Aix-en-Provence and the Cote d'Azur Drive

We spent our last night in Aix yesterday, Thursday, May 13th. We intended to get up and drive to Avignon to see the Palais des Papes, but decided to simply relax and spend the day in Aix instead. We got some laundry done, shopped (Roberto got some great new Diesel sneakers), and ate dinner at Chez Charlotte, which was fantastic. I had an incredibly fresh gazpacho and vegetable plate with quiche and salad, and Roberto had a steak. The one hiccup was when I told him he was ordering a beef appetizer and it ended up being a poached egg in a sour cream soup (our waiter didn't speak English), and with the handwritten menu I thought l'oeuf (egg) said boeuf (beef). It was delicious anyway!
We woke up early this morning to drive along the Cote d'Azur to our last stop in France, Nice. What a gorgeous trip! We traveled through St. Tropez, St. Raphael, St. Maxime, and Cannes, which is in the midst of its world-famous film festival right now. The traffic was so congested that it took over an hour to get 1 km through town, but I thought it was worth it! We saw the red carpet where the stars walk, lots of self-important people with badges strutting around, and the paparazzi camped outside the glitziest hotels. At one point we heard screaming and everyone outside the Martinez Hotel started snapping pictures furiously, but we couldn't see who they were taking pictures of. We couldn't park the car, so Roberto just drove inch by inch while I jumped out here and there to take photos. Some I took from the car's window. It was neat!
After fighting lots of traffic along the way, we arrived here in Nice, which I was expecting to be a little dirty from reading its Lonely Planet description. I am SO pleasantly surprised, though! It's clean, walkable, and fun. We had an amazing Italian dinner at Pasta Basta in the Old City, then walked along Promenade des Anglais for a little sightseeing. Tomorrow morning we're headed to Monaco, then back to nice for a little more sightseeing and shopping!

Aix-en-Provence --- Day One

After a very scenic train ride across the Spanish-French border yesterday, we have made our way to Aix-en-Provence!
The train was... how should I put it... very retro. Lots of browns and tans, 1960's decor, heavy striped curtains on the windows, but the seats reclined much further than plane seats so we were comfortable. We almost didn't want to sleep though, we were afraid of missing some of the beautiful landscape we rode through - castles, French marshlands, ancient villages, cliffs leading to the dark aqua sea, and acres upon acres of vineyards with rolling hilly backdrops. We befriended a little 18-month-old Australian girl, Ava, and her parents (I have no idea how they were travelling with such a young child, but she was surprisingly well-behaved!)
Picking up the rental car in Montpellier was a little bit of an adventure. GPS wasn't available, so we mapped out our route to Aix-en-Provence and we actually got here with very little problems! The countryside along the way is gorgeous... lots of the classic ochre-colored homes with bright blue shutters, surrounded by farmland.













Aix is different than I pictured it to be, it's much busier with lots of foot traffic and tons of chic little boutiques. The university here dates from 1409, so it has a huge student population and they don't seem to be very respectful of the history of the place (think beer cans strewn all over the street, cigarette butts, etc.), but I love the little winding alleyways and the beautiful old fountains. You can just walk for hours around here and find all kinds of cool stuff... last night Roberto and I found a little shop that sold only "macarons", little cakes with cream in the middle in all kinds of funky flavors. He got a chocolate caramel and a pistachio, and I got a peach-champagne and a blueberry-violet. Delicious! Only in a place like Aix, very funky and walkable, could a shop like this survive. I love it.
We ate dinner at a highly recommended (by Lonely Planet) little restaurant with only about 8 tables called Le Petit Verdot. Everyone in there was French, and thank goodness we stopped by early to make a reservation for when the place opened for dinner at 7. While we were eating, at least 4 tables got turned away because they didn't have reservations! We had the most fantastic fois gras with orange gelatin and baby arugula, and Roberto got sliced "canard" (duck). I got braised lamb. We had a fantastic bottle of Bordeaux that went perfectly with the meal.
I think most restaurants here are like Le Petit Verdot in that you have to make a reservation before they open for dinner or you don't get in... at least the ones that are worth it. Tonight we're hoping to go to a little bistro called Charlotte, another that's highly recommended by our book.

Last Full Day in Barcelona

We have officially just eaten the best paella I have ever had, at Restaurante Santiaguino near our hotel (Hotel U232 in the LEixample district). Delicious! This was a small little mom-and-pop type place that didn´t even open for dinner until 8 o´clock at night and we were the only diners there until about nine. We got there right at eight, being the American tourists we are, and as we were eating our dessert (a lovely little dream of tiny wild strawberries - fresitas, our waitress called them - and whipped fresh cream with sugar) the locals started pouring in for their usual late dinner. A couple of the diners knew each other, it was that kind of a place. Anyway, the food was incredible... pan-fried squid and a paella chock-full of fresh seafood, wonderful!
Earlier today we just did some more walking around Barceloneta´s beaches and we explored the Barri Gotic district. There was a nice breeze at the beach and the water is a gorgeous shade of aqua... it´s the Mediterranean, what can I expect? There are lots of boardwalk-type areas around Barceloneta for people to ride bikes, take a stroll, and walk their dogs (mostly without leashes... I don´t think there is a leash law in this country), and I can picture it being a pretty wild place in the summertime.
I loved the Barri Gotic area... the part of the city that dates back to medieval times. We took lots of pictures of Barcelona´s Cathedral, and it was amazing to walk around some of the ancient buildings in the area and see what used to be a moat around them. It always blows my mind to see how a more modern city has sprung up around structures from the 1500´s. Nowadays Barri Gotic is home to lots of trendy little boutiques and shops, all along its warren of narrow, historic alleyways. I loved it.
Tomorrow we´re off to Provence! Can´t wait...

