Pals with Palamos











 Today's stop is Palamos, which I will be honest I had never heard of before we booked the cruise, it is situated about half way between Barcelona to the south and the French border to the north. Originally a small fishing port, it has developed over recent years into quite a busy port, catering for pleasure boaters, water sporters and of course the odd cruise ship, whilst maintaining its fishing heritage. We have booked an excursion to a little hilltop village called Pals this morning and will explore Palamos when we return.

Pals is situated about 20 kilometers North East of Palamos, with the old town being 5 kilometers in land.Population wise it is quite a small place(2.5 thousand inhabitants), but large in terms of land mass, having its own stretch of beach even though it is 5 kilometers away from the sea. The old town is perched on the top of a hill( not a huge one), and provides a very scenic view of its surrounding neighbourhoods, most of which is rural or semi rural at best. For its population it is quite a wealthy village gaining most of its income from the growing of rice, which was the reason for our visit. Prior to 1900 it was a constant battle between feeding the population with rice and  Malaria caused by the stagnant water that was needed to grow the rice. This was solved by a local man who having made his fortune in the USA, came back home and completely transformed the area's irrigation system, which meant the water needed was no longer stagnant. We had an hour to explore the old town, before we jumped on a trolley train, which took us for a tour of the rice fields, and then to the mill where the rice is processed, ready for sale. Within Spain it has 4% of the rice producing land, but produces 12% of the countries rice. As a by product from the rice production a lot of animal foods are produced, so quite a lot of the surrounding area is home to livestock production as well. The rice mill tour was really interesting, showing the process from planting through to packaging the rice, also as a by product they produce rice flour, gluten free pasta and rice beer, which was also very nice.

One we returned to the ship, we had a walk into Palamos, stopping for beverages, on the way, there weren't too many shops open as it was siesta time, but Perdita did manage to sniff out a shot glass to add to our ever increasing collection, obviously a set of new shelves to house them all is going to be on my jobs to do list, when we get home. We then spent the rest of our time at the museum of fishing which isn't  Perdita's favourite pastime, but we have to cater for everyone, even me. The museum was a little unusual as it didn't just look at fishing in the past and present, but also looked at the steps being taken  by Palamos fishermen, to try and make their industry more sustainable, and environmentally friendly. Well worth a visit.




Unfortunately I lost internet before I had chance to finish the blog last night, and we didn't get to Corsica until late morning today, however it did mean I got the chance of getting a couple of pictures of Perdita climbing the walls this morning. Personally I think she was enjoying the attention of her instructor far to much, she seemed to take ages to get her harness adjusted correctly.





Pongo and Perdita signing off til later.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get off your horse and drink your milk.

Image
 Today we stopped of at Cartagena(not the one in Columbia), I say this because every time I Google things to do in Cartagena the Columbian Cartagena comes up first. We have been here before and wanted to try something new and as a special treat for Perdita ( I have been promising her one for weeks if she walked up the rock on Gibraltar)  which she did on Thursday with lots of puffing and panting, dirty looks and even a few choice words. She even said she hated me( remember how that feels Bare), and for a time I think she really meant it. I had booked us in to go to an equestrian centre, to go for a hack( I am a novice, though Perdita is quite proficient) I had researched for this and we had to catch the Alsa L14 bus at the bus terminus, so when we got off the ship we got a map and the lady giving them out marked on the map the route we should take.We set of and arrived there in good time to catch said bus. Unfortunately when it arrived at the stop it just drove straight past us without
Read more

Chocolate, rum and a handmade cigar.

Image
            Today's destination is Amber Cove in the Domican Republic, we had booked to go diving down some waterfalls, however my knee has been playing up for the last  couple of days and although the first part of the trip was by coach, the last 40 minutes involve quite a severe up hill climb, so I reluctantly gave in to Perdita's sensible side, and we changed our trip to a more sedate Flavours of Puerta Plata (meaning silver port) tour. The tour started at 12.30 pm and 1st stage involved a coach trip to a local farm,out in the sticks, where we were treated to a taster of 3 rums, all from the same company(Brugal), one a young dark rum, another aged in American whiskey casks and a white rum, the aged one had been aged for 10 years and was obviously the  best and being a rum drinker I bought a bottle to enjoy once I got back home with friends. Whilst at the farm,we were provided with our lunch which was a buffet if rice and a beef and chicken stew with potatoes, sweet potatoes,
Read more

Houston we have a problem!!!!

Image
          The next day was the half way point of our adventure, so dictated we were back at Port Canaveral for the swap over of new passengers and crew, it also meant that everyone on board had to get off the ship to go through the American immigration checks, this included all the crew members as well. Some of the life boat had been lowered, though I am not sure if that was for planned maintenance or do the immigration officers could do spot checks for stowaways or maybe a bit of both.           We had booked ourselves on a full day excursion to  Cape Canaveral Space Center, which was the most expensive trip we had booked at over £100 each, so we had high expectations. I deliberately left out one thing in earlier blogs, thinking it would fit into this nicely. On our 1st day whilst we were leaving Port Canaveral we were lucky enough to witness a space launch, which was amazing and probably the highlite of the holiday so far. The lauch should have taken place the prevois day
Read more