I don't have any. I am a recent convert to wine and have the palate of a 16 year old. I love fizzy wine, sweet fizzy wine to be exact. Happily (OK esctacially!) Lidl had just the wine that I love at the princely sum of 1.09e That is less than 2USD. So we bought a few bottles to bring home..48 bottles to be exact, they are all wrapped up and distributed in every little hidey hole and corner of the van. Plus a few bottles of odd liquers that I bought along the way, a bottle of lychee and a bottle of pink grapefruit liquer..

anyone else feel a cocktail night coming on?

So ferry at sparrows fart this morning and we are now in Bethnal Green, I went back to my little indian ladies to get my fabulous eyebrows touched up and I am off out with a good friend tonight for a bethnal green pubcrawl and soem e
 
We made better time that I expected and so took a quick side trip into belguim. I never knew that they have gorgeous beaches in Belguim!...miles of sand. It was about 20 degrees and typical of us northern europeans, the beach was full, there were people swimming, if it had been italy, they would all have been huddled over a hot coffee as it would have been far to cold to be on the beach..

of course we had frites and mayonaise and then back to France. It is an interesting thing, I was tired, not just of driving, but this kind of holiday, while great, is a lot more tiring overall than the same time in one location. You always have to figure out where you are going to stay, what you are going to eat (and since we are on a strict budget, we mostly cooked..so food has to be bought daily..no fridge!) and get the timing right. All of that is good as there is the novelty factor, but it takes it out of you. So when you go into a new country, it takes work to figure out the system, little things like where can you park, do you have to pay, interpreting the parking meters (V complicated in belguim!) etc etc...so being a little travel weary, it was easier to scuttle back to france where we had it all figured out, than start again with a new country at the tail end of our holiday. In any c
 
Most of the rest of the trip was driving, we stopped into Lourdes..as a card carrying 'nothing to do with organised religion' person, it was an interesting trip, the faith and hope of the hundreds of invalids and volunteers would move anyone. But it was still a heavy footed patriarchial stamp all over what was and is a locus of the divine feminine...

but this blog isn't for me to bore you with my religious prejudices, rather to witter on about lovely showers..

lovely showers have been in short supply since lourdes..we mostly stayed in nice rest spots and picnic areas, washing yourself in the basin of a public toilet..is a challenge..and can be done!...

we drove north, stopped in some pretty spots, the most memorable being close to Amiens cathedral yesterday. We were there fairly early and since it is august all of the cities of france empty, so it was very quiet. I didn't know that like chartres, Amiens also has a labryinth in the floor of the church, unlike Chartres, the chairs were all pulled back and it was unbusy enough so that I could walk it. It is a beait
 
So I finally dragged our asses from the hammocks and we set off to see the Dali exhibition (and I am having deja vu..was sure I blogged about this!)

Spain was a bit of a disappointment, I am aware that I am generalising the whole country based on a tiny corner, We entered into spain on the road from perpignan, it was shopping centre after shopping center, trucks everywhere and prostitutes standing on all of the side roads, in the middle of the day in the baking sun. My heart went out to them, poor women, they were lucky if they had a chair to sit on, mostly they were just standing, waiting for some random stranger to happen past.

The area we drove through was also very ugly, bad buildings, and dusty and just not nice.

We went first to the teatro dali in figures ( I am sure that I am spelling that wrongly) It was a big museum, with plaster casts of turds stuck all over the outside. They were strange three cornered turds, which made us worry about Dalis anatomy. There were some interesting pieces in the museum, but I was a little disappointed that most of the big pieces, the iconic ones, are in other galleries around the world. I only recognised about 4 pictures from reproductions of his work. Personally the art philistine that I am, I think he became "Dali" in the end, he seemed to just be surrealist, to be Dali..but like I said, what do I know...from there we went to a little fishing village on the coast (duh!)...because we had booked into see Dali's house the next morning.

cadaques, was pretty, sorta reconciled me to Spain as it was pretty, but overrun with tourists..I know I can't complain about that since i am one. But after such a long trip you do get tired of the worldwide attitude to tourists..'leave your wallet at the door, and we will give you shit food and worse service'..we tried a couple of tapas bars...walked around the harbour and back to the most expensive campsite of the trip..can you tell I was not loving Spain!

Next morning a short drive to Dali's house, this was a tiny tiny village, and since the numbers to the house are very limited, there were no coach parties and less tourists. The house was lovely, of course lots of oddities inside, but it was interesting and very pretty..and less consciously surrealist. Once we had that done, we hightailed it back to france as fast as we could go!...

i did wonder though what the locals made of him, while he was busy acquiring the few fishermans cottages that were eventally linked together to be his house. Did they rub their hands with glee, knowing he could afford to pay over the odds for the next house, or feel resentful that this wierdo was buying