Hola! Barcelona!

And as previously mentioned in Brad's Not-Quite-Top-Gear entry, we were off to Barcelona in our little Italian number...

What an incredible city! The architecture (Gaudi curved buildings everywhere!), the food (seafood tapas and paella!), the fashion (bold colours and designs!) - it is an amazing, world-class city to visit. We already want to come back.

The warm temperatures (a balmy 16c-18c while we strolled around during the day) reminded us of San Francisco. But the boulevard trees had a more Hawaiian feel to them.

And as we're in Spain now, the fruit tree of choice for the boulevard (versus olives in 'our' town) is oranges.

A walking tour of the architectural sites is easy to follow as it's marked with coloured tiles embedded into the sidewalks. This marker shows the modernism tour route - the tiles were actually designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi himself.

The route takes you past several buildings either built or renovated in the modernism style - including this famous one, the Casa Batlló, renovated in 1906 by Gaudi.

Another famous Gaudi landmark is Park Güell (the name of the developer of the site). It was an unsuccessful high-end housing project that was turned into a municipal park. Here's a shot of us....with the other hundreds of tourists and school children (and souvenir hawkers who hide their illegal wares at a moments notice when the police appear).

And a shot of the most famous piece in this famous park....Brad is already thinking about the next tile project for the house....

Much of our strolling took place on La Rambla - the long pedestrian boulevard on the edge of the Gothic Quarter. The street runs for just over a kilometre, leading up from a giant column topped with a statue of Christopher Columbus. While the streets are lined with permanent stores, the wide centre boulevard is crammed with stalls selling a unique array of merchandise. There are the usual souvenir magnets/baseball hats/fudge....but there were also two (!) pet stalls.

This one was selling turtles, hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits. AND the supplies for each of them.

Really?!?! People buy that sort of thing on the street? But I guess when they're THIS CUTE!!!

But if you don't want to grow a pet, you can always augment your garden. There were several fresh cut flower booths and then two that sold vegetable seeds for the garden....

But we did find some classic Spanish wares for sale. On our first night here, after walking around for a while, we wet our whistles with some Sangria...keg-sized.

Salut!

An Orange in a sea of grapes.

One of our excursions away from Uzès recently found us in the town (small city) of Orange, about 40 or so kilometres away. Since there is such an amazing amount of Roman history throughout this area, we decided to take in the 'Thèâtre Antique d'Orange', or as we would call it, the really cool Roman amphitheater in Orange.

Quick bit of history. This place is unique because it is the only Roman amphitheater in Europe which has retained its backstage wall. Two others exist this way, one in Turkey and one in Syria.

The place is truly awesome. Even better as we were visiting it in November when there were more cats cruising through it than tourists.

With a total seating capacity of about ten thousand, the whole city of Orange, or Arausio as it was known in Roman times, could watch a performance all together. Since this was Rome, admission was always free, but the people of "lower social status" were allowed in the nosebleed section only.

Although "those damn Goths" sacked the city in 412 AD, the back wall of the theatre has survived for more than 2000 years, with the area inside used as both a fortress and later a whole flourishing Dutch town.

Here we are near the top of the seating area. In the 18th Century, when the Dutch prince left to go back home to the Netherlands, King Louis XIV ordered the whole town to be dismantled and the theatre returned to its past glory. What a guy!

This is the last remaining statue that was found within the rubble of the theatre. It and other original artifacts have been returned to their appropriate places on the stage.

Since the early 19th Century, when the seating area was restored, the amphitheater has been in use for its intended purpose: seeing plays performed in the open air. By the way, the acoustics are amazing, just remember to bring a cushion to sit on...

Oh yeah. One of the best aspects of being in the south of France: Look carefully at the outside temperature shown on the dashboard of the car... and the date...nice.

The cars we drove...

Over the course of our nearly six months away from home, we've had the opportunity to 'test-drive' a selection of rental cars.

So this is "Brad's totally biased, not even close to being objective, a VW will win anyways, European Car Comparison"

Note: if you are not in any way interested in cars (not a "petrol head"), you really don't need to read on any further... yes Rene, you can wait for the next post if you want!

We had a few key pieces of criteria each time we rented a car. The first rental needed to be small and fuel efficient (and cheap!) because we were driving it from Bruges, Belgium to Austria and back to Brussels.

One thing to keep in mind: when you select a car rental, it always shows what is generally an unavailable model, replaced by a totally different car. When you go to pick up the car, you can then negotiate for the exact car you want...sometimes...

