November 16 - A road well traveled

November 16 th – A Well Traveled Road
We left Spain on the 16th – Monday. Cadaques was hard to leave. I took a few photos before leaving which I will post right after this one. It looks a lot like Collouire - but where Collouire has pastel houses, everything in Cadaques is either bright white or deep blue. It’s a mighty pretty place.
Said goodbye to Aaron and Elaine – an older couple that were staying at our hotel and also went on the same Dali house tour that we did. They make you jealous that you haven’t been able to grow old with the love of your life – still vital and enjoying themselves and each other. They are from Manhattan and both are very talkative and very positive. At this point they both paint (small water colors) and are doing a trip from Barcelona to Collouire and back. They paint what they see (and or feel). Elaine was the first one to paint and has been doing it for 20 years. Aaron used to take photos but now he paints too and Elaine thinks he’s getting better than her. Aaron was a CPA in the rock and roll business back in the 1970s. Elaine went on some “road trips” as his representative. They have known a lot of “stars” and were full of fun stories which I am sure are true.
We left Cadaques around 11 am and drove north to France. At the border we noticed that they were stopping a lot of cars and taking them apart as they searched them full. Of course we were just waved through being old and white.
We got to our hotel in the Corbiere region of Languedoc pretty early (e.g., 2:30 pm). Driving through the acres and acres (here make that hectors and hectors) of beautiful grapes, we were anxious to sample the “vin”. This is such a beautiful time of year here, the grapes are many shades of reds and yellows – in patches as all that were planted at the same, and are of the same variety, are the same color. Makes a beautiful patchwork.
The hotel here is beautiful – looks quite old, “Mas” style, covered in vines and with very nice grounds and pool. We asked our host for advice saying we’d like to go to some wineries and taste the local products. He suggested going to the Abbey Fontfroid – at the end of the tour they provide tastings and you can purchase local wine. I was completely out of $ and needed an ATM. Our host said that I would need to drive to Lezignan which was about 15 miles away – in the opposite direction from the Abbey. We drove there and I got $. We then drove back to the Abbey now about 25 miles from Lezignan. Got there, went in, and learned that the Abbey was open for tours but closed for wine tasting (season over). So being much more interested in wine than the Abbey we asked where we might find a winery open for tasting. We were told that all the wineries are closed for tasting but that the wine center in Lezignan (where we had just been) was open. So we drove back there (25 miles) and, you guessed it…. It was closed too. We had just spent 2 hours driving back and forth, back and forth and no wine tasting. We bought some rather yucky rose at a grocery store and came back to the hotel.
Dinner at the hotel was a pretty formal affair, very good food, nice setting, and expensive. We did enjoy it though – not the best day of our trip.