Floating bliss

We traversed over 100km of La Mayenne and La Sarthe rivers, upstream and down. I can't retrain my ageing brain to touch type using a French keyboard so a full account of our voyages will have to wait until we return. Suffice to say that travelling in Europe by canal and/or river has been a lifelong dream for both of us, and this trip met all expectations.

Our choice of rivers meant that we visited lots of picturesque villages and a few small towns, with internet access therefore hard to come by. Hence the paucity of blog posts while we were afloat. See later posting for more details of where we went.

Sketches of Spain I

First, Spain is a different colour. France is green and grey, Spain is orange. Terracotta roof tiles, soils red or reddish brown, rosy stone.

Clothes: young Spanish seem more fashion conscious than the French, but don´t always dress as well - one sees the occasional clothing disaster, up-to-the-minute fashion that doesn´t suit the wearer. Pink shirts are in for men, windows are full of them and we see quite a few being worn as well. Glasses (ordinary, not sunglasses) are an important fashion accessory for the smart young man. Sideburns are in. No one, male or female, wears hats of any kind, despite the sun. No baseball caps, none of the hats currently in fashion for cool young guys in Melbourne. Only the Japanese tourists in their inverted flowerpot hats have covered heads.

Architecture: Juliet balconies everywhere, about a foot deep. Almost every window has one, even in hotel rooms, although the apartment we are renting in Barcelona has, unusually, a very large balcony with table, chairs and a place to hang washing, pegs supplied.

As one of our guidebooks says, the Spanish eat to live, not the other way round, and at first we were a bit disappointed by the food. We found one excellent tapas bar in Salamanca, but apart from that we had to wait until Barcelona to find really interesting gourmet food. Barcelona also has more non-smoking restaurants, and caters for vegetarians.

Traffic lights: Spanish lights cheep to indicate that the pedestrian light is green. It begins as "cheep...cheep..." then switches to "cheep cheep cheep" when you need to start running. And you really do. Unlike our long periods of flashing and non-flashing red before the lights change, in Spain you barely get time to finish crossing once the light starts to flash. As a result pedestrian behaviour is much better: no one starts crossing unless they are confident that the light has only recently changed to green.

Traffic: Despite dire warnings, we didn't find driving in Spain worse than France. French drivers are more likely to observe the speed limits, especially temporary ones for road works, but drivers in both countries are more tolerant of last-minute lane changes than driversin Oz. We note that the favoured marque of the lawless who drive at speeds of 150-200kph on the motorways is a black Audi. By the time you discern the distinctive four rings in the rearview mirror, you have about 2 seconds to move out of the overtaking lane.

Up late

(With apologies to nephew Nick who wrote a song of the same name).

We thought France was civilised because days start and finish late: parking meter restrictions don´t start until 0900 and break for lunch between 1200 and 1400, restaurants don´t start serving until 2000. Spain is even more suited to night owls like us - we can get out of bed at between 0800 and 0900, check our messages and mail and do the odd bit of washing or eat breakfast, start the morning activities as late as 1100 and still have 3 hours of sightseeing or whatever before lunch at 1400. Suits us fine.

When dusk falls at about 2100, it´s time to look for somewhere to eat an evening meal, and one might still be sitting in a square with a drink or the last stages of a meal close to midnight. And it´s a game the whole family plays - in Salamanca we were wondering whether we might have left it a bit late to find a restaurant still serving when we sat down at 2200 on our second night in Spain, but within a few minutes an extended family of a dozen people including a pre-teen and child of about two sat down at the next table. We recently made a one night stop at a modern hotel conveniently close to the motorway route from Granada to Barcelona, and again felt uncomfortable when we were the sole occupants of its large restaurant at 2130. By the time we left after a very good fixed price meal, it had a small crowd of other diners, including a family. Back at the parking meters, in Spain they don´t start until 1000, and also take a mid-afternoon break like the French ones do, but of varying length. They must have complex internal programs, as you can still put in money to cover the whole day, including the break, as we did in Toledo.

