We Have Always Missed the Bus to the Castle
A town on a cliff, an inadvertent emergency call and exotic cuisine.
To get off the bus, or not to get off?
We know we’re getting close to our destination, the stunning lil town of Castellfollit de la Roca1. But when the bus stops, we’re just on the side of the road, not at a bus station. And the bus driver doesn’t make any sort of announcement about where we are.
I stand halfway up – just enough to drop my phone to the floor of the bus – and think about going to ask the driver. But the bus is already moving again. Oh well. This wasn’t so much of a stop as it was a pause, and surely we’ll get to the bus stop soon.
About 15 seconds later, two awful things happen. We realize we are leaving the town behind, and my phone starts making outlandishly loud siren noises. It is making an automatic emergency call, which is a fun thing my particular model of phone does every once in a while. Because this has happened before, I’ve disabled this feature, which means it really shouldn’t be happening right now on this bus full of people. I wish I could form an intelligent thought, but the siren sounds are drowning out all potential for critical thinking.
To my right, Jeff is getting quietly furious with himself because he feels like us missing the bus stop is his fault, for some reason, even though we were both equally clueless. I’m so distracted by trying to hang up on the 911 operator that I sort of believe him,2 reassuring him I’m not mad at him instead of reassuring him no one should even be mad at anyone. While I turn my phone off and pray for it not to turn back on, Jeff has the presence of mind to notice the bus has stopped again and to suggest we get off.
We sit down and both take some time to do some Serious Problem Solving, which, like much of today’s Serious Problem Solving, involved staring at our respective screens with furrowed brows. My phone seemingly sorted out, I put it delicately back in my pocket and look up at Jeff.
“It looks like we’re only about a mile past where we were supposed to get off,” he says, a bit sheepish. “Maybe we could walk?”
My mind free to think any thoughts besides “SHIT SHIT SHIT,” I look up at him and realize this was not his fault. It was both of ours, or, put a more positive way, maybe neither of ours. And, most important of all, it’s not a big deal no matter whose fault it was. We set off down the side of this Spanish road to head back toward Castellfollit de la Roca.
“Oh cool, there’s a sidewalk,” one of us says. The path lasts for about 500 feet (and even fewer meters) before we are on our own and trying to find a place to walk on the side of the road. It’s not a particularly busy road, but it is sort of remote, so some of the cars are going fast.
“Luckily, I have a blog called ‘the Misadventurer,’” I point out. One good thing about having a blog focused on all the ways things can go wrong during travel and new experiences is that you will never run out of content.
We are going to Castellfollit de la Roca because one time my Grandma sent me a Facebook post about it and I thought it looked cool. I’m excited to tell my Grandma about our trip, even though it might be a long shot to assume she remembers the random Facebook post she sent to me like five months ago.3
We start to get just a little delirious as we walk4, joking about what the people driving by must think of us, and about whether my 911 call had gone through after all and an ambulance could pull up any minute. (Have to preemptively imagine that and laugh about it so I don’t die of stress if it does actually happen.)
After some careful road crossings and lots of laughter, we arrive at our destination. It’s about 1 p.m., which means siesta is fast approaching. Aside from meaning “nap,” siesta is when the stores and restaurants in some parts of Spain close for THREE HOURS from 2 to 5 p.m. in the afternoon. According to leading scientists and my personal preferences, this is too long.
Because the town is tiny (less than 1 square kilometer), restaurant options are limited, and we stop at the first one we see, a place creatively named “El Pub.” We order hamburgers with fries, which is a super lame food to get while on a vacay in Europe. But we were so hungry, and it tastes so good I could cry. You know when you can actually feel the calories from your food converting to energy in your body? Or at least imagine that you can?
And boy, did we need them. This ~900-year-old little town was incredible. The cool thing about the village is that it’s on a very high-up, narrow, basaltic cliff, jutting out into a surrounding natural park. The 150-foot cliff was formed by two lava flows around 200,000 years ago.
We take a path down to the bottom of the cliff, where there’s a charming stream and bridges and endless greenery. Fun fact: Fern Gully was filmed there. If I had one complaint about Castellfollit de la Roca, it’s that I’m positive fairies must live there, but none of them came out to hang out with us. :/ Of course, the narrow streets of the city were charming as heck. The view from the end of the cliff was stunning. We just kept saying “wow.”
Other than the bus and the fairies, our mishaps for the rest of the day were minimal. I had some trouble finding a bathroom, but eventually found one. The church at the end of the cliff was closed, so we didn’t get to go inside. And the photos we got of the town from the bottom of the cliff weren’t as good as the ones we’d seen online, because of the positioning of the sun. But we sure felt lucky to be there, to see this piece of history, to be able to walk around in this part of the world. To be able to walk around at all.
It was a perfect day trip from somewhere like Girona, or even from Barcelona, and everyone should go there right away.
I recommend getting off at the correct bus stop, but not stressing too much if you don’t. You can just walk back. And you know what? I recommend the hamburgers at El Pub too. Sue me.
Question of the Week: What song gets stuck in your head most often?
Recommendation of the Week: this incredible Venn diagram
Thanks for reading!
Please do not ask me how the name of this town is pronounced, because I don’t know. I tried to tell a cab driver about our trip there, and he thought I said we went to El Celler de Can Roca, which is an extremely expensive, Michelin-starred restaurant in Girona that requires reservations about a year in advance (and which I also can’t pronounce). We had a good laugh over the idea that I could afford such a thing.
Is this a thing? I remember my first boss told me to stop apologizing so much to customers (I apologize to everyone for everything all the time), because if you apologize when you didn’t really do anything wrong, people start to think maybe you did do something wrong. And I thought he was probably just being a jerk because honestly, my first boss as very frequently Being A Jerk. (Aside from being pretty sexist and yelling a lot, he also just said nonsensical shit like, “Have you ever noticed how all Asian people walk backwards?”) But it’s possible he was right about this one. I still apologize all the time for everything, though, so what do I know?
She did! I may have even had a shot at making her entire March if she hadn’t also welcomed her newest great granddaughter into the world later the same month. (Welcome to the world Bodhi, I love you so so much, and thanks A LOT for spoiling my candidacy for March’s Top Grandkid.)
This was two days before the half marathon I ran in Girona, so I was a little worried about the quantity of walking we were doing, too. You’re usually advised to stay off of your feet a bit the day or two before running a race. Get in your workout, but then give those dogs a rest! But this whole concept was destined to a be a bust no matter what, because how do you go on vacation somewhere in Europe and not walk around a bunch? Whatever, my feet are young, my knees are spry, my caution has flown away with the wind.