The ride up from Tossa de Mar to Calella has been my favorite of the bunch. The climbs were not massive, the scenery was nice and we made a couple of stops for coffee/food along the roughly 50 mile route. I’m not positive on the distance, but that’s what I’m remembering.

It was ‘jersey day’ so we all wore our tour jerseys on this day. Makes us look like something of a team. We look all bright and shiny in the first picture here. It was taken before we all saddled up and headed up the coastal road again.

It didn’t seem like we’d ridden all that long – though it must have been at least an hour to an hour and a half at that point – that we pulled in for a coffee and snacks. There’s a nice group photo of us here taking a break.

Sept 11th is National day (Fiesta Nacional de Cataluña) and the weather was nice and still pretty warm so there were lots of people out and about. We were told a lot of people make it a long holiday weekend before the kids head back to schoool the following week.

There are a couple of pictures here of our ride leads I took as we rode along that afternoon. Both hammed it up for the camera a little. Chris juking to his left while Jill stuck her tongue out. Everyone was having a pretty good time on this straight flat section knowing that lunch was not far away.

Our early afternoon route took us to Peratallada, a small and very old village. Up one of its stone streets arrangements had been made for our group to have lunch at El Pati. The name is apparently a reference to the patio dining there. The place is actually both a hotel and restaurant. Our group had a big circular table you can sorta see here in one of the pictures. We started with salads and also had two cold soups. One was a more typical tomato based gazpacho and the other was made of almonds, grapes and olive oil. If it had a name, I don’t remember it, but it was fantastic. It was creamy without being heavy. I’ll be seeking out more of this stuff in the future that’s for sure. The soup and the salad would probably have been enough since we had a fair bit of riding left to do that afternoon, but more food was on the way. We had a rice dish served with rabbit.

Suitably stuffed, we saddled up and hit the road again. Ugh, I’d eaten too much and we’d relaxed too long. It took awhile to get going again. Eventually we landed at our destination for the evening, Calella. It’s one of many small towns along the coast. Our hotel was the Hotel Mediterrani. It’s the larger white building in the middle of the picture below. It was nothing fancy but the location was great and the breakfasts turned out to be really good. It was right across the street from a nice beach, which you can just sort of make out in the picture below.