The Monastic period

With Barcelona just south of us, and home to the Sagrada Familia (one of the major sites that we want to visit) we had to decide where to base ourselves to visit from as there was no way we were driving into a city of 2 million people. An article in Lonely Planet inspired us to head to a place called Monserrat. This was the best decision ever. We are now at one of the most amazing places in the world – a monastery town high in the hills 40 km away from Barcelona. It is in a beautiful national park with lots of walks that traverse the hills (mountains). We wound our way up the hill and despite the large number of tourist buses that greeted us when we arrived we fell in love with the scenery and decided to put down roots here for three days to start with. An hour long train ride will take us to Barcelona and meanwhile we can experience this absolutely unique place.

Firstly you must realise that there is a fully active monastery here and although we can’t visit this part of the village we can go to the Basilica and experience vespers with the monks and an authentic boy’s choir from the choir school based here. The bells ring at 6.30pm to alert us to come to the chapel in 15 minutes and again five minutes before the vespers start. They echo through the rocks that this village is built directly under. The monks and boys combine to give an eerie sound through the beautiful acoustics of the chapel and the high tones of the young boys is amazing to hear. There are other masses that we can join in with so we plan to go again at 7.30 in the morning.

The air is crisp up here at 1135m above the valley below, a climb that was quite incredible on the switch back roads in a car. Not being able to see the village until you finally reach it means that at each turn you we were expectantly looking around to see if you were there. With about 80 monks cloistered here, the church is the major feature. It again, like other churches in Spain we have seen, is extremely ornate inside and with high ceilings and statues of Jesus, Mary etc at every turn. Unlike other churches this is not called Sancta Maria but the attached monastery was built here because a statute of the Black Madonna (the Virgin Mary) was found close by in a rock grotto back in the 1025.

Although Napoleon tried to destroy the monastery in the 1800’s it has been refurbished to its former glory. People come from all over to kiss the Black Madonna. This village sits in what is now a National park surrounding it with walks to further heights and 2 funiculars, a rack and pinion rail way plus a gondola provides other opportunities for views and exploration.

The weather was cold and wet so we decided to go to Barcelona for the first day of our stay. This meant getting on the rack and pinion rail way down the hill and getting the connecting train to Barcelona for an hour long ride. Firstly, on the way into Barcelona we were blown away by the large amount of large industry that we encountered on our way and this ranged from light to heavy engineering and chemical factories. There was little agriculture to be seen in this part of the country which was a rocky and barren in many places.

Arriving in Barcelona was via an underground rail system so it was hard to get an impression at first. Then we stayed underground and used the well developed metro system to get us to the Sagrada Familia. This is a church that has already been under construction for 125 years and is not due to be finished till 2025. When the original and utter genius of an architect was asked when it would be finished he replied “my client isn’t in a hurry”. He died many years ago but others have carried on his dream and this is despite all his plans and drawings being destroyed in the 1930 uprising in Spain. He designed this amazing structure in honour of Joseph and the holy family and you will see their images in sculptures all over the building; he was a very religious man who believed that the holy family was at the centre love and harmony in society. Much of his inspiration in the design came from nature around him, hence the treed effect as the roof in one part of the church and the fruit on top of some spires representing the bountifulness of nature.

The effect of his architectural design permeates the city and can be seen at various other spots in the city in buildings that he was commissioned to do. Many of the buildings in Barcelona are works of art as well as architectural masterpieces. This city was a beautiful, clean and orderly masterpiece (made Marseille look like a shabby city). It stretched down to the waterfront that was developed tastefully to blend in with the cityscape. Although we only saw a small part of the city, it kept us enthralled at each stage but didn’t have the time to do more exploring, needing to return to Monserrat. It is certainly a place you could spend more time at.

The walks and views around Monserrat are cold and wet as the weather is still not cooperating. The views are fabulous when the cloud allows you to see them. The rock formations on what would be a moonscape without the plants are amazing. That paths are chiselled out of them is even more amazing. A climb up the track to the highest viewpoint (where a funicular can take you if you want) shows Monserrat nestled in the rocks. Disappointingly however, unlike Rotorua and Queenstown, they do check for your tickets at the top of the ride so there are no free trips down.

Parts of the walks close to the monastery itself are adorned with huge numbers of religious statutes and sculptures. Once you got away from the monastery there were very few people on the tracks-pretty typical for most tourist places I would think. As the skies opened up at lunchtime we had a leisurely lunch in the local cafeteria where the bus loads of tourist eat. And we used our upstairs balcony position to assess the lunches that passed through the counter below. Well it seems that pizza, sausage, or calamari rings accompanied by chips and more chips would be the most popular choice and were often washed down with coke and followed by chocolate cake. I guess things aren’t much different here to NZ. People had the option of getting veges (and nice veges at that) and salad but passed them by. We certainly enjoyed our two meals, pork with a variety of veges and spicy sausage with herbed haricot beans. We finished our meal off with cholesterol lowering red wine; wine here is very good value for the quality and I can see that we will continue to try wine from the different regions. Spain has more land in grapes than France (we just haven’t seen them yet). The Roija region certainly makes a nice red wine particularly Tempranillo which was our first tasting bottle bought at a supermarket for $6 per bottle.

