The road to Barcelona

Lew suggested we get up early since we had a long 6 hour drive over the pyreneese to get to Barcelona. I woke up at 7am so I had time to pack up and FaceTime my mum. Lew finally dragged himself up at 9am which meant I could pack everything up whilst he ate breakfast. We left at 10am and I drove through thick fog with only 50m visibility until carcassone. We couldn't see this fortified town that we were supposed to be visiting and we parked up so Lew could Google where we were supposed to be. Turns out we were in the new Carcassone and the fortified township was a little further away. We got a view of it as we drove closer and it certainly looked impressive perched on the hill with its high walls around it. Parking up we joined the rest of the crowd walking towards the entrance way. We have noticed at this time of year the crowd has a significant present of grey hair and they spend more of their time looking down at the ground so they don't trip over instead of looking at the sights. It is rather cool to see older people out enjoying life still. Walking down the outside of the wall was the most impressive view with its two story high fascade. It would seem a lot more realistic if there wasn't a city spanning out beneath it since back in time it would have been just been forest.

Of course since it is a large tourist attraction it has become a bit of a tourist trap with tonnes of places to eat and souvenir shops. We never enjoy it quite so much when places become like this. We decided not to pay the €9 ($14.80 NZD) it cost to walk around the top of the town wall and instead see it from the ground. It does probably look a lot better from the outside but we checked the drone laws and it was a no fly zone all over Carcassone. Sorry team no aerial shots from mr zoomy (our drones name) today. We had planned that we only had until midday since it was going to be about a 6 hour drive to Barcelona. It isn't usually that long if you take the Autoroutes but we were wanting to drive the Pyrenees avoiding tolls and checking out some of the potential Tour de France routes. Leaving the carpark I was hoping we could pull over somewhere soon for lunch as I was driving but I was getting a tad hungry. Google maps wouldn't update for us as the reception wasn't very good and Lew got rather frustrated, lucky mine seemed to work and we were able to navigate out of the city. I took the first shift of driving and thankfully the roads wernt as narrow as some of the others we have been on. We could tell when we started getting into the Pyrenees as the roads were small and windy. It was thick forest with small collections of houses next to the river side that seemed to be all boarded up with shutters. I can't imagine anyone living here in the winter anyways! We pulled over in a carpark by the river to eat our cold leftover spaghetti bolognese. Lew is never a fan of cold left overs but I was just pleased not to be eating a plain baguette for once. We swapped so Lew could do some driving as it was starting to get very windy and I'm still having slight issues with car placement on the road! I tend to be more in the ditch on the right hand side than the actual road. The car has a system that tells you when your going over a line so we put that on which catches me every now and again "beep beep". It is starting to feel a bit more natural now. We continued on the D116 road that we had been taking for ages and once we got wifi back I went to swap the maps onto lews phone which was now behaving. I said to him that we are going surprisingly close to the coast and near Perpignan which was in the direction we wernt planning on going. We wanted to go down the centre, close to Andorra and enter Spain that way. Pulling the car over we realised back when we pulled out of the carpark we ate lunch in we must have taken the wrong road missing the final instructions. Luckily it was only 10 minutes back in the same direction to get onto the right road and we were off.

This part of the road started with a very narrow section of road carved out of a cliff. We got a bit of a fright when a sheep truck came around the corner with its hazards on taking up both sides of the road. We certainly wouldn't want a car bigger than what we have or we would have some issues navigating these roads! It was so beautiful with just a car/truck sized hole carved out of the rock still hanging there. We drove through soem absolutely stunning areas with trees in all shade of red, yellow, orange and green. We had to pull over at one point to take a picture as it was that unreal, Iv certainly never seen trees that vibrant in colour. 

