Malta to home - 27 October

Our flight back to Girona Airport was not until mid-afternoon, so we had some time available on Wednesday morning. After finishing packing up, we had breakfast at the Museum Cafe for the last time, then headed down to look through St John's Co-cathedral.

The Museum Cafe

Unfortunately, there was some kind of military service going on, with a band and a large guard of honour parading for a range of VIPs. We spent quite some time observing all the fluffing about, barked orders and pageantry, but it all went on too late to give us time to go through the church when it reopened to the public.

The sergeant-at-arms was particularly ferocious

All this meant we missed out on the interior, which is said to be amazing. We weren't too disappointed as we've seen any number of fancy church interiors, and saw inlaid tombstone flooring of the same type at the Mdina cathedral.

We set off for the airport in good time, and had a very easy trip back to Girona, and the hour's drive north back to Ceret was easy.

All up an excellent side-trip.

Marsaskala to Marsaxlokk Walk - Tuesday 24 October

We'd always intended to do the walk between Marsaskala and Marsaxlokk, as it looked to be a pleasant trip around the coast, and not too long. We'd done so much walking over the week in Malta that we wondered about simply taking the bus to Marsaxlokk and doing a short out and back loop, as well as retrieving my glasses which I'd left on the restaurant table there on Sunday. However on looking up the walk, it was touted as one of the best walks in Malta, so we decided to do the full trip.

Good decision. It really was an excellent walk. We began in Marsaskala, and after a few false starts, found ourselves heading along the coast. First item of interest was an area of little basins cut from the coastal platform and used for making salt from the seawater. They were sweet.

Salt-making basins, Marsaskala

The track then swung around another bay before cutting across a headland through farm fields with the ubiquitous stone walls of Malta. We immediately noticed dozens of little cages sat on stone blocks on the end of steel poles. In each cage, sheltered from the sun by another stone sat on top, was a small bird tweeting away. Very odd, but explained by the men sitting in little stone huts watching out intently. The huts were hides, and the birds were audible decoys designed to attract other birds to be shot. Why anyone bothers we can't imagine. The birds were smaller and slimmer than sparrows, and the time and expense to shoot, pluck and prepare a bird in no way could compensate for the teaspoon of meat you might potentially get. As we walked we made sure to wave to the hunters so we couldn't be mistaken for large sparrows. There must have been 30-40 hunters along about a 5 kilometre section of track, so a hunter every 150 metres. We did hear a number of shots!

Live decoy birds on posts!

Anyway, the track was lovely, passing through interesting land, with a scattering of towers and churches, and some lovely coastal views. Towards Marsaxlokk, we detoured to have a look at a lovely little cove - St Peter's Pool. We wished we'd brought our togs. It looked a fabulous spot to swim, and a number of others clearly thought so too as there were many in the water.

Lovely track

St Peter's Pool

Into Marsaxlokk and to our restaurant from Sunday. My glasses were duly recovered, and we ordered nearly the same as on Sunday, as it was so good. Our seafood platter arrived before our starters, so back it went and the starters were brought out 5-10 minutes later. Very nice, though not quite as well-prepared as last time. Then out came the platter. We checked that it was a fresh one - "yes the one brought out was for another table". Lies unfortunately. I'd been watching to see if anyone else got a platter and they didn't. The proof was in the eating - the food was not quite fully hot, and was a little dry and rubbery. Worst, the mussels were stone cold. We called a waiter over and said what we thought had happened. After a little while the front of house woman came over and asked if we'd like a replacement, but we had lost interest by then and said no. No word of denial, or apology, though we are certain our plate was the old original. At least it wasn't on the bill when we paid up, though we wouldn't have paid for it anyway. A dumb thing to try by the restaurant. There's no chance a 15-minute-old plate of seafood will ever taste freshly made. They lost themselves some money, and a good review. A little disappointing, but we will happily savour the memory of Sunday's excellent version.

Back to Valletta on the bus, and a quiet evening. We went out again later to have a cup of gelato for dessert. It was expensive, but so worth it!

I think we are both happy to leave. We've seen everything we'd hoped to see, enjoyed all of it, learnt an enormous amount ad had a thoroughly good time. With another 3 or 4 days we could have visited Gozo island, but we don't feel that we needed to. Malata has been great. Never have we been somewhere so visibly steeped in history.

