Gerona (Girona), Sunday, June 17, 2007
From France to Spain
We left Canet-Plage along the local coastal road, wending our way through a few little beach towns, then climbing up along the edge of the Pyrenees. A bit beyond Banyuls we came to a promontory made of some pretty impressive rock
that extended out about a hundred meters above the sea.
Debbie checked the map.
Of course we took our picture
Several shacks along the road sold local wines, even though everyone was driving the two lane, windy road.
We would not pass up the opportunity to buy our last bottle of French wine and some fabulous, home-made, mixed-citrus marmalade.
Our Entry to Girona
You know the refrain:
We arrived in Girona on Sunday afternoon at about 2:00; nearly everything was closed.
As we walked to the town center, we passed one closed chocolate shop called Cal Enric… the last shop under the granite arches
but found an open bakery/chocolate store, called Faure, which had some fame a few years back:
As we walked along we noticed the petals of the local flowering tree blowing into lovely designs on the ground.
Yet Another Medieval Jewish Quarter
After a while it seems as though one little medieval Jewish quarter looks pretty much the same as another. A map in the Jewish museum in Girona illustrates the many Jewish communities in Catalunya, Aragon and Valencia… all of which came to an end with the Expulsion in 1492.
Much of the difference in what we see of these towns depends on the general layout of the city itself, and, of course, the willingness of the current local population to devote some resources to the remembrance of this part of Spain’s past.
Whereas Segovia was built on the top of a flat mountain with gorges on three of its four sides, Girona as illustrated in this model (the Judería is in yellowish wood on the right side; the big building with the semi-circle to its left is Saint Mary's Cathedral)
is built above the Onyar river along the side of hill of the Capuchins which we climbed before we found the entrance to the Jewish museum, a bit lower down, at the base of this street. Girona was home to Kabbalism and especially Nachmanides, who traveled from his home in Girona to Barcelona for the famous disputation.
We’ll find different examples as of how the Jewish communities’ areas are laid out we continue.
Life happened inside the courtyards of the homes (from below):
(from above):
Finding Friends in Strange Places
In the bookstore of the museum we found Vicki Reikes Fox’s book about Jews of the southern United States: Shalom Y’all
And, as we said goodbye to Girona to head further down to the coast to Barcelona, we passed one more closed chocolate shop with its nice Art Nouveau detail work.
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