A surprisingly easy drive, through very heavy rain, down the autoroute and into downtown Barcelona brought us to Marc's apartment, a friend of a friend of ours. Having never met, or talked on the phone with him, we met up with Marc, got a tour of the apartment, he handed us the keys and was gone! What wonderful hospitality! Marc stayed at his girlfriend's for 4 days and gave us free reign over a great downtown apartment, with full kitchen, water pressure to spare (a luxury in Europe), a dvd collection, CDs that looked like they came direcly from our collection, and to top it off, a washing machine ( quite good after almost a month on the road - washing clothes in the sink doesn't quite do the job well enough). We took full advantage, buying groceries, cooking and staying in to watch movies, and washing almost everything we had, which is not much, considering we have only one small backpack each. A clean shirt becomes a thing of beauty.

Barcelona itself was a thing of beauty. We walked along the famous "La Rambla", the pedestrian boulevard, fighting though the throngs of tourists and watching the wonderful street performers along the way. We toured the city by double decker bus seeing all the sites and getting a good idea of the style and layout of the city. We also ate quite well, both home cooked meals at our downtown apartment and in some nice restaurants around the city. One of our best meals, however, came at lunch one day. We were tired and quite hungry and had been walking for almost an hour looking for something simple. Nearing our breaking point, we found a Lebanese take-out place which made a great falafel and salad, packed with good flavours and veggies, which after a month of rich foods, our bodies were craving!

The highlight of the 4 days had to be the architecture of Gaudi and the Modernistas. Barcelona really is the city of Gaudi; his work is everywhere and the city is defined by it. His work is not easy to describe, he loved curves and curved surfaces, form mixed with function, Catalan arches (an elongated arch), the use of natural light throughout his designs and "trencadi" (tile mosaics). We toured the La Perdrera apartment building which he designed with a rolling facade, open, light filled, curved wall apartments, and a flowing roof with trencadi mosaic vent stacks. We walked Passaig de Gracia with its famous Block of Discord, where three of the top Modernista architects had designesd stunning buildings. Gaudi's Casa Batllo (House of Bones or the Dragon House) is by far the most stunning and one of the worlds most impressively designed buildings. The entire front is covered in gleaming mosaic tile, with flowing shaped parts and balconies made of discarded iron work that has been shaped into snarling and gaping mouths...stunning. The hefty 25 dollar price tag kept us from touring the inside it, however. This is a shot of the spires of Sagrada Familia church, an ongoing work and his last job...just before he was runover by a streetcar.

By far the most inspired of Gaudi's work was the Park Guell. This was a failed housing development from 1900 that was turned over to the government. Gaudi had built two tile covered ice-cream cone entrance pavillions, a grand staircase with intricate mosaic banisters and sculptures, stone columns quarried insitu from the natural rock, and the piece de resistance, a huge snaking continuous bench with wild patterns, butterflies, symbols and colours all done in mosaic tile running the length of the bench, just amazing. This park and his other work are said to have been a big inspiration on both Salvador Dali and Picasso.

After our restful, inspiring and fun-filled 4 days of Barthelona we high tailed it back for France, with an interesting Dali side trip to Figueres. Stay tuned...!

We spent four days in a beautiful city called Girona. It is a medieval city about an hour from the Mediterranean coast. On the drive there from La Seu d'Urgell we saw graffiti on the bridges and walls with separatist/independence movement messages like "Viva la Catalunya Libra" and "This is NOT Spain". When we were in Girona, we also saw these slogans and also people wearing T-shirts with messages like "I'm Catalan, not Spanish, so don't even ask".

Girona was very nice. It had a thriving old quarter, where we stayed, with narrow cobbled roads and laneways, pretty little cafes, and lots of history to soak in. It also had a massive cathedral with a tall bell tower, with, as it turned out, a really big bell. When we first checked into our room, in our quaint old hotel right next to the cathedral, we may have thought to ourselves "How romantic! Those bells are lovely!" We may have noticed the way the windows vibrated when they rang, and the way it was hard to think of anything else when the bells binged and bonged at the top of the hour and again at the end of the first minute. We also might have thought "How unique! There is also a bell or two or three to mark each successive quarter hour!" but really we didn't think about it any more than that. After all, it was the early evening and we were in Girona! A new and exciting place with lots of little laneways to explore!

