Breakfast at 8 was in a room with a lot of other people passing through and just needing a place to stop for the night on their way to someplace else. It was the standard coffee machine coffee, pain au chocolat, croissant, cold cuts, cheese, OJ, bread and yogurt. Usually there is an egg option; here hard boiled eggs. Other places have a DIY egg boiling machine and some serve scrambled eggs.
We were on the road about 9:30 and for the first time it felt like it was soon going to be a hot day.
We were on farm roads going through small villages that had turned into tourist villages. There was a fair amount of tourist traffic. In general, tourists and contractor vehicles are the most dangerous on these roads. The self employed guys are always in a rush and tourists are always in a rush or drunk.
As we got to the base of the Pyrenees the traffic got heavier. I was expecting that all the traffic would be on the A9 which ran parallel but our road up the hill was very busy.
Laurie did well up the hill. It was a few hundred meters climb over 5 or 6km. She stopped a few times but got to the top.
As we neared the top the cars that had been whizzing by were stacked up and we started passing them. The French town at the border was a bottle neck. We started to go downhill in the town and at the edge of town rolled through the old Spanish security checkpoints. The booths were still there but long abandoned.
As soon as we crossed into Spain we got a nice wide shoulder to ride on and it was a fast downhill. Without pedaling we were in our town for the night, La Jonquera.
La Jonquera is where French come to get cheap liquor and cigarettes. Jennifer says it has more hookers per square meter than any place in Europe. I have not observed any hookers but I have seen people filling cars full with booze and cigarettes. And Axe body spray for some reason.
We had a Spanish dinner in the restaurant attached to the hotel. Calamari and paella were ok, but the tarte al whiskey was the winner. The waiter brought over the cake and a bottle and did a three finger pour on the cake.
We got supplies for the morning so we could get on the road as early as possible. The is a long weekend and there are a lot of people driving.
The target tomorrow is Girona where I booked a nice hotel in the city center. It's a little longer distance but the first 15km should be downhill.
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