Advertisement
Hi everyone from the south of France. We have now made it up from Spain, and over the last two weeks or so have been moving steadily east.
From Madrid we headed straight down to Valencia to cruise around the city and take in some of the sights - being the usual collection of Churches, walls and gates. This time however we did manage to come across the actual Holy Grail from the last supper (well at least the only one Rome has yet to discredit). We got some great views of the city from the cathedral bell tower, taking in the rich blue tile work which is invisible at street level.
After Valencia we started heading north towards Barcelona, but took advantage of what for us was a rather rare spell of hot sunny weather to park up at the beach for a few days. We had to search about a bit to find something nice, as this coast is really over-developed with high rises all over the place. Luckily we found a camping ground right next to the beach, complete with a supermarket which sold cold (but bad) Spanish beer. The local village also had a nice
selection of bars, one of which ended up getting all our custom because of it's extensive seafood tapas menu and 4 euro bottles of wine :-)
Next up for us was Barcelona, which was of interest mainly for the architecture of Gaudi, a modernist who really was ahead of his time. The Casa Batllo was a town house which he remodeled, with the place coming out more like a film set for 20000 leagues under the sea than a house. The place had no straight lines anywhere, with lots of colourful glazed ceramic tiles all over the place, and halls with internal ribbed vaulting which made it look like you were inside the belly of a large fish :-) The roof also had some crazy shapes on it too - from a roof line which looked like a fish fin to some Dr Seuss style chimney stacks. Bloody expensive entrance fee but well worth it for a look around.
Gaudi's other major work in Barcelona is La Sagrada Familia, his unfinished Catholic cathedral, which makes you wonder what the church was doing giving him the commission after his other work as it is nothing at all like any
other church on the planet. Although still unfinished it's appearance on the street is pretty stunning, and a closer inspection of the outside reveals some rather unique religious sculpture work (very angular lines in the figures). The interior still has some way to go, although the photos (attached) should give an idea of the size of the place and the strange branching tree-pillars used to hold up the ceiling.
Some more time on the road took us back into France, but not before we stocked up on all the preserved meat we could fit into the fridge :-) This was a bit of over-kill as we went a bit silly on our first visit to a French supermarket in a few weeks, overdoing it with cheese, a small sample of foie gras, and the local drop produced in Provence.
We dropped in on Nimes and Avignon on our way east, experiencing a strange mixing of French and Spanish culture in the same region (Bull fights down here too) while still being able to get our hands on the nice ham we had been getting used to from Spain. There are lots of old Roman ruins around here, and
we took in a well preserved amphitheatre in Nimes, as well as the Pont de Gard - another rather large aquaduct. Avignon provided some entertainment in the form of an involuntary walking tour as the old city is rather easy to get lost in, and we (almost) forgot where Bert was parked. On the way we did see the Palais de Papes, home to the Pope in the 14th century when things got a bit dangerous in Rome. This was a bit of a let down as the palace resembled more of a castle than anything else, and fires had taken out most of the old decorative work years ago. The city does have an interesting bridge, the Pont St-Bénezet - interesting in that it gets 2/3 the way across the river and then stops....
We have now made it to our last stop in France, Nice. Unfortunately the weather is still not co-operating with us, so we have been doing a fair bit of walking and sight-seeing instead of beach lounging :-( Hopefully Italy will turn on the weather for us over the next three weeks.
S&S
Advertisement
Tot: 0.254s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 53; dbt: 0.078s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
trev
non-member comment
pont
heeeey, tara went swimming at pont du gard :D