After 5 days in France, we were VERY excited to be headed back to Spain. We stayed our last night in Arles and the plan was to take a train to Narbonne and then switch trains to Gerona – a roughly 3 hour trip. It poured rain the night before we left (leaking into our hotel room) and was raining again in the morning. We were staying in an actual hotel, so we assumed it would be no problem for them to call us a taxi to the train station… we were wrong about that. The guy – who spoke very good english – acted as though no one had ever asked this question before and seemed completely unable to assist with taxis. He did book one that was not going to come until an hour later and made us nervous about missing the train. So… we walked 25 minutes, in the rain, with all of our bags, to the station. This is how badly we wanted out of France.
The train was very full with limited room for baggage. But, then we arrived and all the sad, gray, depressing stuff in France was gone. Suddenly the sun was out, we were in a town full of vivid colors, there was energy everywhere, stores and restaurants were open in every direction, the new hotel place was friendly and helpful… it was literally a night and day difference.
We were headed towards Barcelona, but had read enough good things about Girona to give it a shot on the way. We stayed for 2 nights and continued to be impressed with this town of ~100k people. It’s part of Catalonia which is a region in the northeast of Spain that has been trying to break away from Spain for a long time – they are one of the wealthiest parts of the country and many believe that they could function well as an independent country. The reasons they want to do this are many and complex. They speak a different language (Catalan) which is interesting – they also typically speak Spanish, but it’s definitely not the primary language in Girona. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia with population of 1.7M.
We walked the old city walls, we shopped, we ate a lot of Tapas and just generally soaked up all of the energy. Much like our earlier experiences, Spain just feels so ALIVE and the architecture and buildings are all beautifully designed and very well maintained. 2 nights here was enough, but we could have stayed longer and I could see us going back and definitely would recommend it to others. It was super cheap (~$200/night for a massive 3 bedroom apartment in the heart of the old city, ~$100 for a big dinner for 5 people including lots of wine, etc). Needless to say, we really enjoyed it here. Lots of pictures:
