Cannes

28 Apr - Day 44

Today we left Meyrueis and headed towards Cannes. We avoided the expensive hotel breakfast in favour of a bunch of almond croissants from the bakery and started off.

There were no wide, smooth motorways for this leg of the drive. Instead, dad had to navigate the winding, twisting and usually single laned road.

I was in charge of sticking my arm out the window and taking photos of the gorge as we drove through.

After a few hours driving, we arrived in Avignon, where we had decided to stop for lunch. Avignon, in theory, should've been a very interesting city, quite medieval and still surrounded by castle walls.

We walked up along the walls for a view of the river and a bridge that for some reason is only half finished. But apart from that, the streets were completely empty and not particularly nice to look at.

We had lunch at a nice sandwich shop and decided to return to the car and continue our drive. It was only then that we stumbled upon the town's main square and found out where everything was.

A few hours later, we arrived in Cannes and were greeted by a traffic jam. We eventually arrived at the hotel, unpacked and walked into town. We passed through the Antibes shopping area on our way down to the promenande, la Croisette. The Cannes waterfront is very nice and the sun was out so it was quite a pleasant walk. There isn't too much room to enjoy the beach though, because most of it is taken up by expensive restaurants.

Seeing as we didn't want to pay 40 euros each for dinner, we went back into the town for a big salmon pizza and pasta. After this, we went out to the docks to have a look at the gigantic luxury yachts parked in the harbour.

Before heading back, we stopped by the Palais des Festival, where they hold the Cannes Film Festival. We looked along the line of handprints of who I assume are famous actors (I didn't really know any of them) and walked on the red carpet.

 

29 Apr - 45

We walked back down to the waterfront/commercial area this morning to check out the Sunday morning life in Cannes. As we expected, pretty much everything was closed except for cafes and markets so we walked up the hill to a church for a panoramic view of the Cannes seaside.

After this, we walked further along la Croisette, found Harry Potter with his face cut out and then went for lunch at a Chinese fastfood place before heading back to the hotel to rest in preparation for the afternoon.

In the afternoon, we went to Cannes' VO (version originale [non dubbed]) cinema and caught a screening of The Avengers in 3D. That was super cool.

 

 

Tarn Gorge

26 April - Day 42

We leave this five star Barcelona city today. It was a nice change to be driving again, after a week of walking and metroing. The two nice non-English speaking owners came around at 10 am to inspect the apartment and return my E300 bond money. They gave me their business card saying we should tell our friends to stay there too.

We drove through Costa Brava (a Spanish version Riviera) on the way back to France. The plan was to visit Viaduct de Millau on the way to our hotel in Meyrueis.

We drove across the Spain/France border. There was no check-point, just a gas station and cafe. At the next toll gate, we did get stopped by the French Polizia for passport inspections. This is random stop, presumably for tourists and Spanish cars. The police lady asked if we spoke Spanish, I suggested Anglais - so we settled on French. She asked where we were heading, Marcus said Meyrueis which drew a blank. So I said Millau. After telling us to keep the passports handy (they were locked up in the luggage), we were sent on our way.

The tolls take a bit of getting used to especially in Spain. Deciding which gate to pull into, as you are approaching at 70km/h, with a convoy of trucks, vans and cars bearing down behind you at 90km/h - because THEY know exactly where they are going, is a stress test that could easily feature in the US Navy SEALs "mental agility under duress" training.

This is the process in those few seconds; identify green (open) or red gates, eliminate auto toll gates (for locals on prepaid RFID cards), decide between credit card only, credit card and cash, or manned booth (Xray vision required for this one due to darkened glass).

Make sure car is correctly aligned to the toll booth so that you don't pull something when stretching to pay. Being from a left drive country and used to doing stuff like this with my non-dominant driving right-hand, my reach is considerably shortened if I left it to instincts.

If you end up with a machine, you face a bank of slots, so you have to determine which slot is for your ticket, credit card, notes, coins and change. If short of coins, you scan the machine for the largest acceptable note notice - usually only up to E20 notes. Some entry gates to the motoways don't bother issuing a ticket, they just collect a fixed amount - I have been caught waiting for the ticket to be printed when all the machine wanted was a few coins to be thrown into the coin basket. You could spend a good part of the morning learning and assimilating all this properly if not for the long line of traffic behind.

The amount of toll to pay defies logic as well. We drove all the way from Bilbao to Madrid through beautiful mountain passes and tunnels in 2,3 and 4 lanes and didn't pay a cent - 420 km.

Driving through endless one lane roadworks from Madrid to Granada costs E36. The amounts are weird too. Ten minutes out of Barcelona, the toll was E1.48, just outside Granada - E3.02. Luckily for me, I get to wake Marcus from his sleep to count the correct change. All I have to remember to do is take the money and pay with my left hand.

