Terrazzo Lavilledieu, Arcachon Bay, France, over the Pyrenees to Spain

We have crossed another frontier and are back in Spain.  It's been very hot and today (Tues 18th July ) we had 41 degrees! Yikes, thank goodness for the AC in the car. No one is out and about, the power meters must be burning hot as the AC machines are on full throttle,  the roads are quiet and we had the supermarket virtually to ourselves, the AC was bliss.

Driving the last two days we have seen some beautiful sights. We came across Terrazzo Lavilledieu quite by chance. We were admiring the gorgeous flowerbeds,  topiaried hedges and gorgeous trees so we stopped. It turns out that The Gardens of Imagination are in Terrasson, we didn't know this until later but if the public town gardens are anything to go by the Imagination Gardens (500 roses, 10,000 trees, water features ) would have been amazing

We then drove on to the coast of France and a little seaside settlement called Arcachon. There is a seaside promenade with all the usual holiday hoopla and then there is a little working oyster spit on a river and estuary.  We had to go and check out the oyster shacks.

 They  produce 130,000 tonne of oyster here for all of Europe, also oyster spawn. We had thought to have lunch here but the little shacks really were just that, little shacks and it was way too hot to sit outside, we would have keeled over in the heat before the first oyster had slid down our throats.

  The river looked dirty but I think it was the mud bottom .Check out the boat in the pic below, it has seen better days.

The area had been hit hard in the 70's  and 80's and the oysters  died out due to oil spill pollution and marine anti fouling paint chemicals (France led the charge in changing the TBT levels acceptable in anti fouling marine paint) in the water. They tried to introduce the Pacific oyster but the Pacific oyster we having none of it. Slowly the original oyster has returned and is flourishing. 

They teach the oysters to slowly stay shut via putting them in flushing chambers that replicate low tides, after lower and lower 'tides' the oysters stay shut longer and therefore get to market fresher. 

 They had funny white sleeves (in pic below ) that were all stacked up and I think they used these inside the actual oyster cages or around the oyster spirals above, not sure . Very interesting but way too hot to sit in oyster shack!

For something a little different here's a word from the stats guru

• We have been in Europe 79 days
• We have been driving the Renault lease car for 49 days
• We have travelled 12,000 kms
• We have filled up 11 times at an average of € 30 per fill
• We use 4.3 litres per 100 km or about 1050 km per tank.
• We have been in 15 countries
• We have crossed borders 30 times  and  our passports only looked at twice 
• Our average  accommodation rate is € 50 euro (some higher and some lower)
• We have seen two accidents
• It has rained about seven days.
• We have met only one other Kiwi couple
• Diesel prices range from $0.89 cents super litre in Spain to $1.56 in France.
• Cup of coffee prices run from €1 in most places to €3 euro in others. Thats $1.70 nzd to  $4.80.
• Best beer prices are in Spain and Portugal @Euro$ 0.18c per can for San Miguel. EURO$0.49c for a bottle of Stella
• Best wine price is a bottle of delicious Aussie Chardonnay @€ 1.89 per bottle. (The local wines are great too!)
• A  not  too bad  methode champagnoir is about  €2.00
• Food prices are incredible. For example...  most vegetables and fruits are about 75% cheaper than NZ.
• Croatia likes to deal in cash as does Montenegro. They are not into Visa or eftpos due to transaction costs 
• We avoided toll roads across every country except Austria and  Slovakia. 
• By avoiding tolls we travelled through small towns but... it takes you about Two hours to do 100 km but we discovered some gems along the way 
• A GPS is a must!  Set it to avoid tolls and motorways and sit back and enjoy the countryside.
• We book our hotels/ accommodation one or two days ahead using booking.com. 
• We search deals, verify the quality on TripAdvisor, and always ensured they had good wifi, air con, free parking on site,  big beds, and in a quiet area. (There are little " tricks" that you need to know to find the deals, such as searching away from the " hot spots/ high price" areas, and  waiting to the last minute to book... but we also just drive into an area and look around for a deal).
• Note: Border control is done by thousands of cameras on every entry/ exit road into  all countries.  These cameras film every car and every number plate and simultaneously analyze the plate against a data base which covers all Euro cars. If a car approaches a border camera ( set at intervals along the roads) and the plate is not on the records or is listed as suspect, then the police will nab you before or at the border.  Most borders still have active police  stationed in the offices but they are just waiting for the cameras to tell their computers who to nab.

This is one of the roads the GPS took us around, in the middle of a corn field....it certainly gives you the fuller picture of towns and villages! This was a two way road!