Food and fuel appear to be slightly cheaper here than in France. And interestingly petrol would be 5 – 7 cents cheaper than diesel and 15 cents cheaper than France. Once again, here in Spain, Sunday is a family day with shops being closed. We still both feel that would be a great thing for NZ to return to but realise that won’t happen. There is a huge amount of road construction going on here as the number of cars owned by individuals in Spain has increased by 25% over the past 5 years. The motorways around Barcelona were incredible with Trucks dominating and bumper to bumper traffic in places on the ring motorways even though we were 20km out and it was late morning. Trucks on the roads have made travelling quite slow in places. Now about the TV; we watch the local programmes to get a feel for what is happening and if you think we have too many ads between programmes well we are not a patch on ads in Spain.

The weather is very inclement for this time of year and people having come to Spain’s coast for early summer holidays are being disappointed. But the rain is being welcomed in the Catalan area as drought conditions have meant that Barcelona has a severe water shortage. Although this rain is not enough water to make a difference, the officials aren’t mucking around, they have ship loads (and that is ship loads with a p) of water coming into Barcelona to fill the gaps until the new desalination plant is up and running next year.

From France to the Land of Dali

We did decide to head to Spain even though the strike was only for one day and diesel supplies seemed to be back to normal. We were ready for a change of scenery and culture and (heaven preserve us) the challenges of a new language. On our way to Spain we had a couple of stops to make. The first was to a bridge and aqueduct dating back to roman times (approx 19BC) called the Pont du Gard. It was constructed of arches upon arches and is an amazing feat of engineering for the time.

This was only a slight detour on the way to Spain. Having seen the Pont, we headed for the “Peage”; a tolled motorway that you can do speeds of up to 130km per hour on. On these we would be in Spain in 2 ½ hours according to Tom. So off we went. Well this was a heady time as at these speeds you really need to focus. Huge trucks career along side you and the suction effect of the trucks as you pass them can be a bit daunting at 130km/hr. Also should a truck decide to overtake another they just pull out in front of you as they do not want to slow down, and simply push you into another lane. We stayed on the Peage till Perpignan, our penultimate stop in France. Once again it was another fortified city, with a Church of Notre Dame and designer shops to die for (if you had a wallet big enough). In France you can always see the price of goods as their laws mean everything has to be visibly priced. This was great when chosing hotels as the rates were always detailed at the front door. Perpignan was interesting but as we were feeling it was just more of the same, it confirmed that our decision to go to Spain was the right one.



Having travelled for long enough we stopped ½ hr from the Spanish border in a town called Argeles sur Mer. It even had its own Statue of Liberty. This was a quaint town by the beach. But as with all these quaint towns by the beach you could see that they were like Mt Maunganui – deserted in winter but overcrowded and over-commercialised in the summer. Block after block of similar looking salmon coloured apartments were largely deserted waiting for owners to return with the warmer weather. Some brave people had obviously decided that the weather was right to take a holiday and come to the med, but the wind was strong and only a few hardy sunbathers hid in sheltered places to get a tan whilst windsurfers and kite surfers lapped up the “waves” on the med.

Next morning it was off to Spain. We followed the coastal route and were challenged on the windy roads that carved their way around the Pyrennes Orientales. The panoramas were great, but most interesting was the viticulture on both sides of every hill, and the fact that they were growing vines in what was essentially rock. Add to this the terracing that was done to retain the slopes and these were truly amazing sights. We had essentially been flanked by vineyards all the way from Orange in Provence down through Languedoc – Rousillion and into Spain. We are talking serious hectarage of vines. No wonder we can buy so much cheap wine. We stopped in what appeared to be a quaint fishing town called Collioure BUT a stop and a walk through the village showed that they too were waiting for the tourists to arrive with shop after shop and restaurant after restaurant ready for more people than were there. Interestingly, as we left we passed 4 tourist buses on their way in. The last meal in France at this stage was in Cervere, another seaside town just before the border and was Rabbit. This was largely like chicken but tougher, but the garlic aioli that it was served with seriously attacked the senses (in a good way).