It's another big tick for living in Ceret that we can scoot round Europe on Ryanair from Girona at absurdly low prices. As I write this, we can get to Pisa for 9E, Romania for 10E, and Frankfurt for 16E, all RETURN! Try that from Nelson!

We did most of our packing in the evening, enlivened by Karen picking up a rug to give it a shake and finding a live scorpion had been right beside her hand. Apparently Maltese scorpions are not regarded as very dangerous!

Valetta Monday 23 October

For the first day since we arrived in Malta, we didn't jump up and head out of the city. Monday we had earmarked for exploring the heritage sites of Valletta itself. It rained heavily during the night but the day dawned clear, although very windy and a little cooler, at around 20C. We treated ourselves to a bit of a lie-in and arrived at our friendly cafe around 9:30am. This time we opted for a full cooked breakfast, which still only cost 5E, including coffee. We think perhaps we've misjudged prices a little. Snacks, baked goods and similar light meals can in fact be found very cheaply. It is more difficult to find a reasonably-priced full lunch or dinner. The equivalent of a 3-course meal of the day as you can get everywhere in France or Spain does not exist. However, as always, once you get off the tourist drag and search for some back streets the price of a glass of beer drops dramatically.

Around 10:15am our day started with a wander through St Elmo Fort and the associated National War Museum. Together they provided a brilliant explanation of the history of Malta, and we'd highly recommend it as a starting point for visitors to the island. Videos and information boards explained the successive waves of rulers who vied for the island from about 2500 BC  - Bronze Age peoples, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Sicilians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, the Knights of St John, French, British, followed finally by independence in the 1960s. The strategic position of Malta, more or less central in the Mediterranean, has clearly been crucial for millennia.

We feel we got a really good understanding of Maltese and Mediterranean history. After grabbing a pastry, we followed up our historical research by visiting the Grand Master's Palace and its associated armoury. The state rooms of the palace were certainly impressive. Many of the rooms are still in use by the Maltese government. 

The tapestry room in the Grand Master's Palace

Armour in the Palace Armoury

The armoury was especially impressive. Two large rooms housed thousands of items which depicted the evolution of armour and battle equipment from the period of the Crusaders (1560) and for the next few centuries. The suits of armour, apart from being extremely heavy to wear, they must have really hampered one's mobility and vision on the battlefield. They were absolutely as depicted in story books, all visors and pointy elbows and layers of shiny steel.

By mid-afternoon we were flagging a little but kept on to explore the exhibitions of the National Museum of Archaeology. Once again, the displays and interpretations were extremely good. Malta was inhabited by Neolithic people from around 7000 years ago. It's pretty sobering compared to New Zealand's 700-odd years. The temple builders, whose work we had already seen at Tarxien and elsewhere, were far more advanced than we had imagined. The Phoenicians then took over in around 400BC. The impact of the various civilisations which have inhabited Malta is evident in so many ways.

A little sculpture in the Archaeological Museum

By 4:30pm, feeling mentally enriched but foot weary, we walked the last few streets home. John scored the closest approximation he has found yet to the cannoli he fondly remembers from Sicily (or his stomach remembers) on the way home. We had to finish our bottle of rather pleasant Maltese red wine before we set foot outside again in search of a bowl of pasta for dinner.

Ghar Dalam & Marsaxlokk - Sunday 22 Oct

There's certainly more than enough to see in Malta to fill up a week. One of the standard tourist things to do is to go to Marsaxlokk on market day - Sunday. Until now we have been doing walks and "cultural" things, and have avoided many of the pure tourist attractions. Marsaxlokk would have to count as touristy. It is a little fishing village at the extreme south end of the main island of Malta. It has very pretty multi-coloured boats moored in their dozens on the harbour, and a long waterfront of restaurants, and, on Sunday, market stalls.

We chose to visit the Ghar Dalam caves on our way down. These are a set of caves eroded into the limestone which became open from above, and filled with all manner of bones from 140,000 years ago. At that time Malta was a refuge from one of the Ice Ages (there had been a land link with Sicily and Italy) and had developed its own odd fauna, including dwarf hippos and elephants, and (relatively) giant dormice! The caves had layers of bones in them - enough to actually form a kind of bone concrete. The accompanying museum was rather dated, but had an amazing display of thousands of pygmy hippo bones. All well worth the visit.

