Flew into Girona, stayed initially at Hotel Vilobi, at the airport. Concrete walls and floors, all night soundscapes of the jetplanes taking off next door. Well, it was cheap.    60s decor in the canteen was about the high point.  Then car hire and away to sample the delights off the city...

This is the picturesque riverside.  The poor stitching together of the photos only highlights the unkempt state of it all.  The canal was a foot deep, you could see brown fish trying to hide from the sun.

Eiffel, he of the Tower, also did bridges.  Here's his one crossing the river at Girona.  Distinctive ironwork, you knew it was familiar somehow, the moment you saw it.  Hard to photograph though.

Girona was OK, though more ramshackle than the AA Essential guide would have you believe.  Didn't see a lot of the vibrant cultural life we were promised - or indeed anything much.

 Found one cafe open and got served after only an hour in the blazing, shelterless sun.  Dogs hung round and flies drove us mad.  We did the city walls and decided to drive further up the coast and find a nice hotel with a sea view.

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Here's the sea view from our hotel at Sa Riera.  Notice anything about the trees?  Bent over horizontally...?  I stepped out onto the balcony and had to grab the handrail. 

Out on the beach, sand was scouring everything from knee level downwards.  Pretty, but windy.  There was an island shaped like an ice cream cone in the sea towards Roses and the big tourist resorts further up the coast.  Had pleasant dinner in the only cafe, (on the beachfront, but tellingly, an indoor cafe.  In Spain.   The wind was hurling chairs against the polythene windows as we sat and wondered what the ten staff were saying about the four customers.

This is the quayside at L'Escala, further north and getting on for the French border.  It was a miserable day - that dim gloom is Roses on the other side of the bay.  There were plenty of places to eat though, all fish restaurants.

 L'Escala is the home of the Anchovy - they have a bright yellow shop selling nothing but anchovy-related products. (Anxovie as they have it in Catalan).  Meant to take a pic of it but forgot.  Other than that it's all estate agents trying to flog you a second home.

The weather was so grim we got in the car and decided to drive to France.

Now this was more like it.  We drove into Narbonne and identified a hotel we could park outside.  Walked in and it was gorgeous, an old French family home converted to a hotel in the 50s.  Our dove-grey room had shutters opening out to a view of the cathedral, and bats flying up into the twilight.  We booked 2 nights there and relaxed.


The market was probably the best thing about Narbonne - certainly I wouldn't give you much for the ubiquitously-signposted Plage.  It was like Lanzarote - low-rise tat shops and cafes selling reheated pasta bakes.  But the market in Narbonne itself was stunning - a lot like La Boqueria in Barcelona. (I've just added pix of this at the bottom of the page; the market was a really good bit of Barcelona, too.)

We sat at a Formica counter and had espresso with the locals.  The place was a bit seedy but good, people doing their everyday shopping.  I tried not to look like a tourist but everything was so fresh and so local it was hard to act nonchalant.  Next holiday, self-catering, we promised ourselves.

  

But then to the important stuff.  Drove north to Nimes and found a Roman temple, I kid you not, in the middle of their town square.  They've just never torn it down, and kept on  using it - for 2000 years. It's the Maison Carree, temple to gods unknown.   Since then it's been a market, chapel, a series of house (you can still see house numbers at the door)...  And you can go inside, and it's free.  Gold star to Nimes.

They also had some kind of Colosseo-type knock-off.  It was a bit pikey when you've seen the real thing, but...  Snobbery aside, at least this one's still in use - concerts, bullfighting, etc.  There's a big coach park and a modern ticket office.

After Nimes we drove towards Avignon, and through impressive use of conversational French (Ok, not mine) booked a night in an auberge gastronomique.  A seriously scary place.  We were clearly far too young and irreverent to enjoy their food.  For a start the table was set with a stack of four plates.  They just kept adding them, then taking some away.  Also, although the food was good, it wasn't that good.  But their chef had certificates signed by all sorts, so....

Next day we went to Uzes, a market town nearby, and that was lovely.  A remodelled town square with craft stall et cetera, a bit kitsch but very pleasant.

We then made an epic journey to avoid paying the parking fee at Pont Du Gard - and lucky we did, as although the Roman aqueduct was impressive, there wasn't actually anything there worth staying long enough to justify the 5-euro fee.


Then we drove back over the border to Spain and spent a very pleasant and relaxed 2 days at Roses, doing the kind of beach-type holiday that got us thinking maybe a package trip to a hot sunny place where everything was catered for wouldn't be so bad....

Check back soon for details of the next trip, in a couple of weeks - Dublin - hen after that - Gran Canaria.

..!