Last night, over dinner, we made the decision to leave L'Escala early and spend another night in France to break up the long journey. I didn't fancy an eight-hour drive to Amboise, so we looked at hotels around Cahors and found Le Troubadour, near the mediaeval town of Rocamadour, about four hours drive away. Driving, and staying in an Airbnb, gives you the freedom to do what you want, and the weather was looking a bit dubious for Thursday anyway!
Making the decision gave us a shorter time to get packed, but we wanted to go to Pals again today, to have a proper look around and enjoy lunch there. We left at about 10am and drove for about half an hour across the rural countryside. Pals stands out from the surrounding area as it's built on a hill with views over the plains to the sea.
We parked easily and made our way to the main square where we enjoyed coffees (Keith had a beer) from the friendly waiter.
The village is stunning, with gorgeous buildings at every turn and I can only imagine what it must be like to live here. Crowded and busy in the summer, I should imagine, but gorgeous to have all the beauty on your doorstep! We wandered about looking in the various shops and taking lots of photographs.
We picked out some gifts to take home - a lovely scarf and necklace for my Mum, a tee shirt for my Dad, gifts for Sophie's friends and some beautiful pottery. We made it right up to the tower at the top of the hill with outstanding views over to the sea. We could see big rocks in the sea, and I only wish we'd had time to explore more.
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| The church |
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| Beautiful houses and artfully placed plants |
After a lot of exploring, and up and down the steps, we met up with Keith who'd gone off to have another beer, and we joined him for half an hour, sitting in the sun and people-watching. It was sheer bliss! All this will be a distant memory soon, and the hot sun and blue skies a thing of the past!
Sophie and I had been looking at menus and we found a delightful place called El Nucli tucked away down a side street. The menu looked good so we decided to have lunch there. We were the first customers and sat in a lovely little courtyard with a garden attached, that had a pond with terrapins! They were sunning themselves but eyed us curiously! We were also visited by some sparrows who appreciated any spare crumbs!
It was a lovely, very peaceful restaurant and after perusing the menu (a placemat), we made our choices. We chose three tapas dishes to start - Padron peppers, chicken goujons and chicken wings. All three were delicious and the peppers were the best we've ever had, they were lovely and salty and hot!
Our waitress was brilliant and very friendly. For our main courses, we chose chicken kebabs (me), half a chicken (Keith) and cod for Sophie. The food was delicious and plentiful, but Sophie and I managed to find room for dessert. Mine was very conventional, a creme brulee, but Sophie's was a tad weird... she had noticed Italian cake with olive oil and oregano on the specials board so chose that as she had always wanted to try a cake made with olive oil. When it arrived she was a bit bemused:
We still don't know if it was a proper dessert or a side dish/accompaniment! It was like a poppadom covered with tomatoes and olive oil! She still ate it and enjoyed it!
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| My more conventional dessert! |
This lunch was absolutely lovely and so relaxing and the cheapest meal of the whole holiday. We could have sat there all day! Another couple arrived just as we were about to leave and said hello. Everyone had been so friendly.
We waddled back to the car, drove to L'Escala and waited to see Didier, the owner. We had told him we were leaving on Thursday morning rather than Friday, and he just wanted to make sure everything had been OK and give us instructions about leaving the keys.
He came along at about 5.30pm and as soon as he'd gone, Sophie and I drove into the town to buy some wine to take home, as well as gifts for Mike and Abbie. The shop that had sold the local produce didn't have any of the Cap de Creus white wine, which was disappointing so we went to the well-stocked Bodega near the front to see what they had. Although they stocked local wine from Emporda, they didn't have the one we wanted so we bought gifts for Abbie and Mike and trundled back to the car.
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| Goodbye to L'Escala |
Rather than go home with only a couple of bottles, we called into the Spar and bought five local wines. I have no idea what they're like but they were coming home with us!
The rest of the evening was spent packing and playing Scrabble while drinking Cava. It feels like tomorrow we're off on another adventure!
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