Ghar Dalam Caves

Marsaxlokk when we got there was a little disappointing. You could hardly see the harbour for all the stalls selling junk - shoes, clothes, kitchenware - the worst kind of imported rubbish. Thankfully there was a small section of genuine fish sellers. We took a coffee, watching the tourists go by. We are so glad we were not there in high season. The crowds were more than large enough this late in the year. Saying the crowds were large enough can be read both ways. Some pretty awful bulbous specimens passed by us, along the lines of the worst form of British tourists we'd seen in Marmaris, Turkey, some years back.

Marsaxlokk Harbour

Seafood

Things looked up at lunchtime. We'd hoped that we'd be able to have a really nice seafood meal at Marsaxlokk, and for first time for us on Malta we had a cracker meal. A nice wee amuse-bouche of tomatoey bread and bean dip, then starters of spaghetti al vongole (clams) and spaghetti ai frutti di mare. Very simple dishes - spaghetti, garlic, olive oil and seafood, all done to perfection and utterly delicious. We shared a single main of mixed seafood - mussels, prawns, 2 types of fish cake, and grilled octopus, calamari and chipirones in garlicky oil. Boy was it good, probably the best meal we've had in years. A bottle of Maltese sauvignon blanc helped too. The service was very slow and rather hit and miss due to too few staff for a full restaurant, but we had plenty of time and just enjoyed it all.

A bit of fluffing about trying to find the right bus back towards Tarxien, but we got it sorted and hopped off to see what will be our last Stone Age temple for this visit, at Tarxien. This one was smaller, but more detailed than the others we've seen. Started around 3700BC, it was most impressive. Lots of nice details, carving, sculpture and construction. Society here was enormously more advanced than in Britain and Brittany where we have seen other Stone Age megaliths. The people here were making complex, constructed buildings from cut stone. Not only that, but they were often beautifully decorated, and there was a cult of the obese woman!

The 6 apses of the Tarxien temple

Obese women figures were common in the culture of the time

We were back into Valletta around 5pm. There was a big protest on, presumably about the car-bomb killing of a government critic earlier in the week. A very enjoyable and interesting day all round. 

Rabat and Mdina - Saturday 21st

Another big day. Although we 'only' walked 11km, we only got home at 7pm. We kicked off at 9:15am with breakfast at the nice little cafe we found. Two fat pastizzi pies (spinach and peas) and two coffees for the grand sum of about NZ$8. Our host had messaged to say a big yacht race was starting at 10am and we'd have a great view from the Barrakka Gardens lookout. 

We arrived just before 10am and secured a perfect vantage point. The racing didn't actually start until 11am but it was interesting just watching the boats sail into the harbour from practice runs outside the breakwater, and then manoeuvre into position. Groups of between 7 and 30 went off at 10 minute intervals, starting with the smaller boats and ending with humongous yachts with crews of at least 15. It was a wonderful spectacle, specially since each start commenced with the cannon being fired from the platform immediately below us. In most races at least one yacht inched over the start line just before the cannon went off and had to turn around and go back over the start line again. We found out that 104 yachts were in the race, it's a 3-day event and the turn-around is Stromboli Island, north of Sicily. Clearly many of the yachts had come to Malta just to take part in the race. With the backdrop of forts on the other side of the harbour, impressive boats on the water and cannons firing with great billows of smoke, it was a memorable experience. Postscript - the race line honours went to R88 sailed by NZ's Brad Butterworth and Dean Barker.

"Go!"

The final and largest class sets off

Given our delayed start, we didn't manage to set off on our planned itinerary for the day until 12:30pm. We jumped on a bus and arrived in Rabat half an hour later, quickly followed by grabbing an ice-cream. 

Rabat  street

First on the schedule was St Paul's Catacombs. What an incredible underground network they turned out to be. Before and during the Roman period burials within the city walls were forbidden so a number of catacomb networks are found in the Rabat area. St Paul's catacombs cover an area of over 2000sqm and consist of a labyrinth of underground corridors accessing hundreds and hundreds of excavated tombs, over perhaps five or six levels. The limestone is very soft and easy to work, so the tunnellers could go any way. The little niches hollowed out for the tombs for infants and children were pretty sad. Child mortality was very high and the average life expectancy was only about 26 yrs old.

Inside St Paul's Catacombs

By 2:30pm we were already starting to run out of time so we bought a date 'scone' and a cannoli to keep us going and headed for Domus Romanus, the remains of a Roman townhouse dating back to the 1st century BC. Complex mosaic patterns made from tiny pieces of coloured stone were the highlight for me, and perhaps the gorgeous miniature glass unguent bottles for John. After only half an hour we were done. A bit skimpy on taking it all in but we have seen lots of amazing Roman ruins elsewhere. Worth going to all the same. 

