Day 13 - Bordeaux to Barcelona

Another long day in the bus – over 650 km today travelling from Bordeaux in France to Barcelona in Spain. I’ve always wanted to go to Spain so I’m very excited to see it. Also, a recent book I read for my Book Club, Shadows of the Wind, was set in Barcelona so I’m keen to see some of the places that were described there.

 

We left the hotel at 8am and headed off down the motorway, heading south for warmer weather and another country – Spain. But before we got that far we stopped for lunch at a fortress called Carcassonne. Wow! It has two very thick walls that surround a multitude of cobble stone narrow streets that wind their way through the small town. It has survived sieges of over 5 years in its history and was a very interesting place to visit. All of the buildings now house small shops, restaurants, museums etc and, as it was a holiday here today (All Saints’ Day), there were lots of people, especially families, enjoying the place.

 

We grabbed a baguette, pastry and some ice cream and then spent some time just wandering through the streets and browsing in the shops. A great way to spend a couple of hours! One shop had an awesome display of Christmassy things and I was so tempted to buy, buy, buy, but restrained myself when thinking of how I would get them home in one piece!

 

It was then back on the bus and off to Spain! We arrived at the hotel in Barcelona at about 6.20pm and had about an hour before dinner to rest. We watched a women’s soccer game on TV with the volume muted as CJ finds the foreign commentary distracting. It was actually a pretty good game.

 

After dinner we high tailed it down the street to a launderette and managed to catch up with all our washing. We knew that the place closed at 10pm so we made sure we were there with plenty of time…unlike some others from our tour who wandered in at 8.50pm and wondered why all the machines were taken and you weren’t allowed to start them after 9pm anyway…some very disappointed people! It was very interesting walking in the streets on the way there at about 8.15pm as it seemed that everyone was outside – children playing, teenagers “hanging out” and adults chatting yet when we returned to the hotel at about 9.30pm the streets were deserted as everyone had gone in for dinner – they eat very late here.

 

So we dumped the now clean and dry clothes back at the hotel and went out for a walk. We found another fun fair – two in two days – but managed to resist the urge to partake of the rides and festivities and continued on in the now deserted streets. We came to the building we had been searching for – an office block for the local water company designed by a famous French architect (whose name I can’t remember!). We are too far from the city centre to explore there at night – but we’ll see that tomorrow…I can’t wait.