Rental Car #1. Booked a VW Up! (The exclamation mark is part of the name)
Received: Nissan Micra 4 door. "You've been upgraded!" (actually it's the only car we have left....I'm sure they meant to say).
Yahoo! 3 cylinders of raw, Japanese(?) power. Drove many km's on the German Autobahn and Austrian mountain passes with the pedal to the metal, watching Smart Cars fly by us.

Best attribute: possibly the only Micra in all of Germany (and Austria)
Worst attribute: grannies in their VW Up!s laughed at us.
Funniest moment: roadblock on a Friday night in Austria. My reaction as we pull over: "OMG, do you think the cop will speak any English?"
We pull up, roll down the window and the first thing he excitedly says to us is "Do you speak English?"
Apparently our Belgian license plate made him freak out a bit.... Dutch, Flemish, French... We were on our way in no time!

And here she is... The Micra! (Last place. Like that's a surprise.)

Rental Car#2
Booked a VW Polo 4 door.
Received: Peugeot 308 4 door.
This one came out of left field after our one hour flight was delayed almost 4 hours in South Brussels airport.
We were once again upgraded and this time we were quite impressed. The Peugeot rocked. Tons of power from a 2L diesel, and power-everything: auto wipers, auto headlights, auto dimming rear mirror, awesome stereo, power folding door mirrors.
We drove this car to Italy, picked up John and Megan, drove around Tuscany and then back to France.

Best Attribute: excellent brakes. Tested outside of Milan at 120km/h when a motor home wanted our EXACT spot on the Autostrada...
Worst Attribute: adjusting to up-shifting at 1500rpm.
Funniest Moment: Had a big laugh at the 2 retired Belgian couples ahead of us in the rental car line after landing in Nimes. The one husband who was in charge of the driving rented the French equivalent of our (former) Micra, the Renault Twingo. Picture 4 elderly people in a tiny 4 door, with only 2 of their 4 suitcases fitting in the hatch... And the two of us getting into the exact car they needed, but were too cheap to rent.

Overall placing: second, definitely second! You'll see why soon enough.
Below: the über cool 308.

BTW: our intention had been that we would not really need a car for our time in France as we rented bicycles and there is a really good bus service from our town of Uzès to the nearby cities. However, a trip to IKEA was required at the end of September so off we went to the AutoEurope booking site.

Rental car #3
Booked a Fiat 500
Received a Fiat 500!!!! Yes, Cassie even cheered at the rental counter.
I am perhaps a little biased here, as I really (REALLY) do like the little Fiat. Even in the rental car version with the 69 horsepower 1.2L four cylinder, this car is a scream to drive! All you need to do is keep the revs high when shifting and all 69 of those horses work wonders. Ironically, Cassie's MG has more horsepower than the 500.

Best Attribute: It is as cool to drive as it looks.
Worst Attribute: 2 things: 1. Only had this car for a two day rental. 2. Happily driving around Avignon when a bee stung Cassie in the arm. Dead bee and unhappy wife.
Funniest Moment (sort of): to save money, we try not to pick up a car at an airport or train station if possible, as those locations charge about a €30 fee on top of the rental. In Avignon, the car rental offices are in the suburbs, which was no big deal as we chose to just walk there (and back). As we were dropping off the Fiat, another couple were picking their car up. Joe and his wife, it so happens, own a house in Union Bay! So we talk about Vancouver Island, blah blah blah, and Joe offers us a ride back into the centre of Avignon. We hop in the car and Joe starts driving... without too much thought about how to actually get downtown. After witnessing some tense moments between Joe and his wife, and a few close calls, we were quite happy to be getting out of the car. Nice couple. Hope they survived.

Overall Placing: Tied for first.
The Fiat 500. Just like home. Made in Poland.

Clayton is arriving...
Rental car #4
Ordered: Opel Astra sportwagen. (Guaranteed to have this EXACT model to rent. Paid extra from Hertz. Available only at the train station.)
Received: Option 1: Chevy Cruze 4 door sedan. What? Are you joking? We need to fit 3 people and 2 bikes in the car! Option 2: Renault Clio sort of station wagon. Don't you have an Astra? No? But it says here... 30 minutes later...
Oh, look, we can offer you a Ford Focus Wagon that is just like an Astra... Yes, we'll take it!
As advertised, the Focus did fit all of our needs, although it wasn't as powerful as the Peugeot nor as roomy. We did get lucky finding free parking near our apartment, although a guy in an old Toyota truck scraped our bumper while he was trying to parallel park behind us, while we were sitting in the car... I blame myself. He didn't seem too concerned.

Best Attribute: both bikes fit inside.
Worst Attribute: Ford.Focus.Wagon.
Funniest moment: see renting the car, above.
Happiest Moment: there already had been a scrape on the bumper, so we weren't too worried about Toyota truck guy.

