GR92: Cadaqués to Roses, Figueres and Barcelona

GR92, Friday September 30, 2022, Cadaqués to Roses We departed Hotel Vehí at 7.30 am. This hotel and its staff were fabulous, fully deserving the 9.2 rating on Booking.com. No surprise, the walk more or less started out with a climb albeit one that was not as long, or as steep, as we'd become accustomed to. After descending to sea level the path skipped from one beach to the next. It was fabulous and very much a contrast to the GRP and GR11, which were also fabulous but the scenery was very different. We stopped at one beach for a very leisurely lunch before arriving in Roses, our destination for the day, at 4 pm and checked into the aptly named Hotel Ramblamar. This was an off-season deal at only €66, including breakfast. We went to a nearby Bonpreu supermarket and, to my astonishment, they had confit du canard ("Muslo de Pato" in Spanish) in the refrigerator section, so that's what we had for dinner. It's one thing that never fails to be good. This is truly the end of the walks on this trip, but what a great way to end it! How many times did I say this was "fabulous"? This trip couldn't have worked out better if we'd planned it. Of course, we did plan it but it nevertheless worked out a lot better than we'd expected. For one thing, we allowed 6 weeks, figuring the GRP and GR11 would take 4 weeks, and then we'd figure out what to do with the other two weeks when the time came. In reality, however, the GRP took longer than expected and then we prolonged our stay in Andorra. On the GR11, during the several days when heavy rain was forecast, we booked 2 consecutive nights in hotels and took a zero day to wait out the rain. We only had to walk in rain very briefly during the whole 6 weeks. Our timetable also ensured that we were outside the European vacation time. We were told, at Hotel Vehí, that not only is it unbearably hot in August but Cadaqués is inundated with tens of thousands of tourists a day. It's so much nicer now, they told us. At the bus station in We learned of the GR92 while we were walking the GR11. If we had more time we could have walked more of the GR92 that follows the Costa Brava coastline. Starting in Andorra and ending on the Costa Brava meant the temperature was always perfect, or at least agreeable, as it never reached freezing and never went above 80 F. Figueres After spending a night in Roses we took a bus (€3.20 each) to Figueres. From the bus, we could see that the high peaks are now covered in snow. It looks as though snow level was around 6,000'. Our €90 hotel in Figueres (no breakfast) was only a minute's walk from the Dali theatre-museum that we toured in the afternoon. We even got in at a reduced rate, €11 vs. €17 each, because we're old people. I'm not a huge fan of museums but this one was really interesting so we stayed until they kicked us out at closing time. Dalí used the Figueres theater, billed as the largest surrealistic object in the world, that he had rebuilt after it was badly damaged during the Civil war to house some of his earlier work in addition to art that he purpose-made for the museum. He literally poured his life and soul into the museum as he also made it his mausoleum. In the morning we toured the Museu de l'Empordà in Figueres (free entry with our Dalí museum tickets). I didn't care too much for the older works, mostly paintings. I found the modern art a lot more interesting. Barcelona We walked to the Vilafant train station in Figueres that served the high-speed trains going to Madrid, with a stop at Barcelona Sants. On going through train security I was made to surrender my Campingaz canister. I hadn't even given it a second thought. The 8-coach electric train's speed topped out at 200km/hr (125 mph). At Sants Estació, we purchased two "T-casual" metro tickets, only €7.95 each thanks to a temporary 20% price reduction, good for 10 trips including the Renfe train to El Prat airport. We checked into our hotel just off La Rambla (€108 per night, no breakfast). We took a series of three subway lines to Santa Coloma and then walked to the summit of Puig Castellar, where the remains of an Iberian settlement are located that has been dated to between the 6th and 3rd century BC. The houses were strikingly reminiscent of the Anasazi ruins in the US Southwest in the way that they were laid out. The summit offered an aerial view over Barcelona. The last subway line we took, L9, was completed in 2019 and is so deep underground that descending in the elevator reminded me of the scene from Forbidden Planet where we were given a glimpse of the Krell's energy-generating system. We set off for the airport just before 10 am on our last day. First, we took the L3 subway line to Sants Estació, then a Renfe trail to the airport, and finally an airport shuttle bus from Terminal 2 to 1. It took a total of 2 1/2 hours from the hotel to reach our departure gate, giving us an hour's leeway prior to boarding our flight.