From Sagrada Familia to Palacio del Flamenco

We began our second day in Barcelona with more Gaudi, visiting La Pedrera - a very interesting building built between 1905 and 1910 as a combined apartment and office block - and one of the most recognizable landmarks of Barcelona, La Sagrada Familia church.
We had to wait for a little while to get into La Pedrera, but it was most definitely worth the queue. It has a very distinctive gray stone facade with intricate wrought-iron balconies around the outside that give it a wavy effect. Roberto and I enjoyed exploring La Pedrera´s rooftop, which features weird-looking sculptures that, in Roberto´s words, look "like something out of Star Wars". Perhaps my favorite part of La Pedrera was the apartment on the top floor of the building - called El Pis de la Pedrera - which is open for the public to wander. It is fully furnished in the style of the early 20th century, complete with an enormous Victrola.
Only a few blocks´walk from La Pedrera, Gaudi´s masterpiece Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia was begun in the late 19th century and still isn´t completed, believe it or not. According to my Lonely Planet guide, it´s expected to be done anywhere between 2020 and 2040. (The Australian mother behind us in line remarked the project could be a construction worker´s lifelong career "from the time he gets out of school until he retires", which I thought was cute.)
Roberto was a little disappointed that all of our photos of the unique church will be marred with scaffolding, but it´s OK, we were still able to take a lift to the top of one of the church´s exotic-looking spires for a fantastic bird´s-eye view of all of Barcelona! It was well worth the 45-minute long wait to get on the lift, a tiny elevator that fit no more than 4 or 5 people at once. Then we took the winding tiny staircase back down through the spire to exit through the back of the church´s sanctuary, where workmen were zooming around on bobcats. Half of the floor was torn up and they were putting pipes in. I still managed to get a shot of the beautiful stained glass windows. We were told they are having services in the church at 9 AM and 7 PM each day, although I´m not sure how!
Then it was off for a late lunch to a tapas place that came highly recommended from both Roberto´s cousin Maria Mercedes and Lonely Planet: Cerveseria Catalunya. I´m a huge tapas fan - I like lots of variety in my food - so this place was just perfect. For lunch we snacked on the famous tomato bread of Barcelona, yummy shrimp-and-mayonnaise snacks, veal tidbits with poblano peppers on toast, bacalao (a cut of fish in sauce on toast). We even went back for dinner and a pitcher of sangria, followed by a lively flamenco show at Palacio del Flamenco.

Barcelona - Day 1

Back in 2004 on a whirlwind 11-day tour of five European countries, I flew into Girona airport, spent about 2 hours in Barcelona, then promptly jumped on a bus to Madrid. I didn´t know what I was missing!
This is a very walkable city with a lot of character. As soon as we got in this morning, we jumped on the Metro (very easy to figure out and can take you anywhere in the city) to get to Parc Guell, a whimsical park the architect Antoni Gaudi was hired to create in 1900. Initially, the park was designed to be a residential area for Barcelona´s wealthy residents, but after the project was abandoned in 1914, it became a public park for everyone to enjoy. And enjoy it we did! It´s a steep climb to reach the top of the park, but the sweeping views of the entire city of Barcelona can´t be beat, and we loved Gaudi´s signature glittering mosaic buildings, statues, and details throughout the park. We spent almost two hours searching for the famous lizard dragon fountain before we realized it was just inside another entrance to the park! Took lots of pictures!
Afterward, we hopped back on the Metro and got off around La Rambla. This is one of the more touristy areas of the city, but we are told no visit to Barcelona is complete without stopping here. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called the Attic, which was really delicious... octopus and beef carpaccio, a fried egg dish with jamon serraño, and two towers of fresh mozzarella and tomato... mmm....
Now we´re trying to stay awake so we can get over our jet lag and have a fresh, full day tomorrow. Lots to do and see here yet! We´re not off to France until Tuesday!

Ain´t no volcanic ash thick enough...

Well, we finally reached Barcelona around ten AM local time... a second bout of volcanic ash from Iceland started drifting south over continental Europe on Thursday, closing the Barcelona airport for most of Saturday! We were really concerned when we got to Philadelphia and we were told the airport here was closed, but it reopened just in time for us to get out (only an hour-and-a-half delay, not too bad!) The flight took nine hours as opposed to the usual seven so the pilots could navigate around the ash cloud, but we don´t mind... let the two-week celebration begin!

Labor Day in Playa!

OK, so I am a bit behind on my blogging. Spent Labor Day weekend in Playa del Carmen, Mexico... and came back with a few new baubles. I was so proud of my new wooden chandelier earrings until Roberto put a diamond ring on my finger our last night!!! That kind of blew my "find" out of the water. I staged the sparkler on the palm frond grasshopper our waiter made for me at breakfast one morning (another one of my prized trinkets from the trip, you can't get one of those in Greensboro!)

So... Playa. It is a beautiful little resort city, but if you're looking for rustic charm, you won't find it here. If you want fine restaurants (even one located inside an ancient cave), upscale boutiques, vendors trying to entice you to buy their wares all along the main streets, mega resorts, and expansive aquamarine water stretching all the way to Cozumel (where we rented a bright blue convertible VW Bug and cruised around the island), that's what you'll get in Playa del Carmen. I really enjoyed it though... we stayed at a small, intimate hotel, I swam with a dolphin and a wild sea turtle, and we caught four-foot long barracudas on our fishing trip. AND the flight is less than 3 hours long, direct from Charlotte. That's my kind of travel time.
It was a nice little getaway. We promised the hotel staff we'd be back, so I guess we'll just have to keep that promise, won't we? :)