Lovely 3D mosaic floor in the Domus Romana

En route to Mdina's natural history museum we came across a very sumptuous wedding. We think it was a British/British or British/Maltese wedding, given the accents being spoken, but the amount of money spent on the attire and hairstyles of the guests attending must have been stupendous. The women were decked out in layered lace long dresses, pencil-thin properly high heels, layers of makeup and hair coiffed into curls. It's a pity many let the side down a little by pulling cigarettes from their evening bags when they exited the cathedral an hour later.

Amazing inlaid tombstones in the cathedral floor

We'd squeezed in a quick tour around the natural history museum and had wandered leisurely around the wonderful little town of Mdina, before stumbling across the wedding again as the service was just finishing. Watching the wedding event and the yacht racing made for wonderful bonuses to our day. After wandering around a little more we boarded a bus back to Valletta and arrived home after dark. A scratch dinner again. We've been a bit disappointed in the dining out here and have done little. Our best scoop so far have been our healthy morning pies for E1.20. They certainly beat the alternative of buying mueslis, which without variation are always highly sweetened and virtually all have either dark, white or both dark and white chocolate as an integral ingredient.

View from Mdina - note how flat Malta is

We are really enjoying our time here in Malta. The buildings are certainly gorgeous, and the towns easy to navigate.  We've noticed very few dogs (in fact counted 7 in total during the last 4 days) hence there is no dog poop on the streets. It's a breath of fresh air, figuratively and literally, compared to France. The streets are very clean and it's very pleasant just wandering around. We haven't done much of the latter yet as we've been so busy trying to see many of the sights, but after tomorrow we will definitely ease off the pace and give our feet a bit of a rest.

Birgu - Friday 20th

Breakfast was an excellent choice. Yesterday we'd seen a nice little cafe next to the Information Centre and had decided to go back there for breakfast this morning. The 'Museum Cafe' was superb. The coffee was good, and the two little Maltese pastizzi pastries that we chose to have with it were perfect. One was ricotta-filled, the other spinach. I imagine we'll go back to the same cafe several more times.

Some lovely buildings in Valletta

From there it was down to the waterfront to catch the ferry across to Birgu (Vittoriosa). We had three attractions to look at using our heritage pass; the first was going to be the Inquisitor's Palace, the second Fort St Angelo, and the third the Maritime Museum. First though we had to run the gauntlet of all the gin palaces and superyachts lined up in the marina. We've never seen such a display of ostentatious and obscene wealth. I found it so obnoxious that I actually felt nauseous. There were five simply enormous superyachts moored side-by-side, all of them having at least 3 living levels above sea-level, with outdoor tables for 12, and countless smaller tables and seating areas.

Superyachts and other vessels in Vittoriosa Marina

Back to the real, if historical, world, the Inquisitor's Palace was very interesting, and covered the period when there was a permanent Inquisitor in place in Malta. We thought that the explanations for the exhibits were rather more forgiving about topics like the need for torture than we would have been - presumably not wanting to offend the Catholic faith which remains very strong here. We did enjoy some of the ancient graffiti in the holding cells.

Graffiti of a ship in one of the cells

The coats of arms of a selection of former Grand Masters of the Order of St John

It all took rather longer than we expected so we stopped for lunch. Again a delicious platter of things Maltese including bigilla, a broad bean paste. We'd much rather that than a plate of pasta, or some fried rabbit. Also, the weather was quite hot and humid, and a hot lunch would have gone down so well.

A typical Maltese platter, the bigilla paste is made from broad beans

Next stop was the huge Fort St Angelo on the end of the peninsula. Its main claim to fame is that it was the base of the Knights of St John who ruled Malta from 1530 until Napoleon in 1798, with the British thereafter. In 1535 they held the fort by the skin of their teeth against an Ottoman invasion led by the same Mustafa Pasha we'd met in Turkey some years back (not personally of course). Some really good displays, but again very limited guidance as to the best route to take to view the installation. We think we saw everything, but we can't be sure!

Valletta from the Vittoriosa ferry

The final museum was the Maritime on the waterfront. This was very old-school, starting with a big room of steam engines, including the original one when the building had been the main British naval bakery. There were a lot of models of shops from enormous to tiny, and some interesting information about the naval history of Malta. It was very stuffy inside and we were glad to get outside again. Back on the ferry to Valletta, and we wandered back along the waterfront, then back into the city. We felt like a simple meal so bought some bread, cheese, ham and tomatoes.

