Our slow motion advance to the finish in Barcelona continues!
Yesterday, the 18th (no idea what day of the week it is … one of the beauties of week 8 of a 10 week tour!), was a slow wander around Girona, taking in the sights, the cathedral, the wall around the old city, the hundreds of roadies sitting in the ubiquitous bars and cafes. It was all very relaxing and we could feel ourselves being pulled into the culture.
Dinner tonight was at another Monsieur M recommended place, SiNoFos. Great food but the polar opposite of last night in terms of atmosphere - and that’s good, change is always a good thing. Small place, narrow corridor type seating, black industrial decor and feel, staff decked out in black Carharts. The pièce de résistance though was the bulk of he clientele. The place sat about 30 people, and 18 of them were a 30 something British ‘hen party’. It was not quiet.
There was one 10 second ‘moment of silence’ when the lead Hen yelled out ‘Are we having wine?’ and the classic ‘pregnant pause’ settled on the room - this moment also resulted in SOTD as we, for the only point in the entire night, heard the soundtrack they had playing, some real classic stuff but I digress. In almost unison, the brood shouted back ‘yes’ and the cacophony started back up again.
We’ve been on that side of the equation before, i.e. being part of a big boisterous group in a restaurant, so we really couldn’t be pissed. It’s all just part of life’s rich pageant and we just accepted how this night was going to play out, so we played along. Great food, not particularly photogenic though, and great staff. All in all a very good but different finish to what was otherwise a low key relaxed day.
Today we got back on bikes, but not the Tout’s. We figured we’d do what 90% of the other cyclists in town do, hire a lightweight carbon bike for a road ride. A large part of this was driven by the thought of maneuvering our bikes back down the narrow steep staircase, and then having to haul them back up. Far easier to just take the pedals off and take them, the pedals that is, down the stairs!
We had a nice 60 km(ish) ride out to Banyoles and back. We tried to have lunch in Banyoles but all the open restaurants were open, for drinks, but weren’t serving food until 1 pm, and it was 11:45. We decided just to ride back to Girona and at 1:30 were tucking into a good pizza for lunch.
The rest of the afternoon was given over to domestic duties … blog writing, logistics for the next week, and just chilling. As I said at the outset of this post, we are going into slow-mo mode.
The grand finale of the day was quite exceptional. Our third Monsieur M restaurant, which was right around the corner from our apartment, Cipresaia, was teed up for 8 pm. Once again, exceptional food and yet again a completely different atmosphere. We sat outside at a small table on a narrow street, the menu was composed of small shared plates enabling us to to compose our own multi course menu, with help for the friendly and informative staff. Traditional Catalan cuisine presented in a contemporary fashion, and it was sensational … and photogenic. Sorry, another ‘Aunt Betty dines out’ album coming up!
So, not much biking, but the gorging theme continues. It’s always good to have multiple themes to work with.
This was the song we heard in the 10 seconds of relative silence we had at SiNoFos. A classic from 1970 that was given a second life in the early 90’s as part of the soundtrack to Tarantino’s first full length movie ‘Reservoir Dogs” K-Billy’s super sounds of the 70’s - Let’s get a taco.
An exceptional Picpoul from just outside Cadeques - Pla de Tudella by Anna Espelt. Fitting that it had a sea fan on the label as it went exceptionally well with the seafood we were having
