Visit the small town of Olot

Wild flowers on the roadside

the next day

Early in the morning we took an intercity bus and drove to Olot, a small town 150 kilometers away from Barcelona, and checked into Les Cols Pavellons Hotel.

Fallen leaves on the ground after the rain

Quiet hotel entrance

Minimalist industrial style front desk

The design of this old 17th-century stone house turned restaurant and hotel was designed by the same architects RCR. The founders are all locals and won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2017.

Founder of RCR Architects (picture from the Internet)

Designed for a minimalist experience that incorporates nature, this hotel has only five rooms in total. The main building material of the guest rooms is green glass, integrating the indoors with the outdoor natural environment.

A family restaurant run by a chef in a century-old house for 29 years

Banquet space for thousands of people

Fully transparent space design

Excellent lighting effect

The room adopts a minimalist design, with no TV, no tables, chairs, and no storage space. The roof is also made of glass. The partitions can be opened by electronic remote control, and you can fall asleep counting the stars at night. The design of the wash basin is interesting. It uses filtered circulating water and the design of simulating a mountain spring is impressive.

Although you will be impressed by many of its details in this highly personalized hotel, the living experience may not be very comfortable. This may be why the designers want to remind guests of the trade-offs and choices they need to make between luxury and environmental protection. .

Lying in bed and looking up at the stars

Bathing room covered with volcanic stones and semi-open hot spring pool

Wash basin designed to simulate a mountain spring

Les Cols Pavellons

Address: Lloc Mas Les Cols 2 Direccion Carretera de la Canya, 17800 Olot

Woo woo woo.LES col spa VE LL ONS.com

Recommendation index : ★★★★

The hotel restaurant Les Cols is the family restaurant of Fina Puigdevall, a 2-star Michelin chef. It has been in business for 29 years. It focuses on natural vegetarian food and supplies most of the ingredients from its own organic farm. Perhaps because the restaurant is run by female chefs, a considerable proportion of female chefs are here, which is relatively rare in European Michelin-starred restaurants.

There was still about an hour before the scheduled lunch time. The restaurant staff took us to visit the hotel garden, enjoy welcome wine and snacks in the outdoor sunshine, and then to the restaurant kitchen to show us corn sandwiches made from buckwheat flowers, buckwheat seeds and buckwheat flour. , paired with homemade craft beer.

lobby

wine cellar

dining table

Meticulous meal preparation

The kitchen is well organized

simple table setting

archway to garden

Welcome wine in the sun

While appetizers are in progress

Self-produced buckwheat series

Homemade buckwheat brew

Today's menu

She looks like Mary from "Downton Abbey"

Herb vegetable slices

Steamed white beans in peppery vegetable oil

Lightly pickled bay fruit

Pickled Figs

Fresh snow fungus

Caramel Pumpkin

Garden Green Salad

local brew

cheese tomatoes

Grilled wild baby mushrooms

Tricolor olive sauce with grilled lettuce

Grilled white eggplant

air-dried ham

cheese platter

Catalonia cheese mix

Chestnut ice cream and chestnut rolls

Chocolate bar with coffee

Les Cols

Address: Carretera de la Canya s/n, 17800 Olot

Woo woo woo.LES co teacher.com

Recommendation index : ★★★★

It took nearly four hours to eat lunch, but my body felt light. Probably because most of the dishes were natural and vegetarian. The wonderful combination of various sauces was pleasant, and it was a cost-effective dining experience.

Since the evening, Minyi has been thinking about going to the farm of Les Cols restaurant to visit, but she was told that because the restaurant is closed every Monday, the farm cannot arrange reception. Considering that we had to take the bus back to Barcelona at noon the next day, we asked the hotel to book a taxi early in the morning to go to the city to visit the park and visit RCR's architectural works.

Fruit trees in the yard

The third day

At eight o'clock in the morning, the taxi arrived on time, taking the picnic prepared by the hotel for us, and on an impromptu trip to the countryside of La Vall de Bianya, Girona Province.

This is Hort I+D, the site of Les Cols restaurant’s own farm. This small farm is backed by the rural horizontal houses created by the famous RCR architectural team. These courtyards are divided into thin strips of varying widths by their expertly divided form, which are deeply embedded in the earth, forming a similar shape. Sunken courtyard.

Rural Horizontal House (picture from the Internet)

Hort I+D Farm backed by horizontal housing

Since the restaurant was closed on Monday, I had not made a reservation with the owner of the private residence in advance, so I sneaked into the farm quietly. Gillem, the farm manager, discovered me as an intruder. After explaining our intention, although he did not expect our arrival, he still happily took us to visit his natural farming works.

Gillem lives in Olot, majored in agricultural management at university, and worked for the Les Cols family to establish a farm project dedicated to maintaining as much biodiversity as possible through some methods and living in harmony with nature. The biggest problem he currently encounters is that French ships brought a ferocious alien bee when they entered Spain, which ate the local worker bees responsible for pollination, resulting in a significant reduction in buckwheat production. The current government does not pay attention to it, and there seems to be no solution. , can only rely on eagles to prey on French hives. Gillem took us to taste the carrots, black radishes and rhubarb he grew. At the end, he also presented white pumpkins called angel hair and various peppers to enrich our picnic. Thank you for having us, see you in Shanghai in the future.