Le Centre du Monde (Salvador Dali on Perpignan)

It has been the worst winter  in this area for forty years, and aspersions  are being cast on the coincidence of this phenomenon and our arrival.

However, on Saturday sun was forecast and while Gaz was offering me various options of activities for this warm and sunny day, I was dreaming of my body in a bikini again:

My dream:

The reality:

The Abrivado at Grau du Roi had been postponed so we, with Bassie  and Hugh, decided to visit Perpignan, where none of us had been and where the above beauties reside.   Nice to have a bit of culture from time to time.   Hugh drove, so a lovely break for Gazzie.

Amazingly, though Perpignan is only about seventy miles from here, they had not had snow.   But as we drove towards the town,  the Pyrénées rising before us were completely white.

There are more stunning cities in this area than you can shake a stick at (what the hell does that mean?   Why would you be shaking a stick anyway?).   Perpignan takes some beating though.   Home,  years ago, to the Kings of Majorca, there is a strong Catalan influence throughout the city and the people.   That’s all the historical education I’m afraid.

We were in shirt sleeves (I’ve just got a picture of that.  Where do we get these sayings? Why would anyone go naked except for the sleeves of a shirt?).

We parked easily and walked into brilliant sunshine and shared this view as we sipped our coffee and savoured our croissants.

After a wander through the old town looking longingly into shop windows of high fashion and even higher prices we had lunch in the town square where residents and visitors joined in mutual enjoyment of a good lunch under blue skies.

We are still very new to the French language of course and often have to check things on Google Translate.  So for your information,  if you see, on a menu, “tomette de brebis”, the dish you can look forward to is “floor tile of ewe”.

We then made our way through these ancient streets towards the stop for the little tourist train.

The Basilique-Cathédrale de Saint Jean-Baptiste de Perpignan  looks almost modern from the outside, but the inside filled both Gary and I with wonder and reverence.   Whilst neither of us are conventionally religious, we were both moved to tears by the beauty of  this building and I was so glad I had left any cynicism on the doorstep and walked in ready to embrace whatever we found.

And so  to the relative normality of the Little Train.

Gazzie and I were taken right back in our minds to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway where we had many, many happy times with our grandson over the course of a couple of years, feeding his obsession with Thomas the Tank  Engine.    We said, in unison, as we boarded the train. “Thomas’  Engine is blue, Percy  has a big funnel and oh, here comes the Fat Controller”. That last was Miles and I being hilarious when grandpa appeared.   Ah happy days!

Still, I digress.

The tour was fascinating.   We bib bibbed and toot tooted through the narrow streets where the shops were so close we could have shoplifted.  The train wouldn’t have made much of a getaway car though.

We made our way higher and higher and were then asked to put away our cameras as we trundled through the Gypsy Quarter.  Catalan Gypsies (or Gitans, remember?)  are a valued part of the community here.   There were maybe a hundred men, women and children in the square, talking, playing, being.    They were mostly dressed in black but there was a friendly, happy  feeling about the place and certainly an air of self parody from the young man who shouted“Don’t stop or I’ll have your tyres off”. In Catalan naturally,  but I worked it out from his gestures.   I think.

Every time the tourist information tape stopped, we had a jolly song about Perpignan which we were all soon singing along to.   It appeared to have more to do with a German Oompah band than anything French, but none the less, we happily bounced and swayed in a jolly touristy way.

Back in the town we stopped in Tiger to buy silly glasses and found each other hilarious!

We had felt like kings, enjoying the beneficence that was our due and like paupers who’d savoured every crumb.   Sometimes, that’s how a day goes.