Navarre Pau

... nothing much new awaits. Meanwhile, the prospect of your own bed begins to appeal...
So, there we are: mission accomplished. Above all, I have to say that I for one am mighty relieved that we have managed without any mishaps. Always a worry, whenever you leave home. There were moments - say, in the hills of deepest Albania - where I did wonder what the hell we would do if we broke down. Fortunately, this wasn't a problem.
Overall highs: without a ...

... the same statuettes and bottles in which to collect your holy water. It was difficult to feel any empathy with the people there when it seems to us to be little more than a huge sales opportunity for the church. Difficult to like but interesting to visit!

Mike could recognize very little of Pau as expected. It seemed a lot bigger, but it was interesting to revisit the were Mike spent a miserable and lonely month all those years ago

The next day, we took the kids for a lunch time hike along the GR10 to Lac du Gaube with a view of Vignemale the highest mountain in the French ...

We spent a lazy day in and around our hotel, casually visiting Luz Saint Sauveur, about 10 minutes from our hotel. We also drove up to Gavarnie, the famous Cirque in the region. There weren't much in the ways of views as the mountains were in the clouds.
 
 

This was our earliest start of our day, as Ev, Julie, and Dami needed to get to Madrid by noon, which is a 5 hour drive in the best conditions. So 6am we said our goodbyes from the parking lot across the street from our campground. Why? Because the gates don't open until 8am. They drove off while Sue, Tom, Evie ...

... male group with Andy we were given first preference on position we would hitch in so we took the prime spot. Lots of jokes were thrown around that we would get picked up last but it only took 10 minutes before a French man pulled over offering us a lift for roughly 40km, so we took it. We were dropped off at a service station - Aire de Pyrenees - and here we needed to look for our second ride. After asking a number of people with not much luck it only took ...

We're in Pau for the Etape du Tour, a cycle race over Stage 7 of the 2008 Tour de France. The stage is 165km long and passes up and over the Col du Tourmalet (2115m), then drops down to the ...

... a formidable handful of French expressions that that share the cow as their thematic centerpiece. Whereas in India "la Vache" is revered as a divine entity, in France it is the inspiration of numerous crude colloquialisms and otherwise negative interjections. " Il parle comme une vache espagnole. " Ca veut dire, "He speaks like a Spanish Cow," which is used to describe someone who poorly expresses ...

... formal language style as myself. Neither of us know the quotidien slang that dominates the conversation of native French speakers on campus. Therefore, it's pretty easy to have agreeable and enjoyable French conversations at an easier pace. This morning, I also tapped into the French-speaking Chinese étranger population. These guys spoke just about as well as I, despite their telling me that they'd only been studying French for less than ...

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