2014 Spanish Food Adventure - Day 3

Lunch in Sant Pol De Mar and second night of the festival 

We headed down for breakfast with no hangover, it seemed like our decision to not get too drunk last night had paid off, we were delighted!

 The choice of breakfast items here were much more basic than what we had experienced at the Aqua Promenade Hotel in Pineda. The food was much nicer here though and with it being a much smaller hotel the breakfast room felt relaxing and much less hectic.

Another good thing about the breakfast here was that the hot drinks, orange juice and toast was brought to the table, this meant you spent less time collecting breakfast items and more time enjoying the food whilst it was still hot. 

 After breakfast we went for a walk, we spotted the tourist train and added it to our list of things to do whilst we were here.

We decided to search for Parc Dalmau located behind the main streets of Calella.

 It was easy enough to find and appeared to head up into the hills.

 A fairly peaceful park, shaded nicely by the trees.

 We reached the top where there was a good view of Calella down below. There seemed to be nothing much else to explore here though so we headed back down again.

We sat at a beach bar, a nice little spot but some of the dire 90's chart music being played here ensured our visit would be a brief one.

Over a coke we decided to walk to the next resort and find somewhere to eat lunch.

 We headed out of Calella and walked beside the main road until we reached..

Sant Pol De Mar

It wasn't an ideal day to be sitting on the beach so we walked into the town.

 A delightful little place with some lovely buildings. We struggled to find many restaurants open though and walked for sometime until we found somewhere we liked the look of.

La Casa looked promising so we sat down to lunch.

 They were just serving this set menu for €10.50, we could roughly work out what was on it so we placed our order.

Forget mayo and ketchup, this week was all about balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

We started with a nice cold beer.

 A basket of bread arrived next, trying to not eat it before the starter arrived was quite tricky!

My wife choose a healthy starter of anchovies, they came served on a bed of tuna and lettuce leaves.

My choice of starter was canalones, my first though when it arrived was how will I ever manage a main course too! It tasted incredible with an amazing white sauce, this had a hint of mustard and went beautifully with the cheese topping.

Not to be confused with Italian Cannelloni which is made with minced beef, Spanish canalones are filled with a ground mix of veal and pork. A truly delicious starter and a sauce that was perfect to mop up with the bread.

My wife choose grilled sardines for her main course, I must confess that when they arrived food envy kicked in!

I went for a a beef steak in roquefort sauce served with homemade chips. The roquefort sauce complimented the steak beautifully and was not too strong so I was happy. A second basket of bread had arrived at this point, I vowed not to touch it but it seemed insane not to mop up this amazing sauce with it. There was not a huge amount of chips but this suited me fine as I was getting very full up by this point and each one I popped into my mouth was just devine.

My wife very kindly gave me one of her delicious sardines, really fresh and the best I have ever had the pleasure of eating.

 When a dessert was offered we were pleasantly surprised as we weren't expecting one. We both choose Spanish flan, they were fairly generous with the cream!

 This delicious creamy desert slid down with ease and was a great end to this amazing meal.

Before we left we had an espresso, I wish sugar sachets this size were available in the UK, a proper serving of sugar!

Sant Pol De Mar was like a ghost town, I guess everyone was having a siesta.

 The heat was beating down on us and my thoughts turned to sun stroke, we had applied a small amount of suncream after breakfast but had left it at the hotel. With exposed shoulders we tried to walk in the shade on the walk back but there was very little.

Some cormarants were resting on the rocks, we would return to take a closer look another time though as we needed to find some shade.

After a siesta we headed back to the festival, this little square seemed a good choice for a drink on the way, the locals here were really friendly.

With the vodka and tonic some nuts arrived, covered in a really salty coating to ensure you need another drink!

We didn't want to drink on an empty stomach so we ordered a bikini, my wife went for cheese and tomato.

I went for a traditional ham and cheese bikini, this was far better than the one we had eaten yesterday and with a far more generous serving of cheese too.

One down, three to go.

Mojito time again!

The first band we watched was The Brains from Canada, a great band and a top performance as always. 

Vodka & Rockstar in a pint glass, a good plan!

I had never seen Swiss band The Monsters before, I enjoyed their trash, garage set and seeing 2 drummers playing opposite each other was a good twist. Yep, these guys were great!

The drinks pattern was similar to the night before, with any luck we could pull off the no hangover trick again.

I spotted these sandwiches for sale by the bar area, not a patch on that amazing squidgy sandwich I had spotted yesterday though.

The last band we saw were The Long Tall Texans from England, one of my favourite bands and always a good live show. It was great to hear so many songs from their latest album which I love, top stuff!

Day 4 - Rocapins, Bon Lloc and more from the festival, click here.