From Porto to Budapest and back Day 2

Day 2
Pau, France to Cannes, France -- 710km
 
After the stress of the first day, a nice and pleasant road, not much traffic, fine weather and we arrived at Cannes when they were preparing things for the famous film festival. Lots of traffic, I had some trouble in following the GPS’voice instructions. I choose and booked hotels near the center of the towns so we can leave the car and easily walk. After parking the car in a garage near by and checking in at a nice but good priced hotel we went for a walk see the famous beach and all the people in the streets.

The famous beach getting ready for the film festival

And people getting ready to see the famous

The beaches were not very large, well, rather small compared to most beaches in Portugal. 

There was an extra movement of people because of the film festival. Many nice and expensive cars just cruising.

We had dinner in a small but nice french restaurant with a retro look that suited the place.

More walking, clouded but fine weather, fine town.

War monument

Back to the hotel, we noticed the entrance and elevators with film related decoration. Very nice.

Elevator’s doors at the hotel

From Porto to Budapest and back Day 1

Snow over the Pyrinees

Day 1
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.

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!

From Porto to Budapest and back

Is there a better way to travel than by car? Of course not. The independence, the rhythm, the comfort, the space are things you don’t find in any other mode of transport.
Of course the cost is important and perhaps it’s not cheap.
There’s also the details varying from person to person. I like even the packaging of suitcases, sacs and all the small things to take on a trip.

To prepare things in advance, to define the road, the goal of the trip, the cities to stay in and visit, also the alternate routes in case something goes wrong and you have to change the timetable or get back sooner than preview. I decided to drive in the morning till an interesting city then stop to visit it, have dinner at a restaurant and rest till next day.

I’m pretty sure the best area to live would be in the middle of a continent so it would be easier to drive to different areas. Not my case, though.

A few years ago it was worse because we didn’t have all the international highways or motorways as we have now. The secondary roads are much more scenic but it takes ages to go somewhere. So I defined the trip mainly with highways and a small amount of secondary roads. Also now we do not need a lot of different maps - paper maps, that is - I just downloaded and installed the maps I was going to need in my GPS or Satnav, my Nokia E75. At least I thought so - more on this later - I also had a Europe Map in paper just in case.

And there always is a reason, an objective. The objective was to pick my younger daughter who was studying in Budapest, Hungary for a year and was coming back home. So it was me and my wife from Porto to Budapest and me, my wife and my daughter on the way back.