Sean duct taping the car back together
Where else can you find a sign pointing you to a ski area OR the beach? Only outside Leucate!
Here are a couple pictures from the Cite’ de Carcassonne, although postcards do a better job of the entire city, than we can.
The Scalesse's horses (unique to Provence)
31 March 2008: We got the GPS working and headed off to the Barcelona airport with time to spare. So as far as I know right now, hopefully Caitlin got home safely. (I haven’t heard from her yet.) From there, we headed back into town to conquer everything we couldn’t do the day before, with much luck. Though the tapas, sangria and everything else was great, we were pretty ready to leave Spain!
I know I mentioned how windy France was on the Atlantic coast. It was the same on the Mediterranean too! Just as we reached the Spanish-French border, it was so windy, that it blew the trim off between the driver’s window and the windshield halfway off! We had to pull over and duct tape the part back on. (Thanks Santa…for the duct tape for Christmas!) Going this way, we actually did experience a “border crossing”, but still very uneventful.
We ended up going to a free camperstop in Leucate, right on the water, but really just to eat dinner and spend the night. It still pretty windy! The next morning, we talked to another camper from Germany, who was there exclusively for the windsurfing, apparently like everyone else there.
We headed up to the Cite’ de Carcassonne, noted in one of our books as the most complete and best-preserved walled city in Europe. Some people think too restored, but whatever! Yes, it was a tourist area, and we had to pay 10 Euro/$15 USD for 24 hours worth of camper parking, but still we thought it was beautiful. (Though, I suppose we could have spent the night and experienced the city walls all light up from our camper.) It was like walking into a medieval castle, just as it would have been back in the day. Inside, there were small, twisty, windy roads to walk through, with shops and restaurants. There was another area where you could see the ancient ruins, but we didn’t feel it was worth paying to see. We liked what we saw already. If anyone is if heading toward the Provence area, I’d definitely recommend a visit here. They also have several nice hotels, including a hostel, which you could stay right in the Cite’ if you wanted to.
From there, we proceeded to a camperstop noted as a “farm/winery” in the Provence region that you can spend the night at, which I just discovered as an option for overnight stay in one of the tour books that came with the camper rental. Boy, I would have loved to have known this earlier! There was another winery in Saint Emilion that we could have stayed at! Oh well! Anyway, we were a bit nervous when our GPS lead us to a spot that had no signs for camping. We drove back and forth, re-programming the GPS, hoping it made a mistake and would send us the right way. The only thing we finally saw was a faint sight of a camper off the side of the road, over a non-descript wall. We pulled in, and finally someone came out, who of course only spoke French. At least, it was the right place. The gal hand-signaled for us to go to the maison (house) when we were settled and plugged in, to pay for our night.
Apparently, I was a bit mistaken. We were actually invited into a typical Provencial family home, along with two other campers, for a night of great regional wine, quiche, olives, tapenade; dynamic, yet limited, conversation; and were given a tour of the house and everything! Paul and Valerie Scalesse of Mas du Puits Blanc had 7 children, ranging from age 6 to 33, 3 cats (which Kailani just adored!), we’re not sure how many dogs, 2 white horses (I don’t remember what the breed was, but native and famous for that region), cherry and apricot trees, grape vines and I’m not sure what else we missed. So, if in the area, they offer relais camping-cars et chambers d’hotes (I believe, that’s camping cars and rooms) and are located at: 3215 route de Beaucaire, 30210 Sernhac, France. Phone number (I think) is: 04-66-01-62-17 and 06-17-84-30-05. And, their GPS is E 4 56’ 78.58”, N 43 90’ 66.93”. This night was truly one of the best nights we have had on our trip so far!
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