Dingli Cliffs and Temples - Thursday 19th

Thursday dawned bright and clear. We breakfasted, bought some water and headed down to the bus station to get a bus out to Dingli to start our walk. It took the bus about half an hour to get to Dingli and for some reason the bus didn't go quite as far as as it was supposed to so we had 10 minutes to get to the start of the walk. The start of the walk was high above the sea on the edge of cliffs, with a level of small gardens before another layer of cliffs. The walk generally followed along the cliff edge. Along the way were a couple of small churches, some strange old cart ruts, then an interesting Bronze Age settlement with some very well-formed silos cut into the rock.

Dingli Cliffs

Cart Tracks

The day was very hot, the walk was mostly along roads and we were plagued by a number of large tracks passing us. The drivers don't give walkers much room. We have already noticed that the Maltese are not the most friendly of people. Compared with the average Frenchman, they are positively rude. It's rare to get a smile or any acknowledgement from a passing walker or driver. Maybe it is something to do with the vast number of tourists that cover the island, but it isn't something we are used to.

Typical stone wall, a mix of cut limestone and rubble

The main point of the walk was to get to the Stone Age temples of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. These dated from 3500 BC and were fabulous. Unlike Stonehenge which was built from large single rocks, the temples here were built from slabs cut from the local limestone and put together into very complete structures with walls, roofs and defined rooms. Like many of the Stone Age relics that remain, they too were aligned to solar solstices. We were surprised at the poor design of the information centre and the layout of the site. Visitors were often getting lost or confused due to basic design mistakes. It seems a little silly when you are spending hundreds of thousands of euros not to make it work well.

Mnajdra temple

Hagar Qim Temple

From the temples we kept going along the cliffs to the Blue Grotto, a lovely natural arch over the sea. There was a small tourist town there to take tourists around the coast to see it from sea level, but it didn't tempt us for lunch as it looked very commercial. So a sprint up the hill again to the bus stop and back into Valletta around 2:30pm.

The Blue Grotto

We'd survived on bulk water and a muesli bar, but didn't feel like eating a full lunch so had a date pastry (no cannolis again today) instead. On checking our Fitbits, we found we'd done 20 kilometres in the hot sun. No wonder we felt a bit worn out. The afternoon was spent catching our breath and catching up on emails, the blog and other things.

We didn't have to go very far for a meal and in fact went directly across the road to a little Italian restaurant. In Valletta most of the restaurants are Italian-flavoured. We started with a nice antipasto dish mainly of charcuterie but also with a couple of cheeses - ricotta and burrata. This was followed by a pizza each. Notably the beer that we had was €3 for a pint versus 9 or something like that the previous night. We'd clearly been ripped off. Home to crash into bed.

Wednesday 18th October - To Valletta, Malta

We both slept badly so were well awake when it was time to get up at 7am. I went out and bought a baguette so we could make some rolls to have on our Ryanair flight. We were in the car by 9am and in plenty of time, but opted to take the fast toll road anyway. We knew our way around Girona airport carpark from last time we were there, so it was easy to get the car sorted and get ourselves inside the terminal. We had a fair wait until the plane but that was no problem.

The seats as always on Ryanair seemed pretty roomy, more generous than you might expect for the money. An excellent flight to Malta. Coming in to land the landscape looked phenomenal - we can't wait to get out walking in it.  All the land is terraced and covered in little rock walls. Getting into Valletta itself was easy - we just took the local buses for the grand sum of 1.5 Euros and walked to our accommodation in South St.

In the main city of Valletta everything seems to be made of the same soft honey-coloured limestone - the walls, the buildings, the street furniture, the footpaths. Our apartment is in the basement of the building but has a small outdoor courtyard in the light well. It's perfectly ok - we don't expect to spend too much time in it anyway. Having been shown in by a woman who must represent dozens of apartments judging by the size of her keyring, we dropped our bags off and took off into the city to have a look around.  We ended up walking the entire perimeter of the old battlements, but not before stopping somewhere for a cannoli. Unfortunately we were too late in the day for one, but the pastry shop had some replacement pastries which did the job nicely - bone-shaped and made from an almondy, lemony shortbread.

