Hostalric; Tossa de Mar

Once again, we took a day trip to the Costa Brava (remember Empúries?) It was another 9 am departure, but I was in a much better state after a more casual Friday night at Le Cyrano. (Post on Cyrano to come -- it's a fun bar where you order a drink, the bartender brings you the necessary ingredients, and you pour your own. Self-control necessary).

Our first stop was Hostalric, a random town about an hour north of us and a bit inland. It's quaint, picturesque, full -- like any proper Spanish pueblo -- of cute and friendly old people.

We got a necessary coffee, then trekked over to the 17th- (18th- ?) century castle just beyond the flea market (seriously, Casual Castles is the theme of Spain). The tour this time was interesting and very much audible. A dark, gnome-sized tunnel took us to the inside of the castle walls. We saw a well... 

and a room with windows with strange, strange arched frames -- so strange, in fact, that I was too absorbed in photographing them to listen to much of what the tour guide had to say. If I remember correctly, the room was a housing quarters for soldiers who slept three to a bed. The windows, once small and low, were more recently remodeled to let more light into the building.

Moving past such geometric oddities, we began our ascent and marveled at correspondingly fantastic views. I've seen some pretty great landscapes-from-above in Barcelona, but I have yet to take in a panorama of the countryside. Hostalric is green and untainted, lush as it must have been centuries ago when the catalanes were fighting the French, the Carlist Wars, others (?)... 

After climbing up and down that rather large hill, we walked through the town a bit and back to our bus. It felt wrong to be riding a big bus through such a little town -- we definitely clipped a tree or two rounding the tight corners, and it reminded me of my parents' deep disdain for SUVs on the narrow streets of Georgetown. It was around 2 pm, and our next destination was Tossa de Mar, the beautiful beachside town with another castle -- this one a real, Medieval structure. I'm about to bombard you with photos, and I apologize but remind you that this means pretty things and fewer bad jokes to come. I took hundreds of pictures here -- I was completely captivated by this place. We started our tour of the second castle in the late afternoon and finished it as the sun was setting. The air was brisk and the climb was quite mild. The light was indescribable.

It was chilly as we climbed the sides of the mountain to the castle, but this little inlet was protected from the wind and the shadow. Some people were fishing; others, catching the last warm rays of the day.

This is a view of the town from the top of the castle. All of the rooftops built up until a certain period (wish I could tell you when) are painted white. Unrelated and compensatory date fact: In 1989, Tossa became the first place to declare itself an Anti-Bullfighting City.

Here, the coastline was nicely silhouetted as we saw it from the side of the mountain. The jagged cliffs seemed to go on forever.

In this same area overlooking the coastline, I noticed a bunch of locks hanging on the wire fence. Many of them had initials or symbols carved into them. I'm so curious as to where they're from and who hung them, as to whether this is a tradition or a strangely pretty random act.

The excursion to the Costa Brava has been the most impressionable, for me, of the trips we've taken with CASB so far. I have a boatload of clichéd descriptions in mind. I think my feeling now is one of those things that's too magical (there's one) to adequately express in this fleeting and evasive bastard tongue.

Something I can describe in a much less annoying way, though, is an element of our trip that I have yet to mention -- the human part. Five or six Spanish students studying at the UPF and the UB came along with us. Two of them had been with us in Valencia as well, and all of them will be studying at universities in the US later this year. It's great to have this time with Spanish kids our age -- we know some from our residence, but it can be hard to make friends in classes when we're always with so many Americans, always speaking English. It also made me think about the way we treat exchange students in the US. I think I've met one, maybe two, foreigners studying abroad at Columbia in the last two years, and I have never once tried to reach out to them (the way these Spanish students are for us), despite my obvious interest in studying abroad. I...don't really have a point to make, beyond the obvious "I should be more like them." I guess it's a perspective thing. Maybe I am learning a thing or two in Spain.