Catalonia, Spain - August 2025

We set out from Olot at 10AM, after a nice breakfast at our boutique hotel.  First stop — thanks to the hotel front desk clerk — was an unplanned stop, but we were so glad we did stop there!  Besalu is a medieval town with an amazing bridge dating to the 12th century.  Some of the series, Game of Thrones, was filmed here. We had a great time roaming the mediaeval streets. Next step: a return to the Mediterranean coast of the Costa brava, and a playground for the rich and famous in the summertime: Cadaques. We weren’t impressed by the pebble beaches or the clarity of the water, but people seem to be very happy to be there. I guess if you live in an apartment in Berlin or Paris, getting a chance to be by any bit of ocean is seen as quite different and pleasing. Salvador Dali spent a lot of time here, and set up his summer home in the area. From there, after a great lunch in a town where it is almost impossible to get a seat for a meal, we started out for Girona around 2PM. ...

Given the five hour time change, it was 9:01 AM when we opened our eyes, leading to a bit of a mad dash to get up and out. The hotel had provided box breakfast, consisting of focaccia bread, cured meats, juice, and coffee. So we had that in our room. Manresa, where we had spent the night, has one key attraction, its church - La Seu de Manresa, built in 1322. So we wondered the streets and alleys and explored the beautiful church before heading out.  While there were some Autoroutes (ie, large highways akin to the USA’s Interstates) included in our driving today, most of the driving, comprised zigzag, twisty windy roads into the mountains. Our first stop was the near perfect village of Rupit. The village has its roots back in the 11th century, but it died out in the 14th and 15th centuries, due to earthquakes and bubonic plague. It revived again in the 16th and 17th centuries, although it suffered a great deal due to the banditry of the day. Today’...

After the disappointment of our flight cancellation on Wednesday evening, our WestJet “relief flight” did takeoff on time on Thursday evening, at the same scheduled time. It was a packed flight and a fairly smooth one over the Atlantic. We were served a nice chicken dijon tray just after midnight (Halifax time) and, after a completely sleepless night for both of us, we landed in Barcelona, just ahead of schedule, at 9:30 AM on Friday morning. When we got to our car rental company, they wouldn’t rent me the car because I didn’t have an international drivers license. I have driven cars all over the world, even in Africa, and I’ve only been asked for an International drivers license once. I do have a valid one, which I got from CAA, but I just didn’t bring it with me, because I had no idea that Spain, as an EU member, would require it. $100 later, I was able to get one online after some doing and finally get the car rental resolved. It was 11:40 AM when we set out from Barcelona.  We ...