We recently returned from a three week jaunt in England, France and Spain. This is a brief summary of that trip.
In London we visited places that we had not been to before: British Portrait Gallery, Greenwich, London’s South Bank, etc. We saw two London plays: “All My Sons” a heavy drama by Arthur Miller and starring David Suchet (Inspector Poirot) and “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” a musical comedy based on one of Australia’s most successful movies. Both were a wonderful in completely different ways. We had great seats and the theatres were sold out. We also had a great apartment in the city from which to base our activities. We cooked three meals there and then ate out at various ethnic restaurants around the neighbourhood: Turkish, East Indian, Italian, and so on. On this trip we found London to be actually affordable and the cost of most things was close to what we normally pay at home.

After London, we flew one of the cheap flights “Easy Jet” to Montpellier, France, where we met up with two friends. While the flight is very cheap, there are no assigned seating, so it is first come first serve and husband and I ended up sitting in different parts of the plane. We stayed a few days at St. Chinian (an hour’s drive west of Montpellier) where our friends had rented a country townhouse. It was a very cozy place with two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a large kitchen, dining room and living room and was located right at the centre of town, a small town with 2,000 residents. They noted
that rental of the place was very reasonable (around $500 CDN per week). Now that is a good price. We actually might go back in the near future and rent a place there as well. We visited the walled town of Carcassonne which was about an hour drive away, ate wonderful French food and drank inexpensive wine.

Next, we all drove to Barcelona stopping at Figueres, Spain for one night to visit Salvador Dali’s museum. If you are into art, but it is one of the great art gallery/museums in Europe, particularly if you like his avant garde work. Some of which is a bit way out. We stayed at a good hotel that night, and discovered that the hotel owner had known Dali who held regular dinner parties in a portion of the hotel's restaurant, and they had kept this special room as if it was planned for one of his special dinners.

We then drove to Barcelona, and although it is a large city, we found the location of the apartment we had rented quite easily. Mind you it was Sunday afternoon and the traffic into the city was quite light. As a city, Barcelona is quite interesting with its residential areas encompassing 5 and 6 storey building and with each street being one way and traffic and pedestrian signals at each intersection. We found crossing streets there very safe compared to crossing a street in Paris, Rome or London for that matter. Our 1,400 sq. ft apartment had an American style design to it. One of our friends likes to cook, so we had 5 dinners there over our 9 day stay. Each meal consisted of local foods bought a markets and stores nearby. To our surprise, we all adjusted well to the Spanish eating times, meaning lunches started at 2-3 p.m. and dinners at 9 or 9:30 p.m. We did have 11 am coffee breaks every day and a 4 p.m. cava break (bottle of Spanish sparkling wine) often followed by drinks and nibbles about 6-7 p.m. The lunches tended to be set meals that included a starter, main course, coffee, water and desert and a bottle of wine. The total cost was about 10 to 12 Euros a person ($12 to $14 CDN), which is quite reasonable, Most of the dinners we ate were tapas, although we had paellas as well. We walked about 20 k or so a day (or at least it seemed that far) and when we couldn't walk any further we rode their subway for about 80 or 90 cents CDN a ride. They have a huge subway system and you needed to watch carefully that you were going the right way, which we found out during a few rides. People are very friendly and helpful, and city was safe, although it is known as the pickpocket capital of the world. We saw a lot of galleries: Miro, Picasso, Gaudi, etc. and visited museums, shops, and a lot of old churches which are common to Mediterranean and Old World cities. We even took a train ride and visited Montserrat which is a spectacular Benedictine monk mountain retreat. We attended a short service given by one of the monks who spoke in about a dozen languages representing the audiences countries of origin. So we got a lot of religious exposure on the trip as well. And, just before we left for home we attended a guitar concert by a well known Spanish Master guitarist at an ornate (Gaudi designed) concert hall that was built at the end of the 19th century - The Palau de la Música Cataluña. Before I end this summary, I should note that Barcelona is located in Cataluña, a region of Spain that for centuries has not wanted to be part of the country and still to this day its people are proud and pursuing their own identities. The official languages in Barcelona and Cataluña are Cataluña, Spanish and English. Very interesting. During Franco’s time, he wanted every region in Spain to fly the Spanish flag. In protest, the communities in Cataluña chose to fly Barcelona’s Braca football team’s flag instead.

That’s a little snippet of the trip.