Last Updated on 29 April 2024 by gerry

We woke up today with a plan to visit Calella, one of the bigger Maresme resort with, I believe, a reputation for night life, particularly in high summer. We had an additional motive in that Calella was home to the nearest Ale-Hop outlet and having seen the competitive pricing of their summer hats in Barcelona the other day, I was totally on-board with going there to get some headgear as our day on the the city bus tour confirmed we both need some protection in that regard.

So first things first on arrival in Calella, we head straight for the Ale-Hop shop and pick a hat. This leads to one of the notable features of Calella – Carrer d’església is a very long pedestrian street full of shops, primarily aimed towards tourist clientele. We spend a bit of time exploring, grab a coffee / tea and then gently continue our exploratory stroll with the end-goal of finding the beach. We discover the town hall square, which has a nifty Uruaguayan bar and then the most touristy end of town, with nightclubs and outdoor eateries. The eateries are already busy but I guess the nightclubs have a few months to go to meet their full potential in the evenings.

We head down under the railway tracks and road to experience the wide expansive beach. There are few souls there to join us, but we spend a very pleasant 40mins enjoying the sun, lying on the sand. At this point I propose an idea that instead of going straight home we explore another Maresme town, new to us: Montgat. Montgat is relatively far south down the R1 trainline beyond Arenys de Mar, almost to Badalona. Earlier I had seen some mention of a Panoramic Bar in Montgat with great views of Barcelona. The bar is currently “temporarily closed”, but I’m curious to see if this might be a cool location for my birthday on Friday.

It is about 40mins on the train to Montgat, but the journey goes quickly and I have attempted to plot our best course to navigate to the promised panoramic viewpoint, though google maps leaves some ambiguity with discrepancies between the directions by car and on foot. The conditions on the ground make it clear that it is a much longer climb than the directions by car make out. I’m a bit dubious about whether this will be worth it, but we agree that we’ve come this far and we should persevere to see what awaits us.

As we climb the pedestrian steps, we have a sports centre on one side of us and possibly a school on the other. Google maps is still being a bit ambiguous about the best route on foot, so we soldier on with common sense and before too long we do reach the summit of the hill and the view of Barcelona does not disappoint. There is no sign of what might be a bar at this point, but we feel rewarded enough with the view and also the knowledge that, although worthwhile, this location does not offer much more for a birthday celebration venue for us.

We follow a different path to descend and chance upon the location of the fabled panoramic bar, which looks like it is only open in the summer months, but when high season does arrive, it would be a very pleasant place to hang out. Nearby there are a couple of battlements from the civil war and surprisingly they still contain the huge anti-navy guns.