Richardson Rambles

June 7-10

Straddling the Onyar River, Girona is an inland city in Spain, about 30 minutes north of Barcelona.  A university town, it has an excellent intact historic center, with churches galore, a cathedral, ancient Arab baths, and beautiful gardens along the town walls.  It is easy to reach by high speed train from Barcelona and well worth the journey.  Oddly, the most familiar photo of Girona bears little relation to 99.9% of the city imagery.  It is also one that I find aesthetically displeasing.

Here is what the city really looks like.

The Rambla, where we had our apartment.

Old city streets.

The Cathedral.

The Cathedral plaza.

Below, gardens stretch along the city walls.

The Arab baths are stunning with separate hot, tepid, and cool rooms.

On the second day, we decided to go look at real estate near the coast.  You know, just in case.  Enterprise was fresh out of cars, but they offered their van, a victim of a recent hailstorm.  The entire body was covered with golf ball size dents.  Glad we weren’t in town when that happened!

We looked at several great houses in the towns of Pals, Begur, and Sa Tuna (Begur waterfront) but ultimately decided that the area was too small and remote for us.  Here are some images.