promenadingpeacocks

Soooo frustrating but quite normal by now when we travel to find the much vaunted free wifi at some hotels is lamentably slow. Sorry, readers, if you are waiting with bated breath for our latest doings but matters beyond our control and all that! Off to albania tomorrow, if the car isn’t up on bricks as lou wryly commented. The free parking is a steep gravel patch on the bend of a scrubby road behind some scruffy sheds but with a chain looped across it.  We travel hopefully!

So far we have been driving through familiar territory as we came this way with the camper in 2010.

Not many changes apart from additional bits of motorway that defeated the gps and our five years out of date map. One very noticeable change is the complete absence of people sitting or standing at the entrance to every town and village along the coast road with pieces of cardboard in their hands offering rooms for rent.

It was a sight we had not seen in any other country we had driven through and made us realise that not booking ahead was not a great problem. I’ve been pondering possible reasons for this change; new laws, people better off? But i have decided it must be the internet. Once you have the internet in your home, there are endless possibilities to advertise and save yourself many boring hours beside the road waving your cardboard sign at passing vehicles. Booking.com may have changed the croatian landscape!

Meanwhile, for us, the landscape will be changing from familiar to utterly new….exciting!  🙂

After a good half hour of confusing phone calls and driving up and down and round and round, the gps suddenly got his act together and ensured we ‘arrived at your destination’.

It didn’t look very promising but then i got yet another call to say all was well and they were ready to welcome us. We rang the bell and ‘eva’ opened the door.

A gloomy kitchen/living room but with fresh grapes and pots of local jam on the table, then upstairs to our very blue room complete with balcony and a view of the sea.


Eva disappeared and came back with welcome cocktails. Later the owner arrived and apologised for causing the panic, he had been given misinformation by his booking agent, had we had our cocktails? We assured him we had and all was calm. Perhaps we should invent a petit paons cocktail for our clients?  🙂
Our room appears to be one of four, i don’t envy the view of the two rooms onto the street! Dreary back alley would be an apt description but the welcome when it came has been very warm and eva told me there are two good restaurants on the street below reached by steps two doors down.


And i’ve just read they will provide breakfast which we didn’t think was an option. and the wifi works!  Time for a little zzzzzz

Zadar is a very lively place! The old town is full of restaurants and tat shops but some lovely old buildings and wonderful views across the water.

We walked down from ‘pansion maria’ with its effusive owner, spurning the rowboat ferry but searching out his recommended restaurant.

It wasn’t shut! We dined well on sea bass and drank a bottle of croatian rose between us. Lou took up the offer of a free schnapps, plum slivovitch.

Afterwards we wandered the alleyways, passing live music in one bar and arriving at the organ of the sea.

I wasn’t expecting much but it was beautiful. Musical notes being created by the action of the waves running through something under our feet. Quite mesmerising. Nearby was a light show set into the pavement. Greeting of the sun is its name but the colours were a mixture of shifting blues. Walking back towards the footbridge we watched a grouo take the ferry and decided we should, for the experience. A wobbly five minutes (a yacht had just motored through) and we were on the opposite jetty where some very swanky, incredibly tall masted and imposing boats were moored. A step up from the rowboat! Today, dubrovnik.

Padua is full of bicycles and telephones. Paduans are either riding one or talking on the other, always with emphatic gestures of the free hand.

I didn’t witness both taking place at the same time but maybe someone somewhere was. Paduans are very smart. Everyone was wellturned out;  well coiffed, well shod and well tanned.

we spent the morning wandering and gawping, cameras working overtime. The buildings are antique and beautiful, the streets full of arcades and churches.

The bells go off at proscribed times and each seems to try to outdo the others. We found the huge central market and revelled in the sights and sounds.

I found the frescoes in the baptistry and enjoyed an half hour of peaceful contemplation. Lou is delighting in the good coffee and my cappucinos are ‘perfisk’.

Late yesterday afternoon we visited the basilica of saint antonio, an assault on the eye and the nose, utterly ott decoration and enough incense to make me need to return to the fresh air.

