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Costa Brava home base for 3 day excursion

My husband and I are traveling to Spain in May. We plan to spend 7 days in Barcelona then rent a car and spend 3 days, 2 nights in the Costa Brava. Two main questions:

  • should we spend 2 nights in one place and day trip from it? Or stay 2 places for 1 night each? Our only concern about staying in 2 places is we will by necessity have all of our things in the car while we explore and don’t want to have a theft issue.

  • based on an answer to the above question, where would you recommend staying? We would like to get all the way up to Cadaques and we love to explore hidden gems.

Cheers!

Linda

Posted by
4180 posts

Hi, I would stay in once place for two nights, hate to have 1 nights stays.

Regarding where to stay, I'd say if wanting to stay inland in a charming medieval city look at Girona. If wanting to stay on the coast in a whitewashed beach town I'd look at Calella de Palafrugell.

Hope this helps :)

Posted by
4 posts

Thank you very much for those suggestions! Anyone else have any additional feedback?

How ‘sleepy’ are the coastal towns in the evening? We are not looking for a party atmosphere but liveliness and various dinner options is nice.

Cheers,

Linda

Posted by
4180 posts

I don't think any of these beach towns on the Costa Brava are "sleepy" per say, it's quite well discovered by this point and very popular during the summer months with northern European holidaymakers, perhaps less so with Americans.

If looking for a slightly larger beach town with more after dark options I'd say Tossa de Mar could work better.

Posted by
11570 posts

We enjoyed staying in Begur on the Costa Brava.
Stay two nights.

Posted by
605 posts

We also stayed in Tossa Del Mar. But at the Gran Hotel Reymar, right at the beach. They had paid, valet, secure parking. One night in Tossa Del Mar was enough for us.
We drove from Tossa Del Mar, north along the coast to San Feliu de Guixols, stopping at viewpoints along the way. Another day, we drove to Girona and took a free (tip-based) walking tour, which we enjoyed a lot.
We stayed three nights at the Hotel Playa Sol in Cadaques, right on the beach. The hotel had paid, covered parking for the rental car. We visited the Dali house in Port Lligat. (reservations with time slot required). We had a Michelin star tasting menu dinner at Compartir in Cadaquez (reservations required.) I recommend spending 2 nights in one place and do a day trip if needed. While staying in Cadaques, we did a trip to Figureres to visit the Dali Museum, and then headed back to Cadaquez to relax.
The hidden gem we found in Cadaques was the Restaraurant Pilar on Carrer de la miranda 4. It was upstairs off a side street in what appeared to be a converted apartment, so we were weary- but the food was excellent and homemade and the menu al dia was an exceptional value. That taught us to never judge a book by it's cover.