Cake, chocolate and raspberry tarts.

Here's a lovely picture of Mark's birthday cake, for once not created by himself, but by a fancy shop in town. The Sydney Opera house, chocolate sculpture topping was worth a couple of days of puritan vegetable soup, 6,000 calories a wave I should think.
We very rarely go in Pujola: once a year at Easter to buy something for Ezra, mainly as it's a chance to gawp at the array of beautiful chocolate eggs, fish and chickens all done up with bright satin ribbons. Occasionally I might call in to buy a jam tart as theirs are better than any others I've ever tasted.
My Aunty Lily (featured as the Queen a few posts back) used to make raspberry jam tarts. I'd love to be able to say that they were delicious, that I would crave the sound of her ancient biscuit tin being taken out of the pantry. Alas not.
Out would come the tin: "Here, my darling, I've made tarts! I know how much you love them." They were almost ceramic in their hardness, the jam burnt to the bottom of the pastry in dark, Dracula pools. Aunty Lily and her musty smelling front room with the three bar electric fire; 1950's red and black curtains, Daily Mirror and Players No 6.
We would eat the tarts, drink tea and then she would heave herself out of her chair muttering about where the cat had got to. I would shrink into my own chair, embarrassed, knowing the words she was about to yell over the back garden.
The back door would creak and she'd stand there, calling for the huge monster cat: "Nigger, NIGGER, Nigs, where are you?"

Building No 18

Look at this place . . . is it not an incredible structure? Maybe not compared to Sydney Opera house or the the Taj Mahal, but its presence in this wild, windswept part of Spain is heart-stopping nonetheless.
When we first saw 'Restaurant Cap Creus' it was rather more crumbly looking, which I preferred, being an admirer of the crumbly genre of building, however, I'm sure it was necessary to slap on a few coats of paint in order to combat the horizontal rain and violent winds.
This time we visited, we had just stocked up on as much food as possible from the hotel buffet, so food was not actually important - most unusual. So we just had a drink, gazing out over the impossibly beautiful sea, inlets, coastlines and rugged surrounding hills.
Trip advisor revealed a great variety of reviews encompassing total snarling hatred through to, this changed my life, thank you guys. Seems the chef (and owner) has good days and bad days like us all, but I for one salut him for getting this place up and running, and it being there to offer delicious looking-fish dishes, tapas and beers to weary hikers. Actually, most people there seemed to have rolled up in shining Audis and had deigned to walk thirty metres to the terrace in their leather jackets and reflective sunglasses.

I was so taken with this building the first time we visited the region that it's become the basis for, 'The Mad Dog Café' in my series of novels, but set somewhere on a hill near Cerbère and Banyuls-sur-Mer