Gerona

Have you seen the Harry Potter movies, in particular Hogwarts and the moving staircases? Well the idea was copied from Gerona´s streets and alleyways. You walk down La Rambla, the main street, and turn right at the shoe shop and find a lovely little bar. Later on you decide to return to the lovely little bar and turn right at the shoe shop but it is now a dead end alley with a restaurant at the bottom. You retrace your steps and turn right at the ice cream parlour instead, walk through someone´s courtyard, turn right left right and oh look there´s the bar. Come out of the bar and turn left and you´re back on La Rambla - which incidentally is straight, so that just isn´t possible.

The next day, and after much debate over sangria, we decided to test the theory that if you walk in a straight line in Gerona the streets will move around instead of you having to make turns and you will get to where you are going. We went to the shoe shop which was now not there, and neither was the alley.

Instead we chose to cross the bridge over the river (also a straight river, parallel to La Rambla) and walked away from the old town in search of the city for a spot of light shopping. After around 500m or so we took a small left turn and were back at the river, albeit further to the right.

It really is a very strange place.