Drive, baby

We love our car, even tho everything is the wrong way round. It feels very odd to be sitting on the right, with nothing but dashboard in front. Even worse, on the left, with gear stick in the middle (we really should have gone for an automatic) to be used with the right hand...

Anyway, so far so good. We have both had turns as driver - geoff for first two days, me for next two.

So he got France, I got the trip into Spain. When you get to the toll booths (which we had decided to avoid, until we discovered travel OFF the tollways, so have re-evaluated) all the many road markings disappear and you just drive towards the toll booth you prefer, all the while feeling free to change you mind at the last moment. When you emerge from the other side you do the same in reverse - speeding across the great open expanse of asphalt until you re-emerge onto the motorway.

once there, you do your utmost to exceed the speed limit (if there is one) - so far, as observed earlier, 130 seems to be the preferred number in France, and 120 in Spain.

We have both mostly grasped the need to indicate from the left - although with so much rain it doesn't hurt to operate the windscreen wiper!

had a chilling experience trying to navigate Figueres (home of Salvador Dali), find a park , find the Museu, find the park, get out of town... you get the idea. All in the rain, of course. As luck would have it we got back to the carpark moments before the attendant was about to disappear off with his lunch. God knows how long we'd have waited for release if we'd arrived only seconds later than we did!

The Dali museu was, suitably, weird, and chocka - we had to queue (in the rain) for a good 15 minutes or so, before entering and finding out that we both (still) don't really like Dali. Still it was sort of enriching and definitely memorable!

Getting to our Barcelona hotel on the motorway/s was similarly exciting and i'm not sure if we'd have coped without the navman - it has its quirks but, on the whole, is a toy to be treasured!