Back in the car, we head in the direction of Barcelona with a pit stop in Girona. Alice manages to get us out of the Figueres – with a little glitch at the start – we cannot go the wrong direction on a one way street! But, eventually we make it out of the narrow medieval streets and onto the broad boulevard out of town.
We make a quick pit stop at the Dia grocery story and pick up some great peanut snacks – along with way too much chocolate. Oh and liquid refreshments as well for me – I have my opener in hand! Then off we go to Girona – an ancient town, several thousand years old, that is renowned as the preferred city in which to live in country wide polls.
The drive doesn’t take us that long, as we are aiming for the north end of the city, beyond the ancient walls, to go to a restaurant that gets fantastic reviews. We manage to find the parking areas I scoped out online – free – and right behind the restaurant. Unfortunately, they are chock full with narrow lanes that are almost one-way. We drive around a couple of times, and are just about to give up when we spot a teeny spot up against a little sapling tree. That’s for us. Yay Smart Cars! We fit in there perfectly and go off in search of Txalaka for pintxos. And darn our luck! We get there to find a sign explaining they will be closed from 11/7 to 11/11 for repairs. Aw, come on! We had so been looking forward to this place – and now we are on our own trying to find an alternative.
Poop. I have the address of another place, inside the walls, but we can’t find the street on the map app, so we decide to just head in the direction of the old town and see what we can find. We end up finding a bunch of cafes on the Placa Independencia. We scour the menus and end up at Xibarri – which looks like they have good tapas and pinxtos. The waiter speaks broken English, and when we about the pinxtos menu (3 for 11.50 euros) he says that menu isn’t good today. And, well, we don’t really understand, so we order off the tapas menu – Albondigos (meatballs), canneloni, chorizo and and pulpo alla gallega as a main. It’s all excellent – too much food – as usual, but still so good. Sitting out on the placa, in the sunshine, eating and drinking.
Later figure out what the waiter was trying to tell us – today all the pinxtos are only 1 Euro. Bummer. But then again, the tapas were not that pricey, and they were all excellent, so really, in the long run, it didn’t matter.
Now that we’ve staved off hunger, it is time to wander. We find our way across the pedestrian bridge into Girona and wander the neat little narrow alleys and lanes. Up the steps to the cathedral, there are some gorgeous friezes and then on the cathedral plaza, beautiful views of the Saint Felix church tower soaring against a blue sky studded with white puffy clouds.
We could probably use more time here too, but decide not to press our luck with Barcelona traffic or construction diversions – so we gaze out over the town for a bit, then head back over the bridge..
..and into our car.
The drive back into town is not that bad at all. We make it without any diversions whatsoever – no construction issues, and not much traffic. We come out of a corkscrew tunnel up onto the circle in front of the World Trade Center (I always wondered from where those middle lanes appeared!) and navigate our way (without Alice because she’s lost satellite reception) back to Sixt to drop off the little Smart Car.
Easy enough! As we walk back to the shuttle bus, we find a little mini market where we score those tall, skinny beers Ed needs – then manage to get the last seats on the next shuttle and are all aboard in no time at all. Nice diversion from our normal Barcelona city wanderings.
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