Collioure

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Wednesday July 28, 2010, 6:56 am

Collioure

Couldn’t sleep, again, and I remembered how much I enjoyed yesterday morning, watching the sunrise and the town coming to life, so I’m up, writing on the tiny balcony of our ocean-view hotel room.

Getting this room was the best decision I could have made. It seemed expensive at the time I booked it, but for €80 a night we have a priceless location. All day yesterday, as the crowds languished in shady cafés or under quayside umbrellas, we kept returning to our room, to our terrace on the shady side of the bay. It’s the hotel Triton, and I recommend it.

A few people are out and about: a swimmer breast-strokes across the bay to the chateau, a jogger casts a long shadow on stone walls, some men bait their hooks and fish with bamboo poles, a man walks his dog on a short leash, a metal-detector wields his machine on the rocky beach. Trucks rattle by, the odd motorcycle buzzes. The waves swish lightly, a kayaker out to the open sea. Before the crowds wake up, it is peaceful here.

What a great place to spend a couple of days. The old town itself is pretty beyond pretty, with camera-perfect shots to be had every few meters. Matisse said the blue of the sky here was like no other, and we have seen that, in the evening, looking up between yellow-painted walls. It’s a visual delight, perfectly maintained (even in the private quarters) and spotlessly clean (I watched the street cleaners yesterday, a toy-sized sweeping truck—when its brushes couldn’t reach a scrap of paper, the driver jumped out with a broom to clean it up—followed by a toy-sized washing truck, spraying what smelled like disinfectant. You could eat off these streets.

The shops are tasteful, with nice quality clothing and art to buy. I haven’t seen a postcard shop; no stamped t-shirts or souvenir thimbles here. The ice cream shops make art with their glace, building colour-swirled mountains; the mango ice-cream had a small mango decorating it, the noisette a few hazelnuts, the chocolate a chocolate bar. Yesterday I tried “violette”, and it tasted like flowers.

Food here has been fantastic. We ate the first night at a Rick-Steves recommended restaurant, a tiny terrace in the old town. We had the Catalan menu. I started with Tapas consisting of Manchego cheese, “tomato bread”, thin-sliced ham, and continued with sea bass, a whole, somewhat bony fish, and finished with Creme Catalan, which is like a creme brulée with a citrus touch. Everything was delicious, but I ate too much and suffered for an hour afterwards. Yesterday I ate very little until dinner at 8:30. We went to “The Sails”, just along the quay from our hotel, which is the less-pricey partner to the Michelin-starred Neptune Restaurant. I had the famous Collioure sardines to start, arranged beautifully with a green salad and tomato toast, followed by a Catalan Salad (“de la mer et de la montagne”), a mass of greens topped with seafood and several types of dry, paper-thin-sliced ham. John started with an amazing gazpacho, followed by a chicken dish. We were wise enough not to order dessert.

It is crowded here, but we expected that, this being the tiny French version of St. Tropez. It’s a party atmosphere, so it’s fun. Parking, however, is a problem. When we arrived Monday, there was actually a guard at the lot beside our hotel (beach-front) stopping cars from entering. We found another lot and were extremely lucky to arrive just as a family was packing up to leave; the guard there directed us to wait. It wasn’t too far a walk to roll our luggage, but the lots are metered, with a three-hour limit, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., so we wanted to move the car closer for convenience. We watched all evening, and once the guard was gone, cars lined up in the lot waiting for a spot. Yesterday morning, I happened to wake up at 5:30, saw that there were spaces available, as there are now, and ran to get the car. I had planned to take a short drive yesterday, down the coast to the Spanish border, but once we had parking, we didn’t want to give it up. We’ll do the drive this morning, as we leave.



View from our balcony at sunrise:






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