When we returned to the room later that night, we began to realize that things were amiss. At 11 PM, as we were nearing a pleasant doze, 22 bells shook us awake. We reassured ourselves that "Surely these bells won't ring through the night - how do the townsfolk sleep?" But at 11:15 the single bell sounded. Our windows shook. Eventually drifting off again, we awoke to 24 bells marking midnight. We put in our earplugs. We covered out heads with our pillows. But it was no use. If the sound didn't wake us, we were pounded awake by the sheer acoustic force. It was terrible. We slept in 11 minute bursts all night. In the morning we asked to be moved to a different room, but were told that all the rooms heard the bells, and besides, the hotel was full. So was every other hotel in town (we checked, - unless "absolumente nada" means...yes we have a room?). So we toughed it out, and slept about 4 hours total in four nights.

Besides this little wrinkle, we did actually have a great time in Girona. We saw most of the sites of the town, including a fascinating museum about the history of the Jews of Girona and Catalunya, going all the way back to 400 AD. The cathedral was also beautiful inside, and, we learned, is the second largest Gothic cathedral in the world, only 3 meters narrower than St. Peter's in the Vatican. We ate some good meals, including a very Spanish 2.5 hour lunch over wine on a sunny terrace, our first tapas (quite tasty and fun) and a leisurely late night dinner on the local walking mall (La Rambla) over a full bottle of wine and some good laughs.

One day we took a day trip to the Costa Brava (the Mediterranean) and sat in the hot sun on the beach and floated in the sea. We visited a neat little town called Tossa de Mar which has the last remaining walled fortress on the Spanish coast. And miraculously it still had inhabited houses, not overrun with overpriced restaurants and tacky souvenirs. We also watched and marvelled over a couple of days as a film crew transformed a cobbled street into the 1500's, creating false columns, faux painting walls and then watched as the actors arrived and were put into costume. All while walking those same streets ourselves, each day. All in all a loud, sleepless and surprisingly enjoyable 4 days.

Next stop, the big city of Barthelona! (Please use a Spanish lisp while saying it...it does make us giggle so)!

After our experience in the Appalachia of France (we also had a dreadful experience trying to use public "toilets" in Ax-les-Thermes) we were anxious to find new and greener pastures. We had originally intended to stay for a couple of nights in Andorra, but little voices (and the 4-star prices, and the cows) kept telling us to push on... But where, exactly?

We opened our mapbook and guidebook and assessed our options. Since we were in a fairly remote area, we chose a town based on the quality of the roads available to reach it.

The place, La Seu d'Urgell, turned out to be an excellent choice, and has become one of our favourite places so far. We stayed for two days and spent our time looking at the Olympic canoe/kayak facilities from the '92 games, walking in the foothills of the Pyrennees. One afternoon, we watched three giant helicopters put out a forest fire in the hills above the town. We experienced for the first time "Spanish time" - siesta lasts from 1 until 5, and dinner starts at 9 PM (and don't even bother trying to get food before then!). The first night, we went into the square intending to find some dinner. It was 7:30. After walking around for over an hour, our blood sugar dropping rapidly, and finding everything still closed, we retreated back to our hotel to eat a tin of tuna, some fruit, and some Nutella smeared on day old baguette (all kept on reserve for just such contingencies). Night two was equally challenging. We waited till 8:30 and checked the menus of the 4 or 5 resaurants. Not speaking a word of Catalan (and not wanting a repeat of the raw poultry) we retreated once again to our hotel, but this time to the dining room and a decent meal with a waiter who could translate dishes into English for us.

