18th June

Can’t believe this time a month ago we arrived in Rome.

At preset I am sitting in what they call the rock room of Casa Arriba.  Arriba literally means above, so picture us in the house at the top of the hilltop village.  It is a short 50m to the absolute top which is our backyard and believe it or not we also have a garden room up there!  Wait till you see these pictures, they won’t do it justice.  We have 360 deg panoramic views of the Pyrenees, even glaciers and snow covered slopes.  Magic at sunset this evening!  This house was built in the 1700s but thankfully has been modified with electricity and glazing.  The key to the front door is bigger than my hand!  It faces north so in the morning our kitchen and terrace will be bathed in sunshine.  On this same floor off the entrance we have a bathroom and the rock room so named because the south wall is the rock of the cliff and the north wall opens through French doors onto the terrace. It is a very comfortable reading/blogging room.   Upstairs are the three bedrooms and a very unusual bathroom.  I think we will be very comfortable here; Eric is very happy with his large, well-appointed kitchen and the aromas of frying garlic and onion are already in the air.

This morning we woke early and took the train to Barcelona Central Station, funny how it felt so familiar.  We caught the connection to the airport station and then the shuttle bus to Terminal 1. All going well until we found the long, slow queue for the hire car we had booked.  Eventually we were handed the keys to our red VW Golf and with some trepidation Eric handed them to me to drive out of Barcelona.  He must have had great faith in his navigation skills because neither of us had great confidence in my driving skills on the rhs of the road.  Fortunately I had to do about 4 laps of the carpark before I could exit and was let loose on the streets, so I had a bit of practice!  I’m sure Eric was doing the ‘white-knuckle ride thing’ you see at Luna Park but to his credit he didn’t say a thing. I actually found the changing of gears with my right hand more trouble than remembering to stay on the right, indicate with the stick on the left etc.  Once on the A2 freeway it was pretty easy sailing if you kept out of the far left lane where they fly by, well over the speed limit.  The photo below shows me looking relaxed, Not! About an 2 hrs later  I pulled up at a roadside Cantina and we joined the locals for lunch at about 2pm.  The waitress was very helpful despite our appalling Spanish and we got more than we bargained for.  When I thought she was convincing me that my Moussaka was beef she was actually confirming that I had ordered Moussaka for first course and beef steak and chips for second course.  I could hardly refuse it when it was served but goodness, I will be more careful in future. 

Eric was behind the wheel for the next leg into the hills. He navigated about 15 roundabouts without a problem and only once turned into the left hand side of the road, which he has done correctly all his driving life, until today.  Fortunately he quickly corrected without incident.  When we had been driving for about 4 kms up a one-lane road of potholes, with the occasional chunk of concrete, we were starting to wonder if we really had made a good decision to spend a week here.  Fortunately around the next corner, just 300m ahead was the village of Juseu (pronounced something like ‘who say you’) and we were immediately charmed.  We found our hosts who were extremely hospitable and enjoyed a welcoming drink on their garden terrace before being shown around Casa Arriba. We ducked down to Graus, (love that name) just 12 kms away, to buy supplies for the next few days and fortunately the Tourist Info office was open at 7pm on a Sat evening (strange opening hrs here in Spain) so we now have maps of the walking trails and historical sites.