Perpignon

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My trip was book-ended by kindness from strangers: After a pleasingly uneventful flight into Perpignon, during which I managed to resist buying anything, I kept leapfrogging (so to speak) a mother and daughter couple who, like me, were looking to take the navette (mini-bus) into the city centre. This not proving to be as straight forward as it might be in another country, the mother invited me to join them in their taxi.  They had been delightful company sitting next to me on the plane and patiently ignoring my attempts to contact passing meteors and their spiritually enlightened passengers by various noddings of the head, dribbling, snoring and other twitches more familiar as final death throes of uncommon poisons than tics of a slumbering mountaineer-to-be.  So I was more than happy to repay their sufferance with half the taxi fare, or indeed all of it.  The lovely Mrs Connell, had been on a business trip, the fare was deductible, The net was a welcoming gift to me entering her adopted country - win, win!
Another time I would know to get straight on the bus out of the city centre and head for the hills.  The enormity not so much of the challenge, but more my lack of preparation for it meant some time spent acclimatising- to the French language and culture - was in order.
Perpignon's asset is it's lack of character, being fairly bland it doesn't attract hordes of tourists which would blemish its plain 'girl next door' complexion. Its chief attraction seemed to be a Castillo barely big enough to defend against Munchkins let alone Cathars
I found a 'cheap' pension thanked the kind Monsieurs for their help in my best Arabic and set about, in the still heat of the afternoon, looking for culture

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The bars on the main street up to the station provided me with a taste of the Spanish/French/Catalan mix, as well as a bearded, Panama hatted, fully enlightened Irish man, a painter of women, a scourge among 'Philistines' (yes, yes, more irony, zut!). More of Alan Wallace in another blog.  The evening was finished off watching Toulouse wallop I less local side in another bar, learning what "Q'est il a fait?" meant by the constant, and finally irritating, repetition of it it by the man behind me with the slow eyes. 

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