Going home again

And then it was time to go home again. One last lovely drive through France.

Every single day we took at least one wrong turn somewhere. I can't remember the last time I've seen so many roundabouts.

A9, here we come!

A few last shots from the car.

(click to enlarge)

At one of our stops I spotted this Mustang Shelby. Very new model and very nice looking! That's a lot of horsepower on wheels...

Snip snap

(Click to enlarge)
One of my favourite photos of this holiday, shot from the car. I love the colours.

The clouds / The Mustang

I took this from the car because of the little church at the end of the street but the whole picture turned out quite nice I think.

In a parking at Mc Donalds I spoted this Mustang. Very nice of course but nothing special.

The monster truck

We spotted this poster and I wanted to go with Simone's boy. Unfortunately when the show was on it rained and we stayed home. Would've been fun.

We did get to take this piccie though. Awesome piccie I think :-)

That little supercar on the left drove us all the way there and back to Amsterdam.

Visiting the town of Collioure

We wanted to do something but not to far way today. neighbours told us about a fortress of some kind and pointed us at a small town. Without any other information we went there and had a looksy. Big surprise!

From the carpark we stumbled upon old fortifications, very nice site!

Obviously this was all being restored still.

There was also a "secret" way in.

The nazi's also left their marks here...

After a bit of a walk we drove in to the little town itself. We were told it had nice little streets. But first things first! A nice cold drink and lunch :-)

The town of Collioure is really beautiful and not very crowded.

It's a lovely little village.

Nice little shops and bars.

Nice beaches too!

The views were really nice at times. Like the view in the above picture, of me and Simone ;-)

Then we discovered there was a castle that we could see. For only 10 euro we could all go in so we did!

There was another castle at the top of the next hill.

On the hill slope there was an old wind mill.

And more beach on the other side of the castle.

Private Dobbelaar.

Uhm...

The town's little harbour.

This was a great little visit and the last little trip of our holiday. It's time to start thinking of packing up almost :-(

Reading

This is the view across the street. Currently there is a Dutch family there.

I was checking out Simone's reading material ;-)

The pools

After yesterday's adventures in Spain we relaxed at the pool today. This really means hanging around for maybe 4 hours tops. I usually had two swims, tanned a bit and read my book in the shade.

Nice pools.

Quick visit to Barcelona

We drove to Spain today! Exciting! I've never been to Spain before :-)

Initially we wanted to visit Barcelona but last night decided it would be too far to drive still and planned a trip to Figueres instead. However, driving went smooth and it was all nice and quiet in the back of the car so we asked the kids if they'd rather visit barcelona, even if that was another 45-60 minutes driving. They said yes! ;-)

So I bought us a city map and Simone drove us in to the heart of the city (not easy!) where we found a parking garage right next to the one thing I really wanted to see!

These people have a free view on it every single day!

The Sagrada Familia!

A photo from further away doesn't do much justice to the design of this incredible building by Antoni Gaudi. The level of detail is incredible.

View from the park next to it.

We wanted to walk in to town but it was incredibly warm so we went back to the car instead and drove a bit further in town where we continued on foot.

I believe this is another "Gaudi house" seen from Plaça de Catalunya. Lovely big square.

Lots of people.

Lots of bubbles :-)

Then we got hungry and managed (after waiting 10 minutes) to get a table outside of the Hard Rock Cafe. Very nice food here and they speak English!

For dessert we wanted a McFlurry and went to the McDonalds. I think it was the only one in town because it was insanely busy...

After this we went to our car again and Simone skillfully drove us out of town back on our way to France.