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Published: September 13th 2013
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This morning's first stop was at a genuine French perfume factory at Eze on the French Riviera where Nicola bought some perfume for a friend. From there, we drove to Avignon, home of the Popes for a period of time. Once again, we only had a 1 hour stopover here so it's hard to do the city justice when you're trying to grab a quick bite to eat and have a look around at the same time. After lunch we drove to Carcassone, not far from the Spanish border for an overnight stay at a hotel with a million dollar view of the castle.
In the morning we had some time to walk up to the castle and have a look around. We got a fairly early start and managed to avoid the crowds but unfortunately, not much was open, just a few tourist shops. We had a look inside the church but found it to be dark and musty smelling with little decoration - a stark contrast to the many churches that we had visited which were lavishly decorated with paintings, frescos and statues.
Back on the bus, we headed for Barcelona where we took up the optional tour to have dinner
and see a flamenco show. The dinner was amazing - a wide assortment of food, plates of paella and other regional dishes together with a whole dessert table! After dinner, we moved into a separate room which had quite a low ceiling, to watch the dancers and musicians. Soon afterwards, the dancers were introduced and one of the guys was so tall, his fingertips brushed the ceiling when he had his hands in the air. It was amazing to watch and well worth the money.
The next day the tour guide took us for a bus ride around Barcelona which is a very pretty city with lots of tree-lined streets and a relaxed atmosphere. Some of the architecture is quite eccentric - one building is called the dragon house and another has a wave façade. The Sagrada Familia church is the main attraction here - they've been building it since the late 1800's and it's still not finished. The original architect died early on in the construction and the famous Spanish architect Gaudi was asked to complete the design. To be honest, I thought it was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen but lots of other people like it - each
to his own I guess :-)
Leaving Barcelona behind, we drove to Madrid across a variety of landscapes - vineyards then some really dry mulga scrub sort of country. We stopped for lunch at Zaragosa. The name of this town provided many hours of amusement for us because of the way it's pronounced (Stharagostha - think of the gayest man you know pronouncing Zaragosa with a lisp and you'll get the gist)! Our hotel in Madrid was just down the road from a famous bull fighting ring but we didn't go to see a bull fight (although some of the others on the trip did). The next day we took the optional excursion to Toledo which at one point in time was the capital of Europe! It's a petty little medieval town with yet another beautiful cathedral but this one is really quite nice. The inside is limestone and it's not as heavily decorated as St Peter's which gives it a warm inviting atmosphere. Definitely worth the visit.
After lunch, we went on the guided city tour around Madrid - not much to see really. At this point in the tour, I wanted to have some time off to just rest so
I headed back to the hotel for a nap before dinner whilst Cath and Nicola decided to get in some more shopping. Dinner was at 8pm which is early for the Spanish apparently - no wonder they need a siesta in the afternoon!
The next couple of days were relatively uninteresting... a quick stop in Burgos which is quite pretty before stopping in Bilbao for the night. We didn't visit the Guggenheim museum but were happy to use their free wifi in the coffee shop to catch up on some emails. We had a long drive to Poitiers in France the next day, stopping for lunch at Bordeaux. When Napoleon III decided to re-design Paris, his urban planner Baron Haussmann used Bordeaux as a template. Today the similarities are quite obvious and Bordeaux and Paris are both beautiful.
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