Matt and Kat Brown

Thursday morning saw us make an early start from Avignon as we tried to fit in a quick trip to Carcassonne to see the walled city that one of our favourite board games is named after before catching our train to Barcelona from Montpellier in the early afternoon, a total of roughly 400km of driving. Thanks to the French motorway system and the generous 130km/h speed limit we managed this in just under 4 hours which gave us just enough time for a quick visit and a few photos in Carcassonne itself!

The old city of Carcassone sits high on a hill looking out over the surrounding valleys and the walls and fortifications have been immaculately preserved. The scale is impressive and you have to wonder how any attacking army would have thought they had a chance of breaching the multiple layers of walls and moat/cliffs surrounding them. These days the inside of the fortified city is full of little tourist shops and stalls, the modern day city of Carcassonne is spread around the base of the hill. Our visit was brief but we enjoyed the views, especially as we could see some snow covered alps to the south which made a nice contrast the the warm environment and surroundings of Carcassonne.

The train from Montpellier to Barcelona was fairly old and rickety, but it went slow enough that we had plenty of time to admire the coast line and scenery that we passed through. We arrived into Barcelona early in the evening and checked into the hostel. Before we arrived in Barcelona we’d been told many times to watch for pick pockets and the staff at the hostel repeated this warning in a fairly dire tone, almost like it was inevitable that we would fall victim. Despite that we never saw any sign of trouble, even in the crowded subways or walking Las Ramblas after midnight, but we were definitely watching over our shoulders constantly. While I’m sure the problem exists, I have to wonder if it is over-hyped, it would have been nice to wander through the city without having pickpocketing constantly on the mind!

We spent most of Friday exploring the Gaudi parts of the city, starting at the Sagrada Familia and continuing on to the Park Guell in the afternoon. The Sagrada Familia was definitely a highlight, possibly of the entire holiday. The building is amazing, both in design and construction but also for the fact that it has been under construction since 1882 and is nowhere near finished yet! The style and shape is like nothing you’ve seen before. We took a tour through the inside of the church which is currently a builders workshop where you watch the workers crafting the custom mouldings and pieces of the church. It is scheduled to open as an actual church sometime in 2010. Park Guell continued the Gaudi theme with lots of spiral styled pillars and mosaics. For a single artist/architect Gaudi has left a very distinct mark on Barcelona.

On Friday evening we tried to visit the Font Monjuic on Monjuic mountain, an impressive fountain lit by a multitude of lights that performs in time with music every evening. Unfortunately the fountain turns out to also be in the middle of the Barcelona convention centre area where there was some sort of auto show on. Toyota had taken the opportunity to exclude the public from the area and put up giant inflatable tents that obscured most views of the fountain. A sad end to the day, but we tried to make the best of it by climbing to the top of the mountain to watch the sun set over the city. We dined Spanish style around 10pm at a delicious Tapas restaurant near to our hostel. Needless to say that every meal we had in Barcelona was delightful and ridiculously cheap (compared to Dublin standards) too!

By Saturday, the last day of the holiday, our feet were getting pretty tired of walking and exploring so we spent most of the day exploring Barcelona’s beautiful leafy parks and testing the park benches. Barcelona really is a beautiful city with lots of green spaces and plenty of families and friends out enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.

Barcelona was definitely my favourite city of all the places we visited, followed closely by Aix-en-Provence. As lucky as we are to have been able to spend 8 days in such a wonderful part of the world, I can’t help but think that we need to spend much more time there to really get a feel for the place and pick up some more of the language and culture. If only Google had an engineering office in Barcelona…

Photos from the last portion of the trip are in the gallery as per usual:

• Carcassonne
• Barcelona

As we turned inland from the French Riviera the landscape changed to old farm houses and fields of grapevines and olive trees – our first taste of Provence. We stopped briefly in Aix-en-Provence which I found very charming. The whole town seemed to be roofed with sycamore/plane trees – very pretty. Lynley and I enjoyed strolling through the market there and found some nice locally made soaps to buy. We had our first introduction here to the ‘Mistral’ which is a very strong dry wind that characterises winter and spring in Provence.

We reached Avignon in the evening and looped around the outside of the city before parking and walking in through the city gates. What makes Avignon unique is the solid castle-style walls which encircle the city – very cool. Lynley showed us the very sweet little building where she lives, complete with green wooden door and shutters and we then walked into the center for a quick dinner.

