had lunch in Cadaques. In the nearly three weeks I have been in Europe I really have only eaten at a restaurant a small handful of times. I am glad that I ate in the restaurant at Cadaques. The service was great and I had a terrific asparagus, artichoke, and octopus salad. After lunch I drove to the end of Cadaques and found a beautiful beach where I went for my second swim of the day. This beach was located in the mouth of the bay that goes into Cadaques. There is a majestic tree that guards the opening to the bay and lots of beautiful boats anchored a few hundred yards off shore. There are gorgeous homes all around this part of the bay. The beach at Cadaques was also very shallow, but there were a lot of weeds that came up close to the surface and so it was better not to stand up, but just to swim the whole time. I swam out to the edge of the buoy lines and just floated for a long time, turning around and enjoying the tremendous view.

From there it was back to the mountain pass and Roses and I returned to France where I went to beach number 3 for the day. This one was a huge and crowded beach just North of where I was earlier this week in Collioure. This particular beach was also very sandy, but dry sand, soft and deep. The water depth here dropped off rather quickly and there were strong currents and bigger waves just off shore. Swimming was more difficult here.   

One of the remarkable things about driving between France and Spain is that it is so low key. There is no security or customs. You would probably not even know you had crossed into a different country if it were not for a small handful of signs emerging in a different language soon after crossing the border. In this particular border crossing the views are absolutely stunning too – up in the Pyrenees Mountains. As I returned to my rental house I could taste salt in my mouth. I guess that swimming at three different beaches in one day will do that to you. Certainly worth it!