Ma ma ma my Girona!

This week we went to Girona where we spent two days and a night in a hotel in the medieval part of the city. Girona is famous for its Romanesque and Gothic buildings, and the Roman wall that still surrounds parts of the city. You can walk on parts of the wall. It is a Catalan city, and a lot of people go to university here. 

This also means they mostly speak Catalan, which is the language of Catalunya (where Barcelona is) but it is very different to Spanish. It is quite hard to understand sometimes, but everyone understands 'muchos gracias' (thank you very much) so I make sure I say this a lot. X in Catalan is pronounced 'sh'.

It took us an hour and a half on the train. We packed some lunch and I listened to music on the way. My favourite song at the moment is Somebody that I used to know by Gotye.

A river runs through Girona, dividing the old and new cities.  The river is full of big fat carp we watched swimming.

The medieval town is high up on a big hill. We climbed up many steps to get there.

This is outside the cathedral, looking down onto the square. Dad doesn't like being up high and he didn't like my sister and I standing too close to the edge.

This is a new stained glass window in the big cathedral finished only in August this year. It is by the famous abstract painter Sean Scully. Mum could see his signature on the bottom right of the window.

We went into the cloisters of the cathedral and threw some money into the pond to make a wish. Mum explained that all of the marble columns were carved by hand.

All of the narrow streets in this part of Girona have beautiful stone mosaic patterns. They can be hard to walk on.

We also visited the Banys Arabs (the Arab bathhouse). It is the only public bathhouse discovered in Medieval Spain, although it is not used anymore. It has a frigidarium (cold room) and a tepidarium (warm room).

We had dinner in a Catalan restaurant, but my sister and I found pizza on the menu. All the tables and chairs in the restaurant were on different steps going up this hill, leading to the convent.