Having decided to return to Europe earlier than planned (we had been planning on heading through Central America until the end of July before heading back to the UK for wedding season) we had spent 2 weeks in London planning our spontaneous adventure through Europe. This started with sending our amazing travel family in the South of France a message saying…”You know how we said we’d be coming in September…how about in 2 weeks instead?!” Luckily for us they are very flexible people and within no time at all we had arranged to start our journey in France. Our original plan (we know…never make a plan) was to do our usual trains and buses around Europe so we booked a very cheap flight to France and started mapping out the parts of Europe we hadn’t explored yet and still wanted to go to. However, as so often happens our plan was completely turned upside down when we stumbled across our friends Facebook posts about travelling in a Spaceship (for those of you who don’t know what this is they are a common way to travel New Zealand and Australia and are converted camping cars). This suddenly sparked an idea that as soon as it had been formed started turning into a very different trip. Some of the countries on the original itinerary went out the window for insurance reasons and places we had never seriously contemplated (Hello Andorra and Lichtenstein) were added. 4 days prior to flying to France we had to send our friends a message saying that we would be arriving a day later as we were now driving across. We picked up the Spaceship (aptly named Hamster) in the London depot and hit the road. We had booked a passage on the Eurotunnel (€120/$180.90 AUD/143.6 USD), which is actually a train you drive on to that takes you through the Channel Tunnel and arrived in Folkstone with plenty of time to take our scheduled train. The great thing about booking is that even if you arrive early they will just slot you on to the next available train instead of making you wait around. The journey is super quick and before you could even say ‘Bonjour!’ we were there. We had planned on driving as far as Orleans that night as we did not want to fight the Parisian traffic in the morning and we checked into a chain motel called F1 for €33 a night. The next morning we were up bright and early to finish the over 1000km journey to Cabrières. I can tell you turning up at Pauline and Roman’s was a welcome sight and when they came out with cold beer and more cheese than I had seen in my life within 5 minutes of arriving we knew that we wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. The plan had been to stay 3-4 days…we stayed 6. Partially because of the wonderful hospitality and mainly to do with finally getting to spend time with our gorgeous little niece. I’m telling you it was a miracle that we even left at all and if it hadn’t have been for our now newly arranged trip to return in September I’m not sure we would have. Stop 2 in France was to go and see Uncle Nick who we had met in Bolivia. He gave us a very warm welcome, yet more cheese (sensing a theme?) and a wonderful tour of Toulouse before we headed off to Andorra. Now as a Kiwi I have a fascination with microcountries so after discovering the existence of Andorra and it’s proximity to Barcelona (which was to be our next stop), a visit here was a must! Driving to Andorra still remains to be one of the prettiest drives we’ve ever done. No one really talks about how beautiful the Pyrenees really are. Stunning mountainscapes, green fields, and quaint little villages the whole way through until you start climbing into the snow capped mountains that create the natural border of Andorra. As Andorra is a skiing destination we did notice driving through the first part that it was mainly deserted until the following winter. However, once you reach the other side of the mountain suddenly the place starts to liven up and turn into…the prettiest open-air shopping mall you’ve ever seen. Duty free stores line the streets and gas stations offering incredibly cheap petrol and diesel dot the highway. Pulling over to fill up with gas I decided to check out one of these duty free shops and, overwhelmed by excitement, I quickly left to find my wife so she could return with the credit card. Stocking up on the essentials…a fridge magnet for my mother, a pin for Dani’s mother, 2 Andorra patches, a Christmas decoration and an egg cup for fun we also filled the basket with food items that had cost a lot more in France I ‘tap-tapped’ it and we were off again. Slowly loosing hope of finding a camp ground after pulling up to one advertised, only to find out it was shut we decided to abandon the idea of staying in Andorra and started to head for Spain. Just as we reached the other side of Andorra de Villa we saw a sign for another campground. By this stage it was 7.30 at night and we were pretty tired so we pulled in only to be told that if we waited outside for another 30 minutes it would halve the price of a night’s stay. He wasn’t budging on the 8 o’clock time limit so we parked up and waited. Pulling into the campground at 8.05 we were ready, after over a week on the road to sleep in the car for the very first time. We slept surprisingly well that night and in the morning we sat admiring the green surroundings over tea and coffee while I desperately tried to get close enough to the Wi-Fi spot for news of a new baby in the family. Well rested and ready to go we set off for Barcelona. We had found a campground 10km out of the centre of Barcelona called Camping Masnou that had a train that took you directly into the city. This turned out to be a great option as we had the luxury of being by the water in a nice space without the Barcelona weekend prices. We parked up next to a lovely German couple and set up camp. Barcelona turned very quickly into one of our favourite cities. Surprise surprise within minutes of arriving Dani had booked us onto the walking tour the next day! We started with the Barcelona old town tour, which was incredibly informative and impressed us so much that we booked on to their Gaudi tour for the following day. After a wonderful morning of learning about the old city we made our way to La Bombetta, which was a tapas restaurant that had been recommended to us by our friends in France. After what felt like a lifetime (we hadn’t eaten much in preparation to gorge on tapas) we were sat at our table and went through the menu trying to decipher what was on offer. Luckily for us our Spanish isn’t too bad these days and we wrote down a list of dishes we wanted to order. Dani had just got through the list of vegetarian dishes we were ordering when the waiter decided we could not order anymore and refused to write anything else down. Boy was he surprised when not only did we finish all that we had ordered but then had to wave him back 3 further times to order what we had not been allowed to order in the first place. This turned out to be a very good recommendation and along with Segrada Familia (you need to book in advance to be able to enter, a mistake that we had to learn the hard way) and La Bocqueria one of our favourite experiences. We spent way too much money in Barcelona…not because it’s a particularly expensive city (by European capital standards it’s not really) but because we got over excited about all the cool souvenirs we could buy.
We had been planning to travel back through the South of France to get to our next planned visit to one of our closest friends in Italy. Those of you who don’t know us won’t know that our last trip to Italy had not been very successful and we had actually vowed never to return. It is the only country (out of 44) that we had experienced any homophobia outside of our everyday existence and we had decided it was one of very few countries we weren’t willing to give a second chance. This was thrown out the window when Parsley (long story) moved to Italy. Again as plans change and we had spent longer than anticipated in France we found the option of a 20-hour ferry journey from Barcelona to just outside of Rome was going to be our best option. This ferry journey cost €150 for the car and both passengers which seemed reasonable when you add up the costs of petrol and accommodation to drive round the coast. We had read reviews about Grimaldi and they weren’t particularly promising, however we didn’t find the journey unpleasant. As long as you come prepared it’s a relatively easy crossing but if you have the car make sure you get everything you need out of it before the journey starts as you will not have access to the car until you are docked again. The process at the other end was a little disorganised but it was incredible how fast the cars were unloaded once we got moving. Now came the difficult task of finding somewhere to stay for the night. We found a lake on the map and thought…if there’s a lake, there’s likely to be a campground. Pulling up at almost 9 at night we had stumbled across the mecca of camping. Beautiful lakeside plots gorgeous sunset views, impeccable amenities and great shady spots to park the car. We took out our table and chairs, sat them outside the van and had a long needed cup of tea while watching the sunset over the lake…paradise. Unfortunately we had a deadline to make for being in Southern Italy so as soon as we were caffeinated in the morning we were out. To be continued...
0 Comments
|
Follow us on Instagram or send us a messageArchives
November 2018
Categories
All
|