Crossing the border was totally uneventful, with the old abandoned border crossing control alerting us to the fact we had arrived in Spain. The first town we came to was a sight to see – El port de la Selva. The houses were largely cream/white and stacked up the hills away from the med. Boats in the harbours were not layer after layer of tourist boats stacked in a marina, but local fishermen’s boats. We carried on to our destination for the night – Cadaques. This is a very touristy place that attracts thousands to see Salvador Dalis home and museum. But this town has retained its charm and the numbers of visitors here now add to its atmosphere rather than take away. The church, catholic, was not unsurprisingly called Santa Maria and had sculptured artwork that was most unique and ornate of any church we had seen. The paths were made from local stone cemented in place and had pictures made out of these stones such as a mermaid. We were in Tapas country, where people came out to bars at night eating light meals until the late hours. This is a challenge for us as we are early eaters and early to bed and early to rise.


The next morning one could have been forgiven for thinking we were on the atlantic coast as waves and wind pounded the shores of our quaint little fishing village. But undeterred we went for an hour plus walk along the walking track on the coast at 7 in the morning and enjoyed the scenery along the rugged coastline. Our plans for the day were to focus on Salvador Dali. We had an appointment (they only let in 8 at a time) to visit Dali’s house in Port Lligat, another gorgeously quaint little fishing village. One could see why he chose to live there.

His house was an eclectic mix of objects d’art. We took more than 1 photo a minute as we marvelled at the tie up between these objects and his art work. He was probably close to mad but he had the most wonderful views of the sea from his house and to make sure he saw the rising sun from his bedroom, he installed an appropriately placed mirror in which to see its reflection. He had a fascination with dead things and had stuffed or imitation animals and birds all around his house (as well as keeping canaries and a pet cricket that were alive). The planters in the garden were not regular shaped rather they were cup shaped and egg shapes sat in the garden and on the roof of his house. These egg shapes were to reappear later in the day.

Prior to visiting Dali’s house we had time to visit the Cap de Creus Parc which was a wonderfully rocky landscape with shrubbery growing out of the rocks and held the opportunity for many great walks had the weather been more clement.

But with rain dogging our path we decided to move on down the coast and inland to Figueres where the Muse Dali held all his art work. But we decided to do lunch at Cadanques before we hit the road. We had picked out a restaurant that was recommended by the French equivalent to Lonely Planet but when we arrived it was closed. So we strolled further down this back alley and came across a restaurant that looked empty and well it was 1.30pm so we thought the rush must be over. But this is Spain and we were the first in for lunch with many more arriving from 2 pm onwards. Yes they eat late here. But what was great was the food. From the menu we thought it sounded different to that average fare that is served up in tourist places. And we weren’t disappointed. We got a wine that was different to what we ordered but it tasted great so said nothing. The tapas entrée of mushroom and blue cheese croquettes set the mood for the highly seasoned mains. To finish off we shared a Pear poached in wine dish that left the palate zinging. What a way to finish or visit to Cadanques. We had fallen in love with this little village.

Off to the museum in Figueres. Well what a great experience we had at the museum. We marvelled at his art work and the different stages of his art work from the paintings to the sculptures. What was most disconcerting is that in most of his works what you thought you saw was not the only thing to be seen. Often looking through the camera lens you could see other pictures. He was a clever man for sure. We are glad that it is not yet the tourist season as the museum was packed with a huge number of people – but there was still some room to move!

Then on to Girona for the night. Well one would think it would be easy to get a place to sleep for the night and it probably would if we could find a wretched place to park. The car park buildings are expensive so we had to drive what seemed for ever until we found a park. Then we set off on foot to find a Hotel. Well we have found that Hotels in Spain are expensive, but beggars can’t be choosers so settled for the one close by our park. It was better than its one star indicated but we may have to look at the types of accommodation we use in Spain as you are paying 120- 130 a night equivalent for 1 star hotels with no parks. We were spoilt with the Logis chain of hotels we had been using in France.

From the Med to Provence

From Le Lavandou we wound our way along the coast towards Cassis and the Calanques, a series of natural harbours cut from the Limestone cliffs on the edge of the med coast. On our way we stopped for lunch at a place called Bandol another marina town similar to St Tropez. We soon came to appreciate that Marina towns are expensive – the price of the meal is related to the value of the boats in the marina. Nevertheless we had a delightful fish meal of local origin. Mark does not know exactly what the shellfish were in his meal but I had a fish called Loup which was very tasty.

Onwards to Cassis where we boarded a boat for a trip out to the Calanques, having first passed by the nude sunbathers lying on the limestone rocks the surround the bay at Cassis. It was pretty awesome seeing the pine trees that grow out of the rocks in the strong sea air with little or no soil to sustain them. It was interesting to see droves of walkers surveying the Calanques from the top down whilst we had chosen to view from the bottom up. The rock formations are quite unique and provide the perfect playing field for climbers from all over the country.

With the skies having decided to open up with a flash flood and thunder and lightening, we hit the road to Aix en Provence arriving about five o’clock desperate for a loo stop. We found a public automatic toilet that we didn’t have the right change for, so we decided to sit and enjoy a drink at bar and use their toilets. Where is this leading I hear you say.

