The last hotel night and activities for the 3-day “post-TBEX Europe 2012 Girona, Spain” Costa Brava Tourism sponsored tour for a van full of eight travel bloggers was at the spa hotel Balneari Prats in Caldes de Malavella.

Balneari Prats Hotel & Spa, Caldes de Malavella

The small town of Caldes de Malavella, population under 5,000 residents today, is prominent for Roman spa ruins and bottled mineral water.

2,000 years ago Romans settled in this location for its thermal springs. Read More…

The Catalan terminology for the meals part of our Costa Brava tour was referred to as gastronomy. This is the science of food eating. I like the sound of gastronomy more than cuisine.

Typically I only occasionally eat in restaurants. Food is expensive and when traveling I try and eat heavily at breakfast and lunch, supplement the day with supermarket food, then once every few days go out for a restaurant meal.

Typically I get by on less than $50 per day aside from hotels. In Europe restaurant meals can easily run $50 per day per person.

My three days with six complimentary restaurant meals would have likely made me the 600 EUR gastronomist without my sponsor. Costa Brava Tourist Board made sure we were well fed.

Club-Hotel Giverola

Our blogger group left Tossa de Mar driving north about 5km along the coast. The ocean views were amazing along this southern section of the Costa Brava, 85 kilometers north of Barcelona.

The driver said the road has 365 bends. I do not know how long a stretch of road he meant. We probably made 50 bends in the 5km from Tossa de Mar to Cala Giverola. Read More…

When I mentioned I was interested in hotels while touring Tossa de Mar, our guide said we would be walking near a two-star boutique hotel in town.

Hotel Diana is currently ranked by TripAdvisor.com as #4 of 42 hotels in Tossa de Mar. In my article Tossa de Mar, Costa Brava- Blue Paradise I mentioned the town’s population swells from 6,000 year-round to 50,000 in August. Needless to say hotels get booked.

Hotel Diana

The hotel’s website calls the hotel a modernist piece of architecture.

The hotel is a modernist building with over 100 years of history and built by Antoni de Falguera i Sivilla, disciple and collaborator of Antoni Gaudí. It is listed as a unique building by the Tossa de Mar Town Council. The décor and installations have preserved the building’s modernist character while at the same time they have been adapted for the comfort of guests during their stay. Hotel Diana website.

Fodor’s calls Hotel Diana a 1906 Art Nouveau hotel gem. Read More…

My expectations of Costa Brava were built up around picture images of a great seascape on rugged hills overlooking the Balearic Sea on the northeast coast of Spain. I had been in Catalonia for a week and the only seascape I had seen was a city boardwalk along Barcelona’s seafront.

Tossa de Mar, Costa Brava

Finally, after a week in Spain, I was on my way to see the Costa Brava in daylight with a visit to Tossa de Mar, a seaside town about 60 miles north of Barcelona and 60 miles south of the border with France. Read More…