We love the feel of Valletta. It has a lovely consistency with the stone everywhere, and all the buildings being much the same height of 4 stories. It's on three peninsulas, the old city being the central one.

Having bought a few things for the morning, and finished unpacking airbags, we headed into the town to find something to drink. After a bit of wandering around we found a nice little place that had a number of beers on tap and chose to have an IPA and Pale Ale. The beer was great but the price was high - 9E for a pint! We moved on and had dinner at a place with a fixed menu where we started with a really nice antipasto dish which included some delicious huge olives, and an interesting fava bean dip. It had been a very hot day and we were well ready for bed by the time we got back to our apartment.

We didn't sleep all that well. We decided to sleep with the doors closed because there were a few mosquitoes about, but in the middle of the night we decided we needed a bit more air so opened the outside doors and put on a little anti mosquito gadget. That made all the difference.

Thursday 12 Oct to Tuesday 17 Oct

What a fabulous spell of weather Autumn has given Ceret this year. The skies have been superbly blue, the temperatures remain in the low- to mid-20s, and the wind has stayed away apart from a couple of times when it blew to remind us that it can. It really couldn't be better. The locals have reclaimed the town, but still with the normal smattering of visitors, now mainly French and mostly in the weekends. We are loving our time here, and feeling the strains of a difficult year slipping away from us.

We've done more thinking about where we would like to live for the European part of our year, and the more we think about it, the more we are inclined not to move. There's just so much that we love about Ceret and our house that we don't think we could find elsewhere. It's not for lack of trying. We've walked miles on Google Streetview around other towns, and have spent many many hours looking through real estate websites. We haven't given up hope entirely that we will still find something else local - there are some places that would fit the bill.

The biggest pluses for Ceret are our lovely apartment and its position above the square, the easy transport links to Spain, Ryanair and the coast, the Goldilocks size of the town - small enough to be personal and large enough to have good facilities (e.g. bakeries!) and events - and our friends. Other places we've looked at might match Ceret in one or two aspects, but we haven't yet found anywhere that can do it all.

We've settled back into a routine of morning walks, the odd longer walk, some weights in the afternoon sometimes, reading and learning French, and recently a little house and affairs maintenance. We had high hopes of doing French every day this year, but that's been a complete flop. We just haven't had the inclination, nor have made the time for it until now.

Over the last week we've sat ourselves down with our e-readers at the back of one of the three main cafes most mornings to read and watch the world go by. We've drifted away from our previous favourite, Bar le Pablo. Bruno, the previous owner, has sold his share and is no longer there. He was the most cheerful and friendly of the staff, and the remaining ones are not the same. Michel is a bit odd - sometimes very odd. Christophe and Claude could afford to smile rather more, and only Christian is always cheerful. The coffee can be variable - some days it's great, sometimes it's appalling. Their prices are 10c per coffee more than anyone else's, and they don't give patrons the little biscuit or chocolate that the other two do. Their wine remains very ordinary, though a recent test of Cafe le France's proved even worse! We're enjoying the change to Cafe la France and the Grand Caf'.

The light at this time of year is spectacular. No wonder the painters loved Ceret. The sky is a deep blue, the soft dappled sunlight through the thinning plane trees is just beautiful, and there are always leaves drifting down. On our walks the fragrant olive hedges smell sublime.

We haven't said that in August we booked a week in Malta on Ryanair. We're very much looking forward to seeing what it will bring. I've spent a lot of time looking up what to see and do, and it appears a week will not be enough. At 20 Euros round-trip on Ryanair, we could of course go back another time. Poor Ryanair has made some monumental stuff-ups this year, dumping 400,000 passengers over the last month due to pilot shortages, but thankfully not to or from Malta, or on our leg to Krakow on our way home. It's a fabulous asset for us - the ability to see another part of Europe for the price of a good meal. At the moment there are five places we could get to for 20 Euros return, ranging from Romania to Germany, the UK to Morocco. It's crazy, but the airport parking at Girona is more expensive than the flights.

Friday 6th - Wednesday 11th October - 2017's Visit Really Starts

I awoke to an email from Bella saying the service had gone really well. The speeches were great and the atmosphere was fairly light-hearted, with jokes, stories and little kiddies hugging knees and being passed around family members. It was great for family bonding without doubt. The toughest time was when the old ex-soldiers all got up, stood in line and gave Dad a salute while the Last Post was being played. It's an emotional tune to hear at any time, let alone when a close family member dies.

