On the Beach



This house was built by the guy who rented it to us. It's beautiful. It's solar powered so we can't plug in all our phones and computers at once. No hairdryer is allowed.  Beata thinks my hair will dry naturally in 5 minutes but she obviously doesn't know my hair.

Fireplace which we actually need at night

Wood beams everywhere


Beata will grill anything on anything that even looks like a grill. This house has a wood burning grill. Last night for late dinner, we had grilled shrimp, lamb chops, salmon, onions, potatoes and zucchini. Also salad. So a complete meal. She's a master. If I wanted to learn to cook, I would definitely take lessons from her.

Beata at the grill
Today we took a picnic to the beach or rather Beata cooked a Spanish tortilla and packed the leftovers from last night and fed us on the beach. The spot we went to is famous for wind surfing. A few people were out but it wasn't windy enough for a crowd. We did see flamingos but not as many as there are in the middle of the summer . They're white now. I don't understand the life cycle of flamingos so I don't know when they turn pink.

There are observation decks throughout the delta. Some of them, the "hides," have slits for people to photograph birds, especially vultures.  You can pay 120 euro for someone to take you out early in the morning, and throw meat on the ground so you can photograph the vultures. I was wrong that there are 93 bird species here. There are over 300. So far, I've noticed egrets and flamingos. They're big.
It's Beata's birthday so champagne

Picnic lunch


Evening noise consists of nonstop frog croaking in the rice fields and music that plays all night from we don't know where. A bar maybe that could be miles away. It's flat here with few buildings to block sound.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Laundry Adventure

Image
We saw all of Arles, but let's get to the important thing. Laundry at the Speed Queen. Once again, for all I know we have this kind of laundromat in the US but I haven't walked into one in a while. Nicole always over packs so she had lots of dirty clothes but she had sand in her suitcase from the delta and had also spilled sugar in it.  We decided to wash everything whether we're going to wear it again or not. The clothes filled the bigger suitcase which Nicole rolled to Speed Queen.  It didn't look odd because most rentals are by the river and we see people all day rolling suitcases to walk to their airbnbs. The coolest thing about these washers is they add detergent and softener automatically. No buying it or deciding how much detergent or softener to put in. Or, more importantly, what to buy. I'm convinced I once washed clothes in softener only. Laundry words are hard to decipher in other languages.  The large washers cost 8 euros, the small cost...
Read more

Perpignan to Carcassonne

Image
Here we are on Le Petit Train de Perpignan. I thought it was for children but the earliest train was full of school children while ours was adult tourists. Mostly French. I know that because only nonFrench people were given headphones to plug into the tape player. French blared from speakers in the train. It was difficult to take pictures because you're riding on narrow streets and pedestrian sidewalks with buildings in both sides. Dali was here. He loved Perpignan  There is only one section of the walled city left. The rest was torn down in 1906 to expand the city. They saved the part that had houses built into the walls. Even though there are 10 tour trains a day, many people waved and yelled Hola or Bonjour as we went by. Many people in this region speak both Catalan and French. The children's choices for languages on the train were only those two. There's a lot of construction in the old town. I'm guessing they're trying to attract touris...
Read more

Making our way back

Image
We are slowly driving back to Perpignan to return the car and fly home from Barcelona.  Because we're taking backroads,  it takes us a long time to get somewhere but the sights are worth it. Some of the drive was along the Mediterranean and part was in farmland and the Camarague.  Lots of buildings advertising local goods which are usually fruits and vegetables.  Fields of grapevines and sunflowers. We stopped for lunch at a seaport called Grau du Roi. It's the only resort town in the area that faces the Mediterranean.  Lots of yachts in the port and restaurants,  most of which open around 7. We found a place that was open and had moules.  In some of the big cities, the wait staff doesn't exactly like us and make no effort to hide their feelings.  Their small town people are great. We stopped at a truck stop for a cup of coffee and everyone was delightful.  One woman walked me to the bathroom instead of telling me where it was. I'm using on...
Read more