Girona - Flower Festival

Rick provides a great deal of detail on the cities he covers, which means problems for breadth-of-coverage in large countries like Spain.

I haven't seen the flower festival, but Enric has spoken highly of it on this forum, and I hope to manage a trip to Catalunya at the right time of year.

Girona is fabulous. Not only is it worth a day-trip, it is worth an overnight stay, even without the festival. There are two historic cathedrals, both of which have English-language audioguides available, as I recall. The medieval district is large, picturesque, with a large section of wall you walk on top of. And there's an excellent medium-sized museum. It's an affluent town with lots of restaurants and a lively atmosphere in the historic area. Highly, highly recommended.

There are two kinds of trains running between Barcelona Sants and Girona. The fast trains theoretically could sell out, but I don't know how likely that would be. You will pay a bit more if you wait to buy the tickets until you arrive in Barcelona. But there are also slower trains (MD and regional), and their fares will not increase as your travel date approaches. Those trains have no reserved seats and cannot sell out. So you'll probably have several options when the time comes. Do check the pricing on round-trip as well as one-way fares. Sometimes in Spain, especially on the regional trains, the round-trip is about the same price as a one-way ticket. Hard to beat that.

My guess--and it is only a guess--is that a lot of the people heading to Girona during the flower festival will be Barcelona residents, and they will mostly travel on a weekend (unless there's a holiday in there somewhere--do check on that!), so you might increase your chances of some elbow-room on the train by making the trip on a weekday.

You can take a look at rail schedules and pricing (for fast trains only) on renfe.com. Use tomorrow's date to see how high the AVE and AVANT fares can be at the last minute. You'll note that the AVANTs are often much less expensive than the AVEs and are just as fast for this trip. As you can see, the MD and regional travel times vary quite a bit. I don't know whether the fares also vary with the speed of the train. I paid under 7 euros one way for one of the slower trains to Girona in July 2016.

When Enric notices this thread, I'm sure he'll provide more information.

Acraven - thanks so much for your response. I'm very excited to see Girona as well as the Flower Festival. We were thinking about a day trip to Montserrat, and although it looks to be very beautiful, it sounds like the crowds can really ruin the experience. Perhaps Girona is a better fit for us.

Well, Enric will only add... "Nah, you won't like it. Don't go please, there are already too many of us visiting this gorgeous festival, LOL!" :))))

Seriously now, do expect a lot of people, the festival attracts many visitors from all over Europe, not just from the Barcelona metro area -which it does too- as well as the rest of the province of Girona. And while Ann's thinking might seem wise, well, the fact is that I certainly don't understand how can it be so busy also on weekdays. For God's sake, everybody I know is working so, who the heck are these people that have the time to go to the festival then? well, I don't know, but the fact is that it's very crowded all the way to the last day, which by the way, this year runs from the 12th to the 20th in May.

This is a video for a peek: http://infocatalonia.eu/w/RH9Gv

Temps de Flors, the name of the festival, means "Time of Flowers" in Catalan, the local language here in Catalonia, and it's an ode to the Springtime, to Arts and to Catalan patriotism. This is the website of the festival albeit practical data won't be available until it gets closer to May: http://www.gironatempsdeflors.cat/cat/inici.php Also to mention that if you could manage an overnight in Girona, you'd be experiencing a part of the festival that many don't... strolling the streets of the old city at night it gives a very special and intimate view of the city and there are also some great Arts performances in the streets. Have some examples of what I mean in these other videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHdEKwiBzGA and most especially https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfZpNV71A5o Attendance is free, of course, like most of the other festivals here in Catalonia celebrating our heritage.

For these days DO PREBOOK you fast trains as soon as you can since they get full at times and although there are many each day, you might end up not being able to take the one you need.

Fire away any other question you might have, I'll try to help.

Enjoy!

PS.... and let's continue keeping Rick in the dark about this one, all right? hahaha!

As the word "crowds" is being mentioned twice before, I would like to point out that "being crowded" might mean something different to different people.

