Girona- Quiet Class

I arrived in Girona without any problems and caught a bus to the center of the city.  After briefly consulting my map, I took off to find my hostel and accidentally ended up right outside.  Quelle chance!  I dropped off my backpack and set off to do some exploring.  First impressions:  wow.  In Malta, everything was old, but felt like it was just in disrepair and was starting to fall apart.  Girona, in contrast, has that beautiful “aged” look of a place where you can practically feel the history coming out of the walls to greet you.  If you were comparing cities to celebrities, Malta could be Farah Fawcett, while Girona’s more like Meryl Streep. 

Some of Girona’s highlights: 

1.        The commercial part of the city.  The names of streets and places are named after the activities that happened (and in some cases, still happen) there- ie the placa del Vi (wine), placa de l’Oli (olive oil), and carrer de l’Argenteria (silversmiths), which I thought was pretty cool.  It was an all-around sweet place to wander.

2.       El call.  This is the old Jewish quarter: not a place to visit while wearing stilettos, as I’m sure you’d catch your heel on the cobblestones and break your ankle unless you’re a French woman born and raised in sky-high shoes :)  This area is a bit of a maze, but it’s one of the places I was talking about where you can feel the history if you just close your eyes and imagine a bit!

3.       The bridges over the River Onyar, which let you see riverside houses up and down the water. 

View from La Catedral

4.       La Catedral- I didn’t go in, but the view from the outside was spectacular.  It’s also one of those places that is kind of hiding until you just turn the corner and, boom!  There it is :)

5.       El parc de la Devesa.  This is apparently one of the largest city parks in Catalonia and I would love to see the riverbank market that happens on Tuesday and Saturday mornings !

6.       The Christmas market.  The merchant stands had some really cute handmade jewelry and actually things that I’d consider buying, rather than stand after stand of tourist-trappy things :)

I was so proud of myself because I went to a boulangerie and pointed at the bread that I wanted and the lady told me that it was one fifty (in Spanish) and I both understood her and was able to give her the correct amount!  My crowning moment was at the market, when a woman asked if I had another 2 euros so she could give me a 10 instead of 8 in coins.  She kept talking to me the whole time in Spanish and I’m hoping that she thought I spoke Spanish and was just mute ;)  I was actually really impressed with how well I was able to both understand things and get around.  Because Girona is part of Catalonia, most of the signs are both in Spanish and Catalan and one or the other invariably has a strong resemblance to either French or English or both, so with the help of cognates, I was able to manage pretty well with my primitive Spanish level.  This was in stunning contrast to Malta, where even though technically they spoke my language, I felt lost looking at any number of signs!  Funny how those things work out. 

Me on the walls of Girona

Possibly my favorite part of Girona was the torres del passig de la Muralla, the wall walkway’s towers.  It was really cool to be able to walk all along the old walls of the city, and it was a fabulous way to look out onto the city and the surrounding area.  I was even able to snap a few pictures of myself on the walls due to the ‘delay’ setting and some stable rocks.  I’m sure that I could have spent much more time in Girona, but I actually felt like I saw a lot of things that I wanted to in the short time that I was there.  I was really excited to get to Barcelona to meet up with my UW friends!

Barcelona stories on the way :) xoxo