Last Updated on 29 April 2024 by gerry

We really like it here. It’s just what we need. We’re finding Arenys de Mar is a relaxing place for us, while around us we have the awareness that the town has a lot going on. The main street where our flat is located is always busy with people going about their business and there are many cultural activities advertised on the local council’s billboards.

After another granola breakfast I nipped across the street to the greengrocers and picked up a lovely selection of fruit. This can be lunch we can eat along the way as we head out. I think we are a wee bit unrealistic with such crazy ideas around limiting our mealtimes in this way.

Today we decided to push our orientation a little further in our immediate environs and went for a good long stroll along the beach heading out of town southbound, i.e. in the Barcelona direction. Placed along this camí every 200m or so, there is adult gym apparatus to encourage some exercise. We encounter a few cyclists and we make a mental note to check out bike hire. Having seen the bikes we are bit surprised to find that the walkway / cyclepath is not without major obstacles that force us across the railway lines and onto the main road before long. At this point there is a retail park with a Lidl, McDonalds and cinema among other things.

We buy some picnic material in Lidl and navigate our slightly perilous access back to the safety of the coastal path and make our way back in the direction of Arenys, until we find a nice bench to stop and eat and take in the glorious surroundings. It feels really quite warm at this point and we notice more and more people are heading for a spot on the beach. I say “more and more” – the numbers are just about making it into double figures, so the place isn’t exactly crowded, mind you we’ve seen nobody in the water as yet. It’s about 5pm as we gather ourselves up off the bench and walk home.

We’re still in the mood for some more exploring, so we head right past our front door and gently uphill on the Riera. I’m looking for the Centre Calisay, which I’d seen on some cultural event posters. It’s a gorgeous building not far up the hill and there is an event just about to start inside. It was once a distillery for the Calisay liquer, I think, and there are many stills on display along with a poster display about the new recycling scheme in the town.

We continue on up the hill as it begins to get dark. There’s an impressive building at the top of some steps through a park. It’s the Xifré hospital, which is no longer operational and the park is where a lot of the local teenagers hang out in the evenings, so we’ll explore that another day. At the limit of our walk we check out a supermarket we haven’t been in yet, Condis, and it’s quite big and impressive. We buy a couple of bottles of red wine and decide on home cooking tonight. We have our “home from home” plan after all and it’s Friday and “date night”, so salad, pizzas and wine will fit the bill nicely.