Since we were in the middle of nowhere and we hadn't seen many if any cars I decided to pee next to the car with the doors open to provide a slight shield! It was at that moment that three motorbikes and two cars came fast and since the car doors don't exactly go to the ground I had to balance my height so they couldn't see anything whilst we were both laughing at my terrible timing. Still got the job done though and we carried on up the road. We passed quite a few cute ski towns mainly deserted at this time of year but you can see how lively they might be with a bit of snow around. The ski fields were right up behind them also. Coming into the largest ski town called Bourg-Madame the views of the vast valley surrounded by mountains were pleasant and luckily we had set the GoPro up outside my window. We didn't trust the attachment fully so we used a hair-tie around it and pulled back through the window to make sure it stayed there. The route we wanted to take was blocked off by French policemen and we had to take a detour. We were so confused and then Lew realised that we had made it to the Spanish border. We had no idea why it was closed but was another way to cross it a little further down which I directed Lew to. But this was also blocked off by the Gendarmerie "Policemen". This time we stopped to talk to them and they said the border was closed but his English wasn't so great so we didn't get a reason why. He told us to follow the guy in front of us and they let us through. Super confused by this stage as we pulled up behind a big line of trucks (maybe 2km backed up). The man we were supposed to be following then pulls up the left hand side passing the trucks. Since we had been told by the police that we had to follow him we did! He then turns right into a small road made of dirt which was initially ok for our wee car but fast becomes more like a bit rutted our 4x4 track. At this point we wernt sure whether we should continue as we had no idea what the clearance of the car was underneath. I was going to get out and check but Lew was determined to just keep going through it and he managed it really well not bottoming the car at all. We were surprised our little Citroën handled the large pot holes well and we just hope our tyres arnt out of round because of them! We came out into the suburbs with the Spanish flag flying outside the houses. Now we were just super worried since we had got to Spain and hadn't passed through any border control!!! Lew starts going on about how he would be ok but because I'm not EU we might be stopped at the border on the way out!! Lew suggested we turn back around and try and find the border and we could explain the police told us to follow this guy who went through some back road into Spain. I said don't bother and begin google searching the France/Spanish border and whether anyone else had the same potential issue. We tried a couple of different ways to get through the village we ended up in as the guy we were following we had lost back when we got stuck trying to get past another truck on the tiny potholed road. We saw the same guy speed up the road in the opposite direction and guess perhaps they had blocked that road too. We still had no idea why not did a U-turn to try follow him but lost him. Google maps kept re routing us and Lew was demanding a different way to go but the women in my phone kept shouting different ways as we continued to miss the streets she wanted to take. I made Lew pull over and after a few harsh words he was left to drive and navigate by himself. We continued our route to Barcelona after finally finding a way down from the city that didn't seem to have any blocks but after about 10 minutes driving we came across another block full of police officers. Once again they told us the road was closed but we got a bit more information out of this guy since he was able to tell us that ALL the roads on ALL borders were closed going that way and would reopen at 5pm. He couldn't tell us why as his English wasn't so good, but we were able to translate into Spanish the fact that we have crossed the border without our passports being checked. His reply "Its Europe!" And he shrugged his shoulders. I guess that means we were in the clear?

It was around 4.15pm at this stage and the policeman said that we can take the toll road C16 into Barcelona and that would be the best and the fastest route. He pointed us in the direction and told is this would open at 4.45pm. The motorway appeared as if it was open but we could see in google maps that there was a thick red spot indicating traffic. When we reached it we realised that it was another line of cars waiting for the road to open. I got out to walk up and have a look and there were cars from both directions parked up facing each other with fire trucks and police. People were dancing/singing and waving flags. They had clearly been there awhile as some of them had make shift cookers set up. I took some photos and returned back to the car. Lew had been searching on the internet and discovered that the all entrances into the region of Catalonia were closed as the entire region was on strike. This was due to 90% of the people in the region voting on Sunday for Catalonia to be its own country. Spanish national police raided some voting poles and violently stopped 770,000 people voting but 5.3 million managed to get their opinion across. The government has overruled the decision and clearly put their foot down saying this is not allowed since it goes against the Spanish Constitution. Because of this the people of Catalonia called a region-wise strike protesting against violation of rights and took to the streets to protest. The reason this has actually started is that back before the Spanish Civil War Catalonia was an autonomous region of Spain. The autonomy of the region was suppressed by Franco a dictator from 1939-1975 who banned all use of Catalan the regions offical language. Between the years of 1950-1970 the region expanded and the tourism and industry boomed. Since then the the people of this region believe that their regions financial input into the country is far greater than any other. Hence the want for independence. This isn't the first time this has happened as back in 2014 they tried to vote and it was shut down by the government. Basically it is an interesting time to be in the city with riots and violence throughout.