We spent the next day in Avignon. We saw the university where Lynley studies and assists and we also toured the school where she teaches English. We then browsed through a lovely indoor market and picked out bread, olives, cheese and strawberries for lunch. I would love to have so much variety of fresh, cheap, local food in Dublin! We took our purchases to the Popes Palace gardens and relaxed in the sun there with our picnic.

After lunch we went into the Palais des Papes. The Palace was the temporary residence of the Popes in the 1300’s and features many grand halls and rooms. The palace is mostly empty and unadorned these days but must have once been very ornate and overwhelming. After leaving the Palace we took a free ferry across the river for a nice view back to the city walls, the Palace and the Pont d’Avignon. After visiting Avignon its easy for me to see why Lynley loves it there so much!

On Wednesday we drove out from Avignon to Arles and the Camargue. In Arles we saw Roman ruins including the remains of an amphitheatre and other buildings. From Arles we headed down to the Camargue which is a different landscape to the rest of Provence. The area is flat and marshy with flamingos and other birds as well as distinctive black bulls and white horses. At the bottom of the Camargue we stopped at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and spent the afternoon at the beach. We enjoyed the sandy beach, went swimming and tolerated the wind which quickly covered everything in copious amounts of sand. The afternoon was topped off with icecreams and a big punnet of strawberries by the beach. Yum!

On the drive back to Avignon we also stopped in at Les Baux which is a very small medieval village nestled high in the rocky hillside. It was very sweet and had gorgeous views out over the area. We ate dinner in St-Remy which is another charming small village in Provence. Back in Avignon we said goodbye to Lynley. It was fun to holiday with her and I’m looking forward to showing her around Dublin later in June when she comes to see us

The photos from this leg of the journey are available under the Provence tag in our gallery.

Thursday we left Avignon early and drove south west to visit Carcassonne before catching our train to Barcelona…

We came home with over 600 photos between our two cameras and spent a good few hours today sifting through them and writing some captions.

The first installment can be found via the link below:

• Photos from Nice, Monaco and the Cote d’Azur

More to come in the following days as we find some more time to edit and caption the rest.

We got back last night from a fabulous week away in France and Spain. We visited some gorgeous places, oohing at the stunning vistas and ahhing over the charming buildings and places. I’m feeling very relaxed and content after a week of good food and wine, warm sun and no work!

Part One – Côte d’Azur

Our holiday started on Saturday with a 6am flight to Nice (thanks to Kieron for the ridiculously early airport drop!) which placed us on the Côte d’Azur by lunchtime. We met up with Lynley who arrived by train from Avignon and together we spent the afternoon exploring. The center of Nice is impressive to walk around with cool fountains, big open spaces and the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais. We spent the late afternoon basking in the sun on the beach. The beaches in Nice are all rocks rather than sand and the water in early summer is still very cold for swimming. Despite that it was still great to relax on the beach for a while. We ate dinner in a restaurant called ‘Le Maori’ which featured a ‘Maori burger’ with egg in it and also an ‘All Black’ dessert. Hilarious.

On our second day of holidays we decided to take a day trip along the coast to Monaco. After a false start taking the train (unexplained problems with the rail lines) we managed to catch a bus to Monaco in time for lunch. We stopped in at Monte Carlo, saw the casino and the beautiful views out over the sea. Monaco seemed to be a country of expensive cars, designer stores and luxury yachts. Well out of our league but still cool to visit. From the casino we walked down to Monte Carlo beach which was packed with vacationers. We ate gelato and people-watched for a while before taking the bus back to Nice. Tired feet and red shoulders and faces after our second day of sunny sight-seeing.

Our third day we checked out of Nice and took a hire car along the coast. Matt had the task of driving and did a pretty good job of adjusting to driving on the right (wrong) side of the road.  Our first stop of the day was in Cannes. We were there a week too early for the famous film festival but we did get to see all the tents and pavilions being set up in preparation and we walked on the red carpet hehe. Cannes was not a glam as I’d expected with much of the town feeling a bit ‘past its prime’. Like most of the Côte d’Azur the beach here was lined with deck chairs and divided up into sections by all of the restaurants and hotels planted right on the beach-front. So different from being at the beach in NZ, I would take a nice unspoilt stretch of the Coromandel over the French Riviera any day!

From Cannes we drove the winding coastal road along to St Raphael. Some stunning views along this drive – charming houses dotted along the cliffs and gorgeous blue sea stretching out to the horizon. Unfortunately by the time we reached St Raphael the sky had turned grey so we turned inland and plotted our course to Avignon via Aix-en-Provence…