For those of you who remember the old rhyme:
“Oh dear what can the matter be” you will know where this is leading. For those who don’t, Jocelyn was seriously traumatized by being unable to open the toilet door having thankfully relieved herself (no she wasn’t really traumatized but she was stuck). Luckily there was a Scots girl outside who heard her pleas for help (she spoke English and French) and went to get a bar man to assist. Somehow the lock mechanism had just sheared off. However getting the door to open proved a difficult task and between Mark, Suzanne and the barman they finally got the lock to open and released a relieved (in more than one way) Jocelyn.

The bar man then gave us our drinks for free and we sat down with Suzanne (the Scots lady) and had a good old chat about things and places to go in France. By this time it was after seven o’clock so we decided we should find somewhere to stay for the night. Well that turned out to be easier said than done. All the accommodation in Aix was booked because of conferences. So we hit the road with no real direction in mind but ended up going south about 10km until we stumbled upon an Accor hotel and finally found rest for the night after a very long and at times traumatic day.

We had heard that Marseille was a manic place and so had no intention of driving down to it. Rather we decided to catch a bus from Aix, a decision that proved to be the right one. Marseilles is a manic place and drivers are no where near as courteous as other places we have experience already. There were places in Marseilles that one could have been forgiven for thinking that they were in North Africa with street markets of meat, veges and spices. In others areas you realized you were in a Marina town as shop after shop with designer gear greeted you. Definitely a town of contrasts, from Street markets to posh shops within a block. We think that Marseilles caters very well for it’s population providing 24 hour window shopping in the trash as pictured below.

Also we had another climb up a hill to church and yes you guessed it, it was called Notre Dame. But once again the views were spectacular and made the walk worthwhile. The church was very different to others we had seen having a very colourful interior and was well preserved inside and out.

Then it was back to Aix to investigate what if had to offer. This is an orderly, touristy town but the old part was well worth spending time wandering the narrow streets. We tried some Turkish baking for afternoon tea and all I can say is that they must love their honey as the cakes were very sweet and dripping honey. Not something we will eat again but we had decided to try different foods whilst here. We had already tried an Egyptian curry roll at the Marseille market that was very tasty.

Knowing we couldn’t stay in Aix and having had a wonderfully hot day we headed for the hills again with the lure of tramping and mountain biking in Grieux Les Bain. With afternoon thunderstorms dogging the area we were not sure what we would be able to do. But we were able to hire a mountain bike and going biking in the hills, heading up, up and away and then down, down, down. There were unrideable parts of the downhill which were well signposted and we got there and back. Along the way, in the middle of nowhere, yes you guessed it, another chapel called Notre Dame overlooking the town. Mark and I have a running joke going over what the name of each new church we come across will be.

After the ride we stopped at this little café on the side of the river, away from town, that had only locals and the food was of a local nature and cheap. Here we met a funny French couple who run the place. They don’t have many English speaking people at their place so the chef decided to practice his English on us. This brought about many laughs as we tried to interpret what he was saying. Essentially he was telling us he had prepared our food with love of from the heart. I can tell you that it tasted like it as Mark and I had the tastiest Merguez sausages and I a Bruschetta with Aubergine, Mozzarella and herbs. That was a lovely encounter.

Grieux Les Bain is a Spa town so we decided to have a massage at the incredible spa complex built on top of the thermal spring (and yes Napoleon had been there -we seem to be following his path through the south of France). On the map you would pick this as a small tow of a couple of thousand residents but what greets you is hundreds of older French people who book into the spa for a week at a time and the place was literally overrun by elderly – a category which does not include us!

Avignon and Orange, the heart of Provence, provided a nice days wandering and once again these are old ramparted towns that have preserved their histories well. They are all living part of history here and it is amazing to see young people out and about sketching the beautiful old buildings. Here we have drive down km after km of tree lined roads, with vineyards or orchards flanking either side.

We are riding ourselves of the many “Mythconceptions” we had of France before we arrived.
Number 1 – the cheap wine is good ( not lousy as we were led to believe)
Number 2 – Flower boxes do not abound in Alsace but they do in Provence
Number 3- Provence in not littered with Lavender growing in fields – we haven’t seen any yet (however we have just read the season runs from July to August)
Number 4 – the French are warm and friendly, courteous and helpful not aloof like we had heard before we left – but the service can be SLOW.

We are in uncertain times as there are blockades at the ports where fuel comes into France and diesel has been stopped from being delivered. Our lack of sufficient French means we don’t understand the full extent of the shortages but have witnessed long queues at Fuel stations and panic buying. We have a full tank of diesel and can get to Spain if we need to. Will let you know where we are in the next update.