Month: February 2017

This morning the owner of the guest house we were staying in drove us to the train station. We caught a train to Marseille and then changed trains for Aix en Provence. 

Many of the train stations in France have had pianos for people to play. 

In Marseille I saw something I have never seen before, a pedal powered charging station. 

In Aix we are staying with the wonderful family that Allison lived with when she studied in France. On the way to their house we walked through the old center of Aix and stopped for lunch. We ordered mussels with a Roquefort sauce and a salad Nicoise. They were both wonderful. There were about 50 mussels in the mussel bucket. 

As I mentioned a few days ago, my iPhone has been acting up. They have an Apple Store in Aix. I made an appointment for 5pm for the Genius Bar. It turns out my screen problem is a known problem. It cost me €155 to get a new phone and it took a couple of hours to get set up but I’m back in business. 

We decided to get an early train out of Barcelona this morning. Our train left at 7:20. We changed trained in Nimes and got to Arles at around 1:30.  This is Duke’s first trip to France. It is his second new country of this trip. 

This is in many ways the beginning of phase two of our trip. We are out of Spain and of course don’t have a car any more. It also means I don’t have Duke’s fluent Spanish to rely on. I speak a bit of French but nothing like Duke speaks Spanish. 

When we got to Arles we were standing looking at a big map outside the train station when an American behind us asked us where we were from. We told him and asked him the same. He said near Sacramento. He said when he had to evacuate because of the Oroville Dam situation he decided he might as well head to France!

From the train station we walked to our hotel which is a bit out of the center of Arles. After resting some we walked around the old town.  Arles is on the Rhone River. They have an enormous Roman Arena and a ruined Roman Theater. In addition Vincent Van Gough began living in Arles in 1888 and painted more than 200 paintings here. Although none of them are still in Arles there are plaques all over Arles showing where some of Van Gough’s famous paintings were painted. 

For dinner we shared a cheese and charcuterie sampler. After that we tasted a few more cheeses. They were all incredibly good. 

Barcelona is an amazing city. Today we did the hop on hop off bus tour of the city. It made me realize that there is so much to do here that I could spend another week or two here and still not see everything I want to see!
We started out the day with coffee and a croissant. Then we started the bus tour. Our first stop was at  Gaudi’s Basilca de La Sagrada Familia. They started work on the Basilica in the 1800’s and they are still working on it!

As we were walking around the Basilica it was fun to see a bunch of people playing a game, maybe lawn bowling? All the balls seemed to be made out of iron. Many people had ribbons with magnets on them so they could pick up the balls without bending over. 

After Sagrada Familia our next stop was the Park Güell. We got off the bus and walked up to the look out.  Gaudi had a home here for many years. 

The tour had two loops, the blue loop and the red loop.  After completing the blue loop we had a beer and pizza lunch. 

We learned on the tour that Barcelona has more motorcycles and mopeds than any other town in Spain. 

I thought this shop where you could have a three-D image of yourself printed was pretty cool. 

And I thought this ad in the main square for flights from Oakland direct to Barcelona on Norwegian Air was pretty amazing too. 

The rest of the tour took us past all the Olympic sights, the harbor, and the exhibit halls where the giant Mobile World Congress (MWC17) will be held this week. As I said it all made me realize how much there is to see and do in Barcelona. 

We had originally hoped to spend three nights in Barcelona but the Mobil World Congress which is the biggest conference of  mobile devices in the world meant that hotel rates were hiked through the roof starting Sunday night. So we will catch a train to France in the morning. 

We had another wonderful dinner tonight. We went to L’Antic Bicol Del Gòtic and shared salad, appetiser, main course, dessert and coffee. With a bottle of wine the whole meal cost us €70. 

We got a fairly early start this morning on our drive to Barcelona. We wanted to return our car by 12:30 to avoid paying for another day. It rained all the way from Andorra to Barcelona. Then we spent an hour driving in circles in heavy city traffic trying to find the rental car place. Finally we parked and walked a long way on foot in the rain and finally found it. I was soaked but we did get the car back in time. 

Our hotel is in the Gothic Quarter. We had a fun time exploring this afternoon. 

For dinner we ate pasta and empanadas at a lovely little restaurant with only five tables. 

Then we went for a stroll down La Rambla. We have seen and heard a lot more English speakers here than anywhere else we have been. We also notice a lot more young people than anywhere else, and noticeably more smokers. 

For the first time since Madrid we are spending two nights in the same place. It is a lovely rest. This morning we went up the valley to a little Spanish town, Os de Civís, that is only accessible by going through Andorra.  We walked up to the church at the top of the village and had coffee in the cafe. This seems to be a very big hiking center in summer. 

Next we drove into the Andorra la Vella, the capital of Andorra. We parked and walked around. It is an enormous shopping center. The whole town is like one big duty free store. 

They have some wonderful street art. This is La Noblesse du Temps by Dali. 

And this is a work called The Seven Poets by Jayne Pleasanton. You can only see three of them here. 

This mural on the right and the church on the left don’t even look real. 

We ate dinner at our Inn again.  We had a nice conversation with the owner and enjoyed a great meal. 

My iPhone has been acting up. Several times a day it acts like it has been hacked or is in a endless resources loop competition. I get a quivering bar across the top of the phone and need to restart the phone to use it at all. Sometimes I have to do a forced restart. I originally thought it might be some new applications I was using but I’ve deleted everything new. I also thought it might be related to having mobile data turned off since we are in Europe but it happens all the time on wifi and off. I’m beginning to think it is a hardware problem. Yuck!! So far it is just an annoyance. Let’s hope it stays that way!