What struck us about Northern Spain (sorry, Catalunya), besides not speaking any Catalan (which made us feel, for the time, like ignorant and rude tourists), was how incredibly affluent it is. It had a completely different feel than that of southern France - beautiful homes set in clean, ordered neighbourhoods, broad, well-maintained roads, and construction underway everywhere. Later we noticed other signs: a lack of dog crap or litter all over the sidewalks, no sketchy men lurking in shadows waiting to steal your wallet, and teenagers hanging out in parks, riding bikes and skateboards, and generally having good clean fun.

We bid La Seu d'Urgell "moltes gracies" and "bon dia" and headed east to the city of Girona and to our perfect little hotel that we had booked in the heart of the old city...or was it?

With full bellies, an uneasy feeling, and raw poultry still fresh in our minds, we departed tiny Unac for Andorra. Andorra is a tiny principality that exists on the basis of the skiing industry and its tax-free status.

We didn't quite know what to expect. We had a vision of the Pyrennees as towering, snow-capped mountains. Instead, we saw soft, green slopes with centuries old terraces cut deep into their sides. Cows and sheep grazed them 1000 metres above us. It was quite a drive, complete with steep passes and switchbacks. At the border with Andorra, traffic slowed to a stop. What we thought was a big long line of cars waiting to clear customs, was actually the line-up to get into the parking lot of the "Hyper Center" in the town of Pas de la Casa. This was a strange place with almost no houses, just miles and miles of stores with bright signs advertizing HUGE discounts on everything imaginable. It was a truly surreal sight - neon signs against a backdrop of mountainsides above the tree line. We found parking on the side of the highway, 2 km away and walked through the frenzied buying of a couple of huge tax-free stores. Our lowly Canadian dollar did not allow us to buy much, but it did!
n't matter because most of it was gaudy and ugly. We did buy some booze at "low! low!!" prices, and moved on for Spain.

Shortly after we left Pas de la Casa, we were stopped by a herd of cattle meandering down the centre of the highway. There is only one highway in Andorra, and it snakes its way through a valley on its way to Spain. Everywhere we saw signs warning us about cows, and we saw piles of cow manure on the road, but we would never have believed it unless we saw it for ourselves. Long lines of cars formed as we all waited for the cows to move out of the way. Since the road is cut into the sides of the mountains, there is no way to pass.

Our impressions of Andorra are mixed. We were only there for a day, but what we saw were contrasts: the raw landscape coupled with the loud commercialism of the shopping centres, the cows in the streets in front of 4- Star hotels, and old farmhouses with BMWs, Mercedes, and Land Rovers parked out front. Andorra has an air of 'doing quite alright, thanks very much' but still has one foot in a previous age.

Next we leave the mountains for Catalonya and northern Spain. J and A

Okay, so the gypsies, we've held you in suspense for long enough.
There is an area of southern France that is close to the border with Andorra where no-one actually speaks French, and there is little French about it. The area is the lands that were first populated by the bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers who filled in the newly fertile lands that emerged after the end of the last ice age. But we digress. Anyway, the area is packed with prehistoric caves that were used as picture galleries by these people. We saw paintings from 14,000 years ago that still looked so fresh you could see the brushstrokes. It was amazing.
We thought we should stay around this area, since the following day the plan was to drive down, into Andorra, to shop for duty free booze, and then maybe stay a couple of nights in the mountains. So we found a place on the internet and booked it. When we drove into town, we were struck by how odd everything felt - so completely deserted and everything with an eery colour scheme...no one in the streets, only the odd stray dog or cat. We followed signs to the place, and pulled in, through tiny laneways cut into stone faces, and parked the car where we could.

We walked up to the house, through the iron gateway, and up to the door. We knocked a little and the door swung open. Behind it lurked a small, dark woman - black hair, black eyes, and white, white skin. Her hair was cut very short. Her eyes flitted around and then stared randomly around us. We tried to explain, in French, that we had reserved a room, but she appeared not to understand what we were talking about. Eventually we made ourselves understood. Our room was actually a little cabin, half of a converted garage, with a ladder from a ship up to the sleeping area. Everything was decorated in pink and red lace, alternating with sackcloth. Our only window was to the sky, so we had to get up on the bed to crane our heads out and up to see the outside. Every time we went down, we saw the woman skulking around in the garden and right outside our door.