SaturARTed

Four nights in Toledo, three days in the wonderful art galleries of Madrid: Monday Reina Sofia, Tuesday Prado, Wednesday Thyssen-Bornemisza. We commuted from Toledo on the fast train, which takes half an hour in an air-conditioned reserved seat and lands you at Atocha station, conveniently close to all three museums. As well as all the wonderful art, the galleries are cool, quiet and smoke-free which was welcome as the temperature was in the mid-30s each day. We didn´t find the heat oppressive unless we were walking in direct sunlight, but by the time we walked back from the station to our Toledo hotel each evening, we were always hot and tired. The hotel was pleasant and quiet with cheap parking on the street and we think it was a good alternative to staying in Madrid proper.

When not improving our minds with the huge range of art in Madrid we made the statutory trips to Plaza Major and Plaza del Sol in Madrid, but were unimpressed: the squares were less attractive than those in Vitoria and much less attractive than Salamanca, and the shopping streets didn´t compare with San Sebastian or Vitoria. We did like the gardens of Buen Retiro, where we escaped for a sit down in the shade. We mastered the Metro and used it to visit Cecilia O´Dwyer, Provincial (head) of the Loreto sisters in Spain. She is a friend of our friend Liz Hepburn. We really enjoyed an opportunity to lunch with her and have a serious conversation with someone other than one another.

Toledo itself is a complete contrast to Madrid - a mediaeval town still largely contained within the old walls. We walked around getting pleasantly lost in the labyrinth of narrow streets a couple of times, and took the tourist train trip around the perimeter on the other side of the Tajo river which forms a natural boundary on three sides. It is somewhat surprising that cars are still allowed within the walls, but they are and they travel through all but the narrowest streets, somewhat reducing your walking pleasure as you are constantly on guard against a car whizzing up behind you.

Ham and eggs

Mark Twain said "Nothing improves scenery like ham and eggs" which means that Spain´s already spectacular scenery must be particularly fine. Jamon is the national dish and is visible everywhere, huge hams hanging in restaurants, cafes, delicatessens, even the service stations on the autopistas. There are jamonerias which specialise in ham, with dozens hanging from the ceiling. Eggs are not as visible, but just as omnipresent, poached in tapas, fried with steak and/or chips, hardboiled in salads, essential ingredient in omelettes, sauces and the ubiquitous flan (creme caramel).

It is surprising how much things change as you cross the Pyrenees from France. France seems rather staid, Spain has the feeling of a country full of youth and energy. There is a huge amount of construction work going on - blocks of high rise flats being built around major towns, and new roads everywhere with crash barriers so new they shine silver in the bright Spanish sunlight. We would cheerfully pay the road tolls on the autopistas just to see the road engineering: roads flung across valleys and bored through mountains take us to Vitoria via San Sebastian, where we stop for lunch.

On the downside our breathing is adversely affected by various forms of pollution. We are not sure whether France has stricter emission controls, or whether it is just because we are walking around in much larger cities and parking in under-ventilated underground carparks, or because Spanish drivers drive faster, ignoring speed limits. We are sure that smoking is still a way of life in Spain. In France restaurants are all non-smoking, and we encountered few people smoking in the streets. In Spain there are smokers everywhere, young and old, male and female, and only in Salamanca did we find a restaurant divided into smoking and non-smoking. We have just discovered another clean air haven: smoking is banned in internet cafes. We saw very few of these in France, and couldn´t find one in San Sebastian or Vitoria. Salamanca, being a University town, had a number, and we are now using one in El Barraco, a country town on a N-road on the way to Toledo.

We have also found fewer people who speak much English, and my pronunciation of phrases from the phrase book seems to be so bad that people aren´t even sure that I´m speaking Spanish. We´ve managed to get ourselves fed and accommodated through much pointing and miming, but it is improving: we are learning more words and phrases and finding it easier getting the message across, sometimes even at first attempt.

Restrictions of language meant for the first few days we ate rather boring food: ham rolls, fish and chips, steak and chips. We were getting desperate for greens and fruit. But we have now discovered the delights of the combinacion (a whole meal on one plate, possibly including a bowl of soup), and of course tapas. Spain is also big on fresh juices, so we are getting our vitamins again.

