We got in to France and decided to head straight for the city of Nimes as it looked like it had some interesting places to see. It was founded by Caesar Augustus so as you can imagine it was jam packed full of history. We haved based ourselves at a camp ground for a couple of days so spent Saturday looking around the old part of town.
These are the things we did.
1. (Anna) had a coffee in the catherdral square, looking like the typical French person, after which we had a quick look at the cathedral
2. We went to the les Halles market which had all kinds of stores. Meat, cheese, veges, flowers, sea food, olives, bread & pasteries. Anna greatly admired the variety of unnameable sea creatures available for eating
3. We stopped in at a number of museums which all seemed to be free today
4. We went to the Roman gladiator arena. It was in the top 20 of the 400 arenas with Rome's Colosseum being the biggest, but these days the Nimes Arena is the best preserved, so it was a real treat to walk around. As well as all the history, the arena is now one of the few places authorised for bull fighting outside of Spain
After leaving Foix, we had a stunning drive, on yet another sunny day, over the snow covered Pyrenees, our trusty little van went like a trouper. We had lunch in Andorra which is a tiny little country right in the middle of the mountains. When you have lunch at a restaurant you are automatically served a plate of chips and a glass of wine. We (Anna) randomly picked two things off the menu, which turned out to be quite good (and not the plate of baby squid someone else got!).
We left Andorra and started going towards Barcelona, before deciding not to go any further south. We had a great drive through northern Spain on some fairly minor roads heading across to the coast. We saw lots of camping grounds - until we needed one. After driving for a couple of hours in the dark we gave up and parked on the side of the road on a forestry road. Thankfully no one told us off. The next day we reached the coast, almost left without having Tapas but then miracle of miracles we spotted a restaurant right before the boarder (200m!) so had an early lunch.
Foix is the town we stayed in at the foot of the Pyrenees. It was beautiful, nestled between mountains on either side. Lucky for us "camping" is the same in French so it's easy to find campgrounds. We chose this town because of the chateau des Foix, which stands smack in the middle of town on the top of it's own little mountain. The next morning we drove around & round before we found the entrance!
