Cruisin’ to Spain,

Spartan style…

On tuesday the 12th of august is was the beginning of our holiday. For the first time since we have our bug, we were going on an actual trip to Spain! With about 3000 km ahead we got up of our bed on 3.30 in the morning to go to Spain.

Destination: Vilanova I La Geltru. A place with about 65000 inhabitants about an hour below Barcelona. We planned the first day to have a night over at Lac de Pareloup. Our friends Marc and Tanja were staying there with their little boy Jaro and we were planning to stay there a couple of days on the way back home also. Lac de Pareloup is just a few km away from the bridge at Millau. A huge bridge worth taking a look at.

The trip to Lac de Pareloup wasn’t what we hoped for. Driving an old bug isn’t that much fun in the pooring rain, but unfortunately that isn’t something you can choose. So the first day the weather was a whole lot of bad….and so was my mental state of mind.

And just halfway France, as thing couldn’t get any worse, my rainblades desided to break. What to do? Driving in the rain without rainblades isn’t an option… So we bought some iron wire and tried to fix it. Some nice teamwork over there, because it worked! So we could continue our trip. About 9 in the evening we arrived at Lac de Pareloup. Exhausted but satisfied. The first 1100 km were behind us, so far so good!

After our stop at Lac de Pareloup we continued to Spain with our first stop at the bridge of Millau. What a piece of work! This day was a lot of fun. Finally we had lots of sun, so finally the cruising had begun!

That evening we arrived at Vilanova i La Geltru. With more than 1600 km behind us!

From the place were we stayed a train went to Barcelona every 15 minutes. We went to Barcelona several times. The first time it was in the evening. It was my first time in Barcelona and I didn’t know what to expect.

The first time we got there, we got out to diner somerhwere around the Ramblas. Nice restaurant, but at the end of the evening one big cock-roach made the table besides us quite hysterical. Good for us, we already finished our meal. I’m not used to cock-roaches and i prefer it to stay that way. So far for my first impression..

We continued our walk through Barcelona by visiting the Ramblas. It was past midnight by now and the first hookers already did an effort to get a piece of me and my money. The Ramblas at night is not the place you want your daughter to be hanging around. The same goes for Place de la Real. But it was fun to see the difference between day and night when we came back a couple of days later.

When we came back the other day, the sun was shining and there were of course lots of tourists. We did some shopping, went on the bus tour, did some drinks en hung around in parc Guell. It was fun, but to really experience Barcelona I think it’s better to spend a whole week or even longer in the city itself. We now got a first impression of the city, but I’m sure it’s got more to offer than the things we saw. So this one will be continued!

After staying one-and-a-half week in Vilanova we went to Pareloup to spend the last days of our holiday over there.

When we hit the road we first got the idea of ging into Barcelona to take some shots of our bug and some highlights. It was very cool to ride through Barcelona with our bug. They don’t see that every day over there and it was nice to see some people turning their heads and camera’s when shooting the Sagrade, just because of on old bug entering the scene! 🙂

After that we hit the road again to go to France. We didn’t take the highway because we wanted to get to see some of the beautiful countrysides…and we did!!

The last days of our holiday we spent on a camping at Lac de Pareloup with Marc, Tanja and Jaro. They were already there for the holiday and we joined them for some relaxing and BBQ’ing. The first day we drove to Millau. We drove through the great countryside and took a look at the bridge from below. What a view!!

After some relaxing it really was time to get back home. Back to our own bed, toilet, shower, garden and city…great…

It was our first time to ride this far with our bug. I think we drove about 3500 km in just 3 weeks. That’s quite a lot for a 6 volt VW bug and it was great fun. We got bad weather, sunshine, lots of wind and climbed upto a 1100 meters high. Quite a performance for our bug…and us..

Check some pics behind the click..