Tag: Catalonia

October 31, 2018 Mataro SP

The problem with traveling during shoulder season is the weather is unpredictable.  It has been a wet October in Spain, and it culminated with today.  When we checked the weather last night they predicted a very large storm with possible flash floods, high winds and thunderstorms.  It was supposed to last all day.  Our original thoughts were to begin moving north towards France by bounding up the coast to Roses.  But when we checked the weather there it was actually supposed to be worst than Mataros.  Eventually we decided to hunker down for the day.

This picture is recycled as the weather did not allow us to get anything nice today.

Unfortunately the weather man got it right and it was spectacularly bad weather all day.  We were a little surprised that so many people were choosing to leave when the weather was so bad, and we were beginning to think we were whimps for not carrying on with our plans.  It turns out we did not know that today was the last day the campground was open this year and everyone has to be out by tomorrow morning.

We were going a little stir crazy so we decided to see if the campground had anything planned for the evening, and they did, a wine tasting.  We signed up and it became the highlight of our day.  The tasting was by a local winery in Mataro, and there were only 6 people at the tasting, two English couples and us.  Laura the representative from the winery had brought 4 wines to taste.  She did a great job of explaining the characteristics of the wine from Mataro, and the wines were quite good.  During the tasting we struck up a conversation with one of the English couples , and at the end of the tasting Laura surprised us by putting the 4 bottles in the center of the table and told us we were free to finish them, not knowing this we had also purchased a wine from them, so the 4 of us had the duty of finishing off 5 bottles of wine.  Lyndsey and her husband  John were kind enough to invite us over for supper so we could have some food with the wine.  It turned into a fun night, and it was nearly 1am when we made it to bed having done our duty and finished off all of the wine.  Thanks for the exceptional hospitality Lyndsey and John.

October 30, 2018 Barcelona SP

Today we planned a second trip into Barcelona.  The primary purpose was to visit the interior of the Sagarda Familia, much like the Alhambra visitors are limited per day, and you have to register in advance to get a time to visit.  When we returned to the campground on Sunday we signed up for the next available spot and it turned out to be at 4:45 PM today.

Today was by far the nicest day of our visit to Barcelona with clear blue skies, though it was still on the chilly side.  We took the first bus into town as we wanted to spend some time in the markets at Barcelona.  They have two markets and we (particularly Ton) really enjoy poking around in the markets to look at the different food products.  We also used the time to look around the old town.  We pretty much just wandered around looking at churches, stores, and people.  Barcelona is now the third or fourth most visited city in Europe, depending on who is counting, so there is quite a lot to see. The shopping is diverse and interesting.

The entrance to the Market.
A fruit and vegetable display complete with jack o lanterns, here in Spain they attach tape to the exterior of the pumpkin to make the face.

We have become addicted to Pinxos which is Basque Tapas, and had them again at lunch.  In the past we had been eating mostly seafood, so today we went more towards meets and sausages.  They were also delicious, Ton also had her new favorite drink at lunch, a good Spanish Vermouth.

Finally we headed over to the Sagarda for our tour.  They are really serious about the time on your ticket, we got in line at 4:30, and when we got to the door they turned us around and told us to come back in 15 minutes. 

While we were waiting to get in Ton took this shot depicting Judas kissing Jesus before betraying him.  The numbers on the left add up to 33 in all directions, Jesus age at his death.

We have seen a lot of cathedrals in our last two trips.  Ron thought the exterior of the Sagarda was a little overwrought for his tastes, and preferred the more traditional gothic cathedrals.  Ton thinks you cannot compare the Sagarda with a traditional cathedral.  However, Ron was wowed with the interior of the Sagarda.  While the exterior is extremely busy, the interior is magically elegant, and the use of light is masterful.  His vision of the columns of the cathedral as a forest of trees is stunning.  The soaring ceilings are really something, and seem much grander than the large gothic cathedrals.  Ton was impressed with the stained glass windows, and the way the colors effected the mood of the interior.  The Sagarda is an extremely moving place, and we think Gaudi’s genius came thru on the interior, and his madness comes thru on the exterior.

The columns divide at the top to look like canopies of trees and also to support the roof.
One of the few statues inside the cathedral, this one is of Mary.

October 29, 2018 Mataro SP

Well we are starting to run into some bad weather.  We woke up to temperatures in the low 40’s scattered showers and heavy wind.  All together a miserable day.  We hung around François for the morning, finally getting cabin fever we decided to head into town to the mall, because that’s what you do when the weather sucks.

