Espain: The End! Feb 10-11: Girona, lessons learned

On Feb 10th we got up at 5:30am to leave in time for our plane. After assorted busses and planes, we got to our Bed & Breakfast, Bells Oficis, run by Javier, a super-nice spaniard who speaks more English than he thinks he does.
Bells Oficis is a lower-end sort of hostal, in that the rooms share a bathroom and there's no heating, but Javi's made a really comfortable, pretty place with a good breakfast and smiles all around (and a good price :) ).

We left our bags there, and went into Girona, which is a *very* pretty, medieval town, where you can walk through pathways of archways that support the buildings above you. We made a poor lunch decision (yum! cold tapas!), went to the extensive Jewish museum, where Gabe ran out of energy entirely, went to the hotel, passed out, went out again for dinner to a great seafood place, La Riba, and then went back to bed and read books and such.

The next day was spent barely making our bus, then barely making our plane, then waiting a long time for the bus to Vienna, and then getting home. A great success.


So! Lessons learned:
-Whatever people say, Spain has great food (people mostly say that Spain has good food, but some people go and come back complaining). That doesn't mean there aren't crappy places, but as long as you're going on recommendations, you can find pretty consistently good food. Also, the bread is fantastic. I dont know why, but even mini-market bread products and processed grossness at bus stations are full of delicious, crispy, chewy, awesome bread.

-Spanish Busses are cheap and get you all over the country, but there is noone except for someone *working for the bus company* that actually knows the schedule accurately. We found inaccurate schedules from the bus company websites, from tourist offices, and even from schedules posted at bus stations. Also, if you get carsick, sit in the front. Bleh.

-If you're American, don't use Quick-Checkin with RyanAir. Quick Check-In is great, because the alternative costs €8 more and you get the last, worst seats on the plane, and you might get bumped off the plane if they oversell it and it sucks not to do quick check-in. So we were big fans of quick check-in when we left for our first flight to Girona. On our second flight (back to Girona from Granada), the gate attendants freaked out when we handed them an American passport.

"You cant do that! You can't use quick check in! Only for Europeans! If you were at another airport, they wouldn't even let you on the flight!" oops! Well, we already used quick check-in for our third flight, and we liked it, and we weren't really even sure that they were right, since we have European residence permits.

Well, folks, you can't. Our next flight, they saw our passports and told us we can't get on the flight, and we'd need to run downstairs and check in. We made it, sweaty and panting, but only barely. Nope, Americans are not allowed to use quick check-in.

-Pick your Sundays carefully. A small town like Girona is going to be mostly closed on Sunday. Oops (Though it's not like we had energy to go do things anyways).

-Flamenco concerts are an important part of a Spain trip, particularly if you're going to Seville or Granada. Book them in advance. In Seville, one was sold out and the other was closed for the month. In Granada, they only put on a show if they have enough reservations (and ours was basically sold out).

-The 'vacation from your vacation' part of a vacation is an important part, and it belongs in the middle. We were pretty wiped out by Feb 6th, and kind of over-museumed/architectured. If we did something like Barcelona Feb 1-4, Ronda 5-7, Granada 8-11, that would be been even better. Girona at the end was a little weird, because although it's a good place for a vacation from your vacation, by that point, an even better place for that would have been sleeping in our own bed at home.

-Go to Ronda and Barcelona at some point in your life. Perhaps repeatedly. Both deserve multiple days in a trip.

-Oh yeah, when you go somewhere and the food is good, remember to buy local spices. Im having a very hard time finding the Guindilla peppers that flavored some of my favorite dishes there, and it would have been a cinch to get them there. Lame. (Also, I could have bought a Paella pan cheap there, and didn't think of it.)

Thats all folks! I hope all this was somewhat entertaining :)

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