Jumpy

Time to move on… Rather than deal with trains and planes we decided to use automobiles to move between locations over the next week, flexibility was key to us. In the last few trips that involve drives we had cars that always seemed sightly small so we decided to rent something larger this time and boy did we get it, a Citroën Jumpy. Basically a French mini van (with a clutch) it moves well and is made for the modern world however there are still some ancient streets (and garages) here in Europe. My heart had a few jumps but we managed to survive. Of course the Garmin Nav system does not help, it seems to like to take non standard routes with narrow streets…

One nice thing though was the price of the car rental went (way) down, if you rent a vehicle in Spain and plan to drop it off in another country there is a hefty charge, in our case it doubled the rental cost. We wanted the flexibility so we ok’d the extra cost but when we arrived to pick up the car we were told there was a French originated car available if we wanted and if we took it our drop-off fee would go down about 75%. How could we resist and, frankly I am surprised they decided to ask. Who would turn down the same style vehicle that would cost less because they wanted a certain license plate?

The drive today was from Barcelona to Carcassonne, France with a stop in Figueras (Spain) where Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech (aka Salvador Dalí) had many major life events. There is a museum and theater here dedicated to the towns most famous son. Quite a character, love his eclectic taste.

The Pyrenees Mountains are much smaller than I expected. At least in this part of the continent.

Tonight we are resting in Carcassonne, a fortified city founded by the Visgoths (there is that name again) many, many, many … many years ago. Looks interesting although I was warned it was touristy. We shall see… Nice cool breeze tonight.