Adios Espana, Allo Franca (no parlez-vous!!!!)

Blanes to Spain to Narbonne, France

Day 24 - Wednesday - July 6 - Blanes to Figueres, Spain
Doug being a crazy guy off his bike trying to get a picture while balanced on the jersey barrier in his bike shoes.

Unloading in hotel lobbies is sometime a challenge. The bikes had to go into a parking structure across the street. Doug locked them to a water pipe on the ceiling......very tricky.

Loading up is always fun too!

Those are the Pyrenees in stretching out before us.

We didn't know they ranked mechanics by their height!

Those Romans really did get around.

We didn't stop but would like to find out about this later.....in  English.

At La Jonquera all the semi trucks took the tollway north so our road got much quieter.

Almost there and almost over the Pyrenees too. The top of the pass was only 983', pretty short after watching all those Tour de France "top of the Col" finishes the last few years.

Spain really knows how to say goodby.

We thought it must be a really rigorous crossing at the border checkpoint given the line of cars backed up here.

And the machine guns; but they were only looking for bicyclists trying to carry contraband across the border....not.

In reality, the traffic was only snarled by shoppers in Le Perthus, the French town on the other side of the border. The guys in yellow are directing people to parking places! Pedestrians just walked right in front of us without looking several times and we were going uphill. We were very glad to be done with that town.

This was our smell of the day......petunias on the bridge into Le Boulou, a  lovely little town that was much more sane than the border town.

Bryan and Linda are an Irish couple who have been living in this part of France for many years. They would have invited us home for the night but sadly already had guests waiting for them. They gave us some good information to help with our first day in France.

We did get a room with a view at Lac de la Raho.

Day 26 - Friday - July 8
We moved campsites in the dark due to noisy neighbors. In the morning, we found this ant super highway right outside our door.

Perpignan's version on the city bikes. The bike paths had us almost all the way through town in record time and then we took one wrong turn at a big traffic circle. The problem with traffic circles is that they give you so many opportunities to make a mistake. Oh well.

France is looking a lot like Spain.

Raphael, the cafe owner's son, joined us for lunch. Even though he didn't understand any of Doug's French, they were immediate buddies.

He is a very busy 3 year old.

After rolling terrain all morning it was up the hill after lunch........not quite fair on a full stomach.

Yep, and it was a headwind besides.

Narbonne is in sight.