Zaragoza was a nice enough Spanish town that gave us an idea of what a smaller city off the tourist trail is like. We went there as it's on the way to France and we thought it was a fine place to spend a night. The city centre was quite lively and there were a few nice looking buildings and streets to walk through. There was a huge central market next to our hostel where Sonja collected all sorts of gourmet local ingredients and we spent the evening enjoying ...

We spent two nights in Madrid, and were kindly put up by a friend from Australia living in the city. Having an insider with you always makes a difference and this was no exception. Our timing happened to be excellent again as we were there during a public holiday for Madrid's patron Saint, so there were festivities happening all over the place. The whole city was transformed into one big festival, and the weather was perfect. Many streets were blocked to traffi...

Barcelona is a city that many people have raved about in conversation with us, so our expectations were high when we arrived. It's in the region of Catalunya, and they're extremely independent. If things go their way they could end up separating from Spain one day in the not too distant future. We took a very good walking tour of the city, given by an Australian guy, which put Barcelona's past and present into context. Later in the day during our roaming we s...

Perpignan was just a stop on the way to Spain for us as we don't like the idea of spending full days on trains. Luckily we had no expectations of the place because it was an absolute ghost town. Instead of the usual hostel or hotel we had found a place on AirBnB so we had someone's fully equipped apartment to ourselves which was fantastic. For the first time in ages we were able to enjoy some creature comforts like our own music, movies and a kitchen to ourselves...

Avignon was another nice French town where we had a pretty nice hostel with some decent people to get to know. From Avignon we explored the nearby cities; Marseille and Arles which were again, nice towns to walk through with the usual collection of old town, churches, castles, forts and pretty facades. Arles happened to be in the middle of their Festival of Nude which meant that all of the notable buildings were displaying art exhibits of nudity in some way or an...