Our thought was to catch a movie, but they do not appear to have matinees in Spain, or at least in Mataro.  So we poked around the mall for a couple of hours, and then headed to the campground.  We attended a class on how to make Sangria, which was fun, and we got a pitcher of Sangria to taste at the end.  Some days are better than others.

Another Gaudi facade from yesterday.

October 28, 2018 Barcelona SP

While we are staying in Mataro, the purpose of the visit is to see Barcelona.  The campground we are staying at is about 40 minutes outside of Barcelona, but offers free shuttles into the city which is nice.  It is one of the huge campgrounds in Spain that cater to European snowbirds, there are over 300 spots here, with a bar, restaurant, pool, beach club, and tourist activities.  It is quite a place.

The weather was a little better than yesterday but cold.  The place we visited two days ago had snow overnight, and it was still raining when we set off.  We intended today to be a bit of a reconnaissance of Barcelona so we did not have any firm plans but just wanted to get a feel for the city.  

When we got there it was raining pretty hard so we decided to duck into a coffee shop to plan the day.  After nursing our coffee and chocolate as long as possible we decided to head towards the medieval cathedral.  Barcelona has two cathedrals, one is world famous, and the other is the medieval one.  We will talk about the famous one later.

On our way to the cathedral we bumped into a “free” walking tour of Barcelona.  We had done these “free” tours in Chile and enjoyed them so we joined it.  It was a good decision as it gave us some good background on Catalonia, Barcelona, and the history of Wilfred the Hairy which is Ron’s favorite medieval name, (Richard the Lionhearted, Charles the Brave, and Wilfred the Hairy were all contemporaries more or less, apparently Wilfred was exceptionally hairy).

The door of the Gothic Cathedral in Barcelona.
Wilfred the Hairy depicted slaying a dragon (that looks suspiciously like a giant parrot) on the side of the cathedral

We stopped in a little cafe on the tour that was run entirely by Americans, but they had a good vermouth that Ton and I enjoyed.  After the tour was over they were offering a non-free Gaudi and modernisme tour.  We decided to join that tour also.

The modernisme movement flourished in Barcelona in the early 1900’s and is led by a guy named Gaudi.  We looked at several interesting versions of modernisme buildings ending with a tour of the La Sagarda Familia.  It is an extremely interesting building.  Gaudi was a Catalan who is considered the leader of the modernisme movement.  The university he received his architecture degree from said they were giving a degree to either a genius or a madman.  

The facade of a building Gaudi re-modeled in the early 1900’s.
Another Gaudi building from the early 1900’s he hated straight lines and symmetry as he believed they were not natural.

The Sagarda was commissioned by the city during the 1880’s and Gaudi took over the building a year after it was started.  In the end he did descend into madness, and it became his obsession.  It is still under construction 140 years later, and looks like it has another 20 or 30 years to go, though the official completion date is supposed to be in 8 years.  One interesting fact is that for the first 130 years it was under construction it did not have a building permit.  They recently resolved that and the commission that owns it paid a €30 million fine.  We will tour the interior on Tuesday so more to come on Gaudi and the Sagarda.

The door of the Sagarda, contrast it with the Gothic Cathedral above.  All of the figures around the door were plaster casts of real people in Barcelona.

October 27, 2018 Mataro SP

There is nothing much to write about today.  The weather forecast was for rain all day, and they were right.  We shifted about 90 KM’s to a campground north of Barcelona where we plan to spend a few days exploring Barcelona once the rain stops.

After the drive we settled in for a maintenance day, did some laundry, bought some groceries, and listened to the rain pound on François.  Tomorrow will be more interesting.

Some pretty flowers, since the rain helps make the beautiful flowers.

October 26, 2018 Sant Cugat Sesgarrigues SP

Tonight we are parked at a winery called Cellar Battl Artcava.  We are little bit southwest of Barcelona.  This area is known for a sparkling wine called Cava.  

We had booked a visit to the largest producer of Cava in Spain called Codorniu, it has been in business since 1541, and is still owned by the 18th generation of the original family.  We both woke up early and even though it was only a couple of hours to the winery we left pretty early, and sure enough arrived very early for our 330 pm tour.  After looking at our options we decided to head into one of the larger towns nearby to see if we could knock out some laundry.  That did not happen, but we did find a Lidl which is Ton’s favorite grocery store here.