Overall rating: 3rd place. What we needed was the Peugeot 308 wagon!
Here's the Focus. It looks pretty good from the front.

Our last few weeks have arrived and we decided that we would do a few road trips, so we've rented one last car for three weeks.

One more time on the websites.
Looking for the best deal available.
Once again, we don't really need anything but a small car.
Just enough room for us and our luggage when we catch the train to Paris.

Et voila! I find an anonymous discount code for Europcar (it was really hard, typing "discount code for Europcar" into Google) and it worked! Yeah, it took me 5 months to figure that one out.
...although it almost seemed to be too good to be true. 21 days, $350 CDN. All in: $17 per day!
Apparently some sort of "Ex-pat" discount. Who cares, it worked.

So... Car rental #5
Ordered: Fiat 500
Received: Fiat 500. Didn't even need to beg. Girl at rental counter surprised by rate. Reminded me of the IKEA commercial "start the car!" Literally. Start the car!

And off we went to Barcelona...
What more can I say. We drove the round trip of about a thousand kilometres quite comfortably, most of the time cruising at 130km/h on the toll highways and once again I was impressed. For such a short car, it really handled well. I also reminded Cassie that the one I want is the Abarth version (look it up, Rene, if you're still reading) which has almost 100 more horsepower than our rental!

Best Attribute: unlike the other Fiat 500, this one has an iPhone/iPod connector, which allowed us to hear our GPS through the radio. And charged it too.
Worst Attribute: this one had a white leather steering wheel.
Funniest moment: As Cassie went to pay for gas, I quickly hid the Fiat beside a very purple Porsche Cayenne. Cassie not amused. I still am laughing about the guy who would order a purple Porsche...

Overall Rating: First place again!
And here is the winner, in dark grey this time.

(And I still have yet to drive a VW product in Europe)

Technically that's not true. In England, we used a VW Golf as part of our house exchange. It was a very nice car, but driving on the other side of the road took up all my attention and I totally forget what the car was like to drive.

We drove the Grand Canyon... of France: Les Gorges du Verdon

So there we were, sitting in the Marseille Starbucks on a state holiday (All Saints Day) at 9am, wondering what we would do for the remainder of the day... "Ever heard of the Grand Canyon of France?" asks Brad.

Since Marseille wasn't looking too 'open' today, we finished our coffee, paid for our parking and hit the road!

After about an hour of toll-highway driving, we entered the eastern boundaries of the canyon, driving on what became an amazing, twisty two lane road. It seemed like we almost had the road all to ourselves... which is good because it is damn narrow when even two small cars are passing.
Here's Cassie at the first lookout as we entered into the actual Gorges du Verdon. Translation: canyon of the green river.

After oohing and ahhing at the lookout we travelled a bit further to see and drive over the pont du Chaulière which is 600 feet above the river below. According to Wikipedia (and we know and trust it for its truth) people bungy jump from the centre of the span. We didn't see anyone jumping on this day.

Amongst tunnels carved into the mountainside, we were able to stop and take a closer look. It was also a great time to take a photo of our rental car in "a really exotic location". I think it turned out really well. Go iPhone photography!

Photos do not do justice to actually being here, but hopefully this one gives an idea of what an incredible sight the canyon actually is...

If you look carefully at the upper left hand corner, you can make out the lake in the distance. This is actually the largest man-made reservoir in France, called Lac Sainte Croix.

Finally, as we drove the length of the gorge, we realized that there is another road which is cut out of the other side of the canyon, leading to farms and small villages. In this photo, you can just make out the line of the road cut into the mountainside.

Overall, it was a fabulous drive home from Marseille on a really warm and beautiful November day.

What we do in Uzès

Thought it might be nice to get out of the grocery and candy stores and show a couple of shots of life in Uzès.

It's a very pretty, medieval town, full of winding stone streets, wrought-iron clad balconies and olive tree lined boulevards. The street pictured below is the one typically used on tourist brochures - and it is very, very quaint. The street winds up the hill at such an angle that steps are built into the centre, darker stone part.

And here is one of the many olive trees dotting the town.

And each of them is loaded with olives.

Most of our days will find us at one of the numerous cafes around town, enjoying a coffee. Brad has a simple 'cafe' - essentially an espresso. Cassie opts for a noisette (same small espresso with a touch of cream) or a creme cafe (a giant splash of cream with the coffee). Sometimes you get a little thin biscuit with it, depending on which cafe you're at.

Typical Monday....

