Tallulah and the Pyrenees

Before Elizabeth learned to crawl, stand, slam dunk, etc., we all took a trip to the Pyrenees. Sorry for not telling you all. It was so beautiful we wanted to keep it a secret.

Actually, we were busy too keeping up with Elizabeth – cleaning, baby-proofing, pulling electrical things out of her mouth - to write anything. So here’s the short version (and a snap of E waving to a local farmer).

Executive summary in 50 words: We weren’t prepared. No one spoke English; only Catalan. And because we didn’t know Catalan we accidentally ordered grossness like liver, pork ribs with baby-poop sauce, actual pigs feet, etc. Our unpreparedness, however, meant fate took over. And that’s how Elizabeth became an international baby model (See Hiking with Tallulah).

Day 1: Carcassonne and beyond:

One of the most striking towns I’ve ever seen. For those of you unfamiliar with Carcassonne, check it out on Wikipedia, here.

Unfortunately, we’d gotten up at 4 a.m. and were looking to start our long journey south so Elizabeth could get in a good nap. So we spent maybe an hour and a half walking around the town and stopping to take a picture of Kate sampling the local cuisine (croissants and orangina).

After three hours of snaking up mountain roads, we arrived at our “Allotjament rural,” which if you type it into google/translate just means “lodging.” Anyway, the place we stayed at was on the northern side (read: ski-slopey side) of the Pyrenees, but it had good views, quality amenities, and a gross breakfast composed of wet bread (by ways of tomato juice) and various thinly sliced cold meats (liver, pancreas, cat).

It was also tucked away down a road that kept tapering. Here’s a video of us driving the last few hundred narrow feet.

Day 2: We’ll be coming ‘round the mountain

Our place also had a very nice hostess who told us all about a wonderful place to hike.

Unfortunately this didn’t happen until day 3. On day 2, we were armed with only a poorly marked map and a vague idea of where we were. So we simply headed for higher ground hoping to come across a beautiful, well-marked hiking area.

Although our drive was nice, we didn’t exactly find this. Instead, we came upon the “Famous Cathar Trail,” to us was neither famour nor a trail. Here’s E and K standing by one part of it.

Day 3: Hiking with Tallulah

Finally, we figured out where we were AND, more importantly, where we wanted to go. After about 30 minutes we got to a town named Estana on the edge of the little known Cadi-Moixero national park. There, at the a hikers’ parking lot in the town square, a squat auburn German Shepherd we named Tallulah sauntered up to us and offered to become our local tour guide through the woods. Gladly, we accepted and took a glorious 1.5 hour hike, following Tallulah the whole way up a mountain, much to Elizabeth’s delight. Yes, it felt weird to follow a dog we didn’t know up a trail we weren’t familiar with, especially because we thought Tallulah’s owner might find us and think we’re stealing his dog!

On our way back into the town, we were stopped by a large truck with a photographer, a translator, and a driver – all of whom wanted nothing more than to take pictures of our happy family (dog included) for the local tourist office, which was trying to expose these mountains to the tourism industry.

So we agreed, posing with Elizabeth and Tallulah while the mountains provided a scenic backdrop. One of the poses they asked us to do was me squatting down to take a picture of Kate and Elizabeth while Tallulah sat by my side. Here’s one of several of those photos.

Afterward it was time for E’s nap, so we drove to Andorra, had paella (yes, in a land-locked country), filled up with cheap (tax-free) gas, bought what I thought was chocolate milk (it was not … it was something called chufa juice), and got stopped at the border and had to open our truck to show that we weren’t carting off boxes of tax-free goodies to resell.

Day 4: The return trip.

We stopped at a beautiful French town called Ax les Thermes, well known in the region for skiing and thermal baths. We also saw the scariest town we’ve ever seen, called Frejoiux, which actually had a free public internet window with the keyboard and mouse outside while the monitor was pressed against the glass on the inside. I checked my gmail.