Luckily we didn't have to wait very since we had taken most of the day to get through the Pyrenees. But man we would have been angry if we took the Autoroute to get there faster and we spent most of the day backed up in traffic on a motorway. At 5pm things started moving and as the single lane of traffic was allowed onto the motorways we were flanked on either side by people waving flags, singing, shouting and cars tooting! We managed to get some of it on camera as it was quite the scene. More people waved us through the toll gates and we were super excited that perhaps they wernt going to charge us the €11 the policeman had said it would cost!

Taking the C16 it was a road through some more stunning landscapes with large tunnels, multicoloured trees and what appeared to be the Spanish version of ski towns. We were in a long line of traffic but there were some frustrated drivers that drove up the inside on the wrong side of the road passing everyone. Unfortunately we did come across a toll booth and were disappointed that we did in fact need to pay the toll of €4.25 ($4 NZD). We continued driving the further hour into Barcelona, having to pay further small tolls along the way. We missed one turn we were supposed to take and the maps rerouted itself many time since we were underground and it didn't seem to like that (no cell/GPS service). After slight difficulty finding the Airbnb since maps wanted us to drive down a street that clearly was pedestrian only we messaged our host who came downstairs. We parked in the paid parking close to the buildings and I stayed in the car incase we needed to move it whilst Lew carted everything up and down the stairs. We swapped over so I could grab my handbag and the wallets and check the place out. It was cute and everything we needed whilst in Barcelona.

We drove to the carpark which was about 15 minutes away from where we are staying but on the metro line so it should be easy to get back. We passed the carpark basically 100m away from the apartment but cost €54 ($88.80 NZD). Our one only cost €27 ($45 NZD) so we were saving ourselves some money choosing this one. Plus lew had been up til midnight the night before trying to figure out the best one since there are hundreds, he found one with a single metro one connecting carpark to accommodation with little walking. It wasn't easy finding the place as it involved getting onto two different motorways. We drive past it the first time since the entrance was tucked into the corner and there wasn't any signs before we approached it. Of course there was a bit of frustration and we had to work out how to get around the block. Things went smoothly once we arrived and the man actually upgraded us to be able to enter and exit multiple times which isn't what we paid for. The place didn't have many cars but we found a spot with a camera pointed directly at it. The metro we needed was close by according to City mapper but it had a large cross through it on our phones. We did think we may have some issues with the strike being on but using our translate all we realised it just said the service was running at 25%. Guessing we would go check it out anyways we brought a couple of tickets for €4.50 ($7.40 NZD) since we saw others entering the station. We said down since the next train was in 8 minutes. There was a large group of people waiting by this stage and what we saw a train approach we all stood up. But the driver waved his arms around in a cross and never stopped for us. The board updated and we saw the next train was 20 minutes away so we waited with everyone else. Unfortunately it would take us about 70 minutes to walk back to the apartment and it was getting late other wise we would have done it. We saw a train approach on the other side and Lew though perhaps it needed to go to the final stop, change tracks and come back for us. But 5 minutes later the notice board read that ALL trains had been cancelled. There were some angry people - us included since we wasted time and money. We wernt even sure if taxis would be working but walking towards a hotel we spotted a lady getting out and we grabbed it. It didn't take long to get back and the meter only showed €7 ($11.50 NZD) which we thought was great until he added some other charge into it so it came up to €16 ($26 NZD) 😡. He spoke little English so we couldn't query what this was and I had already seen him add the minimum charge of €2.50 ($4.11 NZD) on at the start. Feeling a bit screwed we went back to the apartment (he hadn't dropped us close at all ) hoping our hosts could tell us the best takeaway place since it was 9pm and we were starving. They wernt home so we ventured out to find this pizza place Lew had found online whilst waiting for the train. It took us 10 minutes to walk and we were pleased to see other restaurants in case it was closed. It wasn't and we both ordered takeaway pizza bringing it back to the house to have with a salad and a much deserved wine. So of course for the taxi and the wasted train tickets we could have parked in the parking structure2 minutes walk from the apartment and walked back. It had been probably the second most taxing day in the trip (can't really beat the day we arrived to London with our bags lost!) but I kept saying to Lew that nobody died we are fine. He doesn't handle his stress quite so well it seems as he said he feels the pressure to keep us both safe. I guess I'm lucky that working as an ED nurse I'm used to high stress environments so a wrong turn on a motorway or a potentially illegal border crossing doesn't phase me. Anyway it's stinking hot and our room doesn't have a fan. It's on one of the main streets down in town too so having the door open at night is going to be loud! Oh well we are car-less for a few days which we are pleased about :)