Girona
Girona has great historical importance for many things involving Iberians, Romans, French armies and a massive wall that the Gironaians built to keep armies out, which worked just great until one of those armies knocked part of the wall down. Because it is so picturesque, many movies and TV shows have been filmed here, including Game of Thrones. The most important historical aspects of Girona are illustrated in the photos below, so you don't have to learn anything further.

I took the audio-guided tour of the Girona cathedral (pictured at left), fulfilling my requirement to do something educational while on this trip. Not to get too theological here, but why would a merciful, forgiving God require people to walk up this many steps to go to church every Sunday?

While on my educational cathedral visit, these dogs barked at me, ready to take me on just in case I had any plans to mess with the stroller they were attached to.

This picture, taken from the top of what remains of the city wall, shows the Pyrenees and France, the country that provided the soldiers who successfully knocked part of the wall down.







But what intrigues me the most about Girona is the illumination settings control panel in my hotel room. It has many buttons that are set to do things that are not written on the buttons and they don't include options for things you might need, like, oh I don't know, like "turn on light." Rather, the lights are controlled by the buttons surrounding the image of the heart below, and instead of being labelled "bathroom" and "bedroom," they are labelled "eros," "passion," "romantic" and "love" (no, you cannot rent rooms by the hour here, it is a three-star hotel). For example, the "eros" setting closes the drapes and turns the bedroom lights on low. "Passion" turns off the room light, but turns on the shower light along with the mood lighting above the bed. Unfortunately, there isn't a setting that says "hey, I'm 60 years old and sometimes I have to get up at 3:00 am and pee so can you turn on the light over the toilet."  

And, while I would not bother to write this last part if I had anything better to do, this hotel (which is quite nice and has a 4.5 star rating on Trip Advisor) also has three "Eros Suites" that contain, according to the website, "The Eros Sofa (tantric chair) specially thought for couples and designed to enhance your sexual pleasure." I kind of know what we're all thinking here about a public, reusable Eros Sofa so I'll stop right there.

On the plus side, the orange juice machine makes up for everything: