Okay, I don’t want to alarm anyone but we have enough empirical evidence to conclusively confirm this. Ever since Prague, we are being followed by garbage trucks. Not just your garden variety garbage truck, but the very loud, smelly ones with a small army of quite aggressive people hanging off the sides. Yes, the kind which obviously needs to ride the pavement right next to you, sharing in your quiet romantic drink uninvited and giving you hours of near-death experiences. This will need to be monitored further.
Back to ‘Embracing the detours’. Viva Espana! After leaving the French heartland of Mirepoix, we were excited to cross over into the wild scenery of French Basque country and then into distinctive Catalonia. Barcelona is such a magnificent city – radical, imaginative, strange and proud. When I think of Barcelona, the colours and shape of Gaudi immediately fill my mind’s eye. Although we wanted to spend a full day exploring there, we decided to take a break from big cities and spend Shabbat in the coastal town of Sitges, just south of Barcelona.
But before any of this, we had to cross the imposing heights of the Pyrenees. Gary did a sterling job, winding General de Gaulle up the careering mountain passes and then back down through the narrow bends of the dirt routes we took. It was so quiet and deserted on our drive, with breath-taking views going on forever across the valleys and forests, and only punctuated once or twice by a passing mountain cyclist or an isolated home perched near one of the many streams.
In the middle of the day, when the motion sickness of the winding roads got too much for me and Gary’s eyes were beginning to cross from trying to keep our car on the single lane against rather rapidly approaching oncoming trucks, we stumbled across a gorgeous trout farm and family restaurant in the forest clearing. It was a postcard picture scene: the family home above the restaurant, the goats sauntering around the chairs and tables and the gentlemen in the kitchen literally coming out in his apron to catch a trout and serve up the plat du jour to the Hell’s Angels biker who had pulled up a table next to us.
Arriving in Spain was a rude awakening from the quiet countryside, and Sean had to be prematurely replaced with another GPS voice after losing the plot between all the Spanish tunnels, off-ramps, circles and junctions. Passing through the traffic of Barcelona led us to the beautiful whitewashed streets of Sitge.
Dos sangria por favour?
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