For me crowded is when the next person is closer than 10 yards from me :)

Saying this because while both places, Temps de Flors in Girona and Montserrat on a Sunday might be "busy", this is not by any means like the first day of sales in Macy's or like Disneyworld in August! Yet this is not to say that on a particular place at a particular time you cannot find it truly crowded.

Enric - Wow. Just Wow!! I'm ready to go right now.

I'm trying to decide how long of a day we can do. We are willing to travel early if it is "open" early so we can take some pictures before the larger crowds come. Would arriving at 9am be good for that? We can also arrive at 7:45. We'd want to stay through lunch and probably some of the afternoon - but would not be able to stay for any of the evening events.

The festival looks quite large. Do you think we could see most of the installations in a 4 hour time frame (excluding the lunch break)? There are fast trains at 3, 4, and 5pm and I'm thinking we'd plan to take one of them back to Barcelona.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Lynne,

If I were you I'd go there early so to make the most out of the day, but not "that" early, arriving there at 9 is all right.... HOWEVER note that (1) fellow visitors of the festival will do the same :), so yes, less crowded but crowded nonetheless and (2) to mention that Girona is a small city so they don't follow "the ways" of the big metropolis (like Barcelona), this means that before 10ish you'll only find coffee shops and kiosks open. And the "spaces" of Temps de Flors will also be closed until 10 so there's no point in getting there earlier. They open from 10 am to 10 pm.

This is the map of the spaces of last year... but every year is pretty much the same so expect 2018 be similar: http://www.gironatempsdeflors.cat/docs/planol_tempsdeflors_2017.pdf As you can see most of the spaces are in the old city (the orange area), inside the city walls. And to get an idea on distances, from Plaça de Catalunya (bottom right) to Sant Pere de Galligants (left) there's just 0.6 miles, but don't you pay attention to Google Maps, you won't walk that in 15 minutes... too many things to see along the way... it can take you waaay over an hour, trust me! My advice?... print it out and create an itinerary with the recommended top10 (Els 10 Imprescindibles) plus anything that's along the way.

I would plan for a return not sooner than 5ish -after all, it's only 40' to Barcelona- so it leaves you 10 to 4 minus lunch... plenty of time to have a general idea.

Important:

-Do prebook you train tickets online a.s.a.p.

-If you have any restaurant in mind for lunch, do write them and see if they accept reservations, if so, do reserve! If not, make alternative plans for other restaurants if the one you want is full when you go for lunch. Also, take advantage of your "weird" habit of having lunch at noon and go there early. From 1 onwards most of the best restaurants can be pretty full, especially during the festival, you see, our normal lunch time starts at 1:30 and there are lots of people (especially those working on shops) that will have lunch at 2 and even 3 pm.

-Remember there's no cost (no ticket) to visit the festival. That's good for your budget but bad for your mobility... anything "free" is always busy, LOL!

Enjoy!

So... I'm having a little trouble convincing my husband that heading to Girona would be worth taking a day away from our short time in Barcelona. He's willing to go, but would prefer we leave Girona sooner than 5. There is a fast train at 3 and another at 4 that I could prebook. He also thinks it would be better to plan to arrive at 10 instead of 9 since the festival doesn't open until 10. I'm sure I could make a whole day of it, but I'm willing to compromise!

On another forum, someone indicated that I wouldn't need to prebook if took a "MD" train (although I may have to stand up for the ride). If I did this, I could keep it open ended on when we leave Girona and perhaps keep my husband interested in a later return time.

Can someone send me a link to the MD train schedule? I want to make sure I'm looking at the right trains and understand the pricing and duration.

Thanks again.

www.rodalies.tk

Note however you won't be able to check the schedule "months in advance" -it'll yield "unavailable". Just check the schedule for any day now (weekday or weekend is the only important difference you need to take into account) as it's pretty similar all year round. If anything there'll be more trains in June and July and also possibly during Temps de Flor, but there are already, in fact, many (many!) each day as this is a very busy line. Girona is considered the second capital of Catalonia, after Barcelona, so you can expect a lot of commuting between these two cities.

An advantage to going to Girona early is that you could do the wall-walk before starting in on the flower activities. The two cathedrals are also worth seeing, though I don't know about accessibility during the flower festival.