Yeah, that picture basically summed up the last few days. Everyone here kept saying that I was going to gain 4 kilos in 4 days, and although it wasn't quite that much it might not have been far off.
Tuesday afternoon we left here, Nîmes, and went to Philippe's parents' house in Sainte Marie la Mer, a town close to Perpignan. It is right next to the Mediterranean, and in the summer it explodes to a relatively quiet town of 4,000 to an enormous 50,000! There's sort of two halves of the town - the side that is inhabited year-round and is really the heart of the village, and the other half, which is actually much bigger than half, which is much more resort-style.
Wednesday morning we went to a town on the Spanish border called Le Perthus, where, once you get to a certain point, one side of the main street is France and the other half is Spanish. I got a haircut on the Spanish side for 8 Euros, which was nice with the climbing exchange rate. After looking around the town there for a little while we went to another town, which I don't remember the name of but is close to Figueres. That's where we ate the monsters you see above, brochettes. I got a bruqeta mixta, which is the long skewer with grilled meat and peppers and onions hanging above a plate of fries and two small plates of salads. That along with calamari, bread, sangria, and espresso filled me up rather well for the day! That afternoon we went and looked around Cadaques, a town on the Spanish Costa Brava that hosts a museum to Salvador Dali.
Thursday morning I got some reading done and looked around the town of Sainte Marie a little bit. After lunch four of us went to the French town of Colloiure (difficult name is Catalan, not French). It was incredibly busy, and I can't imagine it in the tourist season. There's also a small training center there for the French version of Navy Seals, so I got to see a couple interesting exercises they were doing. There a took some really good pictures, too, so make sure you check those out on the pictures link. Many artists have painted or sculpted the church tower in Colloiure, it's really beautiful with the colors and the very blue Mediterranean.
This morning I went and checked out the garden that Philippe's parents keep in Sainte Marie. I thought it was quite awesome, as I'm now enjoying their produce. Their garden is amazing, they grow just about everything there, including apples, peaches, lemons, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, watermelon, honeydew, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkins, strawberries, peppers, almonds, and some fruit that I don't remember the name of but is delicious, sweet, and looks like a tomato except it grows on a tree. Plus they have trees at their house for oranges and kumquats, figs, and possibly a couple other things. Anyways, I thought that was wicked...
That's it for now. It's not almost 2 AM here and I've had a long day, so it's time for me to go to sleep. I'm going to Marseille on Sunday for the day, so I might come back with some more stories or pictures. A bientot
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