October 8th

Today's breakfast was simple. Coffee, granola, milk. It was gray and rainy when I opened the shutters to the kitchen, but the rain broke and the sun came out around 10am. I took a quick 20 minute bike ride around town to get a sense of where things are. When I got back to the house, Fabrice, my father and the two Sylvies were all ready to go on a mushrom hunting day trip to Spain. We hopped in the car and began the 30 km drive south onto the Spanish side of the Pyrenees mountains. On the road to Spain we passed through an EU duty-free zone and I noted the taxi-stand of Spanish hookers next to the diesel pump. I guess hooker taxes are a bitch when you're a trucker. We left the duty free zone after filling up the tank and continued up into the mountains. The land was full of rocks and sand. The single lane road wound up and around shear cliffs and everywhere I looked I could see chestnut trees. At a flat spot on the side of the road we pulled over and my father ambled over some rocks and into the woods to collect chestnuts and look for mushrooms. We followed with less enthusiasm as we were all starting to get hungry. After about 5 minutes of foraging, we agreed to look elsewhere, but only after lunch. We drove for another 15 minutes higher and deeper into the mountains. The air was noticeably cooler. Driving along the gravel road at 10 miles an hour, we made a final turn into what I thought was a secluded restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Before we could park however, 60 retired german tourists poured out of 2 tour buses and goosestepped into the restaurant along with their own accordion player. We decided pretty quickly to ditch octoberfest in lieu of something quieter. I'm still unclear on how octoberfest ended up at a Catalan restaurant in the Pyrenees, but maybe I just don't get octoberfest, like its more a state of mind, man so it like transcends location ou quelque chose.

So with our rumbling tummies we looked at our map and drove to the closest village, west of La Jonquera. We found a village early along our route which wasn't on the map. No one was outside, and there was absolutely no noise. A couple of the old buildings had been marked with offical plaques as historically preserved sites dating from the 12th century. In the midst of this personless quasi-existant town floating in the pyrenees was a Catalan restaurant. It seemed totally out of place to me, but if my chaperones thought so they didn't say anything. They just walked in, found out the chef was French and that was good enough for them, so we sat down for lunch. The food was fine- salad, bread, a very aromatic and fruity local red wine, and then a platter of vegetables with roasted rabbit, duck, wild boar and bull sausage. For dessert they convinced me to taste the Tarta whiskey (frozen cakey-custard soaked in whiskey) which we all shared. It was good but I wasn't in a dessert mood. (As a side note I've noticed that we usually start lunch at around 1pm everyday and it doesnt usually finish until after 3pm.)

After lunch we thanked the chef and went outside to take some pictures of the deserted town. That took all of 2 minutes and then we continued through the mountains looking for chestnuts and mushrooms. We found a good spot a few miles up the road and managed to filled two plastic bags with chestnuts. The mushroom hunting was a bust though. At around 5pm. We got into the car and started the long drive home down through winding mountain roads. We made it home by 7pm and then Fabrice and Sylvie said their goodbyes and left to go back to their house in Montpellier. A sudden thunderstorm started as they left so we ate a simple dinner at 8 and stayed inside until bedtime. Dinner was 2 softboiled eggs, salted radishes and baguette. My father conceded that he had had too much red wine over the previous three days so he retired to the computer without a drink, to show me the local skydiving club's website. I was pretty tired from the slow driving and the wine, so I wrote this blog entry and headed off to bed.