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| Snow over the Pyrinees |
Day 1
Porto, Portugal to Pau, France -- 950km
Porto, Portugal to Pau, France -- 950km
To prepare things for a journey like the one me and my wife were preparing to do is always stressing - do we have all we need? And if there’s a health problem? And if we don’t find a decent and not expensive hotel? And if the car brakes down? And if we have an accident? And how long each leg of the road? And we can’t start too late in the day!
Well, just leaving home I took a road that was not the best one! I planned everything so carefully and didn’t think of the roads in Portugal because I know them so well. Only after one hour driving I noticed I was in a secondary road, not the highway. Oh well ‘let’s keep on going’, it just took a little more to arrive to Spain border. Nowadays there’s no real border, only the area and facilities that can be used if needed.
In Spain there are two ways of going from the Portuguese border Chaves to the French border, in going out I took one way and a few days after when returning home I took the other one. No real difference, not much traffic. The Spain landscape is a bit boring, at least in this area. Also time to fill up the CR-V as gas in Spain is much less expensive than in Portugal or France. France will be the country with the worse gas prices in this trip.
Well, just leaving home I took a road that was not the best one! I planned everything so carefully and didn’t think of the roads in Portugal because I know them so well. Only after one hour driving I noticed I was in a secondary road, not the highway. Oh well ‘let’s keep on going’, it just took a little more to arrive to Spain border. Nowadays there’s no real border, only the area and facilities that can be used if needed.
In Spain there are two ways of going from the Portuguese border Chaves to the French border, in going out I took one way and a few days after when returning home I took the other one. No real difference, not much traffic. The Spain landscape is a bit boring, at least in this area. Also time to fill up the CR-V as gas in Spain is much less expensive than in Portugal or France. France will be the country with the worse gas prices in this trip.
From Spain to France across west Pyrinees, lots of mountains and tunnels. In France lots of traffic but all going north so as I turned east just a few cars, lots of time to watch the snow in the Pyrinees in the distance. Nice road and nice view. From time to time signs indicating a ski area.
Then Pau, a small French town where we stayed in a small hotel. The only one I didn’t book in advance because I was not sure if I could make it there from Porto in one day, mainly because I was not sure the time in the morning I was going to leave my house. But no problem at this time of year. There was no reception just a machine, everything was done typing a keyboard in the ‘front desk’ machine outside the hotel, paying by credit card then receiving the paper with a code to enter the hotel and then enter the room. Of course there was no restaurant or even a bar but vending machines. Luckily we had some things for sandwiches. I inserted coins for a warm tomato soup that made me feel good! 
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