Little did we know that tomorrow is Sant Jordi (Saint George’s) Day in the Catalan region of Spain. After seeing lots of people over the past few days with roses, we finally asked around and learned that on April 23, the guys give girls roses, and the guys get books… Seems a bit of an odd exchange to me, but we’ve seen book stalls popup on the street alongside rose sellers, and everything in the shape of roses, from chocolate to change purses.
Yesterday we rode from Sitges to a small town just north of Barcelona, stopping in Barcelona for lunch. We camped with a Gamping.com host for the night before heading off to Girona today, where we met up with our fantastic host for the evening, who has intrigued us with stories of his past cycling tours and given us great advice for our route tomorrow.
We stopped at a cycling cafe in Girona called La Fabrica, which is known to have pro cyclists visit. We saw hundreds of other serious cyclists out today in the road, at the cafe, and all over town. Finally we fit right in, in our Spandex.
There’s some kind of music festival and street fair going on in Girona, so we found a place to watch the crowd and checked out the popular sights.
On the quiet roads between Barcelona and Girona, we saw a number of working girls, simply sitting on a chair on the side of the road and dressed up really pretty. To be honest, it took us going by 3 or 4 of them to start to ask what’s going on here and then come to the realization. Our suspicion was confirmed when we saw one girl being dropped back off at her chair by a young gentleman.
Tomorrow we cross into France!