Sprint through France

You know you’re back in France when you suddenly can’t read anything and it’s just a few hundred degrees hotter. We spent the day looking around the Normandy war sites. We went to Melville which is the site where the Germans were based during D-day WW2. It was very interesting looking at all the bunkers where they spent so much of their time and to get a sense of the lives lost. Just before we left mum and dad went and watched a sound and light show that makes you feel like bombs are getting dropped around you. Then we drove to Mont St Michel. That was disappointing because it has become such a tourist attraction now, so we decided not to go up to it but to look at it from far away. We then went and had baguettes at a roadside park before driving to our first campsite where we would be staying for a night. These campsites were great because they had pools and there weren’t very many people there so it was a nice contrast because we were usually surrounded by people.

La Rochelle had real character and it is definitely a place that is worth more time than we had for it. Again it is a town that used to be a walled city with the entrances to the harbour having fortifications. Living by the sea really added pressure to the citizens of these towns! We wandered around and it was hot and we were sick of travelling in the car. I had a great idea to travel via the coast so we could see some charming French farmhouses and villages. Yes, we did see some but they were few and it did not compensate for the slower journey not on the motorway. I was happy enough but the rest of the family… La Rochelle has beautiful buildings in the sandstone colour, cobbled streets again and a market. We had a poke around and Terry bought some duck, venison and beef salami (for your benefit Terry W!) and we bought fresh vegetables.

Mum has found her favourite place; an old medieval town with little buildings and shutters galore! Sarlat was the only town that almost made her cry. (Not hard to do mind) We spent ages wandering around all of the hidden cafes and letting mum take thousands of photos. Sarlat had a festival where the games they played were games from the past. They even had geese cooking much to my disgust and people dressed in traditional clothes. We eventually stopped at a crepe restaurant in a lovely courtyard and Ella, Mum and Dad got one each. After a few more hours of looking at houses and wandering around streets we drove off to the second place that we would stay, that had a bigger pool.

Our final French town was Collioure which is touted as the St Trope of the south. Again it had the fortifications and bags of character. Terry and I wandered around the fortification in the hills, situated right on the cliff. We swam in the med and it was our first swim and quite delicious. Ice cream followed and an ooh and ahh at more buildings and at some pastries which we felt the need to sample.

Today we crossed the border from France into Spain and arrived at the wonderful Barcelona! It’s not the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen but it was cool all the same. We went out for tea at our camping site and sampled a few Spanish meals. Mum sampled sangria again! The next day we got the bus into the town and spent the first half of the day on the open-top bus tour. Our first stop was at Pueblo Espanol which showcases Spanish architecture through the years. While there we listened to a choir singing which was rather sweet. We got back on the bus after a couple of painful hours and saw the Olympic stadium and the Barcelona football stadium and the Sagrada Familia and then decided to go for lunch. We were stopped by a man holding a sign about a shop that sold baguettes so decided to go there. Once we had ordered we got three Grande (big) drinks and one small. You can probably imagine the looks on our faces when our drinks came out in glasses that were just a bit bigger than a jug of beer. We reluctantly drank them and waited on the bill. Some people would say that 120 New Zealand dollars (70 euro) was a lot to pay for 4 little sandwiches and 4 drinks but we just laughed and let it go, because what else could you do. We then walked to Gaudi’s house in the park and looked around there until the heat became unbearable.