With the funeral finally over, and news that it had been an affair Dad would have been chuffed with, it is now like a cloud has been lifted off the entire family, including John and I. It has been on our shoulders since we left NZ. In effect, Day One proper of our 2017 stay in France starts today.

We kicked it off with a short walk then sat down at Bar Pablo, had a coffee and read our books for an hour. It was wonderful. The weather continues to be lovely and sunny, with temperatures in the mid to high 20s. 

Basically, the rest of Friday, and all weekend we relaxed. We felt very drained and didn't really have much energy for anything. I guess it was a reaction to being so pent up during recent weeks, and then waiting for the funeral service itself. On Friday night we'd been invited out to a friend's place for dinner and we had an enjoyable evening with two other couples. It was very nice, and low-key.

We went to the market as usual on Saturday morning, and found an alternative olive stall since our regular stall-owner retired just last week. It's not the same though! Later in the day we watched the All Blacks play South Africa, where they just managed to scrape through with a win.

We've been keeping up our regular walks in the mornings, and try to throw in the odd high intensity sprints when we can. The weather has been so brilliant, continuing to be warm, with clear skies and no wind. It's such a great time of year to be here. The leaves are starting to fall from the trees and it's definitely darker in the mornings and evenings, but the sun is still warm and the evening light is beautiful.

Taking a standard route on the outskirts of Ceret yesterday, we got talking to the owner of the trufferie past the old convent. Incidentally, there's been quite a bit of tidying-up at the convent, so it's good to see things happening, though John still wishes it was us doing it. He told us about a fountain in the bush. On following his directions we came across it and enjoyed exploring a new track through forest right on our doorstep.

An old cut-out stone receives water from the spring.

On Monday night we hosted two couples to dinner. Of the three men present, one was John (my John), another was Jonathan (known as Jon) and the third was Jonathan (known as Jonathan). Quite bizarre. John and I had put in a big effort to provide a tasty 3-course meal and it went off exceedingly well. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Earlier in the day John and I had met up with a Kiwi couple who have been renting in the adjacent little settlement of Reynes, just on the outskirts of Ceret. They had arrived in January with their three children, aged 10, 8 and 4, to spend a year's immersion in French culture. To sum up their experience, they have loved it. The children are now fluent in French, two of them don't want to go back to NZ, and their parents would love to stay if they could, but have to go back to their jobs and earn some money. Neither have worked while they have been here - they wanted to be totally free to explore the area and become involved in the local community and so on. Their entry into the community via the children's schools has been a real boon for them and they now have many French friends. It was wonderful talking with them. In fact they were expounding the merits of Ceret and beyond to us! We knew some of it but not all. 

Tuesday and Wednesday were quiet days again - walks, meeting up with friends for a drink, reading, catching up on correspondence and so on. We've also put a big effort into scouring real estate websites for potential doer-uppers in this region and beyond. Unfortunately, we haven't found any potential projects that offer what we are after. Basically they either exist in tiny hamlets or villages that are just too small, for example they don't even have a bakery, are already renovated or are just too expensive. It many cases, the starting price might be ok but the amount of money needed to do it up would put an overall value on the place that would be too much for the market. We don't want to over-capitalise, but it seems that there are lots of buildings already on the market and they are not selling, even at reduced prices. 

Our conclusion seems to cement that Ceret is the place we want to be. It offers so much here, partly because it is a good-sized town with plenty of commerce, but also its handy proximity to the coast, hills, Spain, airport and rail links and more. We love our apartment - it is so well-positioned over the square with all that goes on there, and it is so easy to live in. We are also making more and more friends. We've walked our socks off trying to spy a potential renovation job in or on the outskirts of Ceret but have yet to find one, whether for sale or not. We'll keep bugging the real estate agents here but our chances are looking very slim. We've already been on the lookout for two years. Having said that. we are very happy to just enjoy our little apartment over the square, and focus our attention and energy onto something else. It does free us up for other projects and commitments of course - like grandchildren! What could be better than that?

Thursday 5th October - Pic de Neoulous

Having another extremely bad night, and it being so close to the funeral, John and I decided that the best tonic would be another very long walk. Like last Friday, we chose a walk we had done before, again about 3 hours' worth, this time principally on the Spanish side of the border. It was a 40 minute drive there, mostly up narrow winding mountain roads, before arriving at the carpark just under 1000m asl. 

