(written 11/4/06 14:35 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
We might have driven out of snowy Andorra, but we still had quite a bit more of the Pyrénées to get through before we could drive with any speed. Lots of snowy windy driving followed until we reached the plain, where at one point our road actually passed briefly back into España before re-emerging in France. Crazy tightly-packed Europe!
We decided to cover some serious distance across southern France, as we had spent a reasonable amount of time here
last time around.
Being a Sunday pretty much everything was closed, so after a while we gave in and went with the "fill the stomach" option of McDonalds by the side of a road. Neither of us was very happy with the concept, but it did the job and we pushed on covering a huge, uneventful distance mostly on motorways around Perpignan and then towards
Nîmes. We had actually come through this city changing trains
last trip, and to be honest didn't give it much more of a chance this time than we did then.
I spotted a sign to a
Hotel Formule 1, the fast food option of hotels, on the eastern outskirts, which fitted the bill perfectly. They only have one type of room, one price for 1, 2 or 3 people and set the bar very low and hit it perfectly. Pretty much the McDonalds of hotels, actually. The place was cheap, clean and quiet, and exactly what we needed after such a driving day. They even offer wireless for a price, but we didn't have enough blog ready to upload to make it worthwhile.
We drove into Nîmes looking for dinner, finding a local pizza joint as the simplest option. We brought a pizza and a couple of cokes back to our room, which we mixed with the ridiculously cheap Scotch we had purchased in Andorra for a cheap night in.