France

We flew from Edinburgh through Heathrow to Toulousse, then picked up the hire car and David drove the two and a half hours to Perpignan then 10 km to the coast to the town we were staying at called Canet. It was really weird when we first picked up the car and David straight away had to drive on the "wrong side" of the road, it was really weird to be sitting on the right hand front passenger side and to have no steering wheel, and also going around the roundabouts the opposite way to us took a bit of getting used to, and I was only a passenger!!! Our resort was nice, had a lovely big pool and was very quiet as it is still spring here and of course it was no warm enough to swim anyway. The second day we were here was lovely about 24 degrees and we went for a drive south along the Mediteranean sea, the coast was spectacular, very hilly, acres and acres of grape vines growing in terraced vineyards up very, very steep hills (I wouldnt want to be working there picking grapes!!) We drove through Argeles, Banyula, Collioure (which was really beautiful) across the border into Spain and down to Figueres and back. We stopped at one winery to do some tasting, but considering the amount of vines growing they dont seem to have the big cellar doors like in Australia. They do have little huts called Caves along the way, one we saw was in a car park high up on a cliff overlooking the sea where people were stopping to take photos, just a little hut offering wine tasting. When we went to the tourist information centre when we first got there, the lady told us all about how there were heaps of caves out the way we were going to be travelling, but we decided we werent into visiting caves (that was until we found out what they actually were!!!). So from being 24 degrees on the Sunday, Monday was ok during the day then it started to rain on Monday night, it rained all night, all day Tuesday and part of Tuesday night, and when I saw rain I mean it poured!!! Also there were gale force winds and it dropped to 4 degrees on the coast. We really couldnt do anything as it was so cold and dangerous to be driving around, so we just went into Perpignan and went out for lunch and then checked out a massive shopping centre/supermarket called "Auchan" which sold absolutely everything you could think of! On Wednesday morning we awoke to heaps of snow up on the Pyrenees mountains up behind the coast!

We discovered a few funny things about France, firstly they have no fresh milk for sale or in cafes for coffee, the capaccinos come with a big heap of whipped cream on the top, shops shut between about 12 and two pm, they all ride around the roads on pushbikes but no one wears a bike helmet! All the TV is in french and we saw shows like Simpson, Days of Our Lives, Maxwell Smart and McLeods Daughters which were all dubbed in French, it was very funny!!! Pastries and crepes were good, and heaps of them dont speak english and most menus were just in French!! But THE most annoying part was that there keyboards are all mixed up and different to ours!!