Not Before Time

Well, the 2 weeks we have been in Spain have gone really fast.  During this time we have been to Barcelona, Valencia, Mazarron (a great little beach area), Granada and we are now in a resort in the Malaga\Marbella region in the south of Spain.  We have had great weather since we´ve been in Spain, so a lot of time has been spent at the beach or by the pool.  We are getting used to wearing bathers and shorts – much better than jackets, scarves and gloves!

The past couple of days in particular have been very relaxed, visiting local markets, swimming, sun bathing, eating and drinking.  The resort has a local pub-restaurant type of venue and there is some form of entertainment on in the evenings which has been quite good.

We´ve also visited Gibralter (still part of Great Britain) and stopped off at Peurto Banus – an upmarket harbour town which is full of big yachts and power boats and shops full of designer clothing. 

We leave Spain on Sunday, heading to Italy.  We only have a week to get to Tuscany for our cooking class week so it will probably be a fairly rushed trip through St Tropez, Monaco etc. 

Hopefully we will be able to add some photos to the site soon.

Well, we are still having problems with the laptop, so once again it´s words only, photos to be added later.

We stayed in Paris for a week and had a great time.  The place we stayed at was an apartment right near the Bastille and within walking distance to almost everywhere we wanted to go and only about 15 minutes walk from Paris centre.

We did all the tourist stuff – lots of walking, using the hop on – hop off buses, visiting all the main sites and gardens, sitting in cafes watching the world go by.  Great fun.

When we left Paris the plan was to head north for a while, but the weather wasn´t very good so after visiting Bayeaux (a gorgeous medieaval town and where the Bayeax Tapestry is located) and the Normandy area including the D-Day landing sites, we decided to chase the sun and headed south.  We stayed at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne area.  There is a great caravan park there and we hired a cabin for a week while we explored the surrounding areas.

This area is renowned for its prehistory sites and there are lots of caves, and grotte´s with pre historic paintings on the walls.  The area is also really beautiful and there are a number of medieaval towns, including Sarlat which is stunning.

We also visited markets where we bought some of the local produce so we could cook back in the cabin and that was a nice change from eating out all the time.  We also spent time lying by the pool and meeting some of the other people staying in the park.  It was a really pleasant week.

When we left Les Eyzies we headed over to the mediterranean where we stayed at a couple of seaside towns before heading into Spain.