Spain, Andorra and France in one night

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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 around the old town? But you don't speak Spanish, how did you do this? Mate it was OK. How did you get to the America's Cup? Oh on the Metro. You travelled on the Metro, how did you know this you don't speak Spanish and so on it went. But it was a great catch up and I finally got to see his factory and meet his wife. Wanting to spend a bit longer in Spain, but having to keep a committment I made months ago it was time to head back to Nantes in time for a fireworks show at Saint Sebastien on Saturday night.

As they say the journey is half the fun and wanting to tick off another country off the list it was via Andorra I went. Andorra is described as one big shopping haven due to its' tax free status. Well the guidebook was not wrong on that count at least, it was just fortunate that I arrived into well after all the shops had shut. But the place didn't really inspire me to want to stay the night and shop in the morning. There's one road in and one road out with more service stations per capita then anywhere I've seen (the cheapest fuel in Europe and buy up I did). They also have this incredible ability to make buildings stick to the sides of cliffs and roads that wind up the mountain in between these buildings. Onto France it was then, but a little tip if by chance you go up a big hill via an ever increasingly tight windy road there's a good chance that you have to come back down one.

It was probably best that this happened in darkness, as it was less scarey, what you can't see won't hurt you right, not seeing the sheer cliffs was probably a bonus. The moonlit mountains looked very spectatular though and may be worth a return visit one year. The other tip is that the French aren't really big on the informative road advisory sign. Having spent more than a few years driving in a country that has a sign at each corner telling what speed would be advisable, you begin to think that it is normal. Well not when you're descending a mountain on the France Andorra border it's not, all you get is a 'z' shape on a road sign and the number of kilometres that the 'z' goes for, helpful. At least the sign showing that there were elk on the road was more beneficial, sailing down the mountain constantly reminding myself that I'm not a rally driver and to control myself, I came round a corner to the not so welcome sight of bambi standing in the middle of the road. At this point I'm not sure who got the biggest fright bambi or me but at least I wasn't trying to work out what the best cut of venison was or if there's a fine for decreasing the elk population!

On reaching relatively flat ground again and not having worked out where best to stay the night, I opted for Chateaux le Peugeot, centrally located, with all mod cons and relatively comfortable. Who know's what the next day would bring? Well I should have known really, since I was heading to north western France, rain!! Yep who would have guessed as soon as I passed a sign with Nantes on it there's a humungous great storm cloud and torrential rain.

At least things fined up for the night at the beach or Les Rendez-vous de la Plage in Saint Sebastien and the fireworks. This Saint Sebastien is not to be confused with the one in Spain. The beach is a little smaller and it's on the river Loire rather then the ocean. But the fireworks were fantastic, nice mix of effects and well choreographed segments.

Oh in case you didn't know May is the month of public holidays in France, it's probably easier to list which days are not public holidays on the calender then those that are. I managed to get caught out again today (Monday) after being told that it wasn't really a public holiday I ventured out to the local shopping mall here in Nantes. Well everything was open except the shop selling what I needed, the supermarket, yep you could buy anything you wanted except food!! go figure, the bloody French have got me again. It must be only public holiday in the world for supermarket workers, so much for plans of a big feast, it's back to the trusty baguette, fortunately I managed to find the only bakery open on the way home.

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