Take baguettes twice daily as recommended

Bon jour again from Anglet France.We have been here a month now, and it's time to move on. It was nice to put down roots though for a bit, instead of unpacking every other night.

The Basque country here is beautiful and all the people have been very friendly. It's a postcard pretty spot where cute country cottages nestle in pine trees, with freshly painted window boxes overflowing with vivid scarlet geraniums.

Where giant hydrangeas on steroids fill the gardens, in every spectrum from deep royal purple to bright blue, magenta and powder pink.

Where elegant stone mansions line the boulevards, looking like miniature castles with turrets and pointy witch hat roofs.

Where people wear yellow or purple pants, and sometimes even berets (yes berets!) and drink pitchers of sangria for lunch (we are just next to Spain, so sangria and tapas have slipped over the border here - as easily as they slip down your gullet after a long day of swimming and surfing : )

And where people ride by on bicycles with baguettes peeking out of their backpacks, walk their dogs to get baguettes, and stop off for baguettes twice daily in their little cars. In fact, the French buy baguettes fresh several times a day, and we often find ourselves going down to the boulangerie too for our twice daily fix.

While we've been here, we've done several excursions - visited the charming nearby cities of Biarritz and Bayonne, and also went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain - see us in front with Jeff Koons' giant living flower "Puppy" sculpture, which we had the pleasure of seeing many years ago when it came to Sydney Harbour in 1995.

Unfortunately, Miles has hurt his back and has not been able to surf in the last week. This has allowed us to see the inside of a French hospital (a long wait, but efficient, helpful and shockingly cheap - we thought socialised medicine in Australia was inexpensive! ) Fortunately, the doctor was able to tell us, with a mixture of our bad French and his bad English, that it was probably a tendon pulled or strained. So hopefully with a bit of drug therapy, he is on the mend and will be feeling impish again soon : )

We are off to Toulouse now and then flying to Greece for two weeks at a resort on Rhodes. No baquettes there but there is always fresh fetta, olives and ouzo....Mmmmm.

The Mobile Merde Man

I was out buying my baguettes one morning and noticed a man riding around on his motorbike with a big vacum cleaner on it? I watched him suck up all the dog pooh from the footpath!!! He works for Anglet Council and he is the Mobile Merde Man (it's stored in a big box on the back of his motorbike - I wonder what they do with it when they get it back to the depot????).

We have been here almost three weeks in Anglet (Biarritz) on the Spanish border in SW France on the Atlantic coast, with Miles trying to get in as much surfing as possible, with mixed results. This is Hydrangia capital of the world, I reckon (popular flower in the 70s). They are everywhere and grown with pride (see pics). We have a fantastic apartment we rented for 3 weeks from Madame and Monsieur Boulle (as in the game petanque or French bowls). It looks straight out over the ocean with panaramic views. It's great at sunset at about 10pm with a glass of Bordeaux!! So much for not drinking everyday of the trip. We overlook a trendy little Basque bar out front so it makes for good people watching each evening.

Surfing here has been fun as the French are very polite in the water.When you paddle out in the morning you have to Bonjour just about everyone. Forgot to bring your cossie? No problem. Just drop your pantalons and swim naked in front of 50 people at the main beach!! (Some old dude did this the other day in front of everyone). Au revoir for now.

Madrid: Open all hours except when you need it!

Hi Guys. We've been disconnected from the internet umbilical cord for awhile and unable to blog. So let's catch up. After Tenerife in the Canary Islands, we flew straight to Madrid, and to be blunt, we didn't like it near as much as Barcelona. If you visit only one place in Spain, make it Barcelona, not Madrid. Food is better, people are nicer, and the vibe is, how you say in Espanol, mas simpatico!

That said, Madrid does have some fascinating buildings and lovely parks. Trouble is, we are totally and completely out of whack with Spanish time. You wake up and go out for a coffee at what you, in your silly, non-latin, uptight Northern European mindset, is the very late hour of 9am, only to find out that not one cafe is open except for Starbucks (note to Starbucks tragics - you can be excused for drinking at Starbucks in Spain for this reason. In Italy, NEVER!).

A kitchen in your hotel room is essential (our kitchenette was in a closet in the hotel room hallway!) because by the time you get your shit together to go to the shop, everything is closed again for lunch and does not open again until 4.30. Impossible! But you can open your hotel window and see people lining up to go into a comedy club at 1 am in the morning! We, of course, are never in that queue because we are old and already in bed. Imagine doing this trip when we are even older than we are now???? No way, Jose.

Well that's okay. While we were awake, we ate tapas, we drank fantastic Spanish wine for $10 a bottle, we laid in the park watching backpackers and spagnolas sunbathe in their bra and underwear (Miles was very interested in this local custom) and of course, we went to museums and palaces in Madrid - the famous Prado, and the Thyssen Bonemisza museum - a collection of art across 5 centuries including many famous artists, that was owned by one obviously ludicrously wealthy family and sold to the state of Spain for 300 million dollars. A bargain when you see it all.

We also saw the lead up to the regional elections, which brought thousands of young people out to protest. They are not happy that Spain's economy is in the toilet and the EU, IMF and World Bank are insisting on harsh reforms. We were amused at their naivete and not sympathetic as they will have to take their medicine sometime - but boy, those Spaniards know how to get out and get angry about stuff. They took over the central metro station, camping out and plastering the entire glass dome over the metro entrance with posters, messages and banners (see top photo).

Most of all, we spent a lot of time hanging out of our hotel window looking over the Gran Via, just watching life pass by in all colourful shapes and sizes. The stores may be closed, but your mind tends to stay more open when you see how they do it in another part of the globe.