From Barcelona to Tehran: Day Eight

Day Eight: Another Beautiful Day thorough Small Villages  

      

May 7, 2012; Distance covered today: 120 Km; Total: 635 Km

I left the campground at 9:20 am. It was another sunny day with a mild wind. In the morning, I saw a very old couple from Holland who had just started their trip home—to Holland. It was really interesting to see retired old people do something physically difficult like this. They said they were going to be on the road for six weeks. Their bicycles were fully loaded and they had planned to stay in campgrounds. 

I saw more cyclists today, but they were on the opposite direction so I could not stop and have a chat with them. 

In the afternoon, as I was biking on a country road, I saw a couple of signs outside an old house by the road. They only thing I could understand from the sign was “olive”. So I stopped to take a look. An old woman greeted and asked me to see her little shop in the corner of her yard. There I saw some interesting pictures on the wall. Actually, they were all her pictures in old newspapers. She was very famous when she was young. There were pictures of her getting medals and trophies and awards from minister of agriculture, politicians, and dancing while current Gipsy King’s father, etc. She was stunningly beautiful when she was young. She could have had a life with fame, a rich husband, money, all the rest of it, but she had chosen to living in this small house by the side of the road, growing her own vegetables and living her life the way she wants it.  She was never married, she had a sun, a singer. She didn’t allow me to take a picture of her place, but her little shop was really interesting. I bought a very small jar of olives from her. I tried them with dinner, and MY GOD, I had never tasted olives like that before, the smell of the olive was absolutely different from the industrially produced olive we buy. 

Now, I am in a very nice campground called Camping Nostradamus in Salon de Provence in south of France. The only staff, Gilles Rigole, is very friendly and the campground itself is very nice and clean. It is cheap, 9 Euros, and Internet is 1.5 Euros/h.

Tomorrow is a national holiday, Victory day, in France. It is the day the WW II ended. All the shops are going to be closed. So I will have to starve I guess.