We set off a little before 11am. Last year when we had done this walk, it was in late September, so much the same time.  Then we had stumbled across blackberry plants laden in blackberries. We'd picked ourselves silly, and bought multiple kilos home. This time we went prepared with a number of plastic bags and, even though there were more berries than beside the pathways around Ceret, they were only a shadow of what they'd been. It has been very dry in the region and the crop has suffered hugely as a result. Still, we were very happy to pick over a kilogram of blackberries and we can once again savour them on our breakfast muesli.

The walk was pretty tough - the kind I like best. It was very steep in places. In part it took us along a ridge in the Pyrenees, with France on one side and Spain on the other. There's an amazing 5m x 2.5m snow storage cave constructed near the ridgetop on the Spanish side of the border. Snow was stored inside and then dug out and taken down to the villages and towns later in the year. The views, as always, were stupendous, especially looking out over all the towns and villages scattered over the plains towards Perpignan to the north, and the sea to the east.

France to the left, Spain to the right.

View on the French side, showing Ceret tucked up into the foothills of the Pyrenees, with Mt Canigou behind. On another trip we have walked along the mountainside not far below Canigou.

Unlike the blackberries, we didn't crop these.

Investigating inside the snow storage cave

After 3 hours we made it back to the car, more than a little weary. Jumping straight in we headed 15 minutes further south, to the Spanish town of La Jonquera again. We treated ourselves to a 16 Euro meal of the day - 3 courses, wine, bread and coffee. Not fine cuisine by any means but very nice and just the ticket after a run of simple meals of salads or bread and cheese.

Next stop was to the local hairdressers and yes, they were open this time. For 15E for me and 10E for John (a total of NZ$40), we happily departed La Jonquera looking rather more tidy than when we'd arrived. After a long day we made it back home sometime after 5pm. A hot shower, salad dinner and the last of the funeral correspondence. I had been anxiously awaiting confirmation that the funeral 'celebrant' had received my eulogy so he could read it out at the service. That confirmation came through at 10.30pm and I could finally try and get  to sleep. Fat chance. The service was held not many hours later (3am our time, 2pm NZ time). I just happened to wake at 3am.

Saturday 30th September - Wednesday 4th October

With the news of my Dad's death, I wasn't up to much so it was going to be a very slow weekend.

However we got up and went to the market on Saturday morning to stock up on fruit and veges as usual. Our 'olive man', whom we had been buying olives from for the last five years was retiring today. He'd concocted some sort of home-made punch to celebrate and was giving out small glasses of it to his regular clients. I think it was composed of vodka, white rum, dark rum, cognac and something else, with a bit of orange juice and some fruit chunks to make it look healthy. It was a strong tonic to take at 10am in the morning but lots of fun to share with him and other regulars. It was probably just what I needed as well!

Our 'olive man' pouring out his brew for us. His orange tie has been signed by lots of other stall owners.

After sunny skies in the morning it started to rain in the afternoon but we found ourselves a table inside Cafe de France and spent a very enjoyable hour with our Canadian friends who were leaving Ceret the next day. They love Ceret and hopefully will be back again next year. 

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were pretty quiet days. We generally went for a walk/run in the mornings and dedicated afternoons to writing emails or phone calls/skyping. Lots of correspondence shot backwards and forwards with family and friends, much of it to do with the funeral, speeches and so on. I wrote my eulogy. 

On thing we did do on Tuesday morning was drive over the border to La Jonquera in Spain, only 30 minutes away. We both desperately needed haircuts and we'd both been very pleased with cuts we'd received in the old part of this town a year ago. We'd checked on the internet that my hairdresser was only closed on Mondays so thought we were pretty safe going on Tuesday. As we crossed the border, we noticed a whole load of soldiers checking people going back into France. Oops, we had not brought our passports this time.We arrived but in wandering along the old alleyways, soon discovered that just about every commercial enterprise was closed, including our hairdresser. With little choice, the only thing we could do was buy a few groceries from one of the major border supermarkets (always open) and drive home. On checking the news, we then found out Spanish Catalonia was on strike. It was in support of the recent referendum for independence and in protest against the violence meted out by Spanish police against passive protesters. Oh well, we'd try again another day. Relief, the soldiers had disappeared for the return trip. Passports from now on!

Later, in the evening, we got together with friends for a convivial few hours, supplemented with nibbles and wine. It was very pleasant, and it was really nice how many big hugs I kept getting wrapped up in.  

Wednesday was another quiet day.