Lunch was at an autostop near Papignan, after driving past the Pyrenees range on the reverse side from earlier in the month. We've had a couple of disappointing lunches at these autostops, so Marcus bought some tuna sandwiches from the patisserie near our Barcelona apartment. We only used the facilities and bought a coffee.

Viaduct de Millau (vee ah dook dee mee yoh) did not disappoint. I got excited about 20 kms out and asked Marcus to prep the camera with plenty of time.

As we rounded the bend on the A75, the viaduct pylons came into view looking very gracefully framed by the country side and hills.

Drving across felt like you are driving on a very fragile structure because there was hardly any, the pylons in the middle held everything up leaving a clear view of the sides.

The view along the sides were hampered by the cross-wind breakers. Nonetheless we could see the town of Millau far below and the Tarn river looking more like a stream from this height (300 something metres up).

Once across, we pulled over to the rest area, and climbed up look-out for a view of the viaduct from the north end. It was pretty windy for most poeple up there, but we felt at home and gained another perspective of the viaduct.

There is a very nice cafe and tourist information centre there, with very helpful staff. The cafe sold these things call Cappucin's which is a large ice cream cone filled with either savoury or sweet fillings for around 5 euros each. I'd read that it was made up by a Michelin star chef. Sadly we were too full from lunch to buy one of these.

Tolls to drive across the bridge was E6.70, which we could have easily avoided by driving through Millau below, but they did spend E400M building the thing, so cest la vie. It will take them 45 years to recover the costs.

We then drove to another view area below the viaduct. This place was put up by the engineering company that built the bridge, so there were videos on the process to watch and a souvenir shop.

After all that sight seeing we we keen to get to our hotel for a rest and dinner. Having booked a hotel in the middle of the Tarn Gorge, we had to drive through the gorge to get to the hotel. I will elaborate in tomorrows blog.

The hotel was very nice, the staff, based in the middle of nowhere, spoke English except for the waiter, who was excellent by the way. I, by accident (or ignorance), ordered a sparkling wine with my trout, but he directed me towards a still white which was more suitable. The poor chap at the next table was compelled to intervene in English because the waiters suggestion was falling on ignorant ears, and the charades at the next table was putting him off his dinner.

27 April - Day 43

The reason for staying in Meyrueis was to spend a day exploring the Tarn Gorge. It is like the Grand Canyon in USA, except more stunning, accessible, driveable, and has more features and restaurants

The drive around this area is simply breath-taking and death-defying. We drove up and down the canyon walls on narrow but two lane roads.

The roads are twisty with plenty of switchbacks, sheer drops, large rock overhangs above us and many tunnels carved into massive boulders.

There were many hamlets, villages and settlements on the route, and many cafes and restaurants perched in odd places or where they can to take advantage of the tourist trade.

A canoe company provides opportunity to view the gorge from a water level and less undulating perspective.

 

The highlight of the day was our visit to Aven Armand. Aven means sink-hole and Armand was the guy who found it. I am surprised this is not one of the seven wonders (but the French do like to keep their best stuff for themselves). This is a cave 200k cubic metres, big enough to hold Notre Dame filled with stalactites and stalagmites.

This cave is 4 million years of hard work by mother nature. The cable car took us down there in 2-3 minutes.

The stalactites growing down were sharp, had wavy forms thin and elegent. The stalagmites growing up took a more robust and varied shapes.

They are, for good reason, named palm tree, turkey, draperies, jelly fish, cauliflower and the guide pointed one that looked like the holy familiy La Sagrada Familia, which made me think this is where Gaudi got his inspirations.

I am sure I even saw Homer Simpson, the bald shiny top and round tummy being the visual check-points.

After this impressive visit, we made an equally stunning and hairy drive to a small and beautiful village call Saint Enimie and had our pizza lunch by this part of river Tarn.

 

Final Day Barcelona

24 Apr - Day 40

We took the metro to the Espanya stop where a shopping complex Arena had been built into a coleseum type structure. Marcus wanted to go to the Rock (as in music, not geology) Museum. It was not open.

The views from the top of the shopping mall was pretty good, as they had a circular observation platform with restaurants on the rooftop.

Next we walked towards the National Arts (MNAC) museum passing some Venetian type towers. The MNAC had paintings, scluptures and frescos from the Gothic, Romantic, Baroque and Modern periods. All housed in a very nice building.

After a bite to eat, we walked over to the Olympic Park behind the museum. The plaza area was huge with good views of the city, and housed an interesting looking cell phone tower (on the left).

We checked out the Olympic stadium which hosted the 1992 Olympics, and subequently hosted rock bands like Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteens and the like.

