Cliché

Back home today after our short jaunt to the Costa Brava. We decided it would be a great idea to stop in Girona on the way for some touristing and a spot of lunch. S knows Girona quite well now, since he spent a lot of time there last summer learning Catalan.

His knowledge did not help though, when it came to finding a place to park. We did a tour of all his favoured car parks and drew a blank. Then we ended up in the underground car park from Hell (actually I think it was hell). Three levels, hundreds of parked cars, and a lucky dip to find the five free spaces. When we did find one, you’d need to be a contortionist in a Fiat 500 to get into it. After ten minutes we emerged blinking into the daylight … we’d now spent 45 minutes in total looking for a space. We’d decided to give up and go home when S swerved into a supermarket car park. Great! Only a 2 km walk back into town. It actually turned out not too bad, as it was a flat walk along the river bank.

Phew. We gratefully sank coffee and iced tea on a cafe terrace and then set off to view a shrine built into Girona’s very impressive city wall. It has figures of Jesus and the BVM and lots of votive offerings. The reason for its existence is that on 4 February 1975, Jesus allegedly left a bloody footprint in the sand. No comment on the plausibility of that.

From there we walked exhaustingly along the city wall in bright sunshine. No photos of this, as I was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually we descended to look for lunch at one of S’s three favoured restaurants (I took the photo that everyone takes in Girona on the way). Unfortunately his first two choices were closed, and sadly we did not discover this fact about the second one until we had walked a long and circuitous route to find it. Thank goodness the third one, on the popular Plaça de la Independencia, was buzzing and served an excellent and good value meal (18.90 for three courses and wine), which quickly restored my good humour.

Of course we then had to walk 3 km back to the car, but we took it at a leisurely pace. And home to a grateful cat. It was a nice break even though the weather could have been better, given that it’s May.