Autumn Roses

We have spent the past 6 weeks in a lovely seaside town called Roses, in Spain, just over the French/Spanish border and have very much been acting like tourists, cycling along the prom, eating in the local tapas bars, chatting to other British caravanners about the occasional thunderstorm or windy day we were having, or swimming in the Med or the pool. But. … same as in the UK, autumn has arrived! Just not on such a grand scale!!

The nights are drawing in, getting dark by 7.30pm, mornings are darker until sunrise at 7.30am and evenings are a little chilly, resulting in the reappearance of my faithful fleece! Another downside to this weather, is the abundance of flies during the day and bloomin mosquitos in the evening! They drive David mad!! Me, the flies just annoy, and the mozzies feed a family of 20 on me, so frequent applications of anthisan are a regular occurrence after dark! I hope our neighbours have not heard the frequent cries of “oh, you b**tard, David, quick, rub here!”

This will be our last post for a few weeks, as we are jetting off to the USA with friends Mike and Brenda. We are flying from Barcelona to New York, spending 5 days there, then flying to Detroit, arriving on my birthday!

In Detroit we will be joining a few hundred others at “Motown A GoGo”, a celebration of Motown bands and singers, organised by a British man and held in the area famous for the Motown museum and Berry Gordi’s recording studios. On Friday 25th we will attend Mike and Brenda’s wedding, along with a few others, being performed in one of the actual studios.

After the wedding, we are taking an Amtrak train to Chicago, spending a few days there, before collecting a hire car and driving down part of Route 66, to St Louis, and Louisville, where we will pick up the Bourbon trail. Here we will no doubt visit a few distilleries, sampling their wares, maybe even purchasing some!!! From Louisville we head across to Indianapolis before heading north back up to Chicago. We fly back to New York and Barclona mid November, where we head south, so news updates will continue….

One day we took our snorkelling gear to Montjoi Bay, a secluded bay a little further around the coast, and spent the day at this deserted beach. At one point in the afternoon, there were a dozen people there, most had arrived on yachts or canoes! The water was cool, but not particularly clear, not many fish there, despite us taking tasty bread rolls along.

One day, we took a ride out with Mike and Brenda to the local Hyper shopping mall, and found this amazing Cadillac, reminding us that we are just weeks away from our visit to the USA.

Brenda and I also visited Salvador Dali’s museum in Figueres, housed in an old theatre that burned down, so Dali purchased it, renovated it and used the interior to display his artwork, paintings, drawings, ceramics and jewels.

One of Dali’s most unknown works is called “Explosion of Mystical Faith in the midst of the Cathedral” and is worth studying, the photos probably don’t do it justice. Its a stunning piece of artwork, which Dali worked on for 15 years (1959 – 1974) and is still claimed to be “unfinished”, showing the virgin saint surrounded by a nebula. The second painting shows his first attempt that was used as his “study” attempt, without the layers or colour and depth of bodies.