It was a cold and foggy start to the day with low cloud all the way to the Spanish border. The railway line crosses a large shallow seawater lake near to Narbonne. The track is only just above the level of the water and looks very impressive seem from the shore. Today it had many flamingos standing in the water.
The train takes almost 4 hours, but an hour of that is spent on the border while the train is changed from the French gauge to the Spanish. While this is happening, passports are checked. Although the border between France and Spain is open according to the Schengen agreement, when one crosses by train, identity cards or passports must be shown, both to the the French authorities and to the Spanish. Each time we have seen people being taken off the train. Crossing by car there is now no border at all. One day, perhaps Europe will join up!
We arrived in Barcelona to sun. It was too early for lunch, so we wandered towards the Park Joan Miro. There was only one sculpture there:
but we spotted some parrots in the palm trees
We found a restaurant with an attractive 'menu del 'dia', a large salad and paella for John and asparagus and pork for Pat.
We needed a walk after that and wandered around for a while.
and into the park next to the railway station.
We are now whizzing through the Spanish countryside at 300km/hour towards Malaga on the AVE high speed train. It has 27 coaches and will split into two south of Madrid, with one going to Seville and ours going to Malaga.
We arrived in Malaga at 9.30 pm and raced into a phone shop to buy a SIM for the iPad just before the shop closed at 10pm. After checking into our hotel, we took a a taxi to the centre of town and ate tapas before wandering the streets which were still busy with people after midnight. Malaga is as attractive as we remember it, cafes and bars around the Placa de la Merect where Picasso was born.
The Cathedral
in the traffic free shopping area with its lovely marble pavements.
Pat and John on tour
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