Spain

Since we have now reached our fifth country - Andorra - it's time to write about Spain...

We left a grey and windy France and it felt like the weather improved as soon as we crossed the border to Spain. We spent about three days in a place called Llanca, which had a nice beach/yacht-harbour, two great playgrounds for Yana and a cheap, but completely acceptable, camping ground. The weather was great during our stay. We got to do a bit of sun-bathing, Lindsay went for a 4 hour run/tramp while Kerstin went to the beach with Yana and Kerstin went for a shorter run the next day.

The coast by Llanca

The beach/yacht-harbour of Llanca

Our next stop was Girona, a city with a nice colourful row of houses along the river, an impressive cathedral, cute narrow streets, but a slightly dodgy looking carpark that we were glad to leave behind.

Girona's colourful houses

The next few days we spent in a camping ground just north of Barcelona, near a town called Mataro. From there we took the train into Barcelona for two days. In Barcelona we bought a two-day tourist bus pass, which was a great way to see the city and learn about all the sights. We were able to hop on and off the bus as many times as we wanted. On the first day, a slightly rainy day unfortunately, we did the Southern route that took us to the Olympic stadium and the harbour. And on the second day, a nice and sunny day, we did the Northern route that took us to a couple of creative houses, the impressive Sagrada Familia and the colourful Park Güell - all designed by Gaudi.

The Sagrada Familia from the outside...

...and from the inside

Inside Park Güell - it was hard to get this photo without anyone posing in it.

More from Park Güell - again very hard to not get anyone in the ph

A very very unique looking building... anyone else get cravings for gherkins???

The first part of our drive to Andorra was not very exciting. Last night, however, we stayed in a really cool spot by a gorge here in the pyrenees and the drive today was really spectacular as well. After we've done some duty-free shopping tomorrow, we will try to experience the pyrenees from a hiker's perspective.

Provence etc

Well this update is a little slow as usual. We have travelled around a fair bit since the last entry. 

After reluctantly leaving Annecy, we went to a camping ground in Jonquieres near Orange. While there, we thought Yana was going to make the jump and finally start walking because she took a few shuffling steps, but since then she has seemed rather disinclined to try it again. However she still loves pushing the pram around, and is getting more skilled at getting unstuck

 when she bumps into something. We are a little worried that she might just skip walking and just start driving everywhere. Fortunately she can't reach both the pedals and the steering wheel yet.

One interesting thing we have seen a lot in Provence, is vineyards where the vines are not tied to wires, but left to grow like little trees. We can assure you that they taste the same though (its not stealing when you're doing scientific experiments (e.g. do they taste good)).

Next we went to Carpentras to go to a farmers market (very friendly little town), and managed to take a wrong turn which took us down a maze of tiny little streets that we were seriously worried about needing to back out of with our campervan... fortunately we managed to find our way back out without knocking any bits off the campervan!

Next we went to Avignon, which while ok, was quite shady (lots of strange homeless people) and also a little boring - apart from the Pont d'Avignon (Avignon Bridge, which cost €4.50 just to walk onto! - we didn't bother...) and the Palais des Papes (old Papal palace), there wasn't much else to see - just living from its past.

€4.50 just to walk on half a bridge - the cheek of the french aye...

After Avignon we went to see Pont du Gard, an amazing old Aquaduct built by the romans in about 19BC and still in very good nick. The scale of it is pretty amazing and to think that the bridge was only one small part of the total Aquaduct going through hilly countryside (50 something kms)... We found a nice place to park only a couple of kms from the bridge and therefore managed to get there at about 8am before anybody else, and got some nice piccies.

Pont du Gard - those Romans sure knew how to build!

Big Yana against one of the 'little' arches on the top tier to get an idea of the size.

After Pont du Gard we went to Arles, where van Gogh spent quite a bit of time (including several hundred paintings and chopping off his ear).
Missing ear and all...

There happened to be a festival on with bull fighting (and running) etc and with its old roman amphitheatre etc it was a really nice place. We also got to experience the famous Mistral wind wistling down the Rhone valley - rocked us to sleep in the campervan ;-)

We are now on the Mediterranean coast with nice summery conditions. On Sunday we stopped off near Montpellier on a nice beach where I (and Yana) got to swim in the Mediterranean sea for the first time (I only dipped my toes in when we were in Rome a few years ago). We are planning on staying on various beaches along the coast as long as the weather holds out (is due to rain on Thursday) and then heading towards Spain/Pyrenees mountains.

