Collioure Castle and beyond

After yesterday’s highly relaxed day decided to explore Collioure Castle in the middle of town.  We enjoyed exploring its subterranean bits, and vertiginous glimpses down the sheer castle side, and spells in rooms with interesting roofs.  Some rooms were being used for two contemporary art exhibitions. One was art produced in collaboration with four poets and as far as I could translate, they seemed to reflect the violent history of the castle.

After this Lorraine and I found ourselves in Café Sola and had two large glasses of cold beer, before heading home again. Buying en route some nice afternoon snacks, two little Spanish pastie things, and some French patisserie.

Later we went to the beach, and Lorraine sunned herself while I went for a snorkel around. Perhaps not quite so cold today, saw some good sized fish, grey mullet I think, even allowing for the magnifying effect of water, seemed to be as big as my foot or bigger.  Wanted to swim around to mitigate the food. Both Lorraine and I are at the top end of our chubby scales.

In the evening a walk about through town again, after having spent time on our balcony playing cards, and drinking red wine, which after our second glass we noticed was 13.5% and we felt a bit squiffy.

Surged out into town again, stopped at somewhere called Le Tambourin where we had a decent meal. Had an aperitif of Muscat de Rivesalt which made me think of Janet and Ken. A cheery time there with Lorraine, sitting outside the restaurant trying and failing to look French.

The Collioure folk are generally welcoming, and if you wade into their language with barbarous gusto, they often talk in English to make it stop.

I’ve noticed over the last week that there are lots of French people trendily wearing Union Flags, either as part of a teeshirt design, on bags or caps and so on.  No other flag is being used in this way. It makes me wonder if it is a simple fashion thing, or if the union flag has come to represent something a bit edgy.

After our meal we sat outside the church where a guitarist has been playing day after day. He plays some lovely things including bits of classical and jazz. So we wanted to give him a proper listen. Sadly he was playing Abba’s Fernando, when we arrived and it went down hill from there. And so we tottered home an off to bed.