Perpignan – sort of…

We have now discovered the joy of getting caught in holiday traffic, in Europe. Not just a short stretch of slow moving vehicles either…the type of gridlock where it takes an hour to move 7kms, and where the queue was roughly 12kms long. It began before we rolled over into France and was compounded by a mix of lane closures and a toll bridge. We arrived at our hotel a tad before 3pm and still managed a couple of hours slumming it by the pool. You can’t call that a bad day at the office really.

We’re in Canet-en-Roussillon which is on the coast (east of Perpignan) and have taken our first wander around, primarily to find an open café for dinner. The first few cafés were either booked out or not yet open, so we braved an empty ‘pizza and poulet’ place. Ostensibly it’s a caravan but our French chap had a lovely dog, so I suggested we give it a go. Monsieur rustled up a truly divine pizza and we got to pat Blume the woofer before leaving. On the way home, Mal provided me with another chuckle at his expense. An artisan pâtisserie had their sign out and I said we should take a look. ‘The door is shut though’ he says. ‘They are closed’ which was his definitive declaration. ‘Hmm, but the sign is out’ says moi. With both of us standing at the door, I try the door handle. Et voila!! They are open, as I’d suspected. Two French pastry delights were bought, from quite possibly the friendliest Mademoiselle we have ever met. As we wandered away I couldn’t help but laugh. It is one of Mal’s ‘things’ he does…when he’s not convinced that he wants to follow me to a shop, he’ll conjure up a statement like ‘it looks closed’ in the hope that I’m feeling passive and will acquiesce with an…’Oh, that’s a shame.’

Funnier still is how much he loved eating his sweet treat though. Men…difficult creatures to understand!

On the language front, we are terribly confronted by our incapacité de parler Français, and I don’t think this state of affairs is going to improve anytime soon. Spanish and Italian are obviously of little use to us, which means we have work to do to replace our ‘Si’ with ‘Oui’ and ‘Gracias’ with ‘Merci’. It’s not easy, as these had become second nature. At least we are both proficient in the French shrug/face pulling, which communicates everything from ‘I don’t understand’ to ‘She’ll be right’.

Even though our language challenges are creating a shock of dislocation, at least the buildings still look largely familiar. The terracotta roof tiles and general design feels more like Spain than France. Although we are seeing less of the roller door thingies that cover the windows and more lovely wooden shutters. The sea breeze and slightly cooler temperature does hint at a change in latitude too.

Going walkies is our way of seeing the neighborhood we’ve washed up in, and as we took ourselves off in the direction of the sea we were super delighted to find a local market in full swing. Amongst the clothes stalls and local produce for sale we found an animal rescue fund raising effort. They were reeling in the pundits with a couple of cute tiny Vietnamese piglets. While the piggies were irresistible we couldn’t stay cuddling the bacon babies for long as the fund raising hard sell was coming on thick and fast. We failed to grab a photo of the porkers but they were undeniably a highlight of our day.

This little seaside place is pretty cute too. The locals are a mixed bag, but we really enjoyed watching the aging hippies. I think it’s because it gives us something to aspire to! It wasn’t over run with tourists, but that is most likely because we are at the end of the usual summer holiday period. Although, there are a few English couples (of a certain vintage) who look like they are on the hunt for their ‘place in the sun’. One couple, staying in the same hotel as us, clearly have an interesting relationship. We found ourselves at the same restaurant for dinner, and I was captivated by the snarky conversation between them. He was making no effort to talk quietly so I couldn’t really be accused of listening in. Let’s say he was choosing to broadcast his convo, and I found his non verbal body language too irresistible to not watch. When it came time to go, he was on his bike and off…leaving his wife in his wake. Their frostiness towards each other was still there when we saw them at breakfast. I wonder how their South of France holiday idyll is working out for them. I also wonder if she will wring his neck or smother him with a pillow before much longer. Which gets me thinking. We must be ‘people watched’ in the same way…and I wonder what strangers make of our carry on!

As we are hanging around here for a few days we organized a day trip out to Les Orgues d’Illes-sur-Têt and then into Perpignan to see the Palace of the Kings of Majorca. We enjoyed one, but not the other. I guess in a country that is awash with Palaces, Abbayes and Cathedrals, some of them are going to be a bit soulless. The Palace of the Kings of Majorca wasn’t worth the visit. Some of the restoration leaves a lot to be desired and Mal made a keen observation in that all the informational guff is only in French. Which he called ‘non inclusive’. Quite right. I tend to only read that stuff if something particularly interesting strikes me and I want to know more. Mal on the other hand diligently reads everything on offer! Not at this Palace though. We were not their target audience. So we wandered the mostly empty rooms and with no ability to understand any historical context we got a bit bored.

The Orgues on the other hand were interesting. An uncomfortable place to be on a windy day though as you get your skin sandblasted while wandering the strange ‘fairy chimneys’. The path to the Orgues also has a collection of iron art works with a particularly bizarre one that everyone stops to photograph and giggle at.

Carcassonne

Visiting the Cité de Carcassonne was our reason for heading east before going back to the coast and stopping near Montpellier for a few days.

If you’re anything like us you’ll peek at the Trip Advisor reviews before you go to some places. I was interested in reading the one star reviews for the Cité so dialed me up the Moaning Myrtle crowd and feasted on their words of misery. What a tale of gloom they told. On and on they wailed about the souvenir shops in the town, and how distressed they were by the boring views from the ramparts. Holy cow! They clearly haven’t been to the Majorca pile! Anyhoo with those reviews tattooed on my retinas we sauntered off to see for ourselves. Our review? 4-5 stars we reckon. And, we quite liked going through those souvenir shops! It was an easy way to spend half a day, and we’d happily go back again.

Cournonterral – 14kms from Montpellier

We are addicted to being in the water. When we discussed our travel plans for today we quickly decided to go via a swimming hole. The idea being that we’d muck around swimming for a good few hours before getting to our next stop which had a 5pm check in.

Best laid plans…on arrival at the sleepy hollow (which is supposed to have a delicious looking swimming lake) we found a shallow rocky river bed doubling as an algal petri dish. Dammit. No swimming then until we get to our B&B. Slinking off to the only open café we could find we drowned our petulance with deux espressi. We were surrounded by chatting French folk enjoying the sun and pre lunch coffees. Except, that once a handful of people left, our fellow ‘French’ café dwellers turned out to be folks in disguise! It takes a moment to calibrate that the French you heard a moment ago is now cockney Anglaise! We couldn’t follow their conversations in French, which sounded terribly interesting…but in English, we got to hear about their psoriasis flare ups and some general complaints about not getting stuff fixed quickly here. It’s hilarious. Everything sounds romantic in a foreign language. Except maybe in German. Or Russian.

And so we now have a few days here, to swim in the pool, and lie in the sun while enjoying the 30 degree days. We might not bother seeing Montpellier until it’s time to head towards Avignon. We are quite possibly turning into ‘retirees’.