We started in Barcelona and we’re finishing in Catalonia after a 6 week loop around the country. Our feelings about leaving Spain this week are complicated – I’ll save that for a separate post. For these last 8 days of our trip, we traveled across southern France and dipped back down into Spain in the northeast corner, into the province of Girona in Catalonia.
If you’ve read my previous posts, you know how the fear of losing our children over steep unprotected drop-offs has plagued me for much of this trip so far so you can imagine how I felt as we approached the town we are staying at here, Castellfollit de la Roca.
It is extremely picturesque, built on the top of a 50 m high basalt cliff within a very lush and mountainous region of Spain. I’ve concluded that Spanish children must be very smart and focused (at least compared to my kids) or else not many would make it to adulthood. The rock mechanics engineer in me was intrigued by the cliffs, the fact that the homes are built right up to the cliff edge, and that you can see toppling basalt columns undercutting parts of the edge of town. Seems the town will have a finite lifespan unless some ground support is engineered to prevent further undercutting….but that’s not why I’m here and I’m sure it’s not what anyone would want to read about.
Yet again, we have been awestruck by the beauty of another part of this country. If it weren’t for the high temperatures, we would have liked to explore more. We hit the highest temperature yet of our trip, 46C (115F) on one of our days here, but each day has hit somewhere between 40-46 degrees. Unlike the heat in Granada, it is also humid here which really drains your energy. Most days we tried to get out and do something but our days exploring were not as long as they were in other cities because of the heat.
We took a day when we first got here to decompress and generally relax. The Airbnb that we are staying at is great (again!). There is a big yard for the kids to play in and lots of toys for them to play with. We took a walk down to the older part of town and then down into the valley to get a view back to the town. Spectacular.
We also had a lot of fun in the evenings at the apartment. There was so much space, we all had a chance to have our own space and do our own things for a change. Here’s the scene on a typical evening at home – Iain is drawing pictures at the dining room table and in the background, you can see Riley outside putting on a some sort of gymnastics ‘performance’ for Ronan who is filming it for her.
There are many beautiful medieval towns near here, too many to explore in just a few short days. In addition to exploring Castellfolit de la Roca, we took trips into Besalu and Girona. We loved Besalu. The town is very beautiful and has a lot of history. There are gorgeous, narrow cobblestone streets, nice restaurants, and quaint stores to shop for locally made souvenirs. There is also a long history here that we did not have enough time to research or enjoy. We did learn that there is a very unique Jewish history here. There is a 12th century Jewish bath and the remains of a 13th century synagogue. In 1966 Besalu was designated as a historical national property and as a result, it has been restored to some of its original grandeur.
We also drove 30 minutes to Girona, a much larger town of ~100,000 people. The city is beautiful, there is a beautiful river, a number of nice bridges through the city (one designed by Gustav Eiffel), well-preserved buildings, and a number of museums. Unfortunately, it was so hot that day that we really ran out of steam for exploring. We stopped at the cathedrals, did a little shopping, got some ice cream, and gladly got back into our air-conditioned car.
After exploring Girona, we decided that heading out into other towns was not really what we were into for this point of our trip and with the unrelenting heat. The towns here are so beautiful but at some point one gorgeous cobblestone street looks like any other and we were starting not to appreciate the beauty and history as much as we had been earlier in our trip. So instead we decided to go for a proper hike. Since we’ve discovered Wikiloc (does everyone else know about this awesome App?), we’ve used it everywhere we’ve gone to find hikes to go on. The one we chose was only a few miles long up to a series of limestone caves on a nearby mountain . There was about 450 m of elevation gain which normally wouldn’t be a big deal but it was 41C that day (105F). The kids were awesome and managed to have a lot of fun exploring despite the heat. We all enjoyed having a picnic lunch at the top.
Our amazing Airbnb host Ana invited us to go with her and her two children to a local swimming hole that same day after the hike. There couldn’t have been a better way to end that day. It was only about 10 minutes away in a dammed off portion of a river below a very picturesque 14th century limestone bridge. The water was warm and the river was narrow enough that the kids could swim back and forth independently between its banks. We liked it so much that we spent the following day there as well just swimming and relaxing and swimming and relaxing. It hit 46C (115F) that day so this was really best way to get through that day.
Ana also helped organize a babysitter for us. So, for the first time in almost 2 months, Brett and I got the chance to go out to dinner without the kids. Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly I suppose, the kids were just as excited to get a babysitter as we were to get an evening out to ourselves so it worked out for everyone. Dinner was so nice. We went back to Besalu and had dinner on a beautiful patio overlooking the river and the city. We didn’t even talk about the kids.
On our last day, we were busy packing and taking care of errands but we did manage to walk over to the town swimming pool that was only a block away from us. We had no idea what a nice pool it was or we would have been there many more times over our stay.
Catalonia is absolutely beautiful. The medieval villages are interesting and picturesque, the terrain is very lush and mountainous, and the people have been very friendly. I think we would have enjoyed this part of our trip even more if it hadn’t been so hot. There was no reprieve and it really zapped us all of our energy. We still did a fair amount of exploring and enjoyed all of it. Ana, our Airbnb host, gave us another reason for why we prefer staying at Airbnb’s. Not only is her apartment great, she was such a gracious host and really made our week so much more enjoyable for taking us out to the local river for swimming and organizing the babysitter for us. It is nice to get to the chance to meet someone local and know that we are supporting their local business.
A summary of this leg of our trip:
Accommodation: A really nice Airbnb apartment in Castellfollit de la Roca. If you have kids (or even if you don’t), this place is ideal. It has two bedrooms, has been recently re-modeled and looks fantastic. There is a great backyard and you can walk within a few minutes to the local store, bakery, playground, swimming pool, etc. There are many fastastic looking hikes that start from the town center into the surrounding hills.
Budget: We spent on average $240/day here including everything (accommodation, car, food, activities, …). This also includes the tolls and gas for the drive here as well as the costs for us to send back a box of stuff to Portland (things we’ve bought in Spain, extra things we packed but found we don’t need, etc.).
Favorite memory: Swimming in the local river. The spot was beautiful and it was just so relaxing especially since the kids could swim around more or less independently (that was not the case at any of the beaches we’d been to) and it felt so refreshing in the hot weather.
Other things to note:
- There is a lot of history here and I wish we had taken the time with the kids to understand a bit more about the history. We also know very little about the politics except understanding that Catalonia is a semi-autonomous region that voted overwhelmingly to separate from Spain last year. This was not received well by the Spanish government and a number of the Catalan leaders at the time have either fled or have been imprisoned and are on trial in Madrid, accused of rebellion. There is graffiti, posters, flags, and signs everywhere here that show the level of unrest with the current situation.
- I realize I’ve mentioned this 400 times but if you’re coming here in the summer, it is HOT! Be prepared for heat AND humidity. Unless you’re somewhat acclimatized, it’s really hard to do much during the day in this heat.
- Mosquitos – There are lots and they loved our kids. Iain seemed to react much worse than the others to the bites – his legs swelled up a lot with each bite.