Week 2 – Wednesday 9th July – Carcassonne

We awoke this morning to watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona on TV again today. It’s become something of a morning feature to see who gets it in the daily stampede. Advice to anyone planning on doing it would be to avoid the outside of the corners, as the bulls seem to take a wide line and sometimes fall over on the outside of the turn. It’s certainly where people seem to stumble and fall most often as well, so it can be a bit of an accident black spot. The most viewed mishap this morning was the man lying spread eagled face down in the middle of the street. Who would have picked that the bulls hoof would have landed right between his legs – amazing pinpoint accuracy. The paramedic with his clip board was interviewed soon afterwards to find out the days tally, but of course, being in Spanish we couldn’t understand a word of it. These guys must get on the cover of Paramedics Monthly, as they are the stars of the after match show and sometimes we even get to see them outside the hospital.

The other night when we were in Tossa, we were given one of the local specialties a Crème Catalan. It’s a vanilla equivalent of a baileys and was very yummy. Well worth a try for something a bit different if you get a chance.

Today we left Girona and headed to France for 3 days. On the way we stopped off at the town of Figeures, which is the birth place of Salvador Dali and the home now of the Dali Theatre-Museum. Figeures seemed like a medium sized modern town, but after we’d parked the car and had gone for a walk into the town centre, the older part of town opened up to have the usual character of so many European towns, with a large central Rambla and lots of little single lane cobbled streets.

The museum itself was conceived in 1961 when the mayor asked Dali for a painting as a donation for the local museum. Dali replied that he would give them an entire museum, which was then begun in 1970 and opened in 1974. It was developed and changed until the artists death in 1989.

It’s an amazing building both in terms of the exterior decoration and the size and variety of the collection inside. We spent a couple of hours at the museum and like Picasso, from our perspective anyway, Dali is known for one particular type of art, but when you visit the museum you get to see the full breadth of the work that he undertook over a very long career. I’ve included some photos in the blog to give you some idea of some of the art we saw there.

Upon leaving Figeures, we typed the address of the hotel in Carcassonne into Jane (TomTom GPS) and headed off on the motorway to France. I apologise to all of you suffering through the New Zealand winter, but 37 degrees really is too hot to be driving with the roof down, but that’s what we did for the 150 odd ks from Figeures to Carcassonne. Jane estimated that we would get to the hotel at 3:14 and we got there within two minutes of that time, which is easily accounted for by the stops at motorway pay stations. Jane delivered us to the door without any fuss, so we were very pleased and although we still like to keep an eye on where she is leading us, it does make navigating a painless experience. Anne still acts as a second set of eyes on the road (and on the speed limit signs), which is great (grate). With a speed limit of 130 on the motorway, it’s only a minor grate and don’t let me understate the value that Anne adds to driving, with the way she does keep her eyes on things and points out any obstacles or things that I might have missed. When you are driving on the wrong side of the road, the extra help really is Great!

We haven’t been to Carcassonne since we visited with Mum and Dad when we were living in the UK back in the early 90’s. Last time we were here was in May and it was a charming medieval town with few tourists. This time it is tourist central and there is a month long music festival, with a different act on each night. There are some big names – Diana Ross, Deep Purple, ZZ Top and tonight, Pete Hodgson of Super Tramp was playing. We went for a wander round the restaurants and after initially selecting one, but deciding we didn’t like it once we had sat down, we settled for a nice little restaurant with only about 10 tables outside in a quiet part of town well away from the main square. I had the Gazpacho and Anne had a Goat’s cheese salad for entrees and then Anne had the scallops and I had the duck for main, finishing off with a Crème Brule for Anne and the poached pear in chocolate and whipped cream for me – yum.