5 – 6 July 2022

Poor planning

I had an extremely stressful evening on Tuesday 5 July. We went indoor climbing as normal and on the way back I decided it’d be a good idea to check the covid requirements for our flight to Spain at 12:25 the following day. It turned out that although we were double vaccinated, we could only enter Spain if our second vaccine had been received within 270 days of the flight, we’d had the booster (which takes up to 5 days to register on covid records), or we had a negative test result. Negative (by about 25 days), negative, and negative, respectively.

After hours of googling, despair at realising most test centres (including the one at Bournemouth airport) had 24-hour turnaround times, and a small degree of extremely sceptical relief at having found a centre in Southampton offering £22.50 lateral flows with 2-hour results and an 8am appointment slot, we packed at 1am, hoping that we weren’t tempting fate. We went to bed at 2am and were up by 6.

Ryan’s dad rushed us into Southampton for 7.30, we had our lateral flows at the test centre – surprisingly busy for 8am – and we went to a nearby walk-in vaccination centre to get our boosters at 9am, just in case the covid app updated on time. Miraculously our negative test results were emailed through as we were queuing, to our immense relief, but we were still slightly anxious that they wouldn’t be accepted at the airport.

On the way to Bournemouth airport I filled out our Spanish government issue entry forms, uploaded our test result documents to our boarding passes, and breathed for the first time in 12 hours. We went through security, had a drink in the bar, bought a phrase book from the shop and boarded our busy flight without any hassle.

Arrival in Girona

We stepped off the plane to that intense, slightly stifling wave of heat that marks the beginning of a hot summer holiday. We left the airport, slightly incredulous that Spain had let us in without batting an eyelid, and waited half an hour for a bus in the searing heat. I was delighted to find a vending machine at the bus stop selling impossibly processed ham and cheese sandwiches and paprika crisps, which kept us going until the bus came.

The 30-minute trip to Girona bus station took us past dry, golden fields, dusty buildings and the industrial southern end of the city, which seemed to be full of car and motorbike dealerships. We left the large, air conditioned station building and were once again hit by the heat of a Spanish summer as we walked out onto a large, open, very clean plaza. We headed east through intermittent, warm rain towards our airbnb past slightly tired-looking offices and flats, then along a long, straight, smooth-cobbled street flanked by tall, six-storeyed buildings with a variety of narrow shops underneath.

Then we reached the river Onyar and realised what Girona was all about. We stopped on the wide stone Pedra bridge to admire the river, which consisted of a barely flowing channel of clear water between two lush green strips of grasses, reeds and wetland plants, set about 15 feet below street level. It was incredibly clean, and large carp swam lazily around the weeds directly below us, to Ryan’s delight. The river was lined on both sides by pretty, flat-fronted buildings two to six storeys high, painted in a striking array of oranges, yellows, reds and creams, and the elegant grey towers of the cathedral and basilica soared above the flat rooves on the right bank. This was the view that came up when we’d google imaged Girona, but it was even more beautiful.

We crossed the bridge and wandered down the cobbled, tree-lined Rambla de la Libertat, which was bustling with pretty shops and little restaurants with tables spilling across one side of the street. We turned right at the end onto a narrower street squeezed between attractive, five storey high buildings, some painted pastel oranges and some bare-stoned, all with pretty balconies and shutters or blinds to keep out the heat. The streets brimmed with all kinds of little shops and restaurants and it was remarkably clean and tidy – not a speck of litter. Old town had delighted us already.

Accommodation

Our airbnb was in a third floor apartment right in the middle of old town, down a narrow alley on the Placa dels Raims, the smallest square in Europe. It took a little bit of finding but we were delighted with it. Our host – despite barely speaking a word of English – was extremely welcoming and our room was along a corridor in a separate part of the apartment to the main bit where she lived with her family. It was high-ceilinged and timeless, with whitewashed walls and a lovely stone feature wall, shelves full of books, towels and trinkets, a tall shuttered window opening out onto a narrow gap between the tall buildings, and our own large, clean private bathroom. It was lovely to be spending the trip in a Catalonian home, rather than a common-or-garden hotel room.

Paella & Chill

We took some time to settle and relax in the room following the stress of our poor-planning-related near miss, then got changed and went to explore a little. We had a little walk around the picture-postcard narrow, cobbled streets, enjoying that distinctive summer smell of warm, fat raindrops (none of that nasty British drizzle) hitting the stone floor. My flip flops were slippery on the smooth slabs so I walked around barefoot with my silky trousers rolled up. We went back to the tree-lined Rambla de la Libertat for dinner and found a reasonably priced (we later found out that most restaurants were reasonable) Catalonian restaurant with street seating under large stone arches and grappled – probably quite poorly – with ordering our dinner in Spanish.

We shared a lovely seafood paella and “fideua”, a similar dish but with noodles and a different sauce. I enjoyed my first ever (!) sangria and we sat people watching, drinking in the unfamiliar and refreshing lack of English-ness. The rain subsided and we went for an evening walk. We crossed back over the Onya, which was equally beautiful under a fading, grey-pink sky, and wandered around the clean, more modern, slightly wider streets on the west side of the river, intrigued by the randomly situated but bustling small eat-and-drinkeries. We found the large, buzzing Placa de la Independencia square, lined on all four sides by long, tall, balconied apartment buildings above a multitude of bars and restaurants, and decided to return for lunch the following day.

We crossed back over a bridge further down the river and returned to our little flat in the middle of old town. We were extremely pleasantly surprised by Girona’s charm and atmosphere and planned to spend the next day exploring the city more thoroughly. My biggest qualm was my aching left arm from the booster jab that morning and the warm temperature, which made getting to sleep difficult, particularly as I was concerned about jab side effects. After some tossing and turning I drifted off, probably thanks to the air con unit in the room and the thin sheet instead of a duvet, excited for the rest of the holiday.