We took the furnicular down the road back into the city and walked through La Rambla street, towards Barcelona's very own Arc de Triomph. By this time both were tired and we took the tram and metro home.

25 Apr - Day 41

Happy ANZAC day everyone. A rare weekday one, so one actually gets a day off work, I was thinking.

We took the metro to the Royal Palace near Barcelona University. This palace houses the ceramic and fabric museum, which did not interest us. So we walked past various university faculties towards the home ground stadium of the Barcelona Football Club.

It is a huge stadium, we saw gate 101. There is a tour of the stadium, changing rooms, press room, and the clubs museum if you are willing to part with 22 euros each. We didn't and instead went into the mega shop.

The shops sells everything branded Barcelona football club. Shirts, umbrells, soccer balls, mugs etc. They have a facility to print your own name and number on the back of a Barca shirt if you didn't like the Messi #10 one.

It has been a high mileage week in Barcelona so we went home after lunch, picking up a TV dinner of paella and lasagne on the way.

 

Sant Jordi Day

22 Apr - Day 38

 

Today was an uncharacteristically cloudy day in Barcelona so we had to dress up warm for our excursion. Our first stop was the Parc Guell, a park designed by Gaudi. Situated at the top of a big hill, it is not your typical park, with odd looking buildings and structures and some strange choices in flora but a very nice view of the city. Despite the subpar weather, it was still very busy and full of tourists, runners and buskers.

After this, we walked back down through city. We came across a square called Placa de Revolucion where a human tower competition was being held. In this competition, large teams of people attempted to create the tallest or best looking structure or something like that. I'm not exactly sure what the judging criteria was though, not collapsing and crushing people in the crowd might have been enough to earn a placing.

It was pretty fun watching small people clamber all over the bigger people to stand on their shoulders and build the tower. It's the kind of thing I would imagine monkeys doing if they weren't so busy eating, sleeping and flinging their own poop at each other. The people at the bottom of the tower seem to get a pretty bad deal though: their only job is to grab fistfuls of the butts of the people who make up the lower columns so that they don't get flattened by the 2000 or so kilos worth of people standing on them.

 

We then walked around a bit more before stopping for lunch, looking at some more Gaudi buildings and returning home for the day. Dad prepared a huge amount of fried rice for dinner which was pretty awesome.

 

Apr 23 - Day 39

 

Today was St Jordi, which is like the equivalent of Valentine's day here in Spain. As a result, there were street vendors trying to sell roses at 5 metre intervals throughout the city. It might also have been a public holiday because there was an unusually large amount of people out and about.

 

We started off the day at Catalunya and walked down La Rambla, sticking to the sides as the crowd was far too thick to push through. After reaching the bottom, we headed to the Gothic quarter of the city which has all the Gothic-y buildings. We took a walk through the CIty Hall, during which we stopped to watch a string quartet concert in what I guess was the concert chamber.

 

Afterwards we decided to head to the Catalan Music Palace. It was closed, so we went to go visit the Picasso museum which was also closed.

For lunch we went to a restaurant near the waterfront called La Mar Salada. I ordered veal steak tartar for my main, unaware that tartar is just a fancy word for uncooked slab of meat. Expecting the worst from the way my dad described, it actually turned out to be very good. Conversely, when my dad ordered a pina colada for dessert, it failed spectacularly to meet his expectations. When dessert arrived, he recieved a glass full of fruit cocktail which contained no alcohol whatsoever. He was so upset that I had to eat it for him.

We went back to Sagrada Familia in the afternoon so that I could actually go inside and dad could have a beer while he waited. However, the line for tickets stretched round the corner so I decided to forgo the visit today and instead go back laze around in the apartment.

Beach Barcelona

20 Apr - Day 37

Marcus had gone 35 days without touching a guitar, though he tried an unsuitable the day before at the El Cortes Ingles department store. So we decided to try again. Maybe a good second hand one. Where best to look for one than at the flea market, Els Encant on Place Glories Catalanes, the largest in Barcelona.



Els Encants flea market at 11 am was very crowded. They sell new kitchen sinks, furniture, CD, DVD, old XBoxes and Playstations, old and new electronics, and all sorts of old stuff - clothes, books, furniture, framed family photos (someone elses family I assume).

On the way there we saw a cigar shaped building called Torre Agbar. I am sure there is one like this in London too.

Marcus bought a pair yellow shades for 5 euros. We were having no luck with the guitar hunting, only saw a couple of bass guitars and a really battered one with no strings.

We went to the nearby Glories Shopping mall and much better luck here, and a Rochester acoustic guiter in blue was acquired.

No point dragging the guitar around, so it was home for lunch and siesta.

At 5 or so, we took the metro to Barceloneta, by the beach and Port Vell. The promenade there was full of cafes, hawkers, and plenty of people. And no wonder, it was a beautiful 20c, light sea breeze and warm sunshine.

