In this period of my life I sometimes experienced in the minutes before waking, the deepest darkest despair. About nothing in particular, just pure distilled sadness flooding my heart. Later I discovered a plausible physiological explanation. The time before waking is when body activity is at its lowest ebb and waking is like trying to crank start a cold motor. The heart is struggling with insufficient oxygen to pump blood and this is felt as heartache. It hasn't happened of late. In a perverse sort of way I miss it. With such a start to the day, nothing that befalls you thereafter could be worse.
We had a slow start to the day, not the least because it would be a long day for me. We had a decidedly non-spartan breakfast in our room of müsli, yoghurt, bananas and a couple of packs of pineapple juice before venturing out. This is the Castillet cinema around the corner mentioned yesterday that dates back to the Franco era.
We took a look at the antique market in Allée Maillol, named after the French Catalan sculptor. It was held in an open-air park lined with trees. It was a small affair with old books, furnishings and bric a brac. However later in the old city in one of the plazas we found a group of people dancing the sardana.
If anything this demonstrated how the residents identified more with Catalan culture than mainstream French.
I showered in the hotel and left my backpack with the concierge. From the tourist office we ascertained that we needed to take bus 1 to Carnet-Plage (Perpignan is not by the sea). There were some palms but it was a beach mostly unrelieved by shade. The sunshine was blinding, and there was little breeze so it was no fun walking the promenade. I had a galette lunch. It contained tuna, anchovies, tomato, cheese and egg. The most refreshing part of lunch was the Kronebourg 1664 beer.
We looked around for a supermarket to buy bottled water but the only businesses at Carnet-Plage were ice creameries, trinket shops or restaurants, as one would expect of a holiday beach. Also real estate agencies. I noted that house prices seemed low. I wonder if they still are. We found our water on return to Perpignan.
After having a siesta in what was now B's sole occupancy room, we went out for dinner. I had the Morue à la Catalan (Cod Catalan) which is desalted cod, obviously related to the Spanish bacalao, cooked in an earthenware dish.
Then we went back to Allée Maillol to watch the folkloric dancing that had been advertised on posters. It looked like there were invited groups from neighbouring Catalonia. During the break they put on sardana music and the audience took the cue. When the band came back and began a number, the floodlights and the sound system cut out. A fuse must have blown somewhere. The band started playing a sardana to entertain the audience. The crowd was quite good-natured about it. Unfortunately I had to leave. I collected my backpack and walked to the station with B. We were to meet again in Dijon in a few days, after I had visited a friend in Strasbourg.
There were quite a few dodgy looking characters in the waiting room but there were railway guards prowling around. They even ejected a drifter from a platform. Eventually the train came. At Narbonne I changed to the sleeper train. It had come from Toulouse so there were already people on it. I found the door to my cabin locked. Eventually a conductor came. He took a look at my ticket and said that it was for the following morning, 14.6, not 13.6. I gave such a big sigh of despair that he took pity on me and unlocked a cabin with a free couchette and altered the details on my ticket accordingly. I'll be forever grateful to that quick-thinking SNCF fonctionnaire. The mistake was made back at Sète. I made a resolution to check my tickets in future before leaving the counter, especially for departures after midnight.
We caught an early train and arrived in Perpignan around 0930. This was as close I would get to the Spanish border from the French side. The Catalan influence is still palpable in this city because prior to 1642 it was governed by Aragon. During the Thirty Years' War it was captured by the French and ceded to them in 1659. The picture is of the Castillet, a central landmark.
I didn't have a map of the city in my guide so we walked to the centre of the city looking for the tourist office. There we got a city map. Then we looked for a hotel and settled for one near the Castillet and the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). This pleasant canal runs through the centre of the city.
B went to look at the cathedral and I had a cool drink at a Quick restaurant (a French fast food chain) while writing yesterday's entry in the diary.
This is a façade of the city hall.
The city has a Dalí connection. In 1963 he famously declared that its railway station was the centre of the universe because he always got his best ideas sitting in the waiting room. The city has not failed to capitalise on this tenuous connection as you can see from these street decorations (egg and limp watch). Perpignan was also where during the Franco years Catalans would come to see banned films like Last Tango in Paris.
After a lunch at a sandwich joint, where I tried a steak haché (page in French) which is nothing more pretentious than a hamburger patty, we walked to the Palace of the Kings of Majorca. It dates back to the 13th century. I guess King of Majorca would have been a title like Prince of Wales, and later Majorca narrowed its meaning to just the island. The palace is maintained by the city and still used for cultural events.
I got the impression, from looking at posters outside the Palais de Congrès, that Pepignan was trying to reinvent itself and aligning itself more to Barcelona, which is closer, than to Paris.
In the evening we went walking in the old city. While looking around for dinner we were persuaded to dine at a place called Chez Sarda by a very personable Moroccan woman who might have been the owner. We got a nice shellfish meal for 15€ each.
The floodlit red Castillet was quite pretty from the other side of the canal.
We strolled around the streets in the cool night air and I took a few night shots before we called it a night.