(this is a good likeness of her, on the left, from a painting we saw in paris...and pretty accurate for him as well, on the right) When we made eye contact, she glowered at us, and wouldn't look away. This went on for hours. She had an odd way of looking at us - like she was looking straight through us. Her head would shake oddly and her hands would flit constantly around her face. We were convinced she was cursing us. She even did, we thought, a couple of those little spitting motions at us. We never did figure out what we did to draw her wrath.

We made the mistake of eating dinner with them that night, as part of the Table d'Hote option (we were in the middle of nowhere and there was nowhere to eat), with a couple of other couples from France. Dinner started at 9, with some strange drink that we sat around sipping awkwardly until 10, each couple visibly agitated and praying for food. Our host, a funny little man that looked as if he had walked out of a Dickens novel (with lamb chop sideburns, and long, pointed and bulbous nose, and only three fingers on his left hand), talked at us in a strange language for 4 hours straight. One particularly interesting tale that he told involved an old spinster who decided to off herself. She wrote three letters: one to the fire brigade, one to the church, and one to the garbage men, with money in each one. She then set fire to her house at 4 AM to make sure none of the villagers would hear it, and proceeded to walk to the train tracks to catch the 6 AM. She lay her head down on the track. Turns out she didn't want any of her children to inherit anything.

Dinner consisted of three courses. Half way through the first course, which involved raw poultry, we were stuffed, and scared out of our wits. By midnight, when our Dickensian host finally realized that we were asleep, each couple sprang up and ran to their beds. One of the worst sleeps of ours lives followed. We literally couldn´t breathe with the amount of food we'd eaten. The next day we received a tour of the house. ("No words....should have sent...a poet")They had mannequins modelling their clothes, including her wedding dress. She only ever wore black. Their entire house had been turned into a kind of folk museum, with bits and pieces in every corner.

The other gypsy experience was more funny than scary. We had done some laundry leaving Ladern, and had made the mistake of leaving it to dry in the basement, next to the oil heater. When we collected the clothes, we couldn't believe how pungent the smell was. In a stroke of genius, we decided to string up our clothesline across the backseat of our car, and hung the laundry there, with the windows down. About a half hour later, both of us were completely high from the fumes (couldn't stop giggling, dizzy, etc). It took us a while to realize that it was our clothes and we were huffing them. That night, we did laundry again, and had to dry them again the next day, again, on our little caravan clothesline.

Well, we are hopelessly behind in our blog entries. We leave Barcelona tomorrow, but in the blog world, next you get to hear about Andorra. Oh, Andorra. What a bizarre little place.

In Carcasonne, besides our killer sandwich, we snuck in for a peak at the 1200 euro a night Hotel de la Cite, built in the castle, and dreamt big. Also, we saw the 13th century basilica with its huge stained glass windows and it was gorgeous. Simon de Montfort, victorious crusader against the Cathars, is entombed there.

Our visits to the Cathar castles are definitely a highlight so far. We visted the chateaux of Termes, Arques, Puylarens, Peyrepertuse, and Queribus., and climbed up to most of them. They were built as safe havens for the Cathar religious order, as well as fortresses against not only the French armies and the crusading knights and armies of God, but later against the marching forces of Aragon and others from what would later form Spain. They are all built at the tops of the most impossible mountain tops and perched on the edges of sheer rock faces a kilometre high.

We marvelled at their strength and their remoteness .....clearly there was no nipping into town for a coffee for these guys.

From the warm and inviting B and B, near Carcasonne, we stayed for three nights in Rennes Les Bains. Far from the spa town / da Vinci Code conspiracist mecca we we had anticipated, it was more like a backwater where they took a natural thermal hot spring and turned it into a warm swimming pool. The whole town was overrun with working class brits who got loudly drunk and surly each night in the town square.. We did have a good meal at our B and B with 12 other guests. We're not sure if this was calculated or not, but it ended up with the Brits at one end and us at the other with a couple of Belgians and a couple of French, and we had a great conversation, even if our French stank!

