Corinne CrawfordI took it easy doing some laundry and some work to catch up and booked a history and food walking tour in English for the following day. Girona was bigger than I thought it would be and I was staying about 20 minutes walking from the old walled city. I always like getting a tour so I can get the lay of the land and find out more about the area and maybe other things I would like to do while I am there. Girona’s old town has one of Europes oldest Jewish quarters and the longest Carolingian walls (9th century) that you can walk around about half of the city on. I arrived at the designated meeting point for the tour 15 minutes ahead of time and watched as people and a guide started showing up and checking in. I wandered over and noticed that it was all in Spanish. I overheard another couple, Americans, ask the guide if the tour was in English because they had booked the English tour as well and the guide said in Spanish, no- this is the Spanish tour and told them to wait for another guide. I approached them and verified that they were on the same tour as me in English and so we waited. And waited. And then called and emailed the tour company. And then we left after no one showed up for 20 minutes and we got no response back from the tour company. We decided that we would all go to the tourist office together and see if they had a self guided tour map and we would just do it on our own. They said that I was welcome to join them and I thought why not? We walked to the tourist office and got a map that had tiny bits of info on some marked spots on the map but it certainly wasn’t the same level of information we might have gotten on the tour. By that time, both of us did finally get a WhatsApp message from the tour company saying they basically forgot to tell their English guide about the tour and they would refund our ticket price. I was hoping they would offer to reschedule but they did not. So I woudn’t bother with Girona Explorers if you are looking for a tour. I wandered around the old town with this other couple for a while and we made note of some of the interesting areas in town such as the churches, including the one that served as a set for some scenes in Game of Thrones. They even had an entire Game of Thrones tour you could take showing the different parts of the city that were used in filming. We saw the old Jewish quarter, the old gardens and walls and the Arab bathhouse – which cost $3EU to go inside. And then low and behold, we saw another show/movie being filmed. We had to wait to cross one of the streets so that we wouldn’t be in the shot and it appeared to be a present day shoot except all of the actors were wearing winter type coats and stuff and I am sure they were roasting because it was a pretty hot day. I was wearing a tank top and skort and would not have wanted to have much more on.
I parted ways with the nice couple and wished them a happy anniversary as they had told me that the day prior was their 17th wedding anniversary. I went back to my room at the apartment and started thinking about what I wanted to do with the additional days I had in Girona. I knew I needed to work some but I was about an hour from the coast that is called Costa Brava and it seemed after some googling that kayaking and snorkeling were major activities so I looked it up and then looked at the weather and tried to decide if I wanted to go through the hassle of a walk back to the bus station to go to the coast for some snorkeling and if so, what day. Well it turns out I waffled on this idea too much because by the time I decided to go for it the next day and book it, there was no more availability. Maybe I can do it when I go to Cadaques next week even though the weather is getting slightly colder each day.