After spending some money in Lidl we headed back to the winery and still had some time to kill so, so we settled in and did some reading.  Finally we went in and had the light lunch we had scheduled, we met a couple from Austin who were touring Italy and Spain by car.  We swapped stories about  wine regions before beginning the tour.  

In the foreground is a very large vessel used for olive oil production in the 16th century, in the background is a wine press from the 19th century.

We have been on a lot of wine tours but this one was unique.  This is an industrial sized winery and they have the capacity to produce one million bottles in a year, though last year they “only” made 600,000 bottles.  Around 1911 they focused exclusively on Cava which is a sparkling wine.  The tour focused on their storage caves which are about 90 feet underground and according to the guide cover 13.5 km’s of tunnels.  To prove the extent of the tunnels at one point they loaded us all onto a train and drove us around the tunnels for about 10 minutes.  They are really vast.  The wine was good, but we still are not great fans of sparkling wines.

Part of the extensive cellars used to store Cava while it ages 2 to 10 years.

After the tour we moved over to Cellar Battl Artcava which is supposed to be located 5 minutes from the source of the original vineyards in Catalan, so it is the Cava (winery) closest to the origin of wine here.  

We have been in Catalan for a few days now and are beginning to get even more confused with romance languages.  The signs here are in Catalan and Spanish. Catalan unlike Basque is a romance language, but it is as different from Spanish as French or Portuguese is.  As an example wine in French is Vin, in Spanish is Vino, and in Catalan is Vi.  There has been a bit of a political uproar as the Catalan parliament voted to leave Spain last year, but driving around there is no sign that anything is happening to move that forward or to stymie it, but of course we cannot read the signs in Spanish or Catalan!

This vineyard is 2 minutes from the source of the original vineyard in Catalan.

April 19, 2018 Rose SP

We are parked in an aire next to a hotel in Fitou France.  Do not try to find it on a map unless you have a very detailed map of France, it is somewhere near Narbonne.  

After a slow start to the day, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and had a nice conversation with our German neighbors, who were a little confused at first when we did not respond to their initial conversation starters in French.  After they sorted out we were not French they effortlessly switched to English.  We had a nice time talking to them and getting to meet their dog.  They are German versions of snowbirds, spending about 6 months a year in Spain and Portugal.

We decided to head into the town of Rose to have the meal we missed yesterday.  We had a fantastic 4 course lunch for €13.50.  This was a huge meal including a glass of Sangria for an aperitif, a bowl of mussels for an appetizer, paella for her main dish, and a creme brulet for desert.  She had a choice of wine or water and chose wine.  Ron had Sangria, calamari for his appetizer, a dish similar to paella but with noodles instead of Rice, and flan, because he was driving he had water.  We were wowed with the quantity and quality of the food, and enjoyed people watching while we ate.

The town of Rose, on the Costa Brava, the Costa Brava may require a longer visit in the future.

One correction, all of the fields we were identifying as mustard are actually canola fields, or as they call them here Rapeseed.  The yellow fields are still really beautiful.

April 18, 2018 Rose SP

Well we thought we were going to head east towards Provence, but instead we found ourselves in Spain. We realised we were really close to Spain this morning, and decided why not.  So tonight we are parked up on a ocean front spot in a campground with at least 400 other campers.

François and Ron enjoying the beach before the mosquitos drove him inside.

From our site you can see the town of Rose about 400 yards away.  We decided we were going to have a nice Catalan dinner there.  About 3pm we decided to walk down to town to scout for a dinner choice and discovered there is a river between us and the town that you cannot see from the campsite.  Usually these rivers are pretty shallow where they meet the sea so Ron thought we could cross over, but then we watched a pretty tall fellow wade up to his chest crossing over.  Well there must be a bridge, so off to the office we went to find out how far.  From here it is two kilometers up the road, and then two kilometers back to the town, so the round trip to town would be five miles.  We had a nice dinner sitting outside François, and will have a nice Catalan lunch tomorrow.

Welcome to Spain.

This was our first time crossing from one country to another in the EU so we were curious what it would be like. It is much like crossing a state line at home, except there were three police doing random checks of vehicles, we were not selected. Also the contrast between the two border towns could not have been more different.  The French town had incredibly tight roads with everyone trying to squeeze by each other at 5km, probably the most stressful 1km of road Ron has driven, in Spain a wide two lane road thru town.

The unfordable river, that is only in place a few weeks a year, that kept us from our Catalan dinner.

