Many thanks to Ray Morris for another one of his memorable stories from the days he worked in Lloret and Tossa de Mar. Ray is now living in Australia but it seems that his days of working in Spain are never far from his mind! ……..
I spent several hours watching footage of Tossa and Lloret on You Tube and it left me feeling like I had actually travelled there. In the footage of Lloret it looked like they had demolished most of the buildings and built a new town on the site. I got a kick out of seeing the old town hall building where I spent two hours in the jail looking out the window at people frolicing on the beach. Otherwise it was a large bustling city that I had never seen before.
Tossa was a different story where I recognized many places from 55 years ago. I saw the bar/nightclub where I had worked as a barman in 1962 fronting onto the beach and recognizable by its distinctive round top windows on the upper floor. It is no longer named "Chez Biel". Several doors down was the Bar Corisco which used to be named "Bar Coris" back in the old days. The Hotel Ramira is still there but I could not find the Hotel Reymar among the cluster of new waterfront buildings at the north end of the main beach. The garage and petrol station owned by the uncle of a friend had been replaced by a shop. I was favourably impressed by how they had turned the rock filled Codolar beach into a nice place to go and I got a good lock at the Rocamar building where I worked as a drink waiter in 1963. The beach was so crowded and there were lots and lots of anchored boats that did not exist back in the 1960s. I saw no evidence of the Cruceros and Escursiones passenger boats that used to be the main form of transport between Lloret, Tossa and San Feliu. Back then the winding dirt road between Lloret and Tossa was a slow bumpy trip.
I am now aged 88 so I would be unlikely to find anybody that I used to know in Tossa if I were to visit Spain after the COVID thing is over. The YouTube footage brought back so many memories of Tossa.
May you leave COVID behind and resume a normal life Jacqui.