Getting a sea fix

Plan A was to take about 2 days to drive from the Loire to Toledo. Are we there yet? After 5 days, non. First, leaving anywhere early in the morning is not really us, so we only drive for half a day at a time. Second, we need a sea fix after all those lush green inland fields. In La Rochelle we enjoy the tang of salt in the westerly wind blowing in from the Atlantic and the familiar clanking of yacht halyards. We stay in Hotel Ocean in the old port, looking out over rooftops rather than boats as our tiny room is at the back of the fourth floor. In La Rochelle the natives are markedly less friendly to us, probably because we see and hear large numbers of English people in the streets here. Waiters speak English, and correct our attempts at French: a waiter struggles to describe garlic mayonnaise and when I helpfully say aoli with my Aussie accent, he replies aoli. I think I´ve accepted the offer to have some with my moules marinieres, but it doesn´t come, perhaps as punishment for mispronunciation. Peter´s pronunciation is also corrected when he asks about a famous yacht Joshua, sister ship to Northern Light, which unfortunately happens to be off sailing in Gran Bretagne. Despite this we like the town with its mediaeval twin towers guarding the port, and the ancient chain that used to be put between them at night now stretched out as a pedestrian barrier. Eating our croissants by the port in the morning sun is a lovely way to start the day. Off La Rochelle is the Ile de Re, which we explore in the morning before heading south. It has more of a beach holiday feel - terracotta tiles rather than slate roofs, small houses. But it also has cultivated fields including vineyards, and towns with mediaeval fortifications. We lunch at St Martin, looking at but not sampling the sea produce in the markets before eating baguette and cheese perched on the seawall, looking out over the very shallow area to the north of the island which is a centre of French oyster cultivation. We would like to compare French oysters with Australian, but they are expensive in restaurants, and sold unopened in the markets, and we don´t have the tools to deal with that. Our last stop in France is also by the sea in St-Jean-de-Luz, a resort town just south of Biarritz which people haven´t yet resorted too, so is pleasantly free of tourists. It has a real plage with hardy souls swimming and is also a fishing port, giving us another opportunity to enjoy breakfast with a harbour view. Although still clearly French, there is a sense of Spain´s proximity in the architecture and the increasing amount of garlic in the food. There are also lots of Basque influences in the names of streets and hotels, including the Ohartzia, where we stay in a studio type room in a delightful garden at the back of the main building.

Au revoir to the Loire

Today is our last day at the gite, tomorrow we head west to La Rochelle, to find French yachties. From there, south to Spain. We have been très contentes here, enjoying being semi-local when not being tourists. In the last few days we've added Chinon and Fontevraud to our list of tourist trophies. At Chinon there are a few people like us walking through the mediaeval town clutching guide books, but we spend much of our time sitting in the square eating another beautiful meal on a glorious sunny day, surrounded by French-speakers who look like the family taking Mum out on Sunday, or having a meal after shopping at the Sunday market, which was packing up as we arrived. There are small children playing in the fountain, mother rescuing the toy car from the water and drying the tears of the toddler who dropped it in. There is one middle-aged English couple nearby, also with elderly Mum, but they like us are exercising their French and amusing the waiters in the process.

On our way back from Fontevraud we decide to try navigating by map alone without the satnavs assisting, take a wrong turn in Tours and as a result see what the outskirts of large industrial city look like. A bit like Dandenong. We also drive to Chateau-Renault one day, a medium, non-tourist, not very prosperous town where for the first time we see lots of flats (not pretty, but not as ugly as most flats at home) and youth with tatts strolling around looking as though they don't have enough to do. We discover Bricomarché, the French equivalent of Bunnings, and make an overdue purchase of safety vest and warning triangle (mandatory for driving in France). We cross the road to the Intermarché supermarket and find the same gear at half the price. Merde. We decide our French isn't up to taking the overpriced stuff back to Bricomarché, just grit our teeth and note the lesson. Intermarché is cheap on everything, and we buy some good fruit there at less than market prices.

On our last evening we have dinner in front of the fire downstairs with Veronica and Talulah, enjoying food bought from the Amboise market, the local fromager de chevre and the boulanger in Chateau-Renault, washed down with a sparkling Vouvray and a Chinon red. Earlier at the goat cheese farm I make my halting way through an explanation that this is our last night at the gite and that we are dining with Veronica, and am rewarded with an extra piece of cheese, gratuité. I can just manage "Vous êtes très gentille" in response. We will be quite sorry to leave France, and wonder how we will go in a country where neither of us can manage much more than por favor. Watch this space.