It’s the last few days with the whole family here in Spain, so I booked three days of relaxing experiences outside of Girona.
The first night was at Hotel Balneario Vichy Catalan, a thermal resort in the hot spring town of Caldes de Malavella (there are other hot spring resorts there, it’s literally a HOT SPOT). It’s the same company that bottles the bubbly mineral water Vichy Catalan. The bottling plant is on the same property, right next door.
Point of menopausal interest: “Caldes de Mala Vella” translates literally to “Heat of the Bad Old Woman” from Catalan.
We did a 50-minute thermal circuit and got massages. Vichy Catalan is a historic old school thermal spa from 1881, with the feel of a nicer hospital/asylum. Less luxury feel and more old-timey cure for the sick and aged. Not everyone there was old, but it sort of felt like they should be.
I thought Vichy Catalan was kind of charming old-school meets high-school. Look at these floors! Sadly covered up with a boring beige runner. Also those Home Depot builder’s special chandeliers, sigh. But then that Star of David door!
My family didn’t see much charm. They thought Vichy Catalan was creepy and straight out of The Shining.
I did find one thing creepy. I got a little bit dolled up for dinner because I saw a nice restaurant downstairs. Google Maps said it would be open. It was raining outside, so I was excited about not going anywhere, just eating dinner at our bubbly hot water resort/asylum.
But then when we went downstairs for dinner, the ballroom restaurant was not serving dinner, or even open. It looked like it was set up for an event. My family immediately saw it as an opportunity to do another Shining-themed photo shoot.
My family did like the thermal circuit and all the ways to spray and soak your body in water. Right after we checked in, I put everyone into hot water, and then we took turns getting massages, which were a little bit too tame to be really good, even the “Vichy Catalan Special Massage”. But even though they weren’t very deep tissue, still better than a sharp stick in the eye. Relaxing.
Vichy Catalan had the usual hot pool, warm pool, and cold plunge. The hot is not super hot and the cold is not super cold. Spaniards don’t go to extremes. I was able to walk right through the cold plunge. Stairs down and then then back up the other side. You don’t even have to submerge if you don’t want to.
There was also a “bidirectional shower”, which means that you get cold water sprayed at you from one direction and warm water from another direction. I went into it with Dan, and he got all the warm water while I got the cold, so that was a bad strategy.
Oh, and another common feature that I’ve seen at three thermal spas now is the “Pediluvium”. It’s a path of rounded large pebbles that you walk over with bare feet while your ankles get sprayed with water from both sides of the wall. I guess walking on the stones is supposed to be stimulating or something. Pediluvium is Latin for “foot bath”. My feet are tender, so I “ow ow ow” my way across. I dunno. It’s fine. It’s different. All these thermal spas seem to have one. Caldes de Malavella is an old Roman thermal spa town too, the Romans were here taking advantage of the hot water coming out of the earth way back then. Their stone bath ruins are visible in the center of the town. So maybe it’s a Roman thing.
After the disappointment of the closed restaurant, my family refused to eat at the buffet in the cafeteria because they didn’t want to be around old people all day long. Whatever! I think it was mostly middle-aged people, not even old. Ageism sucks, and the buffet was supposedly good. But we went to a restaurant on a lake nearby and the men had steaks and I had some overpriced scallops with ham, and my sandals got wet in the pouring rain.
We had a room for four people, kind of unusual. It was a queen with two twins sort of tucked into nooks. Very tall ceilings, sort of Victorian. The window was covered with a sheer curtain, and when I moved it to see what was outside the window, it was just the wall of the bottling plant right next door.
The next morning we finally went to the cafeteria for the buffet and it was kind of meh. I was hoping it would either be gourmet or it would be really healthy spa food, but it was neither. It was kind of like a high school cafeteria. There was lots of Vichy Catalan bubbly mineral water. I drank a whole bottle and peed for the next several hours at 30 minute intervals.
There were the standard eggs, bacon, sausages, a table of pastries, and then fruit and pudding cups of various kinds in a “Desserts” section.
Then there was the “Healthy Corner”. This section cracked me up. It's just cheeses and cold cuts. There was membrillo, that’s a kind of solid jam made of quince, it’s great, especially with cheese. You can see orange cubes of it below. That orange loaf at right is some kind of gristly chorizo mush. I thought it was carrots. I had to spit it out, it was a nasty surprise in my mouth.
After breakfast, we got our stuff and headed for the car. It had stopped raining finally, and was bright and sunny. The pool looked pretty decent, especially the shaded cabanas surrounded by wading pools. Those must be nice on a hot day. This was still early June, and after days of rain, so not very hot. But I could imagine.
This statue below caught my attention because of her C section/tummy tuck scar. It’s by a famous Catalan artist, Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar. He also did the Passion Facade of the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, a lot of other important building facades in Barcelona, and also the St. Michael’s Cross at Montserrat. The female form is carved from an Ionic column, with the breasts on top as the traditional scrolls that would appear in the same place on an Ionic column.
Not that I knew ANY OF THAT at the time that I was looking at it, I didn’t even read the sign. I was just like, “Oh, pretty, and she has a bit of a tummy and a scar like mine!” I didn’t realize that it was a sculpture by a famed Catalan artist.
Well, that’s why I take photos that include informative signs, I guess. So I can realize what I’ve seen after I’ve seen it. Travel happens too fast to absorb everything in the moment. Some of it takes time to sink in, and that’s where photos help.
That’s also why I’m posting this on the 14th of July, when it happened on the 13th of June. Too busy doing and being to stop and write about any of it until now. And I only have time now because, well… I’ll put that in my July 13 post.
