Girona

Last week I had a chance to visit Catalunya in Spain. My boyfriend was due there with a truck full of theatrical scenography, so I decided to tag along. We left Basel early on Monday morning and drove through southern France arriving to our destination, Girona, the following afternoon. It was nice to go trucking again, since we've done it earlier a lot with Mnemopark. And countryside along the highway was really beautiful this time of year, because all the vineyards were blazing in all imaginable colors of red and yellow.

Somewhere near Narbonne.

This was my first visit to Girona, some 60 km north from Barcelona. The town turned out to be very pittoresque albeit sleepy. In one afternoon you can see all the important sights. The town is divided by a river - on the east side the old part and on the west the new stuff. The new is like in any other European city with posh fashion boutiques and jewelleries. You get it right, not much of interest there.

The old town is nice with it's narrow lanes, especially in the Jewish quartier. In the daytime, during the off-season week, it's very empty there. All the locals are having their afternoon siesta and there is very few tourists around. But one will want to go walk around, because it's the only time when you really see the surroundings. So, I practically had the streets to myself.

In the evening everything springs up to life, when the locals crawl out from their lairs and hit the streetside cafes and restaurants for dinner and social life. I guess, for me it would take some serious adjusment before I got used to this two-part daily routine.

Panoramic view over the town seen from the old city wall.
(Also my first experiment with photo-stitching)

Peeping to the south through a narrow window in the wall.

Cathedral on the right.

Old town lane.

Sunday morning.

Girona by night seen from the Fishermen bridge.

Girona has relatively lot of parks which are easily accessible. Especially the ones next to the old city wall are quite pretty. I was amazed how greenish they still manage to look in November. All in all it was hard to believe that we're really in November there. Weather was bit cloudy mostly but the temperature hung steadily around 18'C. Nice after the plus-minus zero in Helsinki on only the previous week =)

Park in the south seen from the old wall.
(And photo-stitch number 2)

Cathedral behind the park of Placa dels Jurats.

Església de Sant Feliu in approaching sunset.

I've been to Spain before so I was really looking forward to get some seriously good food and wine again. The region didn't disappoint me in this sense, but I was surprised how expensive everything has turned out to be. Nice lunch you'll still manage to get for around 15€, but dinners are about to cost you bigger bucks. Well, who cares, the food is good and "tapas" is always great option.

Ugly pic, but delicious tapas - the spanish snacks.

One point of curiosity was a film crew staying in the same hotel as us. They were shooting some 19th century epoque-movie on the big stairs of the Cathedral. I bumped into these people on the very first night in town and talked with them lengthly about the differences between creating lighting for movies and stage. It would have even been cool to continue this comparative discussion, but our paths didn't cross anymore.

Anyway, I've had sort of brief introduction on movie-lighting during my studies, but I've never seen it in big scale, real life, before. Movie-technicians invited me to come over and see how it works, which I later did. It was interesting since the equipment they use are partly the same, but also something completely different -like this big glowing daylight-globe below.

Night shoot.