Spain - only the parts where they don't speak much Spanish

Las Rambas

It felt different from what I expected; the airport felt forever away from what could be the Barcelona city. Farmland rushed past the windows with all kinds of crops and within 20 minutes we had reached the heart of Barcelona. Time to whip out a bit of that long unused basic Spanish. Or so I thought.

Northern Spain, that Catalylan state is not home to Spanish at all. Rather the people speak a somewhat related language – catalyan. There was the odd word that I could understand and most people spoke some Spanish, but not on first impressions.

Antoni Gaudi building

After we had adjusted to this (not entirely unexpected – but not such vast differences were anticipated) we settled into to our hotel and sought about making a plan for the next 5 days we had in Spain. There were a couple of touristy must do’s, but other than visit La Ramba, Montjuic  for my first European castle and some great views over the city, the waterfront area and one of the building by  Antoni Gaudi we decided Barcelona wasn’t our scene and it was time to head out (not without sampling a range of Tapa’s and wine of course).

View from the wall in Girona

Our next stop was Girona. Picked largely due to the fact that a) we could get there by train and b) it was a short journey. Girona proved to be a lovely ‘city’ with much more of a town feel too it. Much better value accommodation was appreciated here, although the beds were just as hard and uncomfortable as Barcelona and not so far from the discomfort we had grown accustomed to while in London.

The quality of the French bakeries was outstanding (although nothing of what we had experienced in France of course, but a decent step up from London all the same). With my vegetarian diet not proving to be the easiest in Spain, in fact the food in general being pretty disappointing, I ate more than my far share of pastries. I blame this for the wasteline I have recently discovered, which seemed to appear out of nowhere (undoubtly influenced by the consecutive colds which lead to no exercise in the last month we were in London). Regardless of the cause, the mission to get fit again is reinstated come Australia.

We walked the walls once surrounding once side of the city. From here you have amazing views over the city and a grand cathedral. Girona had been fought over many times, and the Roman and Jewish influences were evident in the architecture.

The wall

In Girona there is a bridge, Eiffel bridge, unsurprisingly designed by Gustave Eiffel who designed the Eiffel tower. It has got nothing on the tower, obviously. In fact it was just a small bridge, one of many which crossed one of the three small rivers that run through Girona. All the same it was pretty neat to have seen more than one of his designs in different parts of Europe too.

Our time in Spain was brought back to reality by the passing of Spike’s Nana in New Zealand. It makes you realise how physically far away from home you are. No amount of Skype and technology can make up or change the fact that Europe is, as minimum, over a full day away from New Zealand.

Before we knew it our time in Spain was over and we were on the train back into Barcelona to catch the next flight, on Air Arabia, to Morocco.

Buying some chocolate treats in Barcelona