A fond farewell to Lacoste

This sign means "You are now leaving Lacoste."
We may not be able to see around the bend,
but we hope whatever the road brings will be
as wonderful as our time here has been.

The car’s windshield was frosted over this morning; thankfully it melted with the defroster, as we didn’t have an ice scraper! It was 7am, the house was locked and the keys were left for Madame Collette. We sat it the car watching the ice melt away to reveal the now familiar view of Bonnieux across the valley. I knew I would miss the view, and as we drove away from Lacoste we had already started making a list of things we would miss about living here.

The drive to Barcelona was uneventful and much less stressful than our original trip over two months ago – how can it really have been that long?! We had carefully printed out directions to get to our hotel, and found it without too much trouble. The room wasn’t ready, so we left the car in the hotel garage and headed out to find some lunch. We had tossed around the idea of going to the Hard Rock Café, and with the realization that we wouldn’t be tourists much longer we set out for this world-wide tourist attraction.

As we walked along I suddenly realized I felt short – or, more specifically, that everyone else was really tall! It was my first realization of how much I had gotten used to France… and all the short French people : ) At the restaurant I could actually understand other peoples conversations, and while it was nice to be able to talk to the waitress I missed the sound of French voices. I constantly said “Bonjour” and “Merci” and then felt very silly – what was this American doing speaking French to Spaniards, especially when I actually know way more Spanish than French? For the first time in all my travels, I felt more attached to the country I was leaving behind than to home I was heading towards.

Monument to Christopher Columbus - he is
pointing to America. Maybe he is telling us something...

Along the sea

 One place I really wanted to see in Barcelona that we missed before was the Picasso museum. It doesn’t house hardly any of his famous Cubist works, but is filled with his early (and mush more traditional) paintings as well as later works, including pottery. It was a very nice museum, and it also included a temporary exhibit comparing the works of Picasso and Degas, which was quite interesting.

We had brought food from Lacoste for supper (although I managed to leave the peanut butter behind – oops) and so walked back across the city to our hotel, where we watched a good game of soccer on TV before heading to bed for a good night’s rest before tomorrow’s travels.