Ton has come up with a name for our trip, France Backcountry avec François.  So far on this trip about 90% of our travel has been on what the French call D roads, these are roughly a cross between state highways and county roads in the US.  Some of the roads have been one lane tracks where when you come across another car someone looks for a place to pull over and let the other car pass.  The French handle this really well.  Ron is still playing with the preferences on the GPS to try to avoid these roads, but since the speed limits are the same on a D road whether it is a one lane track, or a good two lane road with shoulders, our GPS has sent us into some interesting places, and often insists on sending us thru the center of small villages when there is a perfectly good by-pass that is 200 or 300 yards longer.  Ron is going to have another go at the settings tonight to see if we can still stay on D roads without some of the really small roads we have been down.

The Pyrennees mountains.

October 31, 2018 Mataro SP

The problem with traveling during shoulder season is the weather is unpredictable.  It has been a wet October in Spain, and it culminated with today.  When we checked the weather last night they predicted a very large storm with possible flash floods, high winds and thunderstorms.  It was supposed to last all day.  Our original thoughts were to begin moving north towards France by bounding up the coast to Roses.  But when we checked the weather there it was actually supposed to be worst than Mataros.  Eventually we decided to hunker down for the day.

This picture is recycled as the weather did not allow us to get anything nice today.

Unfortunately the weatherman got it right and it was spectacularly bad weather all day.  We were a little surprised that so many people were choosing to leave when the weather was so bad, and we were beginning to think we were wimps for not carrying on with our plans.  It turns out we did not know that today was the last day the campground was open this year and everyone has to be out by tomorrow morning.

We were going a little stir crazy so we decided to see if the campground had anything planned for the evening, and they did, a wine tasting.  We signed up and it became the highlight of our day.  The tasting was by a local winery in Mataro, and there were only 6 people at the tasting, two English couples and us.  Laura the representative from the winery had brought 4 wines to taste.  She did a great job of explaining the characteristics of the wine from Mataro, and the wines were quite good.  During the tasting we struck up a conversation with one of the English couples , and at the end of the tasting Laura surprised us by putting the 4 bottles in the center of the table and told us we were free to finish them, not knowing this we had also purchased a wine from them, so the 4 of us had the duty of finishing off 5 bottles of wine.  Lyndsey and her husband  John were kind enough to invite us over for supper so we could have some food with the wine.  It turned into a fun night, and it was nearly 1am when we made it to bed having done our duty and finished off all of the wine.  Thanks for the exceptional hospitality Lyndsey and John.

October 30, 2018 Barcelona SP

Today we planned a second trip into Barcelona.  The primary purpose was to visit the interior of the Sagarda Familia, much like the Alhambra visitors are limited per day, and you have to register in advance to get a time to visit.  When we returned to the campground on Sunday we signed up for the next available spot and it turned out to be at 4:45 PM today.

Today was by far the nicest day of our visit to Barcelona with clear blue skies, though it was still on the chilly side.  We took the first bus into town as we wanted to spend some time in the markets at Barcelona.  They have two markets and we (particularly Ton) really enjoy poking around in the markets to look at the different food products.  We also used the time to look around the old town.  We pretty much just wandered around looking at churches, stores, and people.  Barcelona is now the third or fourth most visited city in Europe, depending on who is counting, so there is quite a lot to see. The shopping is diverse and interesting.

The entrance to the Market.
A fruit and vegetable display complete with jack o lanterns, here in Spain they attach tape to the exterior of the pumpkin to make the face.

We have become addicted to Pinxos which is Basque Tapas, and had them again at lunch.  In the past we had been eating mostly seafood, so today we went more towards meets and sausages.  They were also delicious, Ton also had her new favorite drink at lunch, a good Spanish Vermouth.

Finally we headed over to the Sagarda for our tour.  They are really serious about the time on your ticket, we got in line at 4:30, and when we got to the door they turned us around and told us to come back in 15 minutes. 

While we were waiting to get in Ton took this shot depicting Judas kissing Jesus before betraying him.  The numbers on the left add up to 33 in all directions, Jesus age at his death.

We have seen a lot of cathedrals in our last two trips.  Ron thought the exterior of the Sagarda was a little overwrought for his tastes, and preferred the more traditional gothic cathedrals.  Ton thinks you cannot compare the Sagarda with a traditional cathedral.  However, Ron was wowed with the interior of the Sagarda.  While the exterior is extremely busy, the interior is magically elegant, and the use of light is masterful.  His vision of the columns of the cathedral as a forest of trees is stunning.  The soaring ceilings are really something, and seem much grander than the large gothic cathedrals.  Ton was impressed with the stained glass windows, and the way the colors effected the mood of the interior.  The Sagarda is an extremely moving place, and we think Gaudi’s genius came thru on the interior, and his madness comes thru on the exterior.

