Trevor Huxham

Pont de Besalú The small Spanish village of Besalú first entered my imagination almost five years ago when a fellow language assistant went on a travel blogger retreat here and, naturally, posted glamorous photos of this charming medieval town, complete with a striking bridge and stereotypical moat! Later, the hit TV series Game of Thrones would use Besalú as a filming location for a recent season, and while I’ve never watched the show before, it felt like the world was telling me to check out this tiny town before my time in Spain was up . With a portcullis and everything

Whenever I’m on a trip that involves taking a lot of public transit, I often think about how many “layers deep” I am in connections that have brought me where I currently am. A Travel Inception, if you will. Greek ruins + the Mediterranean As part of my exploration of northeast Spain two years ago, I left my initial base in the Gràcia neighborhood (1) of Barcelona up to Girona (2), and from Girona I daytripped to Figueres (3), going further north from Figueres that same day to the tiny coastal resort of L’Escala (4). I was seven layers deep, counting the shuttle to the airport in Santiago de Compostela (5), the flight from Santiago to Barcelona (6), and the commuter train ride into central Barcelona (7). But if you also count one of the most ancient ruins in Spain as a time travel machine, it adds up to eight. What is Empúries? Mosaic scene in the museum If the name Empúries reminds you of a Victorian-era emporium, you’d be right on the money, as these ruin...

Dalí Theater-Museum Surrealist paintings have fascinated me ever since first being exposed to them in my 9th-grade art class, especially the works of Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. Whimsical works like The Persistence of Memory  and Swans Reflecting Elephants  tickled my fancy, while spiritual pieces like The Sacrament of the Last Supper  and Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)  inspired me with their mysticism. Dalí Theater-Museum In the three years I lived and worked in Spain, I went on several pilgrimages to check out the works of some of my favorite Spanish painters, like to Toledo for El Greco and Barcelona for Joan Miró. The mid-sized town of Figueres, just south of the French border in northeast Spain, was the destination for my third painter-pilgrimage, as it was Dalí’s hometown, final resting place, and location for his personal Theater-Museum,  a museum that makes you feel like you’ve stepped into the frame of one of his own bizarre painting...

Artichokes When I visited the gorgeous city of Girona just north of Barcelona two Junes ago, I came into town expecting to stay just two nights before returning back to BCN and from there to Santiago. No, this isn’t one of those cliché “I just had to extend my stay!” posts—I literally thought I had only booked two nights in my hostel…but come to find out, I had actually booked (and pre-paid for) three! Fuet sausage Another happy surprise was that my (now-longer-than-expected) time in Girona overlapped with the biweekly (twice-weekly?) open-air market, as I found out while reading the hostel’s bulletin board. What better way to spend a Tuesday than by taking in the sights and smells of the building blocks of the local cuisine? It was a literal walk in the park to get to this market as they had moved the stalls that typically line the banks of the Ter River into a sprawling wooded park for the summer. Tomatoes

The handsome city of Girona in far northeastern Spain had long been on my to-visit list, becoming irresistible after a series of sensational blog posts and Instagram photos from friends I follow came across my feed. After all, who could resist a city that gets festooned with an avalanche of flowers every spring , that boasts a strikingly-red Eiffel Bridge, and that is home to the Best Ice Cream in the World™? Girona, seen from the Eiffel Bridge You might think that Girona (pronounced “zhee-ROE-nuh” [ʒiˈɾo.nə]) would be totally overshadowed by its neighbor Barcelona to the south, but sitting a 40-minute train ride away lets this provincial capital carve out its own unique character and feel. And that personality is 100% Catalan, making Girona a perfect place to experience what makes the northeastern region of Catalunya so special. As part of my final trip around Spain before moving back home, I spent three nights in this fabulous city and got more deeply acquainted with w...