Cadaqués is one of the most beautiful villages on the Catalan Costa Brava — a whitewashed fishing port tucked into a rocky bay on the Cap de Creus peninsula. Its relative inaccessibility (a winding mountain road with no train connection) kept it from the worst of coastal overdevelopment and gave it a character that larger resorts have lost.
Salvador Dalí lived here for much of his life, and the connection is genuine: the landscape of Cap de Creus, with its eroded limestone formations and strange seascape, runs throughout his surrealist paintings. The Casa Museu Dalí in nearby Portlligat gives you a look inside the eccentric compound where he worked for decades.
The Cap de Creus Natural Park surrounding the village is the easternmost point of the Iberian Peninsula and excellent walking country. The ruined monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes surveys the whole peninsula from the ridge above. South of Roses, the remote cove of Cala Montjoi is where Ferran Adrià's legendary restaurant El Bulli once operated. The evening light bouncing off the whitewashed waterfront explains why artists kept coming here.