The columns divide at the top to look like canopies of trees and also to support the roof.
One of the few statues inside the cathedral this one is of Mary.

October 29, 2018 Mataro SP

Well we are starting to run into some bad weather.  We woke up to temperatures in the low 40’s scattered showers and heavy wind.  All together a miserable day.  We hung around François for the morning, finally getting cabin fever we decided to head into town to the mall, because that’s what you do when the weather sucks.

Our thought was to catch a movie, but they do not appear to have matinees in Spain, or at least in Mataro.  So we poked around the mall for a couple of hours, and then headed to the campground.  We attended a class on how to make Sangria, which was fun, and we got a pitcher of Sangria to taste at the end.  Some days are better than others.

Another Gaudi facade from yesterday.

October 28, 2018 Barcelona SP

While we are staying in Mataro, the purpose of the visit is to see Barcelona.  The campground we are staying at is about 40 minutes outside of Barcelona, but offers free shuttles into the city which is nice.  It is one of the huge campgrounds in Spain that cater to European snowbirds, there are over 300 spots here, with a bar, restaurant, pool, beach club, and tourist activities.  It is quite a place.

The weather was a little better than yesterday but cold.  The place we visited two days ago had snow overnight, and it was still raining when we set off.  We intended today to be a bit of a reconnaissance of Barcelona so we did not have any firm plans but just wanted to get a feel for the city.  

When we got there it was raining pretty hard so we decided to duck into a coffee shop to plan the day.  After nursing our coffee and chocolate as long as possible we decided to head towards the medieval cathedral.  Barcelona has two cathedrals, one is world famous, and the other is the medieval one.  We will talk about the famous one later.

On our way to the cathedral we bumped into a “free” walking tour of Barcelona.  We had done these “free” tours in Chile and enjoyed them so we joined it.  It was a good decision as it gave us some good background on Catalonia, Barcelona, and the history of Wilfred the Hairy which is Ron’s favorite medieval name, (Richard the Lionhearted, Charles the Brave, and Wilfred the Hairy were all contemporaries more or less, apparently Wilfred was exceptionally hairy).

The door of the Gothic Cathedral in Barcelona.
Wilfred the Hairy depicted slaying a dragon (that looks suspiciously like a giant parrot) on the side of the cathedral.

We stopped in a little cafe on the tour that was run entirely by Americans, but they had a good vermouth that Ton and I enjoyed.  After the tour was over they were offering a non-free Gaudi and modernisme tour.  We decided to join that tour also.

The modernisme movement flourished in Barcelona in the early 1900’s and is led by a guy named Gaudi.  We looked at several interesting versions of modernisme buildings ending with a tour of the La Sagarda Familia.  It is an extremely interesting building.  Gaudi was a Catalan who is considered the leader of the modernisme movement.  The university he received his architecture degree from said they were giving a degree to either a genius or a madman.  

The facade of a building Gaudi re-modelled in the early 1900’s.
Another Gaudi building from the early 1900’s he hated straight lines and symetry as he believed they were not natural.

The Sagarda was commissioned by the city during the 1880’s and Gaudi took over the building a year after it was started.  In the end he did descend into madness, and it became his obsession.  It is still under construction 140 years later, and looks like it has another 20 or 30 years to go, though the official completion date is supposed to be in 8 years.  One interesting fact is that for the first 130 years it was under construction it did not have a building permit.  They recently resolved that and the commission that owns it paid a €30 million fine.  We will tour the interior on Tuesday so more to come on Gaudi and the Sagarda.

The door of the Sagarda, contrast it with the Gothic Cathedral above.  All of the figures around the door were plaster casts of real people in Barcelona.

October 27, 2018 Mataro SP

There is nothing much to write about today.  The weather forecast was for rain all day, and they were right.  We shifted about 90 KM’s to a campground north of Barcelona where we plan to spend a few days exploring Barcelona once the rain stops.

After the drive we settled in for a maintenance day, did some laundry, bought some groceries, and listened to the rain pound on François.  Tomorrow will be more interesting.

Some pretty flowers, since the rain helps make the beautiful flowers.

