The Richards Family

On Friday morning we headed into Nice and Nate’s comment later was, ‘ Nice (niece) is Nice ’ We drove into the city in the morning along the Boulevard des Anglais, found a parking spot in a garage, and then wandered about the old town, had lunch in an italian restaurant (the kids had a need for pizza and pasta), looked at the beaches and then headed back to our villa. It was a fun morning and we lounged about the pool for the afternoon as it was pretty toasty out. We spent our last night at the villa cooking by the barbeque, hanging around the pool, and watching the resident toad hop past us to the pond. In the morning we packed up and then began the drive from the Riviera, along the coast to the southwest corner of France. What was suppose to take 5 hours, turned into 7 plus, as it was the French holiday long weekend (bastille day is celebrated today), kind of like traveling on fourth of July. There were many ‘bouchons’ (traffic jams) and just a lot of traffic on the road. We managed to laugh alot, listen to ‘BBC Riviera radio’ and overall have not too bad a time . We arrived at Perpignan in the early evening, returned the car to Europcar and then hopped on a train to the town of Collioure. Oh, at this point there were these huge thundershowers, lightning and it was pouring down rain. When we got off the train in Collioure we had a 10 minute walk downhill to our hotel. It was pouring and I wish now that I had taken a video of us running down the bumpy roadside with puddles everywhere and us laughing as we rolled our suitcases as fast as we could down to the hotel. We passed by people in cafes and restaurants who just smiled at us and we eventually arrived, dripping, at our hotel. I fell in love with the town of Collioure The next morning dawned overcast, but not raining and Dave and I wandered through town to the bay and had coffee and croissants by the sea and read the paper. The kids slept in and we woke them later, bringing them back croissants, beignets and a baguette. The weekly market was happening right outside of our hotel so Nate and Becca picked up some cheese and munched on that with their baguette as we wandered about through the town. There are alot of artists in Collioure and we found one that we particularly liked and bought a painting We had some lunch by the sea and then walked up to the train station where we boarded the train for Spain. We had a short ride, then a stop in Portbou, waited for a bit and then hopped on the train to Barcelona. We arrived in Barcelona at the main train station last night, got on the metro to Las Ramblas, then carried our suitcases up to the street where we met up with the fellow who let us into our apartment. We have a two bedrooom apartment on Las Ramblas, with a Burger King just across the street It was about 8:30 by the time we got settled in and the the kids were kind of tuckered out and hungry so I picked them up burgers and fries and they ate in the apartment. Dinner time in Barcelona is about 10 pm, so Dave and I went out later for dinner and a date. We wandered down from our place, into the old town and found a restaurant that we went to four years ago when we were in Barcelona. It was delicious. We had a great dinner. Today we are going to wander about, go and look at some shops, wander about some more…..