Day 55: Vila Fresar to Girona

October 20, 2023

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This is a day that turned out to be one of the most wonderful and memorable of the trip, but one that started out in a very mundane way. True, our hotel, where we had been holed up for inordinate hours , had given us a large room with all the amenities for just hanging out and resting. With so much time, we had even launched some fruitless telephone quests. For example, Paypal had quit dealing with me unless I could retrieve a secret code that they were sending to a phone in Canada. After some nonsense maneuvers they concluded by advising me to return to Canada.

We set out with a sidelong glance to the mountains. We'll be back, but bye for now!

The NII, like the hotel, is effective but not exciting.

4 km down the road turned out to be the little hamlet that Booking.com had fingered as the location of our hotel.

We took a cut through Medinya, just to look for something interesting.

Well there was this juice coloured house.

As we entered Girona, I was looking around for all the wonderful sights, but only saw furniture stores. Finally I fell back on shooting just exactly what I was seeing, to document the sad situation.

Well. this furniture store was rather cute.

When Dodie announced that we had arrived, what I saw was a large dirt parking lot or park. Confusing, because our research had shown a historic town stuffed with medieval wonders.

We followed a gaggle of students towards what looked like a church in the distance.

The students and us walked onto a foot bridge and when I looked right, that is when the magic began.

The Riu Onyar, with the must covered on postcards coloured houses.

The river is very shallow, but we spotted fish in there too.

On the other side of the bridge (there are at least seven bridges, all famous) we encountered more groups of students. We learned later that they were participating in a city wide drawing the city contest.

These kids were pleased that I asked to record their work, and then they photo'd my photos.

And yes, here was the Basilica of St Feliu, with the Cathedral nearby. We had messaged our hotel to see if we could drop off our bikes and gear so as to launch a walking tour of town. Getting no reply, we thought we would find the place and see. Meanwhile in the back of our minds was the knowledge that our chains needed replacing, so we had been on the lookout for bike shops. Almost immediately we passed one, with an open door and a mechanic inside. This is where we would encounter the first of at least a dozen people in Girona who were so nice to us and who we just loved at first sight. This one stopped what he was doing and checked our chains, confirming that they were both too loose and fairly worn. But he did not have time to work on them, nor did he have the needed chains. We had a fun philosophical discussion on whether the bikes would make it to Valencia. The mechanic said he was an expert on what is, but hopeless on what would be.

We set off through what was turning out to be amazing narrow streets. Then wow, another bike shop, with a mechanic working in the window. We are always apprehensive when walking into a bike shop while on tour. Normally the shop is busy and stressed out, and we are eager to carry on pedaling. That is, we are also busy and stressed. The name of the shop was Tata Bikes, and it is run by the husband wife team of Magda and Stephan. Magda says Stephan is the best mechanic in Girona. But we could see that Magda was a master of being unstressed and welcoming. Yes, Stephan was busy, but he looked at the bikes. New chains were in order. It seemed we could wait while he got to them quite soon, and Stephan was also at pains to point out a nice nearby cafe for that wait. But we asked and Magda readily agreed - we took off the baggage and she stashed it in a back room. Then we said we would leave the bikes and walk the town, coming back later. Magda gave us a card with their hours on it, we left her our phone number and email, and now we were off to the town!

Our first look at the streets of old Girona

The bike shop had several photos and paintings on the wall. Two were of the shop itself.

Our next step was to go for a peek at our hotel, which was very near.

We found we were in an incredibly atmospheric environment of stone walls and steps, with balconied buildings. But we were incredulous that just about the most atmospheric corner of them all was in fact our hotel.

Our hotel, yes that's it right here. And none too bike accessible!

We scouted around now for the nearby Cathedral, eventually coming around to the front entrance.

The Cathedral entrance is by those stairs.

Lots of students at the base of the stairs.

The Cathedral featured what is the widest Gothic nave in the world, and a total width second only to St Peter's in the Vatican. Around the nave were about twenty chapels, and a high altar with the Chair of Charlemagne. Charlemagne is recognized as a saint in Catalonya, but not by Rome.

The altar. Dodie thought the canopy resembled a Jewish marriage one - a chuppah.

Here we go around some of the chapels. We will just peek at and name them:

Conventual Chapel. Dodie had to explain that the funny chairs are for kneeling and not sitting.

Chapel of the virgin of Montserrat. Another black madonna. There is one actually at Montserrat, which is a day trip from Barcelona.

I think the chair of Charlemagne is up those stairs.

The chapel of Saint Marti has a restorer at work.

Not sure what this was about - but shiny!

