Barcelona and Andorra

Cote D'Azur …. Costa Brava …. places we have only dreamed of. And here we are!!

for more fotos click here

The Costa Brava has been beautiful. Lots of lovely little coves and pretty beaches. And SUN!!! But not nearly as hot as Croatia and Greece where it was 30 -36 degrees every day. Now only about 25 degrees. But hey – who's complaining!

So into Barcelona and all the usual touristy things there. As a designer and an architect Gaudi was certainly different. We spent ages in the Sagrada Familiar – his famous church which will take another 30 years (at least) to complete. There is one huge central spire still to be constructed, and a number of other spires and other works. The inside is quite interesting too with the branched columns and leaf design on the ceiling. Each facade on the outside represents a different theme in Christianity – from the nativity scene to the death of Christ. The detail in every aspect is quite amazing. And touches of his style are now evident all over Barcelona - museums, parks, etc.

We had fun walking around la Ramblas – a long touristy street with buskers and street stalls, and fantastic market area. Fruits, meats and fish, nuts - and more types of mushroom than I have ever seen.

Time to leave Rach and Felix as they are staying there for a couple of days with Felix's aunty – so we have gone our separate ways again after a wonderful 2 weeks together. It has been really fun exploring new places and sharing this experience with them. (It has also been REALLY nice sharing their camper with food and hot coffee and cold wine at the ready!) Definitely time to leave …. Felix has started to win at card games at night!

Heading north (yes, it had to happen eventually...) and our first stop was at a really interesting monastery at Monserrat. Again perched high up in the mountains amid round boulders. All conglomerate rocks and quite different to other sites we have visited. We took a cable car up to the main area - a beautiful basilica where they were having mass. There is also a rack train up to another smaller monastery another 1000 meters up. Really steep! And the monks must have lived in caves up there at some time. Beautiful scenery from up so high – way too many photos!

Enroute to Monserrat we were travelling through reasonably remote country roads, and there along the side of the road were about 20 ladies in very short skirts and hot pants looking for "business".  What a weird place to find them!  They were just standing beside the road and the bush and scrub behind them???   

Then leaving Spain and on to Andorra. A bizaarre traffic jam after going through border control – the traffic was at a crawl all the way through the main village ( no real reason we could fathom), then we eventually got going and its a real change to be so high up in the mountaians – the temp has certainly dropped though and this may be our last night camping!!! There are so many apartments and hotels here that it must be really buzzing in Winter but at the moment its a bit dead but with the autumn leaves is quite stunning.