it´s summer in spain ; )

hallelujah. after what? 8 weeks or so on the road we finally arrived. ..at our first (DCC rated) 5* caravan park.

of course, it doesnt meet our (rather stringent by now) 5 star requirements. in fact, rohan has said that in his book the site is down to 1/2 a star!! but then rohans rating system is largely based by whether the toilets have seats or not (these dont).

and although the wine comes with a napkin folded around it in the ice bucket at the restaurant, there are a few faults at the more practical end of the services spectrum ...

1/ (its about the toilets again sorry - we try not to let all our conversations degenerate into the merits and (moreoften) demerits of toilet blocks past and present, but it happens. ) but yes point 1. toilet paper outside of the toilet block. difficult when you forget and difficult to figure out how much to take when there are other people hanging around the dispenser. easily a 1/2 star off.

2/ no free drinking water. every tap has a big cup with a bigger cross through it. on our evening walk around the campsite (yes, yes it is hard not to fall into the retiree pace of life) we found some taps without the sign - by this time i was dying of thirst so had a sip...the water is like brine. so we have had to survive on our wine and shnapps, which thismorning did not sit to well with the toddlers who woke up early and played outside our tent - but they're so cute, who can be angry.

3/ no self service washing machines and signs leading to the lavederia that actually lead to a construction site

4/ not being able to chose your campsite. it is our favourite pasttime to trawl slowly through the campsite searching for the penultimate site (close(but not too close) to amenities, view, sun/shade, flat (especially important to rohan who seems to think he detect the slightest of slopes),etc)


i think thats it and to be fair, the site was quite beautiful.

our home at the end of our street


The restaurant



5* toilet block (supposedly)

one of the two swimming pools

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but now, back to the holiday proper. when i left off last time, we were actually in Annecy - in the lower French Alps...it was a bit of a desperation stop as we couldnt find any hotels with parking in Geneva but it was one of our nicer desperation stops.Annecy.

From there we pretty much legged it to the coast along the Route Napoleon - stopping at a gorge the Lonely Planet rated and driving through the (harvested) lavender fields of Provence along the way.

Rohan and the gorgeous gorge

Aha! some sun on the coast near marseilles...and our triumphant return to camping after a week in low star hotels.A view from the campsite. We kept heading west at this point, taking in a bit of Aix-on-Provence, Arles and the Rhone delta along the way. Again the weather was not great..so i dont think we saw southern france at its best - we will have to come back...also not many photos because the light wasnt right...on the way to spain we passed through another gorge that we werent expecting (tricksy tom) with even narrower roads with a even bigger drop on the other side. Still the beamer is going strong...work horse that it is.We stayed on the Costa Brava for a bit and did a bit of a Dali tour, stopping in at his summer home town, Cadaques ¿above = cant get the paragraphs to work all of a suddenª argh my keyboard has gone crazy? and the Dali theatre in Figueres which was as surreal as you would expectRohan being arty ¿Dali inspired?Rohan and his new little friend at our campsite in Costa Brava.We also spent a (too brief) time in Girona = here the imposing cathedral (i still cant find the dash, but have found the paragraphs).

Rohan went for a dive off the coast of LÉstartit while i floudered around trying to snorkel (luckily i was by myself so there was noone to notice me - my wetsuit was too short (as opposed to too small) and i was too bouyant).

Before you knew it, it was time to head to Barcelona where we had a few sunfilled days enjoying the Gaudi architecture and the rest of the city. We both thought Barcelona is somewhere we could live if our spanish or castellano was a bit better.

the most visited construction site in the world. i suffered a bit from crowd rage at this point and had to sit in a corner by myself while rohan took photos.

Casa Milla (at this point i got a ´so what is this all about then´ from Rohan in a ´do we really have to go to another museum/walk up stairs´ kind of way, but once we got to the top i couldnt stop him taking photos.

the dynamic markets in Barcelona, not unlike (and i am not joking) Adelaide Central Markets

Candles in the cathedral

Me attempting to be arty

the end of sesame street?!

washing.

After Barcelona we headed to Granada, stopping at my dads friend Frans´ villa along the way. It was the perfect place to chill out before continuing the tour so muchos gracias to Frans and Monique for having us.

a long way down - hiking around the mountains near Alicante.

We are now in Seville and have really enjoyed Andalucia....overdoing it a bit on the cerveca and tapas but thats ok.

ains and roh

xxx