Ribes de Freser, Barcelona Proper, Catalonian Cava Mixer

Hi all,

It's been a few days since I've been back with the laptop which is the only way I can think of to relay adventures from the last few days in appropriate detail.

Kaitlin, Larry and I grabbed the Renfe last Wednesday from Canet all the way out to Ribes de Freser which is a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. The trip took 3.5 hours and cost $3.00 each. Once at our apartment in Ribes we (Kaitlin & Larry, the mountaineers) quickly set about planning hikes for the next couple of days.

Our first outing took place at 6am the next day, where we caught a funicular further up the mountain to Vall de Núria where there is a pristine lake and funnily enough, a giant hotel built around a church. We got started before the sun came up on hiking toward the Puigmal summit which is a roughly 6 mile hike that takes about 5 hours (All Trails link here). I've never been in such epic mountains before. Hard to describe the experience in appropriate detail so I've linked to some pictures and video here. Not recorded are the constant sound of wild goats bleeting, and horned Ibex sprinting around the hillside. The summit was beautiful, and very cold + windy so we stayed long enough to read some of the plaques, have a drink of water, wave hello to France, and start heading back down. Núria has an interesting history. As the story goes, one Saint Gil arrived in roughly 700AD and began working to convert shepherds to Christianity which is why the church was built. More on the history here. Something I thought was interesting about the museum (which is co-located with the hotel) was the emphasis on educating visitors about the historic, present and endangered way of life led by shepherds in the area.

For day 2 of our alpine adventure we caught the Renfe one stop down to the next town Campdevànol to hike the trail of the 7 waterfalls (route map here), which is pretty much what it sounds like (pics and videos here). The highlight of this hike was summoning the courage to take a quick dip in one of the waterfall lakes. I will admit I was partially motivated by the possibility of re-creating this meme. And I would say I succeeded.

Despite both of these hikes being only a few miles, they were both pretty challenging and left us feeling in need of fuel (beer, coffee, wine, peanut butter and peach jelly sandwiches, naps and snacks). We also cooked some great meals while in Ribes and made garlic bread for every dinner and breakfast, courtesy of a massive loaf of doughy white bread that Larry and Kaitlin managed to pick up from the local bakery. We had some very thick cut bacon and eggs picked up from the local butcher as well which were delicious.

Ribes is pretty much a ski town that seems to slow down a bit in the off-peak seasons, but Friday some of the restaurants opened up so we took ourselves to La Tinto which is a craft beer and burger joint above the local cinema (side note, Canet has an active DVD shop, and Ribes has a movie theater which I think are interesting things for super small towns to have) where we treated ourselves to some vegan croquettes featuring unique combos of mushrooms, curries, apples and pumpkin. My faulty Spanish (and even worse Catalan) struck again when I ordered a medium-rare chicken sandwich. Thankfully the server very kindly told me the sandwich would be fully cooked. Despite being in wine + cava country, La Tinto also specializes in sourcing craft beers made locally and elsewhere in Spain so we enjoyed trying a variety of those.

Saturday (10/8) we started our journey back to Barcelona where we would stay for the evening at Hostel New York which with its single high efficiency LED lightbulbs in every room and timed hot-water use allocation Larry and I joked would be fun to brand as an eco-friendly efficiency minded lodging option for travelers. Jokes aside it was a decent place to stay and afforded us the opportunity to explore Barcelona without worrying about the train schedule back to Canet. In the afternoon we walked from Place de Catalunya (renfe stop) downhill to La Barceloneta to grab some tapas for lunch before making our way back to drop bags at the hostel and step out again to explore more of the Gothic Quarter. We happened upon an orchestra playing outside of Catedral Barcelona, accompanied by what seemed partly planned and partly spontaneous groups of people performing what looked like a form of traditional Catalonian circle dances. The energy and focus was not dissimilar from some of the folk dancing I grew up around in the US. Video here. The night evolved in to more tapas, and vermouth over ice (common fare in barcelona, I've learned) at a bar called Babel where one of the servers convinced us that if we were already going to be up this late, then we might as well check out an underground club call Moog which plays techno and house DJ sets and really gets going around 2am. We had a great time bopping around to very loud electronic dance music, and eventually made our way back to the hostel to grab 3-4 hours sleep before our final stop of the weekend, Cava Tast.

Cava Tast aka the Catalonian Cava Mixer (Larry's renaming) takes place once a year in the small town of Sant Sadurní d’Anoia and brings together 60+ local cava producers for a 3 day festival. Given our overlap in timing and relative proximity, we obviously had to go. As you approach San Sadurni by train it is clear that you are moving through an industrial outskirt of Barcelona in to an agricultural production hub where much of countryside is lined with terraced or flat vineyards which stretch for miles. On arrival it seems like the entire town is dedicated to the culture and tradition of Cava (Spain's champagne equivalent) production. The parking bollards are shaped like cava bottles, and almost every street has some sign or symbol referencing cava. After arriving we made our way up the hill where we bought tasting tickets and staked out a spot on the hill overlooking the landscape, where we sat for a few hours trying different wines and listening to a guitarist play a mix of Spanish and Catalonian songs, and cover some American classics. Pics here. As the sun started going down, the prior evening at Moog began catching up with us and it became apparent that we needed to get going home.

We made it back to Canet on Sunday evening and have continued the practice of sharing good meals since then, including, specifically, yesterday's lunch at La Font which is a traditional Catalonian and Michelin rated restaurant a few hundred feet from the apartment I am staying in, that is only open between 1-3:30pm Monday - Friday. This was a top 2 meal since being here (up there with Dos Palillos), and was very affordable. I didn't take many pics because I was too focused on enjoying the food but please enjoy this photo of the tiramisu:

We finished a 1,000 piece puzzle of La Rambla (pedestrian walk in downtown Barcelona) had a great home made meal of salad, cabbage sprouts, bread, sweet potato, roasted vegetables and sardines last night, and Kaitlin and Larry headed out this morning to meet their cousins in Perpignan where they will be for a few days before we meet up again this weekend in Florence, Italy. 

Thanks for reading!