Our trip to Spain and France was really three vacations rolled into one. First we had six days in Barcelona, staying at a rather stylish hotel. Then we got a car and spent eight days circumnavigating the Pyrenees. Then the last three days were in Vallgorguina, Spain (about 40 kilometers north of Barcelona), where we stayed with some friends. Details to follow.
The neighborhood where we stayed in Barcelona is called Eixample—it’s a neighborhood of broad avenues and exotic Art Nouveau apartment blocks, including the major works of Antonio Gaudi. This part of Barcelona kind of reminded me of New York—big streets, fashionable stores, lots of smelly traffic. Plus it was hot. But there was all sorts of interesting stuff to look at:
On the streets of Barcelona.
This lady and her companion were in fact walking down the street.
We took in most of the usual sites. Our last day in town we went to an amusement park perched on a mountain overlooking the town. You had to take a bus, then a special tram, then a funicular railway to get there. The three of us don’t always agree on what do to, but we all love funicular railways.
After Barcelona we rented a car and spent the first day driving west across open dry country (kind of like New Mexico) before reaching Navarra. We stopped for an hour in Pamplona (and noticed the improvised memorial to the “bull runner” who was fatally gored this year) before driving up into the mountains and stopping in Donamaria, in the heart of the Basque country. We stayed at a kind of inn for three nights. The place was a family affair, and we enjoyed trying to communicate with the mother, who ran the hotel and served breakfast, and one of the daughters, who served us dinner every night. We spent one day exploring a nearby nature park on mountain bikes, and one day in San Sebastian, which is a beautiful old city with a great swath of beach:
The old quarter of San Sebastian.
The beach at San Sebastian. It was raining an hour after we took this photo.
Basque country has a unique look and feel:
Basque archi-
tecture
On the French side of the border, in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, which sort of means St. Jean at the foot of the border.
The next four days we were in France. We got to experience a little bit of elevation, and also got acquainted with some of the local fauna:
From 6500 ft. up in the Pyrenees.
A marmot, which later almost got run over by the tiny train we were riding on.
Next up was Carcassonne, an immense mediaeval hilltop fortress that was restored in the 19th century. It’s a bit Disneyfied, and it was hot and crowded, but the place really does look great:
Carcas-
sonne by day.
Carcas-
sonne by night.
Jonetta and I were digging the fact that we could conduct basic conversations about things like food and accommodations in French, considering how helpless we were in Spain and (ahem) Denmark. Merchants and shopkeepers in this remote corner of France generally don’t speak any English, so French was the best option. So that was nice. Also, at this point in the trip, we were just picking little items out of the guidebook and checking them out:
The entrance to a 12th century church carved into the side of a mountain in Vals.
The mediaeval timbered arcades of Mirepoix.
Just an amazing part of the country (the department of Ariège), with fascinating history and all sorts of natural wonders. Our final stop combined history with nature: we were lucky enough to phone ahead and schedule an appointment to visit the Grotte de Niaux, a cave with 13,000-year-old drawings of bison and deer. They closed the most famous such cave (Lascaux) decades ago, and I’d always though that my chances of ever seeing such a place were pretty slim. We had to walk 800 meters through damp darkness holding flashlights, past stalagmites and stalactites (but not Stalag 13 or 17), to reach the paintings. The guide then instructed us to turn off our flashlights. After about 30 seconds of total darkness, he turned on a much stronger electric torch, directed at a section of wall containing dozens of drawings. It was a moment of pure awe. No photos allowed, unfortunately, except at the entrance:
From Niaux, we drove up higher and higher into the Pyrenees, before cresting out at over 2400 meters (7500 ft.) and descending into Andorra, Europe’s fifth smallest country. It’s good for hiking and skiing I gather; we spent the night in the capital, Andorra La Vella, which to me was Andorra La Putrida: imagine a ten-mile strip of narrow highway bordered by the kinds of stores you usually only find in the tax-free area of an airport: jewelry, alcohol, electronics, designer clothing. Because Andorra, as it turns out, is a tax haven. After checking into our hotel, we walked for miles past snarling traffic without finding a decent restaurant, which is the one thing we never had trouble finding anywhere else on this trip.
After a final day of driving through Catalonia on the Spanish side, we rendezvoused with our friends Rita and Don and their son Joe at the house where they were staying in Vallgorguina, Spain. Rita and Don are “house exchange” veterans: every year or two they trade their house on Bainbridge Island for a house or apartment somewhere in Europe for two or three weeks. We stayed our last three nights with them, and it really helped us stave off the usual end-of-trip-dirty-laundry blues. We shared three sumptuous long dinners in classic Spanish style with them, going on until the small hours of the morning. Here we are on the streets of Girona (yet another gorgeous Spanish town), and after hiking up through a forest of cork trees to visit a dolmen near the house.
Louis, Jonetta, Joe, Don, and Rita in Girona.
At the dolmen near Vall-
gorguina. Poor sock choice on my part.
I’ve got hundreds of great pictures from this trip and I’m going to post them online somewhere. I’ll update this post when I do.
