Last Updated on 29 April 2024 by gerry

Now that the threat of the stormy weather (which never really materialised) is out of the way, our plan today is to go to a nice Catalan restaurant in Sant Andreu de Llavaneres called Pins Mar and afterwards walk along the coast towards Mataró and find a spot on the beach for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

That was our best laid plans anyway, but like often happens we had to change tack when unforeseen circumstances threw us curve-ball. We got off the train at Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, a town we had yet to explore and we set off to have a look around on the other side of the main road. It proved more difficult than just following our nose to actually find where the centre of the town was and after a while we had to resort to google maps, prompting us to retrace our steps and find a street with a small convenience store on it. Here we were able to buy some provisions for our sunbathing stint later before heading back under the road and railway line to walk south to the Pins Mar restaurant.

When we arrived there about 1.20pm, there were tables and chairs arranged around its outdoor areas but not a soul to be found. We can only speculate they were taking the Tuesday off in lieu of working the May Day holiday Monday. We had researched another restaurant called Can Jaume in the area so we made our way back along the coastal path northwards past the railway station and the nice Platja de l’estació. Just before the Port Balís harbour complex we spotted a lovely looking restaurant clearly serving food on their beachfront terrace. “This will do”, we both declared as we’d tramped back and forth enough at this stage.

We were welcomed very warmly by a man from the restaurant as I asked Tens un menú del dia? (do you have a menu of the day?) – “no, we have a la carte and I can speak well in English”. As we perused the menu, it dawned on me that this actually was the Can Jaume restaurant and I’d got it confused with another restaurant in the neighbouring municipality of Sant Vicenç. Enough confusion – it was time to relax and enjoy our lunchtime celebration with a glorious beach view, a nice bottle of cava, really delicious food and excellent service.

After such a good outcome to the adjusted first part of our plans, we were more than happy to adjust the location of the second part and instead of heading to Mataró we walked towards Sant Vicenç and Caldes d’Estrac to find a nice spot on the beach there to lie down for what was left of the afternoon. Although we had walked this stretch of coast and enjoyed the xiringuitos there before we had actually used one of these beaches for sunbathing and a swim. It is a long stretch of beach and we were delighted to find it relatively sparsely populated so it was easy to find a nice spot to put down our blanket and have a swim. It was another lovely calm day for swimming and the gradient into the water was gentle, so we staying in for a good 10 – 15 really relaxing minutes.

We had one more surprise at the end of our day, as we reached Caldes d’Estrac we decided to explore what was beyond the railway station on the beach side and found a lovely little bar on the sand that was full of life while all the other xiringuitos had closed for the day.