Thursday, May 28, 2015

Today was the kind of cycling that I enjoy -- a good distance (48 Miles), a good amount of climbing (over 4000 feet), not too steep, no wind (but enough of a breeze to take the edge off the heat of the early afternoon). The first couple of blocks after leaving the hotel were teeth-rattling cobblestones, and then we had a mile or so of city traffic, but after that we had the roads to ourselves, through rolling countryside. This is billed as the most challenging day of the tour. It was challenging, but given the wind that we had on a couple of the other longer days, I am not sure it was the most challenging. At any rate it was fun, and I arrived at the hotel in time for a quick dip in the pool, a quick washing of some bike clothes (the last time that I should need to that on this trip), and now the  blog.

Yesterday I took 126 pictures; today I only took four, so I will catch up with a couple more from yesterday. Here you see the hotel dining room in the hotel Duran that I mentioned, and then a photo of the group of us (ten riders and three guides) outside the Dali Museum. It was the last time we would all be together, since Gary, Sybil and Amy left this morning for their tour in Majorca, and Montse is off to lead a tour on the Camino de Santiago. We stopped a local cyclist and asked him to take the picture so that we could all be in it. Imagine his surprise when we handed him at least half a dozen phones and cameras to take pictures with. He was a great sport about it.


Today we left the flat plains surrounding Girona and headed further inland toward the "serralada transversal" mountain range. Toward the end of the ride we entered the Natural Park and Volcanic area of "La Garroxta." It is an area with much more rainfall and heavily forested.

We stopped in Banyoles for

Hotel Duran Dining Room

In front of the Dali Museum, Figueres

Tramuntana street --named after the winds that we have been expeiencing

The lake at Banyoles

lunch, with most of us getting take out sandwiches (bocadillos para llevar in Spanish -- I haven't even tried to pick up any phrases in Catalan) and enjoying a rest by the lake in town.

Tonight we will have dinner as a group. I expect that it will be much quieter than the loud and fun-filled dinner that we had last night in Figueres as we bid farewell to those whose tour was ending at that point.