Our next stop was the cloister, which of course affords the soothing walk around the perimeter.

Now we come to two special features that really made this place stand out, and that is coming from two travelers who after 50 days in Catholic lands are just about "churched out". The first feature was a close up look at some of the stained (painted glass) taken from parts of the cathedral.

Here is a very close look at some of that painting:

More parts of the stained glass display.

Down some atmospheric stairs. By the way, we did not follow Game of Thrones on TV, but this cathedral was a major set in Season 6.

Next we had the Treasure Room, and here the word treasure is really appropriate. It began with a 100o year old book:

There was a video display beside the book's case, in which the pages are turned. One sure wouldn't want to actually touch this thing unnecessarily.

Not actually sure what this thing is, but it has a nice St Jacques!

Next comes part (most) of a 1000 year old tapestry, that is called the Creation Tapestry sinceit depicts elements of Genesis. It is quite large, and hangs in a bright case in the centre of the room. Behind it, a video screen of equal size plays an analysis of the various parts, highlighting and explaining each one in turn. We don't know the whole history of the tapestry, but its origin seems to be Girona, and it was clearly lost and rediscovered at some point. There are whole books written about this thing.

At the bottom God fills the air with birds for Scott to photograph and identify. How about these? (I do see one parrot in there).

Dodie loves cross stitch. Creation Tapestry cross stitch - cool.

By comparison with the cathedral, St Filieu was fairly plain.

But it did ha ve this sepulchre of Saint Narcissus.

Yesterday during our long stay in the quiet hotel we came across an app tht has turned out to be fairly useful. It is called GPSMyCity. For any of several thousand cities, it will show on a map or in an alphabetic list the various things to see. You can call up descriptions of each thing, ticking off the ones that interest you. The app will then create a walking or cycling circuit of the chosen places, and show where you are as you go around. It's a computer version of the traditional Tourist Information map of town. The full version (with the most cities and with travel articles about the places) is a $20 or so annual subscription. We were skeptical, but have in fact found the thing quite useful. So now we set off to find several of the app's "must see" spots.

The Arab Baths are a series of rooms from the 12th century that were used as a sauna. There is a change room, and then cold, medium, and hot rooms, powered by some kind of furnace and underground conduits. Almost more than the baths, we liked the ticket seller. He was just such a Blink, really nice man. You can see Dodie enjoyed chatting with him. He spoke Spanish, English, and later we heard him in perfect French with some other people.

Some scenes as we left the baths area:

We now declared ourselves to be starving, and dropped in to a cafe for a drink and cookie. Over the rest of the day we found a large variety of places and things to eat, including an unexpected number of pastry shops with good looking stuff.

My "creme" one was really good. Yes, it is sort of a donut, but no. I am a new fan!

21 euros for Pope Francis? Is that Putin in the background?

A better look at the nearby coloured houses.

A large square, with restaurants of course.

More of the 1877 Eiffel bridge and the coloured houses. Look how low the river is here!

Despite the XUIXOS, only fresh juice can give the power needed for extended touring. This spot did the trick, and the boy joined the many in this town who were so nice to us.

Ice cream (gelato, sorbet) is everywhere. See some of the great flavours!

We were now outside the old town, but Girona remained pleasant. See:

We crossed the Pont de Pedra (stone bridge) as we now targeted checking out the train station.

Travel in Spain makes us think of Bob Dylan's reference to the mountains of Madrid or the coast of Barcelona, in "Boots of Spanish Leather". Bob feels a little hard to take, here around midnight and very tired, but we can listen to Nanci Griffith:

At the train station, the ticket man was also very sweet.

These guys are still sort of front page material almost 90 years later. The line underneath says The Three Faces of Fascism in the 20th Century". We have some very bad cases already in this century!

This poster shows way more water in the river than we found.

Farrah and Remy. We met them at the bike shop as they rented a bike for a day ride. Remy is here for a Triathlon. Both live in Paris!

Farrah and Remy were eating here. It looked good, but we had our eye on a spot in La Rambla de la LLibertat

Oh no, another church! Fine, let's have a quick peek.

Sparkly thing at the front, but what is it?

Not sure if this is the flag of Catalunya or the football team.

These starters are already more than we would normally eat. we would just split a tuna salad like that.

These three guys also have light appetites.

This order of "chicken cutlets" turned out to be very good schnitzel.

Our last sight was the "Jewish Quarter". Little did we know but our hotel was already in the Jewish Quarter. Here we are heading for it:

Back at the bike shop, Magda and Stephan were calmly waiting for us. Stephan came out for some shots by the shop name. It was sure a great place, and our repair cost was very reasonable too.