LJ

Today was the day to explore the Alpajurra region properly. Orgiva is the the “gateway” to the High Alpujarras. We visited the most famous 3 villages – Capileira, Bubion and Pampaneira. The drive up was spectacular, lots of twisting, hairpin bends and gorges. We drove to the furthest away one first – Capileria and worked our way back. We had our lunch in Pampaneira. It was our first 'menu del dia' (menu of the day)of the trip. All restaurants have to offer a menu del dia and they are usually a really good deal as you get 3 courses, bread and quite often a drink too. They can be as cheap as €9! Emily was very popular in the villages, the Spanish seem to love children. All the waiters love making silly noises at her and ... read more

After a long and somewhat eventful trip we have made it to Spain! It was all going well until we got to security. Obviously we have more luggage than you can imagine – only the kitchen sink is missing. In our defence most of it is Emily's, she has one big case and me and Tim have to share the other one. We loaded our mountains of bags and coats onto the belt and went through as normal. No beeping so we went to pick our stuff up. At this point we were asked to wait whilst our pushchair and car seat were swabbed – all perfectly normal for items that can't be scanned. A few minutes later they said they'd need to re-do it as they'd had an unusual result. As we'd got the pushchair ... read more

Another day, another ruin up a hill - we will be super fit at the end of all this. The weather has been good every day so far and today was properly hot! After a windy (as in winding road not blowing wind) drive through the mountains we arrived in Les Baux de Provence, one of the most beautiful villages in France, according to the signs on the way in. Parking was an issue as it is very popular, given it was actually reasonably quiet we can only imagine the horror of trying to get a spot in August. We walked up to the castle that sits on top of the hill, the village really is pretty, like a Disney interpretation of a medieval village but real! We walked past lots of nice looking shops selling ... read more

After another trip to the boulangerie for some croissants and a baguette we headed out for the day with our first stop being Gordes. Gordes is a typical Provençal hilltop village in a region known as The Luberon. This area is very pretty, full of lavender fields and was made famous by the book “A Year in Provence” - and it seemed that the whole of France, most of Japan and half of America had also decided it would make a nice place to start the day too! We hadn't researched properly and had decided on market day for our visit. Now markets are nice to look around, and this one was very pretty with soaps, olives and lavender aplenty (plus some of those annoying carved frogs that chirp and are beloved of market traders the ... read more

Bonjour! We are in Provence in France on yet another holiday. We thought we would make the most of things and go whilst we still can! We are currently renting an apartment in a little village called Graveson, about 20km south of Avignon. We arrived here yesterday afternoon after flying to Marseilles airport (cheap Ryanair flights as per usual) where we collected our hire car (a Peugot 207 - not as good as last year's diesel Fiesta in Tim's opinion). TomTom got us most of the way here without any problems. Obviously it failed to locate where we were actually staying as it didn't know which roads were one way or no entry. After a minor amount of swearing from Tim we found it. Our apartment, apartment Cezanne, is very nice. It is a one bedroom ... read more