Tossa de Mar.. Beautiful Area, Cat Litter Beach! (Tossa de Mar)

Member Name: Claire_DC

Product:	Tossa de Mar
Date:	21/09/08 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Picturesque, Hot !

Disadvantages: Impractical Beach, Quiet!

Originally written July 2007 on my Ciao account.

I got back from a week in Tossa De Mar on Saturday night, it was my first visit to the area so I wasn't altogether sure of what it would be like there, or what to expect from the holiday.

The night we arrived (at about 2am) we found a bar to have a drink in, unfortunately it wasn't serving food (just ice cream) which was a pain as we were all starving, and couldn't seem to find anywhere to buy some food. So my first piece of advice is to make sure you have enough to eat before arriving if you're arriving at a silly time at night.

My first impressions of the resort were that it was picturesque but seemed very quiet and as the holiday went on, I discovered that this was correct. As a 26 year old, I've been more used to going out and getting rather tipsy (OK, I mean drunk but I didn't want to let my dooyoo halo slip too far down) and things getting a little raucous, however this just did not seem to happen in Tossa. I'm not sure if it's because there's a lot of Spanish/German/Dutch people there (more so than English people) or because the people who go there seemed to be older people or families.

This didn't spoil the holiday for me though; it just changed the tone of it into a more relaxed break with more time for sunbathing instead of nursing hangovers, which actually turned out to be quite refreshing as hangovers in the heat are definitely not nice.

The beach was lovely, however the 'sand' (small stones/pebbles) was more like cat litter (which I have also done a review about on Ciao if you're interested in reading, plug plug haha) and so walking across it was not the easiest, or most graceful for that matter. This also applies to the sea as not only did you have to contend with the act of walking in cat litter to get there, but also a fairly steep/sudden drop down from the beach to the water in which you end up sinking down into the pebbles with every footstep you take whilst going in or out of the sea. Although it's fair to say that getting out it makes a good work out, if you think of it as going on a step machine at the gym but on the beach, and looking silly in front of people who hadn't attempted it so didn't understand the difficulty that is.

The sea itself is also pebbly and I didn't venture in too far as I'm not a big fan of the sea anyway, it seemed nice and clear, but there seemed to be quite a drop from the small bit of 'shallow' area into a much deeper area that I'd say is definitely not suitable for young children to be venturing into, certainly not alone anyway.

If you're looking to sunbathe on anything but the pebbles, I recommend looking into buying some form of deckchair/sun bed as it costs 4.70 euros to hire a sun lounger from the guy on the beach, which mounts up if there's more than one of you and if you're doing it every day. We just braved the pebbles with a beach towel and a spade to try and make it a bit comfier to lie on by digging out small holes for our bums to fit in haha.

There is an old town area of the resort which is beautiful and looks amazing when lit up in the evenings, there's a large walled area on a hill that looks like a castle which you can walk up and view the resort from up high from. One piece of advice if you go for a walk up there past the restaurants on the hill, and try and go through the little opening that leads even further up the wall is to make sure you're completely through the tunnel before standing up, which I did not do - thus making me bang my head quite hard, and although very funny, it was very painful too.

Eating out is not a problem in this resort, there are LOADS of restaurants and cafés for you to eat in, most close about 12ish (on the sea front) and also seem to have very similar menu's to choose from but the food always seemed well prepared and tasty. One place that I cannot recommend highly enough is a restaurant called Can Pini (http://www.canpini.com/) which is situated up a side area off the main restaurant row on the sea front in the old town. They have a set menu that is a 3 course meal; it costs just 12.50 euros per person and is VERY filling. I had the hot cheese with herbs and toast to start, the pini pizza (as I'm vegetarian) and ice cream and crème brulee (not on the same visit). The service is excellent and the atmosphere relaxed but not so quiet that you don't feel you can talk in anything louder than a whisper.

They also have a couple of cafés - one of which we spent quite a bit of time in as it was quite near the sea front, this was called Caffeteria Gelateria and was fairly reasonable price wise for drinks, although I couldn't recommend their hot chocolate crepe as the one we had was very tough.

We found out the day before our last night that there is a bar called Chaplins that apparently does stay open later, gets quite busy and attracts a lot of English people and reps but we never got a chance to check it out in the end, but it might be worth looking up if you're going over there and want a bit more action. The people who own this bar also own another English bar called Time and Place, which is located quite near to the beach and offers a small selection of small tasty meals (sandwiches, chip butties etc) for a reasonable price (about 2.50 euros ish).

Parking is quite difficult in this resort, so if you're hiring a car for your holiday you can expect to have to walk a fair distance from your parking spot to where you're staying generally, especially if you're looking for free parking. There is a bus station that has buses going to Barcelona (18 euros each, return) and neighbouring Lloret De Mar (like a sunny Blackpool if I'm honest, and plenty of dodgy fake designer stuff which I wouldn't touch with a bargepole haha).

I didn't take note of any more routes but wherever you go, expect to be going through winding high up roads that can be quite unnerving (especially in the dark) - if you're driving it's definitely safer to be driving slowly and surely so as to be safe on those roads.

The weather when we went started a bit cloudy at times, but by the end of the holiday it was scorchio and I got a great tan so I'm not so pale and interesting anymore haha.

All in all, if you're looking for a fairly quiet holiday in a nice area then this is the place for you. If you want more action then I'd suggest finding somewhere a bit more lively as I'm not altogether sure how easy it is to go out of the area on public transport for the night/until late on.

Just a little afterthought.. i believe the nearest airport is Girona but we flew into Barcelona which is just over an hour or so away.

Summary: A quiet holiday!