We're slowly getting the hang of 'having coffee' here. If the cafe serves food and you only want coffee, you don't sit at a table set with placemats and cutlery. Cafes usually have some set and some not. You don't need to wait to be seated, just sit down and someone will appear to take your order. When the drinks arrive, so does the bill - which you can choose to pay immediately. After that, you're free to sit there as long as you want.

Typical Tuesday.....with Clayton visiting...

Typical Thursday...

Heyyyyy, wait a minute!

Ok cheating here. We dropped Clayton off in Marseille for his flight out of France, and we stopped in the city for a bit o' home. Starbucks has not infiltrated into France yet, really. There are a load of them in Paris, but outside of the City of Lights, the way the French have coffee and the way Starbucks needs to do business are very different.

The French like to sit and drink their coffee and relax for a while. But Starbucks needs a good percentage of their clients to take that Grande Latte and leave with it. We've read that the profit margins for French Starbucks are low (or non-existent) due to the required rental of large stores with adequate seating (and the established, traditional cafe culture in the country). Should be interesting to see what the green mermaid can pull off.

We did enjoy our stop at the downtown Marseille store...with the next closest one about 300kms away.

The name is Bear...Gummie Bear.

And yet another blog about food shopping.....but this time, only for the sweets.

The town of Uzès is home to one of the Haribo factories. Hari-who, you say? Haribo, a German candy company and creator of the gummie bear - those little guys date back to 1922! If you bike by the factory (which we have) you can smell the sugar in the air. Not only is the factory located here, there is an attached Musée de Bonbon (Museum of Candy!). Athough we knew our cultural experiences would suffer, we skipped the museum and headed directly to the boutique (aka, the big candy store).

You are welcomed to the site by the Haribo bear, so of course we had to stop for a picture.

Brad opted to stand with his favourite candy.....Mr. Licorice

And we were quite serious about this being essentially a grocery store selling only candy. The entire store is bubblegum pink and there are four cashiers to check your purchases through at the end.

Once inside it's a cornucopia of sugary snacks and treats. As we mentioned before, these guys invented the gummy bear, so there's no shortage of them here. Including ones in size XL. I'm sure this would see someone through an entire sitting of The Hobbit.

Buying in bulk here is the obvious draw for many. You name the candy, it comes in a 5kg package. Seriously.....

We opted to get the regular sized bags of candy and not finance our respective dentists' boat purchases.

Sweet.

Literally.

We're not in Safeway any more Toto

Another shopping post....but no quaint stalls or artisan honey tastings here : this is conventional store shopping.

Welcome to the InterMarché. Think Le Thrifty Foods.

Just outside of downtown Uzès (a short 15min bike ride) is the new'ish InterMarché. As is the case in North America, it's grouped with complementary stores - so there's also a pharmacy and a Bricomart (a.k.a. Le Home Hardware).

It's always interesting seeing what other countries have in their grocery stores (even going to the US is fun - wine! fun cereals! Payday chocolate bars!). France is no different (and neither were Germany, Austria, Luxemburg or Italy, we just decided to wait until France to blog about it).

The biggest thing we've had to get over is picking up an item and turning the label around looking for the English. Ahhh, such is the reflex of Western Canadians eh?

The tinned fish aisle is extensive. And not just for types of fish in cans. The photo we took below is just the selection for sardines!

And equally as impressive as the sardine stack selection is the sensational sweetened cereal sampling (nice alliteration eh?). And not specifically sugared kids cereal (well, yes on the kid part) but the sweetness is specifically chocolate. And all types - milk, dark, filled, covered...endless ways to turn your morning milk a lovely shade of cocoa.

And speaking of milk (sans cereal here) - here's a shot below of the milk aisle.

Yes, no refrigerator here - the majority of the milk selection is shelf-stable. Even some of the plastic bottles in the cooler section have 'best-before' dates five to six weeks in the future.

But back to chocolate. Hazelnut and chocolate to be exact. Nutella and any reasonable facsimile of is in plentiful supply here in France. How popular? It's like our peanut butter - a giant selection.

Need an example?
- top shelf, small light-blue lid, that's the peanut butter (skippy, smooth, to be exact). The rest of the display is for chocolate-hazelnut spreads.

And what has now become a tradition with us, a quick snap of an unusual (well, for us) potato chip flavour. This time - smoked ham:

But if all the dizzying array of foreign foods is making your shopping head spin - there is a section to bring a little bit of home and comfort to the expats.

The British food aisle:

But waaaaaaait.......this ain't no Brit product!

I wonder if someone is writing a blog about Thrifty Foods and the fact we keep our eggs in the cooler (did I mention their eggs are on the shelf?)....or that our milk dies in ten days....or a household would actual buy and use 1kg of peanut butter...