Sunday Morning in Girona

We left our hotel this morning at 8:30 and walked to the other end of the block to Viena, a coffee and fast food shop we had checked with yesterday and which we had determined was the best alternative to the expensive (25 euros per couple) and all-too-plentiful breakfast buffet at our hotel. At Viena we each enjoyed a hot breakfast sandwich and cafe con leche for less than half that cost. Plus we listened to beautiful recorded classical music and browsed El Pais, the only Spanish newspaper offered (the rest were in Catalan, as was the framed article from the New York Times on the wall reviewing  the chain of Viena cafés throughout Catalan and Andorra. Then off we went across the river via the bridge near the Plaza de Independencia to the old town, and up to the Jewish quarter.

Actually we discovered that we had been in the Jewish quarter last night on a stroll, but we missed the Jewish Museum because it is only open in the morning. This morning we were too early and it wasn't open yet. We continued walking along up the cobblestoned narrow streets, thinking we would return in a half hour or so, but by the time the first church bells struck 10:00 AM, we were far enough  above the old quarter to be engrossed in the trek around the old city walls, which is the second highest rated attraction in Girona, after the Jewish quarter and museum.

We passed by various historical markers noting that walls and structures had been in operation in the first century before Christ, in the VI century, and in the XVth.  We walked through a lovely garden with three different blossoming flowers, and made our way through an old fortification identified as German military barracks, though the era was not identified. We climbed up a winding steel staircase inside a tower and from the top viewed the whole of the city of Girona, in front of and behind us, and fields beyond and then mountains, presumably the Pyrenees. Then we descended and walked for a  kilometer or so along the ancient city walls, these from Roman times, before they ended and delivered us down to ground level again and a monument recalling the underground bunkers created during the Spanish Civil War when Catalonians went beneath the earth to avoid bombing raids, the first time in war history, according to the historic marker, that nations at war developed the tactic of deliberately bombing civilians.

We revived ourselves with a cup of coffee near Ponte Pedra and then stumbled onto a Sunday morning flea market featuring books, stamps, old money, bottle caps, and assorted other bric-a-brac, and we each fell victim to parting with some money, though not much. I couldn't say "no" to a copy of Tales of the Alhambra, by Washington Irving, in Spanish. I have already purchased one copy of Tales, and this one is missing its spine, but this one also has print large enough that I might actually read it.

We finished our morning out with a stop at the tourist office to pick up a city map in English (our hotel had only been able to provide French and Catalan versions), a stroll back through the lower part of the old town, and lunch in the sun in the Plaza de la Independencia (salad and roasted vegetables), and then made our way back to the hotel for a long siesta before an evening concert.