October 26, 2018 Sant Cugat Sesgarrigues SP

Tonight we are parked at a winery called Cellar Battl Artcava.  We are little bit southwest of Barcelona.  This area is known for a sparkling wine called Cava.  

We had booked a visit to the largest producer of Cava in Spain called Codorniu, it has been in business since 1541, and is still owned by the 18th generation of the original family.  We both woke up early and even though it was only a couple of hours to the winery we left pretty early, and sure enough arrived very early for our 330 pm tour.  After looking at our options we decided to head into one of the larger towns nearby to see if we could knock out some laundry.  That did not happen, but we did find a Lidl which is Ton’s favorite grocery store here.

After spending some money in Lidl we headed back to the winery and still had some time to kill so, so we settled in and did some reading.  Finally we went in and had the light lunch we had scheduled, we met a couple from Austin who were touring Italy and Spain by car.  We swapped stories about  wine regions before beginning the tour.  

In the foreground is a very large vessel used for olive oil production in the 16th century, in the background is a wine press from the 19th century.

We have been on a lot of wine tours but this one was unique.  This is an industrial sized winery and they have the capacity to produce one million bottles in a year, though last year they “only” made 600,000 bottles.  Around 1911 they focused exclusively on Cava which is a sparkling wine.  The tour focused on their storage caves which are about 90 feet underground and according to the guide cover 13.5 km’s of tunnels.  To prove the extent of the tunnels at one point they loaded us all onto a train and drove us around the tunnels for about 10 minutes.  They are really vast.  The wine was good, but we still are not great fans of sparkling wines.

Part of the extensive cellars used to store Cava while it ages 2 to 10 years.

After the tour we moved over to Cellar Battl Artcava which is supposed to be located 5 minutes from the source of the original vineyards in Catalan, so it is the Cava (winery) closest to the origin of wine here.  

We have been in Catalan for a few days now and are beginning to get even more confused with romance languages.  The signs here are in Catalan and Spanish. Catalan unlike Basque is a romance language, but it is as different from Spanish as French or Portuguese is.  As an example wine in French is Vin, in Spanish is Vino, and in Catalan is Vi.  There has been a bit of a political uproar as the Catalan parliament voted to leave Spain last year, but driving around there is no sign that anything is happening to move that forward or to stymie it, but of course we cannot read the signs in Spanish or Catalan!

This vineyard is 2 minutes from the location of the original vineyard in Catalan.

April 18, 2018 Rose SP

Well we thought we were going to head east towards Provence, but instead we found ourselves in Spain. We realized we were really close to Spain this morning, and decided why not.  So tonight we are parked up on a ocean front spot in a campground with at least 400 other campers.

François and Ron enjoying the beach before the mosquitos drove him inside.

From our site you can see the town of Rose about 400 yards away.  We decided we were going to have a nice Catalan dinner there.  About 3pm we decided to walk down to town to scout for a dinner choice and discovered there is a river between us and the town that you cannot see from the campsite.  Usually these rivers are pretty shallow where they meet the sea so Ron thought we could cross over, but then we watched a pretty tall fellow wade up to his chest crossing over.  Well there must be a bridge, so off to the office to find out how far.  From here it is two kilometers up the road, and then two kilometers back to the town, so the round trip to town would be five miles.  We had a nice dinner sitting outside François, and will have a nice Catalan lunch tomorrow.

Entering Spain.  Much like crossing a state line at home, except there were three police  doing random checks of vehicles, we were not selected.

The contrast between the two border towns could not have been more different.  The French town had incredibly tight roads with everyone trying to squeeze by each other at 5km, probably the most stressful 1km of road Ron has driven, in Spain a wide four lane road thru town, our first impression of Spain was really positive.

The unfordable river, that is only in place a few weeks a year, that kept us from our Catalan dinner.

Ton has come up with a name for our trip, France Backcountry avec François.  So far on this trip about 90% of our travel has been on what the French call D roads, these are roughly a cross between state highways and county roads in the US.  Some of the roads have been one lane tracks where when you come across another car someone looks for a place to pull over and let the other car pass.  The French handle this really well.  Ron is still playing with the preferences on the GPS to try to avoid these roads, but since the speed limits are the same on a D road whether it is a one lane track, or a good two lane road with shoulders, our GPS has sent us into some interesting places, and often insists on sending us thru the center of small villages when there is a perfectly good by-pass that is 200 or 300 yards longer.  Ron is going to have another go at the settings tonight to see if we can still stay on D roads without some of the really small roads we have been down.

The Pyrennees mountains.