{"id":1597,"date":"2019-04-13T19:28:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-13T18:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/?p=1597"},"modified":"2021-06-17T21:43:17","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T20:43:17","slug":"spain-to-france-to-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/?p=1597","title":{"rendered":"Spain to France to Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SPAIN<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

S<\/strong>We had a few days in a site just between Figueres and Capmany about 10 miles from the border with France. The site was spacious with lots of large pitches and very quiet, surrounded by vineyards and oak forests, at night the site was very dark, plenty of bats and owls about.  We had a few windy days here, even though we were protected by the tall trees\u2026..we were rocking, so to speak! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capmany is a tiny village but well known in this area for being home to not one, not two, but three winemakers and distributors! A small castle type building houses accommodation, a pub and a shop are all that are here, the area is surrounded by oak and cork trees, as well as the odd vine and olive tree. We also found almond trees in flower, such a beautiful scent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Almond trees.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Capmany castle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Leaving Capmany.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Snow capped roads crossing the border into France.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The site was also a few miles away from the motorway and the town of La Jonquera, which cannot really be described as a town.  There is a small traditional village a mile away with the same name but the main attraction here was the massive supermarkets and tobacconists, perfect for motorhomers and lorry drivers stocking up on bulk alcohol, tobacco, clothes, electronic goods and traditional Spanish products.  We could not get over the size of the bottles available in the supermarkets, 1, 1.5, 2 and 3 litre bottles of every possible alcoholic drink you could think of and several you may never have heard of!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A 3 litre bottle of Jack Daniels for \u20ac79 !!! That’s one hell of a hangover bottle!!!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

People, mainly French speaking, had trollies full of huge sacks of meat, vegetables and everyday household products, the staff on the tills spoke French first then Spanish then English so obviously a popular day trip destination from France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Port Bou, a village on the French\/Spanish border, view from the Church at the top of town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Out and about…..<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The journey from Spain into France was an easy one but Narbonne to Lake Garda was 1,655kms, broken up into jumps of 360, 300 and 280kms, always stopping halfway for a refreshment break.  We find it quite funny looking at the lorry driver\u2019s expressions as we pull up alongside their 18 wheelers!! Along the way, we also passed several snow capped mountains, experienced sun and rain, saw blue skies and grey clouds, green fields, grey industrial areas and brown rocky hillsides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tee Pee stop en route in a lorry park!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

FRANCE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

F<\/strong>In France we returned to a site we have been before just off the motorway at Narbonne called La Nautique where we had a few surprise visitors from Bonterra \u2013 our lovely Dutch friends Kees and Reik stopped overnight on their way back to the Netherlands, and our even lovelier Dutch\/Hungarian friends Chris and Mary stopped en-route to their overnight stay, stopping long enough for a bite and a drink and a quick walk around the site before continuing their journey.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Afternoon sun, with friends.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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From left, David, Kees, Reik, Mary, Chris and me xx<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We moved onto Frejus for just one night, despite emailing the site weeks in advance, when we arrived on Sunday morning there were no staff on reception at all!  Apparently they do not man the reception desk at weekends until the end of April!  A kindly German man let us in and in the morning we paid and moved on.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tried a new site in Antibes, called La Vieille Ferme (The Old Farm) which turned out to be lovely, housing several RVs and permanent home to a Welsh couple from Tredegar, we felt at home!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A traditional hill top village alongside the road.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Antibes Village.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We explored Antibes marina the first day and was star struck when we saw the world\u2019s largest Superyacht, called Dilbar.  It dominated the skyline due to its huge size and gold colour.  We established it is owned by a Russian billionaire, is only 3 years old, 156 metres long, houses 40 passengers and 80 crew and has not one but TWO helipads and an indoor swimming pool on its top deck!  It only cost a cool $600 million US Dollars!!!!  We spotted a people carrier on the 4th<\/sup> deck, gold in colour of course, to perfectly match the yacht!!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Spotted in the Marina car park.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
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    Antibes Fort.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
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    Antibes is an attractive place, comprising the old seafront\nvillage and a more modern smart area behind the old town on the Cote\nD\u2019Azure.   Here the sea is soooo blue, blue\nis not a good enough description, try azure, turquoise, deep aquamarine,\ncobalt, navy or indigo and all shades in between.  The old town has lots of medieval stone\nwalls, a fort and beautiful tall buildings looking out to sea.  We had several lovely hours wandering around\nadmiring the beauty, sadly we did not spot any celebrities\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    ITALY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The drive from Antibes in France to Asti in Italy took just over 4 hours, boy do the Italians know how to charge on the tolls! We paid \u20ac85.90 from Narbonne to Frejus and another \u20ac136 from the French\/Italian border to just outside Asti.  And all because we have 8 wheels on our vehicle and are over 2.3m high!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    An Italian tunnel, with traditional village overhead!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We returned to a site in Asti that we stayed at last year, again the owners welcomed us back before they were officially open. It was so cold at night, a real shock to the system after a warm Spain and hot France, we had to put our heating back on!!! One day we did sit outside in the sun until about 6.30pm! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Our view in Asti.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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    This was our temperature most evenings, 2C!!!!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    We did venture into Asti one evening and found a wonderful Indian restaurant, recently opened, where we had such a lovely meal. David tried a new beer, it did not have any additional effect on his prowess that night!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    We ventured into Turin from Asti, another day, another blog!!! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    SPAIN SWe had a few days in a site just between Figueres and Capmany about 10 miles from the border with France. The site was spacious with lots of large pitches and very quiet, surrounded by vineyards and oak forests, at night the site was very dark, plenty of bats and owls about.  We had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,5,125,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-general","category-spain","category-travel","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/20190317_104955.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1631,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}