Barcelona Part III & Girona

We changed our plans for Wednesday when we remembered that we had set up a change in hostels for that day. We had stayed in our own room for the first three nights, but decided to go with a cheaper hostel down the road and share a bunk bed room with other people for our last two nights in Barcelona. The switch took more time in the morning than expected because the second hostel did not allow us to check in until later than the website had told us. The delay allowed us to explore the area to the west more than we had so far. There wasn’t much to see there, actually, but Alan got his dunor kabob and we saw Botero’s Gat in the Rambla de Raval.

Me with Gat

After checking in to the new hostel, we went even further west to the park Montjuïc. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, searching for the beautiful flowers and views of the city that we had heard and read about. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the end of the day that we came across a pretty area. In the meantime, we saw a lot of out-of-control, dry grasses and an old military castle.

Thursday we went to Girona. We purchased tickets for a train that would take us the 1 ½ hour ride north to arrive mid-morning, but boarded the wrong train. After asking for lots of help and backtracking a bit we finally arrived in Girona at noon. We set off along the river on a bike trail. It was pretty until the path turned away from the river with no protection from the sun or dust. We stuck with it, though, assuming that it would take us somewhere or give us an option to turn soon. It didn’t. We ended up outside of town at the Science Building of Girona University. We reversed our steps and after a little bit more aimless wandering found ourselves a tourist information building. The ladies there were very helpful and pointed us in the opposite direction of where we had gone the last few hours.

As it turns out, Girona is a very pretty little town. There were lots of medieval structures and narrow, curvy streets. We wound around the Archeology Museum and went in. It was an old monastery with few archeological artifacts of interest, but the information was in Catalan, Spanish, and English, and I learned some things about the Iberian and Roman Empires in the area 2000 years ago. We caught the penultimate train back to Barcelona in the evening. On our walk back to the hostel we got to see the outside of Casa Battló at night, which looks even cooler than during the day.