La Bisbal D’Empordá
We needed to get some doors for our flat renovations, so on Saturday we decided (on Ester’s recommendation) to go out past Gerona to a small Catalan town called La Bisbal D’Empordá. We’ve been there before when it was Isabel’s birthday last year and we stayed in the rather posh hotel Castell d’Empordá - which is really excellent; great rooms and wonderful food. La Bisbal is full of antique shops and Ester assured us that one particular shop had “thousands of doors”.
Anyway, this was a day-trip only and we thought that rather than hire a car we’d try the journey by public transport - mistake! We took the metro L-1 from Urquinaona to the RENFE station Clot-Aragon, only to miss the train by a few minutes largely because the automatic ticket machines didn’t sell tickets to our destination station (Flacá) and we had to queue. When we eventually got to the front of the ticket queue, the ticket lady told us; “Well it’s a bit like flying from the airport when you need to arrive an hour or two before your flight; for the trains you need to be at the station 30 minutes before departure.” Right! :-( An hour wait for the next train… We decided to kill time by having lunch in a local granja - quite good and very cheap. Then we caught the train to Flacá. Unfortunately, someone on board had a serious BO problem, so the journey of 1 hour 40 minutes was less than pleasant.
When we arrived at Flacá, our plan was to catch at taxi to nearby Bisbal. However, there was not a single taxi in sight at the station and we were informed by a local that we had just missed the bus to La Bisbal by a minute or two; you guessed it - an hour wait for the next one. Isabel took the initiative and went into the nearest bar… Eventually we found a number for a local taxi and gave them a call. Ten minutes later we were sat in a very comfortable S-class Mercedes which took us right to the front of the antique shop for 15 Euros; which we both felt was a bit steep for being out in the sticks.
We spent an hour or so looking at antique doors with the very helpful Rosa, and think that we may have found two suitable front doors, although the price is way above our budget.
Later we went to the famous cake shop “Sans Bisbalenc” in La Bisbal to try the traditional Bisbalenc. This is a log-shaped puff pastry filled with a type custard and coated with sugar and pine nuts - extemely sweet.
We caught the local bus (only 1.20 Euros) back to Flacá railway station which has this interesting clock. The time is 19:46 if you’re interested. 
 
We got back home a couple of hours later. Next time we’ll hire a car, or go by bicycle…
One weird thing: the river in La Bisbal was completely dry and cars were parked in the river bed in the town centre. I’m not sure why this is, but I’m sure it’s nothing to do with global warming.