As this was written on Monday and it is now Friday, it is a little out of date - we have now reached Spain - a little earlier than expected due to the weather packing it in on Wednesday instead... but that will all have to wait until the next post ;)

Lac d'Annecy

We have moved on to France now and we have spent four very nice days in the area around Lac d'Annecy (Lake Annecy). Annecy itself is a beautiful little town with canals, narrow alleyways, bridges with flowers on them, lots of playgrounds and a park right by the lake. An amazing two-way cycle 'road' runs along the entire western shore of the lake (and carries on south for another 10kms or so) and there are mountains with sheer rock faces towering over the eastern shore. There are also giant meringues to be sampled. It's a very nice area.

The first night we spent on a carpark together with lots of other campervans, despite a sign saying no camping. We couldn't quite understand the text of the sign, but were pretty sure camping wasn't allowed given the campervan picture with a cross through it. However, we thought that the town must tolerate campervans, otherwise there wouldn't be 15 or so campervans parked there. The carpark was right by the lake. In the morning I went for a run along the lake. For the rest of the day Lindsay went for a bike ride, while Yana and I explored the centre of the town. We did some sightseeing and went to two different playgounds. Afterwards we relaxed in the park.

The next couple of nights we spent in a legitimate parking spot, which wasn't as close to the lake though. Because the second day was rainy, we went out for lunch and then spent the rest of the day in an indoor swimming pool. Yana loved playing around in the water and Lindsay and I took turns swimming lengths. Lindsay had to buy some speedos from a vending machine, because shorts weren't allowed.

On the Sunday we went for a walk on the eastern side of the lake. We followed the markers to a mountain, but even though we were climbing up at a continuous rate, we were struggling to get a view. We knew there was an amazing view, but it was covered by all the trees. Finally we found a spot, from which we could see down to the lake. we didn't make it to the top of the mountain though, as we had no idea how long it would have taken us.

Because we liked Annecy so much, we decided to spend another day there, exploring the town centre and relaxing by the lake. We biked into town along the lake from where we were staying and then spent the day in town. It was beautiful and sunny, and we were almost tempted to stay on for another day.

Now we are on our way to the Provence, eager to find out what kinds of places we will discover here.

Beautiful Switzerland

So after a long pause, I check our blog again to see that Yana has cheekily hacked my
password and added herself as an admin on the blog... That earned her a month computer ban.

In other news, we are now (and have been for the last 4 days) by Lake Geneva in Switzerland where we have found a rather pleasant campingground with a beach nearby and the neccesities of modern living - power and internet access ;-)Kerstin has been using this to make some serious progress on her Information Design assignment while Lindsay and Yana have been making sure nobody causes any problems on the beach.














Before coming here, we spent our time in the following way:

We visited our friends Julian and Jana in Freiburg and organised a survey that was testing the correlation between price and taste of 10 different pinot noir wines. Julian invited some work mates of his and we all sampled the wines (without knowing which was being tasted)that ranged from €1,50 to €16. There was a slightly positive correlation between taste and price, but some people had pretty random results. Most of us realised that the wines started tasting better, the more we had.

We did several walks in the Berner Oberland (or Jungfrau) region of Switzerland, making use of the incredibly nice, sunny weather. We stayed a couple of nights in Interlaken and a couple of nights in a small place in the Lauterbrunnen valley, called Stechelberg. Our walks took us from Stechelberg to Lauterbrunnen, from Stechelberg to Gimmelwald and Mürren, and from Grindelwald up the hill to no particular destination. Yana was such a great companion, either sleeping or being a quiet little angel in the backpack. We did make her do her share too though: she had to crawl parts of the way, especially up steps, which she loves to do (crawl, because she still can't be bothered walking).



































On our way to lake Geneva we found two less touristy, but still really nice places: Saanen and Leysin. In Saanen we stopped off for a day to do a bike-ride to the neighbouring town of Gstaad and in Leysin we spent two nights on the carpark of an sports complex. From Leysin we did a walk up to a mountain called Berneuse and took the cable car down. It was quite a long way, rather steep and hot, but we had amazing views and Yana behaved really well again.