The rest of France
Hola,
We are currently in Spain where they have somewhat proper keyboards.
They have fullstops but I can´t figure out how to get the @ symbol. I
can see it on the keyboard but I can´t make it appear on the screen.
We left Paris on Thursday aboard the TGV to Marseille. The TGV was
really good. Very fast and the seats were actually quite accomodating.
No 'in-flight' entertainment but you really don´t need it on a trip
that is only three hours long. The people across from us brought their
cat on the train. I had heard that people take their dogs on the Metro
(although I didn´t see any dogs) but your cat on the TGV? Silly French
people.
Marseille is a very industrial city. There´s a lot of construction
going on in the city centre which I assume is a good sign. We didn´t
see a lot of Marseille as our hotel was out of town a bit. The hotel
is a famous modernist building. I won´t go too much into details, Tom
can do that later if he feels like it. However, we really liked it.
We picked the car the Marseille and promptly got lost trying to drive
to the hotel. It seems that sign placement is very different here in
Europe. They put the signs on the turn rather than before, especially
on roundabouts. Tom was initially very nervous about the driving but
he´s settled in. He even did some crazy french merging on the first
day.
Left Marseille the next morning and decided to stop in a town called
Arles. Interesting town with lots of Roman and Medieval stuff. This
was also the place that Van Gogh decided to cut his ear off so there
was also a lot of art stuff.
If you have ever been to a medieval town you will know that there are
a lot of little tiny streets that it is amazing that cars can drive
on. It was in one of these that I took my first major fall of the
trip. I managed to walk into a bollard. Most people when walking into
a bollard would stub their toe or bang their knee however, I went
flying though the air. Thankfully, I landed on my tummy and chest
which are both well padded and injuries were minimal. It was a little
hard to explain that to the French shopkeeper who came running out of
his shop to assist though.
Left Arles and headed for the French-Spanish border via a windy road.
Good views, but such roads make me nervous. The border was
interesting. A man with a tiny machine, lady checking our passports
and another policeman smoking next to the checkpoint. And so, we
entered Spain.