For us, the beauty of the place is on the streets. To finish, pizza last night with cold glasses of soave, the drink of our honeymoon!

After a sunny start in chambery topping up on gasoil, finding an optician’s to fix the loose screw in lou’s glasses and buying a picnic lunch in carrefour we were off! The scenery to the frejus tunnel was amazing as usual and i was well behaved in the tunnel itself (controlled the rising panic and sweaty palms by counting the blue lights etc).

All was ticketboo until we approached milan. An accident somewhere ahead so TWO HOURS to drive 7km! When it finally cleared lou put his foot down so we made it to padua by seven not five as hoped.

Happily the hotel turned out to be comfy and well placed for exploring. We found a restaurant on the prato delle valle just around the corner and i revelled in the sound of italian being spoken all around. In the dark the prato looked beautiful and worthy of a photographic revisit!

Sunny drive, stopped for our sarnies in a pretty aire and am now enconsed in room 13 at the b and b hotel. No gruffalo bill nearby but we have a bon for two free kirs at a restaurant close by. For now, a little zzz, it is a holiday after all!

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Getting very excited about our road trip to montenegro and albania but can’t helping noticing the paradox between our expectation of easy movement from one country to another while being assailed with tragic news stories about the thousands of refugees trying to do the same.

we went back to the ‘end of the world’ to eat on wednesday evening as the other restaurant had rather a limited menu. i had discovered the name ‘end of the world’ used to refer to the whole village as the valley road ended there. the extension up to the col de peyrol was built in 1937. on tuesday we had eaten the menu decouverte, a robust helping of choux farci (delish, must try to replicate it), truffade (already a winter favourite), jambon cru and salad. we drank a local auvergne rose called ‘terre et lave’, a volcanic reference?

this was followed by a selection of three cheeses; salers, forme d’ambert and a lovely tomme de chevre (goats’ cheese) made in the village. then pud – coulant de chocolat which i have always called chocolate fondant. on wednesday neither of us could cope with more cheese so it was homemade hamburger for me and ris de veau for lou after choux farci as entree. we passed on cheese and pud!

the dining room was much quieter than the previous evening. we walked home and hoped it wouldn’t be as cold overnight but it was!

we’d been a bit miffed at having to pay for jetons for the showers but they were wonderful. knowing there was copious hot water persuaded me out of bed and there was lots of space to hang up towels and my several layers of clothing. plus electric sockets for my hair dryer. almost, but not quite, making up for the ghastly squat and drop loos! our insulated mugs from the norwegian cruise came in very useful at breakfast waiting for the sun to come over the hill and warm us up. packing up the tent and stuff into the car was a breeze although we were concious that the family next door were cramming four people, two tents and a dog into the same space that we were using just for us.
a fruitless visit to the cheese farm but we found the same tomme in the village shop. then to the ‘end of the world’ for a last coffee and so lou could buy some artisan beers. we were gobsmacked the same staff had been working there for the whole time we had been in mandailles and still managed to be cheerful and welcoming. even more surprised to learn that one of the waiters has a ‘maison secondaire’ in bretenoux! a lovely break, we’ll be back….with more blankets! 🙂

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well, the best laid plans and all that. the higher we climbed the colder it got. i pitied the family with laden donkey attempting to make it over ‘les cretes’ to le lioran.

at the col de peyrol the car park was heaving and the puy itself shrouded in grey mist. the car temperature guage showed 10 degrees. it has been 35 back in the valley at gagnac lately! we decided to carry on down the other side of puy mary, a valley we hadn’t visited before. it was majestic looking back at mary with a parapentist floating on the thermals.

we stopped for coffee at a pretty buron and shivered into our fleeces.

we carried on, stopping to gawp at the col de serre and taking a circular route around la claux. a swift look at a thunderous and almost hidden cascade, also named serre.

we ate our ham and cheese baguettes watching several parapentists coming in to land.

home via muret, le lioran and the col de pentus with lovely views all along the valley of the jordanne.

a cup of tea, a read in the sun and then a sieste….cos we’re old!! 🙂