The Nomadic Life

The Paris weather has been gray and overcast and drizzly non-stop since November (or so it seemed to us).  A bit of sunshine felt like just the thing we needed, so we carved out a week and a half to go someplace sunnier and a bit warmer.  Neither of us needed a vacation from work, just a temporary change of scenery, so we packed our laptops and sunglasses and headed to Spain.  On Tuesday, Glenn, Sandy, and I took the train from Paris to Catalunya to begin our adventure as digital nomads.  The plan was to stay in three different places, each for three days, and just continue our normal work schedules from there.  We chose Airbnbs instead of hotels because we wanted multiple rooms in which we could both be taking Zoom calls, or work when the other was on a call.  We are lucky that our work is so portable, but we tried to plan carefully, bringing work that could also be done off-line if we didn't have high-quality internet connections everywhere.

Glenn planned our itinerary.  Our first stop was Girona, about which I knew little.  We discovered a beautiful small city on a river, dating back to Roman times, with a very well-preserved old town and many dramatic architectural elements from medieval times.  We learned that it has become a mecca for at least three types of specialized tourists:  cyclists, foodies, and Game of Thrones fans.  Lance Armstrong moved to Girona many years ago because the varied terrain in the vicinity proved ideal for training.  Many serious and professional cyclists have followed him.  Also many years ago, three brothers, Joan, Josep, and Jordi Roca, launched the beginnings of what would become an internationally-acclaimed food empire in their native Girona.  They now have restaurants of all types in Catalunya and beyond, including a restaurant that has been named the best in the world multiple times, El Celler de Can Roca.  Food-obsessed tourists have come in droves (and have seemingly provided strong incentive for high restaurant quality all around). And, then, as you might guess, Girona served as the setting for filming much of Game of Thrones, by virtue of its well-preserved architecture and dramatic buildings.  And GoT fans have followed.  

So, for a city of 100,000, it is remarkably well-served with coffee shops, bars, restaurants, gourmet shops, bicycle-rental locations, and hotels.  Glenn and I remarked that, for a small city with so many tourists, one would expect normal, everyday businesses, as well as high quality, to be crowded out by crummy tchotchke shops, low-quality restaurants, rip-off sandwich places.  Those mainstays of tourist culture all seemed to be largely absent (at least in the old town where we were staying), and we were impressed by the quality of everything we ate and the sophisticated ambiance of every restaurant, bar, or coffee shop we visited.  Also, Girona seemed to manage an interesting balancing act, were the locals mixed freely with the tourists.  We heard as much or more Catalan in the streets and restaurants than we did English and French.  (This is presumably low season, which I am sure contributed.)  

Highlights of our visit included a hike along the medieval city wall; lunch in a park filled with ghostly white-barked trees as far as the eye could see; vermut, wine, and delicious tapas in a dog-friendly bar; a huge cheese plate with wonderful local cheeses; shopping at a chic housewares store with local handmade products; fantastic gelato; and many walks through the old city, down narrow streets, across bridges, up stairways, past beautiful architecture.

Our three days passed quickly--I certainly could have spent our entire time away from Paris in Girona and not tired of it at all.  There were many activities and many restaurants still on the to-do list when we left, but also some lovely memories of our visit.  Here are some images below.

A couple of final notes, in case you want to plan a trip there:  We stayed in an Airbnb on Rambla de la Llibertat, which was an ideal location, 15 minute walk from the train station and right in the middle of things.  The bar where we had outstanding tapas was La Tabarra.  We also ate well at Federal, Rocambolesc Gelateria, and various bakeries and coffee shops around town.  Finally, we kept seeing images of flies everywhere, which we thought was a strange symbol for a city.  I looked it up and found that it had something to do with a legend of French soldiers trying to take over the city in 1286 and being driven away by ferocious flies, thus saving the city from foreign rule.  We, luckily, were not bitten.