Day 3 - Andorra - Spain - France

Day 3 Andorra to Barcelona
Barcelona to Avignon
Avignon to Cannes

We knew this was going to be a very long day. John woke up rather more refreshed than Ryan as last night he didn't feel great at the meal and so Ryan had to polish off a bottle of red to himself, what a sacrifice. At 9:30 am we hit the road, stopping for petrol and on the go breakfast before leaving Encamp at a petrol station. Andorra is so cheap, fuel prices were some 35 percent cheaper than in France. The woman behind the counter had a face like thunder, obviously not impressed at our poor Spanish. John remarked that if tourists didn't come here she would probably be hearing goats up a mountain rather than sitting comfortably at a desk. As a side note we picked up a passenger on the way to the boarder, Federico. Well we named him Federico, he was a fly that got into our car.

At the border we stopped to take photo's, then as we crossed into Spain we were asked to pull over by customs. When they checked over the car we were free to proceed. It was strange to think some 20 years ago you would be stopped like this at virtually every boarder. The scenery was spectacular and surprisingly green for Spain, as we went further south, however, things did start to turn brown. Also we had a stone strike on the windscreen, there is a bit of a chip. Thank God for the zero excess policy we have.

On the way John managed to fit right in with the locals. He was beeped a few times for not moving out of the way of someone wishing to overtake. John took offence to this as there was no where for him to go. A beeping match between John and the driver ensued. John won the 'Who can hold down the horn longest' competition and when he was able to move over we received hand signals from a extremely angry Spaniard. Turns out that while John and I know virtually no Spanish, we had no problem understanding the hand signals. As our car has a French numberplate we were glad to do our bit for Franco-Spanish relations.

We arrived in Barcelona around 1pm, and proceeded to Sacra Familia. We'll we thought we were but some TomTom error(probably operator in nature) meant we parked the car to find we were a few miles off. With time being precious we hailed a cab. John managed to communicate with his flawless Spanish and we were on our way. Barcelona seems to be a place of contradictions. The locals seemed like most of the locals we have meet on this trip, more chilled out than the those back home. However there were thousands of tourists that were certainly not chilled. Very interesting architecture too, obviously drawing from the moorish style with the cities complicated history. The Sacra Familia was astounding, it's vast but more impressive is the detail. The carvings on the front look extremely time consuming. Once you see it you can understand why it's taking so long to complete it. They began construction in 1880 and they don't expect to finish it until2060. Hoards of tourists but you can't have everything. Once we were had taking the mandatory pictures of the church/building site we found a restaurant and had paella. Had to be done; we were in Spain! Very good, John had meat and I had Fish. Felling full we hadded to the car feeling a little guilty that we had to leave such a interesting place so soon but cest le vie. We did manage to see the Arc de Triumph in Barcelona, a very different style from the one in Paris.

Hitting the road again we headed towards France about 4 pm. We were now in a race with sunset, we wanteed to get to Avingnon before dusk. Barcelona is where we left federico sto start a new life for himself in Spain. We manged it with 10 minutes to spare. Avignon is a medieval city and was once the city of the popes. Long story but there was two popes in the 12 century and they both couldn't live in Rome together cause they didn't really get on (Newsround version peps, sorry id you want detail that's what wikipedia's for) The city is truly remarkably, we drove in through a hole in the war. The entire city was walled to protect the pope an its pretty amazing site. We saw the palace which covers a 3 acre site, vast and beautiful the palace is fronted with a court yard. Avignon is now a top class tourist destination and so there were restaurants everywhere. The entire place had a great feeling to it. One bad point though, being medieval in nature the roads are a little tight for cars, John had a little difficultly manoeuvring through the ancient cities, the hordes of Japanese tourists didn't help either.

Then on to Cannes where we had booked a hotel. On the way we had a quick check of the car hire documents and realised that we were not meant to have gone into Andorra - no insurance. Pretty pleased that we managed not to sustain any damage to our car or anything else there! When we arrived at the hotel it was pretty late and the owner's customer service was a little Parisian in nature. Toll roads are killing us, we can't work out why the locals don't kick off, we must have done 40 quid on them today alone.


Andorra to Barcelona: 128 miles
Barcelona to Avingnon: 268 miles
Avingnon to Cannes: 127 miles
Filled up the tank 3 times - doing our bit to melt the icecaps.
Total: 523 miles