The weather turned interesting around this time. It rained extremelyheavily over 4 successive nights and then by 10 am it was fine and we could have full days to go out and to see the sights, only to return by 4 as the skies opened again. It turns out that the rain resulted in some very serious flooding in Southern france and Northern Spain, luckily (for us at least!!!) It has not hampered our plans much.

We obviiously had to visit the famed Rennes le Chateau, which was a site in the da Vinci code and is supposed to hold some mysterious secret related to the Knights Templar. Besides a small and wonderfully bizarre church and a tacky souvenir shop, there was not to the place, so after solving the mystery and deciding not to tell anyone (for their own good, of course), we beat it across country farther west and farther south towards the Niaux caves, Andorra and Spain, the next stops on our Grand Tour. We had booked a room in the tiny (and as it turns out, creepy) village of Unac. We thought all was well... But in the immortal words of Hammy Hampster..."That's another story"... (Stay tuned - this is where the gypsies come in)

It has been a while since our last blog, so here goes...
We last left you as we made our way into the Cathar country around and south of the city of Carcassonne. Carcassonne is like a fairy tale place, filled with turreted walls and towers, and a perfectly preserved core. We spent a couple of days exploring this place, and stayed at a really nice and cozy B&B run by a couple of Brits. We took some great photos of the city at night and ate some nice meals, including the best sandwich we´ve ever had - called a kebab, it was a flatbread with lamb and curry sauce, mayo, and fries...sinful.
We then spent several days touring the 12th and 13th century Cathar Castles.
We only have a minute left on our connection so we will continue this...

...and Canadians, it would seem, go out in the midday sun. The weather here has been blindingly hot. Since we arrived, the daytime temperature hasn't gone below 32 degrees. We have been idiots, walking around in the full sun, wanting to see as much as we can, but ending up giving ourselves sunstroke! And not making it past 2 in the afternoon. There is a reason all the shops close and everyone disappears between 12 and 3....

Since we last posted, we have seen and done much: we saw Roman ruins, some Roman construction that is not in ruins (a bridge, 2000 years old, that has withstood countless floods and hasn't budged, despite the destruction of more modern construction), our first village markets, many locals out with their shopping baskets, and some beautiful countryside complete with the blues and yellows of calendar scenes of Provence.

Just a little sad leaving our oasis-type B&B in Vaison-la-Romaine, we drove through Orange with a quick look at the Arc de Triomphe and a tour of the amazing Roman theatre. We then drove on to Avignon, getting horrendously and completely lost in the process. We drove around the city a couple of times, under the famous bridge ('look kids, the bridge' a la Chevy Chase) but ended up at a nice little hotel complete with a pool (a necessity in this heat.) Turns out that the owner had just sold his place and that we were to be his last guests. We saw our first French big box mall, featuring the largest grocery store we have ever seen - we would say, without exaggeration, the size of 4 walmarts.

On Thursday we toured the city of Avignon. We walked the narrow streets and visited the Palais des Papes and had a sinful steak, frites and chevre baguette sandwich from a street vendor. We walked to the Pont d'Avignon, but with the heat playing havoc with us, we decided to skip dancing on the bridge, but instead watched a crazy homeless woman dance below it.

Friday we saw the Pont du Gard, a 2000 year old Roman aqueduct that has stood the test of time. What a feat of engineering - no mortar.
We drove on to Arles and for the first time drove our car right into the heart of its medieval streets - through part of the Roman theatre and past the Roman arena. We ended the day with romantic dinner of duck, gazpacho, and profiteroles.

Today we had a long drive across the south, past Montpellier and Beziers and a quick stop at the Abbey in Caunes-Minervois. We now find ourselves in a small village south of Carcassonne, deep in Cathar Castle country, in a cute little B&B run by a couple of ex-pat Brits who have recreated an Edwardian British country house.

The coming week should be a little more low-key. We plan many hikes to see the castles and towns of this area, many of which have become quite popular in the wake of the da Vinci Code craze... if we solve the mystery, we'll let you know. J and A.