France - Summer Driving

Driving, in France, during Summer vacation - are we nuts? 

Yes.

And stressed.

Yesterday, we left Sète (practically on time!) at a little after 9am, heading to Nantes. Normally, during the week, that's 7-8 hours of driving, plus a couple of hours for breaks. We left a day early, just to make sure to miss the summer crunch. We expected to get there by 6pm - plenty of time to get settled in, have a relaxed dinner, and a pleasant evening.

But no!

The traffic gods were clearly angry, and looking for a way to make everyone pay! 

*Right* before we get there, the section of the A83 freeway we needed was closed - completely closed! But because we were there, it was too late to re-plan. So, we waited. And waited. ("I'll never get out of Casablanca"). Some unspecified, but loooong time later, we started to move. The police had worked out a route for us - go through this aire (rest stop), cross over the freeway, go back to the next exit, then take the back roads till you can rejoin the freeway. Everyone and his dog was having to do that, so of course it was clogged the whole way. We stopped at the aire for a much needed break, then stayed on the back roads longer than many. 

Section still closed at 10pm

At least it was less stressful. But. Our gas level was now screeching at us that it was in the danger zone. 

We pressed on. (No, we did not run out of gas - what a nightmare that would have been!)

We finally arrive at 9pm! Two totally frazzled people hobbled into the hotel and collapsed!

~~~

UPDATE From Ouest France news

Yesterday, Thursday, August 1, 2024, a 10 km traffic jam formed on the A83 motorway between Niort (Deux-Sèvres) and Nantes. The cause: a fire in a timber truck, which took the firefighters several hours to extinguish.

It was only last night, at 1:20 in the morning, that a lane of the A83 motorway was reopened to traffic, near Sainte-Hermine, in Vendée. The day before, Thursday 1 August 2024, in the middle of the afternoon, a fire broke out in the load of a truck transporting logs and spread to around 3,500 m² of surrounding vegetation. The motorway was closed to traffic and a traffic jam formed, soon reaching 10 km.

Mountain Drive

Today we took a little drive into the mountains! It was a *hot* day (36°C / 97°F), and we took full advantage of the car's air conditioner 😎...

This was definitely a seat-of-the-pants day - at 11 something, we decided that we were going, so we took off. My only real goal was to get to the panoramic view point of Fontfroide - everything else was up for grabs. I looked up just as we passed this bridge at Lamalou-Les Bains, and immediately pulled off for a photo or two

We went on to another town, and tried to park - first to one side of the main road, then the other - we ate our picnic lunch in the shade, but didn't really see anything too inspiring - then we had a rather round about drive to get back to the main road. But, we're exploring, so...

On to Olargues! I followed the centre-ville sign instead of looping around the town - it's designated as a "Plus Beau Village" (Most Beautiful Village), and has a Devil's Bridge!

The town

Devil's Bridge (from the 12th century) 

View from the bridge 

I had parked the car at the Town Hall (shady, free, short walk to anywhere), so returned and then went on.

To the Panoramic! Wow, that road was winding! But worth it!

Heather, I think 

See all those mountains? And that road?

On our way back down the mountain, we stopped for another view...

Look at that isolated town!

Mountains!

Here's another view of the winding road...

We came back home along a slightly different route - all along our drive, no matter the route, we passed a *ton* of vineyards and tasting rooms! We did not stop, but it's filed away for later 😁

Reus Spain - Ruta del Modernisme

Reus is a city in Spain known for its Modernist architecture - that's Art Nouveau to you and me 😉.

We spent a couple of days wandering and touring - our focus was on two buildings by Domènech i Montaner, the Pere Mata psychiatric hospital, and the Casa Navás private home. 

We went to Pere Mata our first morning - we were the only visitors! We took our time, used the audio-guides, and our cane-chair. When they heard that this was our first day, they gave us a tourist map, and explained how to follow the Ruta del Modernisme (I was very glad of this, since it was hard to find anything about a self-guided tour online).

The old entrance 

After Pere Mata, we rested a bit, went to lunch, then walked along part of La Ruta 🙂

Our next morning, we went to see Casa Navás - this was a completely guided tour (we signed up for English), with extremely limited photo-ops, and booties required! We had forgotten the cane chair, but it wouldn't have been allowed anyway. We usually steer clear of this type of tour, but it was the only way to see the building (and it was interesting, if tiring).

Casa Navás 

Entry hall

Mosaic 

Entry hall balcony 

Entry hall from balcony 

After Casa Navás, we went along more of La Ruta!

We did drive from E to F...

Mural where we stopped for lunch 

Thus ended our whirlwind tour! We stopped at a grocery store (Mercadona) for non-French supplies (black beans and lactose-free cheese), then back to the hotel. We had a fairly easy drive home the next day 🙂

~~~

See more photos in the Reus, Spain 2024 album - there are sidewalk plaques outside of the various buildings; I included those in passing 

I'm glad we got to see everything! We had missed this trip several times - the timing was always just a little wrong! 

Important things to know: 

• visiting hours for both buildings are different throughout the year, and very limited outside of summer
• tickets were tricky to get; the website didn't work with every browser or device, so it looked like things were closed or unavailable 
• parking at Pere Mata was easy, but difficult to be sure of; not easy at all for Casa Navás! I had this backwards, unfortunately - we were waaay early for Pere Mata, and a bit late for Casa Navás (luckily, they hadn't started yet - maybe waiting for us?)
• Reus seemed pretty small (I had guessed a population of only a few thousand), but it actually has over 100k residents!