A more planned route

Taking the remaining plan for Catalonia and pushing it forward, we made our way to Girona. It was another very scenic route, winding our way through mountains and tunnels. It was nice and relaxing, until we hit Girona.

Road signs
When hitting the bigger cities, finding your way isn't usually a problem. However, finding your way around the city brings about much frustration.

When lost, the tendency is to grab a map. As logical as this may sound, a map in a bigger city or town is useless when in a car, as it is next to impossible to find street signs. For the record, street signs do exist. But they can only be found on intersection corners, tucked away on a building, in really, really small print. When driving around in a car, this is, well, useless.

Next thought is to look for signs to help you find your way to popular tourist destinations. Again, this would be nice, but instead, most signs in cities either lead you out of town or to a hotel. Once in a while you might find a sign for a major destination, but it is fleeting, as usually only one exists, giving you a general idea of direction at best.

Parking
This is another interesting experience in Spain, if not Europe. First comes the challenge of finding a spot to park, which is big enough for your car. Remember, while cars are small in Europe, space is at a premium. This means you have to squeeze your way out of a car once parked. I don't understand why they don't park on sidewalks like they do in other European countries.

Next comes the challenge of making sure that no signs tell you that you can't park. Finally, if you do happen to come across a sign, the final challenge is being able to try and understand what it tells you. While a car is convenient to drive around, to stop and leave it isn't as easy.

Grocery shopping
Instead of staying in Girona, (since we could not find our destination, nor parking) we decided to head for a grocery store to pick up some munchies. It is always interesting to see how other cultures live, and a grocery store tells you quite a bit.

The best part of the grocery store was the booze isle, mainly wine. Besides having a decent selection, for a grocery store that is, some of the prices would probably convert more people to become wine drinkers in North America! The lowest bottle I could find was 0.79 Euros, which even for me seemed too good to be true. So instead I opted for a slightlier pricer bottle at 2.79 Eu.