Avignon and Barcelona

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Hi all,

Just an update.

Have now moved into Spain after three days tripping around Provence. Visited the Roman theatre, the aquaduct and did a wine and olive tour which was a highlight.

Also visited within the walled part of Avignon and the Palace of Papes, this is certainly turning into a Roman and Christian historic sites trip - but then they both had such amazing influcence over the whole place.

Palace of the Papes was used by three main Popes who moved the seat of the catholic church to Avignon around the 13th century due to all the civil unrest in Italy at the time. Each added his own touch to the Palace but unfortunately the taking of photos was strictly forbidden. The chimney from the main kitchen had to be seen to be believed as it rose up 35 metres from the centre of the stone kitchen.

At one feast they had to celebrate a new Pope, there was mention of 96000 loaves of bread, 12000 sheep, 2000 beast and 130000 eggs being consumed by the populace. Not a bad effort.

Not a lot of information or promotion of the Rugby World Cup in a rugby region of France. Found some take off rugby shirts which instead of All Black logo, had Haka Dance team on it.

The country side in Spain is completely different again from France, once away from the border and the stonewalled terraces on which they have planted the olive groves are a feat in themselves.

Speaking of feats of engineering, the Aquaduct at Pont Du Gard was astounding. Built in the first century AD by the Romans to take water to Nimes, it stands as a reminder of the influence the Romans had. At that time they allowed 1000 litres of water per resident in Nimes perday. The town now, using todays 350 litres per day allowance, has the same amount of water being pumped into it for today´s population, but not the aquaduct obviously.

I especially liked the fact that grafitti it appears is not a new thing. Lovers from throught he ages have carved their names and the date into the sandstone rocks, the earlist I found was 1643 and the last one was 1856 or thereabouts.

Extremely interesting museum on how the built the monster.

Barecelona was an absolute madhouse and once you have driven there you could drive anywhere. The wonders of GPS again proved invaluable with us being able to navigate around such a busy place. For a city the size of Auckland it is a far lot busier with the tourists.

The area we have stopped in over night is on the way to San Sebastian. The drive was extremely interesting from France and into Spain with grape vines for miles - imagine driving from the Bombays to Taupo and seeing nothing but grape vines, then into Spain and the same but this time Olive trees. They certainly have the country side plastered with it all.

We have now driven through to San Sebastian, a coastal city on the Bay of Biscay and it is very very hot up here.

The countryside from where we stopped to here changed a number of times and as we crossed the great plain in the middle of the country, it rained, so the saying is totally true.

Spain is very much into wind powered electricity generation with, by our count over 200 of the wind turbines standing like soldiers doing gun drill in just one area we drove through. They seem to have taken into the account the countryside and you will be driving along oblivious to this giants until you turn a corner and there they are for miles.

Had a bit of a play up last night and got into the local culture and beer. The locals call their Tapas - pincheros to retain their seperate Basque identity. Seems to be a lot f people around here with some type of physical defect or another, more per head of population than say Dunedin anyway.

We are in a Hostael Almenia, which was recommended by Lonely Planet and worth the reference. Two star and very clean and tidy with nice bathrooms in the rooms. No air-conditioning which made for a very hot evening last night. Also seems to be a national shortage of bikini tops here, we are looking into the situation and will report back as we find out more.

Paul

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