The promenade and boardwalk went for miles. We walked from Mirador de Colom (at the end of La Rambla - Barcelona's main shopping street) to the casino.

These were lined with restaurants, a cinema, hotels, pubs, and a shopping mall - Maremagnum. On Joan de Borbo, there is an unbroken chain of restaurants.

We bought drink from a convenience store and sat on the beach a bit to admire the sand and an interesting looking Westin hotel. Looks like a sail.

Real Madrid was playing Barcelona tonight, and the pubs were very noisy with Barca supporters. I found out later it was an away game in Madrid. Madrid won 2-1.

 

Gaudi Day

18 Apr - Day 34

Today we left Granada and made our way to El Puig, a small town a few minutes out of Valencia. The drive was about 5 hours long and went as you'd expect: it took five hours and there was a lot of driving.

After navigating the streets of Valencia and then taking a wrong turn once we got to El Puig, we eventually ended up at the Hotel Ronda I (the Hotel Ronda II was a few doors down the street). we unpacked, had a rest and then went for a walk. There isn't a whole lot to do there unless you like skateboarding in carparks or visiting the one cathedral that they have. We did see an apartment with a New Zealand flag hanging from its balcony but refrained from yelling out the national anthem in the middle of the street.

The restaurants around town wouldn't be open until 8.30 which was far too late for us. Instead we went to the supermarket to buy what would end up being an excellent but very cheap dinner of ham, bread, sardines and peppers. The room tragically didn't have any glasses for the consumption of wine so my dad had to repurpose a jar of beans that we had eaten earlier that day. Gross.

19 Apr - Day 35

We checked out of the hotel and continued our journey onwards to Barcelona. The ride was good and we had a nice shower of rain to clean the mass of insect guts off the front of the car.

After several wrong turns, we managed to reach our apartment half an hour before we were due to meet the owner, Eric. I sat in the car while my dad went for a walk around and to sit outside to wait for Eric to arrive. A few minutes after our arranged meeting time, dad gave Eric a call. I saw a man walking down the street a few metres away from him pick up his phone. Assuming the man to be Eric, I waved at dad telling him to turn around. Eric (for it was he) thought I was waving to him and waved back; my dad didn't take the hint and started walking towards me, away from Eric.

Eventually we figured things out, parked the car and went up to the apartment. Turns out Eric is a French guy who has been living in Barcelona for 13 years and runs this place with another guy, who we didn't catch the name of. It is a very nice apartment and is big enough for 5 people. It's about 3 times larger than out apartment in Paris and is the first place we've stayed in that has more than two rooms. The best part is that I now have my own bedroom. Exciting stuff.

After we unpacked, we went for a walk around the neighbourhood. This was during siesta time and there was not a whole lot to see so went to get groceries and returned back.

The plan was for dad to cook a chicken noodle soup for dinner. We couldn't find the right noodles at the supermarket and ended up buying rice macaroni tubes instead but it was still very nice. The only downside to having a kitchen is that I have to start doing dishes again.

20 Apr - Day 36

Today I had planned to meet my school friend Felix, who is currently spending a gap year living and going to school again (sucker) in Italy. It so happened that he was on an art and history trip in Barcelona and we were able to meet up.

I found him in Barcelona's Hard Rock Cafe where he was contemplating buying a t-shirt. We sat and lunched in the Placa de Catalunya on sandwichs kindly prepared by my father that morning.

We then took a walk down one of Barcelona's most popular streets, La Rambla, where we bumped into some of his Italian classmates and then caught the metro to La Sagrada Familia, a gigantic church in the middle of the city with some very interesting architecture, very different from all the churches I'd seen so far.

We then had a little walk through this garden that I don't know the name of on the way to the waterfront, a place often frequented by Felix and his classmates late at night during their stay in Barcelona in their search for the city's discotheques. We stopped to take some photos with Chris Colombus before seeking out a gelato shop. Felix had to return to his hotel at 5 so as to not get stranded in Barcelona, so we parted ways until I see him again, which will probably in a few weeks when we hit Italy.

Meanwhile, my dad had been looking around at a whole lot of Gaudi buildings (that's the name of the artist/architect, not a rude description of the buildings) and had also visited La Sagrada which was desgined by Gaudi too. The design for La Sagrada Familia was actually concieved in 1912 but is still under construction today, 100 years later. This slight delay is due to the fact that Gaudi got hit by a tram and died sometime before it was to be built.

We met back at the apartment and prepared for a dinner of quail eggs on lettuce, whitebait (which looked like Medusa's hair) omelette and stirfried veges and basmati rice. I was given the task of peeling the boiled quail eggs which ended up being very messy, with large chunks of the eggs missing, but I got it done and now I'm really full.