We flew into Girona airport. Not Barcelona. Girona. Because the Ryanair flight from Bournemouth was forty quid and we are exactly who we are. This is how we travel. Not to save money as an end in itself — but because cheap gets you somewhere interesting, and interesting is the whole point. Find the flight that lands somewhere real, somewhere with its own reason to exist, and see what happens. What happened in Girona was that we walked out of a small airport into a warm June evening and straight into one of the best cities either of us had ever been in, which we had not been expecting at forty quid.
We were based here for four days. On the third day we got on a high-speed train and did Barcelona in a day, which is a completely different story and deserves its own. This one is about Girona.
The first evening
The Plaça de la Independència is where you land when you cross the river from the new town into the old. Wide arcaded square, outdoor tables, a statue in the middle, the medieval city rising behind it. We sat down on the first evening and ordered drinks and looked at the view and felt the specific pleasure of being somewhere neither of us had been before and knowing, within about twenty minutes, that it was going to be good.
I had a beer. Sarah had wine. We made no plans. This was also deliberate.
Early morning, old town
I was out before seven on the first morning. The Onyar at that hour was completely still — the coloured houses on the far bank doubled perfectly in the water, the cathedral sitting up behind them on its hill, the whole thing reflected and quiet in a way it absolutely would not be in two hours’ time. I stood on one of the bridges longer than I needed to. It earned the standing.
The Onyar from the bridge. Early morning. The coloured houses and the cathedral, perfectly still.
The Call
The Call — Girona’s medieval Jewish quarter, one of the best preserved in Europe — is the kind of place that rewards going slowly. The passages are narrow and the stone flags are uneven and the stairs arrive without warning, and none of that is a problem when you’ve got nowhere specific to be and the city is empty and the light is doing what early morning light does in medieval stonework, which is make everything look like it’s been there since always, which it has.
I got lost. Several times. Found my way out. Got lost again. This is not a failure mode in Girona’s old town — it is the correct way to use it.
The cathedral
The cathedral appeared at the top of a flight of stairs I had not planned to climb. There it is anyway — the wide baroque facade, the steps dropping away below, the twin towers catching early light. You don’t so much find the cathedral in Girona as it finds you. It’s visible from almost everywhere in the city at almost all times. It watches you. You get used to it and then you stop getting used to it.
The walls
Girona has medieval walls. You can walk them. Not alongside them, not around the base of them — along the top, on the walkway that runs the full length of the eastern edge of the old town, with the city spilling away on both sides and the Pyrenees somewhere in the distance doing their thing.
Sarah walked them with me on the second day. The views from up there — old town tight and terracotta below you on one side, modern Girona flat and spreading on the other, the cathedral floating above it all ringed by cypress trees — are the kind that make you stop mid-stride and just stand there. We did. More than once. Without any embarrassment about it.
When it rained
The storm came on the second evening. One minute the square was full of people; the next it was raining properly and everyone shuffled their chairs back under the arcades and ordered another drink and settled in, which is the correct response to a summer storm anywhere in the Mediterranean and we have learned this now.
We were caught in the open. We walked back through the old town in it.
Wet cobbles at night in a medieval city look extraordinary, is the thing. The stone flags in the Jewish quarter were slick and amber under the street lamps and the narrow passages were empty and slightly unreal and we walked slowly and I took photographs that were never going to be as good as the actual thing and took them anyway.
The Onyar from the bridge in the rain stopped us both. The coloured houses rippling in the river, the sky gone purple-grey behind the cathedral, the whole reflection broken and shimmering. We stood there for a while. Then we found the tequila bar on the corner — we’d walked past it twice already — and we made it ours for the night.
The turtle
The turtle lives in a small walled garden on one of the back streets of the old town. I found it on a slow post-wander, half-hidden behind a gatepost, doing absolutely nothing with complete dedication. I went back to visit it twice more before we left. Some things in a city just become yours without you deciding they should.
Everything else
Sarah found the church of Sant Domènec — the enormous verdigris bronze doors, the baroque portal, the wide stone steps — and stood on those steps and looked like someone who belongs in old cities, which she does.
The city mural is visible from the walls. Big, vivid, impossible to photograph properly from any angle. It’s there and it’s good and Girona just has it on a building, like that’s normal.
We ate well. We drank in the right quantities and then slightly more than the right quantities, because it was that kind of trip and Girona is that kind of city. The nights were warm and the old town was busy and everything was exactly right.
Four days. One storm. One tequila bar. One turtle that is definitely mine now.
On day three we got the high-speed train to Barcelona and walked thirteen miles in blistering July heat, which is its own story entirely. But Girona first — always Girona first if you’re coming to this part of Spain. It costs forty quid from Bournemouth and it is absolutely worth it.