Costa Brava Day 2: Palamós

     After our group was done romping around Besalú, we drove about an hour and a half to a beach town called Palamós. Palamós is beautifully located at the northern end of a large bay. Our director, Big Rich, had some connections with the owners of a sweet beach side hotel. This place sums up Costa Brava in a few short photos. Some of our activities included hiking, swimming, kayaking, cliff jumping, beach soccer, cooking, shopping, eating, drinking, and sleeping. Almost all in that order too. Check out some eye candy in this photo packed post.
#Activities

This was the view from our 7th floor penthouse suite, obviously. 

Casual friday night dinner at the hotel's restaurant... thanks BIC

Went on a walk in the morning and this is what I found

     I would be content with getting married here. My wife might want something bigger and better though, who knows...

     This is where the cliff jumping occurred. If you look closely at the bottom left portion of the picture there is a dark cave that actually turns into a tunnel and comes out the other side just to the left of the boat. The other side of the cave was a perfect spot to jump as high as you want. There was one problem, how do you get to the perfect jumping spot? The answer is quite easy - Rally the troops, rent a few kayaks, paddle up the coast a bit, and anchor just where that boat is. I dove the landing area a few times to make sure there wasn't a nice big boulder waiting for us at the bottom and it without a doubt it was deep enough and big enough to do whatever one feels safe doing off a rock cliff into crystal clear water. Alex and I proceeded to climb the rock face and huck ourselves off a few times. Half the fun was climbing up the face, it got your heart racing a bit and there was no turning back. Perfect mid day adrenaline rush.
#Ganor

Did I mention this was our hotel view? Yee

Found this little house on a day hike with a few others. Pretty cool. Turned out to be one of Gaudi's numerous casas. This must have been his Palamós beach hut

     After our beach adventure, we went on a cultural expedition to a local fishing port for a cooking demonstration. Compared to the cliff jumping this was jury duty. Turned out to be pretty cool though, we learned about how the fishermen brought in their daily catch and auctioned it off to local markets. We were lucky enough to try some of the popular dishes as well. Below is a fish called pift gato, meaning shark fish. 

The gentlemen up front also cooked suket (fish), fideuá (noodles w/ garlic cream sauce) and octopus (octopus). All tasted pretty good!

       After the cooking expo we walked down the street and had the option of going to a fish museum or doing whatever you wanted for the rest of the evening. In hopes that group participation would boost my spanish grade I decided to tough it out and walk through this wonderful place