St Malo is one of those places that I had been told about and somehow managed to miss three years ago on the way up to Mont St Michel. But now I've made it, and am just more then a little pleased about it too. St Malo is a walled city and many moons ago they decided to build a fort that surrounds the city right on the ocean, come high tide the waves crash against the seaside walls. On some of the surrounding islands other forts were built but none as grand as St Malo. There is a nice little [View Full Entry]

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Well it had to happen after all these years of being blessed with brilliant weather for holidays. After last years two and a half months away and only three days of rain, my fine weather credits with buddha, god and allah have finally gone into the negative. Yesterday was one of those wonderful days sitting in the sunshine basking and enjoying life around Nantes, today all that has come to an end, so much so that I have been scaning the net in the hope of finding somewhere to escape to to build up the tan before jetting back home. But [View Full Entry]

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After a bit of unguided touring of the majority of the roads that lead into and out of Valencia I finally managed to arrive at the rendezvous point where I was due to meet up with Ricardo, the world famous protechnician, to be escorted to his fireworks factory. He now thinks that I'm a little insane after his questioning a little along the lines of; you come to Spain, drive into Valencia with no hotel booking, where did you stay? Yes a nice little hostal in the old part of town. Where did you eat? oh a couple of nice resturaunts [View Full Entry]

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Like last year and the pan fried calamari in Split, Croatia, it´s happened again, who would have thought that you would get pasta so amazing in Spain that it is just plain good. Before stepping out tonight I did a little research and this little Italian place came up as a possibility. I got there a little early at a quarter to nine and all the staff were sharing a meal at a communal table (good sign). Through broken Spanish, Italian and English I worked out that they opened at 9pm, so come back later. After resisting the temptation of paella [View Full Entry]

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The time in Valencia has gone a little fast, but it´s time to move on back up north into France. After the first night in the Hostal that was a bargain basement price with ´free´ parking I found a better quality of Hostal in a more central location. This was after five attempts though, €28 a night and all was well. It had all that was needed, clean (not like the two others I looked at!), didn´t smell of mould (not like one of the others) and it had a lift (not like the one that was on level six with [View Full Entry]

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While watching that enthralling bit of Spanish Opera I decided that Valencia sounds nice this time of year, so off to the home of the 32nd America´s Cup it was. After retrieving the car from the dodgey parking spot up on the hill at San Sebastian south I drove. The drive through the centre of Spain is quite nice really. You start by going up a winding mountain road with views to die for, if you could see them through the fog and rain that is. Then across the plateau to Zaragoza,which must be the wind farm capital of the world, [View Full Entry]

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After checking out the surf beach from Zurriola Promenade in San Sebastian it was time to leave the surfers and that bizarre naked man who was just walking up and down along the beach (go figure) and head back past the Kursaal to the old part of town. On the way I passed the same old sandstone building that I had during the past three days. It was then that I realised that it was a theatre and that there was a show on that night. Imagine walk past the same building all the time and it finally dawns on you [View Full Entry]

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With all the travel shows on the tv none of them get around to mentioning the mundane tasks that go on while you travel. Washing is one of these mundane things. There´s only so many times you wash things in the bathroom sink with the belief that they are clean. Today´s adventure was to find a laundramat in San Sebastian, a simple task really, first stop the lady that looks after the pension that I´m staying in. She was kind enough in her broken English (which is 4 000 000 times better than my tokenistic Spanish) to point out a couple [View Full Entry]

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Who would have thought after running away from Nantes that the rain would follow me down here. Oh well liked the place so much that I´m going to stay for a few days anyway before working out where to next. San Sebastian really comes alive in summer, the major selling point for the pension that I´m staying in is that it is close to La Concha beach. La Concha beach is a crescent shaped beach that you can imagine covered in the finest of Spanish beauties taking in a little sun, the reality is that´s it not quite summer yet so [View Full Entry]

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After a fun filled six days in Ireland it was time to return to sunny Nantes. Which since I've been here has managed to turn on the sunshine once or twice but definately not three times. So with that outlook on the horizonand things being a bit cold, it's time to pack up and fly south for the winter or to jump in the peugeot 206 and drive to the Med or at least somewhere warm on the way. So drive I did, south and after five or six hours in the car and 25 euro in tolls I made it [View Full Entry]

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