This long weekend trip to Spain was possible because Heather had the [mis]fortune of having to work a number of additional hours in Swindon that resulted in us being able to tag three days onto a weekend . . . . so we had nearly a week away!

Having done some research the best location we could find in terms of maximising the time away from the UK was Girona in Spain. There was a late flight out on a Friday evening from Birmingham and an early evening flight back to East Midlands from Girona on the following Wednesday - although sadly the flights were with Ryanair which was a downside, but you can't win them all.

Queuing up for flight FR8046 at Birmingham it was obvious that the 'best of Birmingham' were not neccesarily flying with us and maybe understandable why our destination is also known as GIRO-na. We will however be visiting the Costa Brava towards the back end of this trip and hopefully our choice of coatsal town will be a good one without any all day English breakfasts being offered!

Having landed at Girona at just after 23.15 (local time) we hot footed it to the car hire desk and collected a Skoda Fabia from SIXT for the short drive to our hotel on the edge of the city, the IBIS Girona, which was about a 15-20 minute walk into the central area of the city.

We had discovered before flying out that the TV show Game of Thones had also used Girona as a filming location - mainly in series six - and given that we had just finished watching series five of the show it made exploring Girona on the Saturday more interesting.

The central area of the city, set around the cathedral and basillica, is a maze of narrow streets, walkways and what seemed to be lots of steps and we certainly pounded the streets when exploring the city. The cathedral and basillica (€7.00 for both buildings) was well worth the entrance fee and both included an audio guide too which were very informative. The historic Arab Baths (€2.00) was also quite an interesting short visit - and somewhere that will soon feature in Game of Thrones when we start watching the next series.

Girona was a walled city and there is quite a lot of this still in situ that enables you to gain a number of different views across the city. Entrance to the walls is free of charge - but also involves lots of steps!

Before getting photographs of the iconic riverfront area of Girona, with the brightly painted buildings, we stopped for lunch at Lizarran. This place served up rather gut filling pan dishes of chips, fried eggs and meat (ham/chorizo) for very a reasonable price. I would certainly visit here again especially given the draft Mahou beer was just €1 a glass.

After more exploration of the central area and a spot of shopping it was time to head back to the hotel and freshen up ahead of dinner - it really had been a hot day in the city. Dinner was had a a German style resto-bar called Konig that was less than ten minutes walk from the IBIS hotel. They served up good value food covering Italian, Spanish and German fare along with a decent selection of beers and wines. It was surprinsing, given the slightly out of town location, just how busy with [mainly] local people this place was with everyone seeming to be enjoying an evening out.

After our second night in the IBIS it was time to head to the coast on the Sunday morning - the famed Costa Brava awaits - where we might catch up with some of our fellow flyers from the Friday evening . . . . . if unlucky.

We will wait and see what the next stage of this trip holds for us as we plan to travel along some of the coast from Malgret de Mar to Cadaques, a total distance of around 100 miles.

More photographs available in the Girona album in the Photos area of my travel blog