Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Pamplona - 31st May

Another day another country - as you can see from the above we have left Andorra and are staying for the night in Spain. After visiting Andorra it made more sense to drop down into Spain and travel below the Pyrenees rather than travel across the mountains on the French side. We chose a route of 434kms that would take us deeper into Spain so we could see some of the bigger cities as opposed to small villages on the edge of the Pyrenees.

However, first we had to go through border control, but still no passport stamp, only a 10 question Government survey mainly to see if you bought any duty free. The surveyor was doing very well with his English and impressing the NZ tourist right up until he said “and Sir in New Zealand you would be retired?”, not sure why Sir ‘the pension collector’ was offended by that. [Ed: One day...]

Our first stop was Ponts, only because they were having a market with available free parking. By a stroke of luck they also had a café that had a very obliging person on the till who used her phone to translates Roger’s specific instructions on how he wanted his coffee made. “Perfecto” finally Roger had a perfect coffee. Unlike the Spanish the French are renowned for making shit coffee, unfortunately for Roger we go back to France tomorrow.

Picture below is lunch: donut, spinach savoury and an empty coffee cup, in an air-conditioned café, out of the 31 degree heat.

Family history time: My maternal grandmother’s family are Paniora (Spanish Maori), descendants of Manuel Jose, a Spanish whaler from the town of Valverde del Majano, Spain, who jumped ship in NZ waters about 1835 and married, consecutively, 5 Ngati Porou women. The town is very small and 4 hours drive south from Zaragoza and I will leave it up to the Australian family to visit in August this year.

Meanwhile I have taken a photo of the view looking south while sitting in road works at Fraga. This is some of the better scenery we have had today, as most of the way to Pamplona it was dry barren land.

Zaragoza was the furthest south we went before going north to Pamplona; big city, big heat (34 degrees), big basilica (Our Lady of the Pillar), but cheap as inner city parking for only NZ$1 for an hour.
Roger got another perfect coffee, I got an ice cream and when you have outstayed your welcome at the café they call in the piano-accordion playing homeless to drive you out. We had to move on anyway as I needed to make sure Roger made his daily appearance at a Catholic church. We couldn’t do much else because I had planned to be here at 2.00pm assuming that like the French the Spanish would have a two hour lunch, I got that half right, but because it is hotter in the afternoon the Spanish shut their doors from 2.00pm to 4.30pm.

Pamplona is our final destination tonight and we are staying right in the middle of the old quarters on ‘tapas’ lane; it's lucky our room has two doors out on to the street, both double glazed. We also get half price parking in the underground car park minutes from our hotel. Pamplona is famous for the running of the bulls in the main street and we planned our trip not to be here at that time, but did go and see the arena and the monument.
If you don't know what the Running of the Bulls is, it is an annual event where testosterone & alcohol fueled English & Aussies run in front of frightened animals...

Our other tourist visits focused on the old city and the book fair in the main square.

Cheese Experience No.40 - Dinner for two We dined in the old town square, after searching the café menu boards for a Spanish meal and, only finding croquettes, we settled on their cousin, Mexican done Spanish style. Roger had chicken and chips with camembert sauce and I got nachos, the big blob of yellow in the photo below is an island of thick cheese.