Perpignan 2

Time to head into a coffee shop for some sustenance after the whole day on a train. Perpignan, in her heydays was referred to as the 'centre of the world'. Today it is confused about her identity, it's part of France but they feel more Catalan than French. It's a quiet and pretty place, easy to get around and makes an excellent place to visit the nearby beach towns and the isolated villages of the Pyrenees, both of which we were there to do. This evening would be the only time we spent in Perpignan, pity, I would have liked to have spent more time. This, as in any other trips, is when time and money is of the essence, both of which I have little. It doesn't deter me from doing the most with whatever I have of each. I looked at my last pay stub and released that though I made a huge gross, I only deposited and took home half of it, the rest went to taxes, social security, 401k and whatever else. What I took home was really meager but no matter, I have to stretch the dollar to it's breaking point. Like I wrote before, I get triple fun from these trips, fun in planning it, fun in doing it and fun in writing about it and reliving it. Everything in my life have to do double or triple duty. 'What's in your wallet?'

The old town is across the river and we crossed over on a little bridge. Perpignan gets rather deserted after 7 pm and the people are dark complected and I was scared. I did remember reports of racial riots here 3 years ago. Another thing that I noticed is the dog poop, every where in France, one has to deal with dog poop but in Perpignan they are extra large, they are huge. A Japanese tourist put a Catalan flag on one and took a picture. Sorry, one can't help but notice it.

Part of the citadel.

We didn't even have time to go in this church.

Every one's gone home, there are some people at cafes, the restaurants were not opened yet, I guess they follow the Catalan way of eating late, way too late for us Americans. We had Tapas on our first evening but when we tried to return to the same restaurant the next evening, they were closed so we ate Chinese, imagine that. It was the only restarant opened early. It reminded me of a similar incident in Trapani last year. It was Sunday and it was raining the whole day and we had already got wet during our day trip to Erice. My boots were wet, it took 3 days before they dried. I was miserable and we were looking around for a restaurant, Sophie didn't want to eat at a cafe. So we trudged around and finally, round a corner, we saw red lanterns.... could it be...Chinese? Sure enough it was a Chinese restaurant and they were opened, about the only restaurant opened that sunday evening. Thank God for the Chinese, they're every where in this world. Come to think about it, we do find ourselves eating Chinese food in the oddest places in Europe.

We saw some