Abbadia

Although it was built in an old-fashioned Gothic style, this chateau is not really all that old.  It was designed and built as a wealthy man's fantasy and also his astronomical observatory around 150 years ago.  During the second world war, it was occupied by the Germans and ended up in a terrible state.

Now, when you go inside, everything looks perfect. They have spent a fortune re-doing all the mural paintings and replacing all the fabrics and stained glass.  The work was finished in 2004.  The house is still used by the Abbadie family so you are not allowed to take photos of the inside.  I took one sneaky one in the library of this book to show how important Glasgow was in the world of science.

The outside is covered in carvings of exotic animals .... and cats catching rats

Spain And Back Again In Two Days

There were two reasons for our trip to Spain:
 
1) David Brown goes to Hondarribia every year and recommends it highly.
2) Near the border is the Chateau d'Abbadie which was built by a famous and wealthy astronomer.

If you are not into fancy food and fresh fish then Hondarribia is a total dump.  The hotel was in a private villa and we had a nice breakfast served in the garden.  On the other hand, the room was very hot & stuffy, the TV had only Spanish channels and the DVD player and the WiFi didn't work.

The Old Town used to be fortified - you can see some of the walls still - and it is tiny.  At the top is the square with all the painted houses on one side.  The other side looks kind of like a prison with lots of with lots of holes where it has been hit by bullets and canon-balls.  In fact, it is a very posh hotel.

It took less than an hour to walk round the new and the old town so we took a ferry boat over to Hendaye it France.  The trip only takes about 5-10 minutes!  If anything, Hendaye was even more of a dump so we got the next ferry back.

Wednesday turned out to be very cloudy but the rain that was forecast didn't happen.  We got out of Spain as fast as we could.

Horrendibus Menu

 Tuesday - we got up early, went to market for a light breakfast and drove all the way past Biarritz and into Spain.  Just over the border is a small fortified town called Hondaribbia.  I prefer to call it 'Horrendibus'.  If we had not booked a hotel there, I doubt if we would have stayed. Anyway -- we were getting hungry so we went to a nearby restaurant for pizza.  This is what we found on the menu that had been translated into English.

Street Sign, Toulouse

My best guess is that there used to be a baker's shop in the street.  'Four' is French for 'oven' and there is a type of loaf called a 'bâtard'.  The symbol over the 'a' means there used to be a letter 's' there as well.
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Grand Hotel

 Saturday turned out cold and rainy wo we went to Toulouse and stayed the night in a designer hotel right in the very centre.  It was great!  The room had a huge HD TV,  an expresso coffee machine and lights everywhere.  The weather turned dry and fresh and we had a lovely dinner and breakfast in the man square.

Latest Royal Family Photo

Yet Another Accident

I drove to Toulouse to collect Marion from the airport on Friday.  On the motorway, I saw a big lorry at a crazy angle on the other side and this had caused a big long traffic jam.  "Ha Ha!" I thought  "Lucky I'm not going that way."  Ten minutes later I was crawling along at 2mph in a gigantic traffic jam.  I was sure I was going to arrive t the airport long after Marion got there.

Eventually I got to the bit where police were waving cars through one by one and they stopped me completely ... this was to let the ambulance get through to the scene  of the accident.  It was certainly one of the worst crashes I have ever seen.  One black car was lying against the central barriers facing the wrong way and it was completely wrecked.  There were three shocked people and a panda standing behind the other barrier.  Whoever was in the black car just had to have been injured.

In the end, I arrived at the airport car park exactly as Marion's plane landed so I wasn't late after all