Vacation Canet en Roussillon Style

D and her family have an apartment in Canet and she invited me to stay a few days with her before I went back to France. Her birthday is July 13th and mine is the 15th, so we celebrated our bdays together and left on Thursday to drivce down to Canet. Canet is about 10 minutes from Perpignan, and very close to the border with Spain.

This is the view from their apartment:


Yes, the beach was across the street. Pretty fabulous... except that I have to majorly avoid sun exposure because of all the treatments I had. But it wasn't so bad. We got up pretty late most days, so I could spend a couple of hours in the apartment reading or doing some French excersizes and then head down to the beach around 5:30 or 6 when the sun is less strong and sit under an umbrella in capris and a t shirt covered in SPF 55 sunscreen.

So I can't be a beach bunny, and honestly I never have been, which means this was not my ideal vacation. I prefer vacations where you go places and visit things and do stuff, so I got bored of this pretty quickly. We did take two day trips, one to Banyuls sur Mer with a friend of D's who lives in Perpignan. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met. He knew everything about all the plants, rocks, animals, buildings, etc., treated us like princesses and packed a picnic and everything!

The village itself:



Gorgeous, right? We wandered around in the village and then hung out in a crique (cove):




We also took a day trip to Villefranche de Conflent, an 11th century city tucked away in the mountains that was later fortified. It's tiny, totally surrounded by walls, and very cute:




I guess this is what D likes to do for vacation, relax and not do a whole lot, but if I had been in charge of vacation there would have been more going on. We didn't go to Spain (apparently the wait at the border is really long and most French people only go down there to buy cigarettes and alcohol, not to sightsee), and there are tons of different villages we could have gone to. Plus there's Perpignan right there with some stuff to see, but D doesn't like Perpignan. An excellent friend, but not my ideal travel buddy. It was really nice of her to invite me though, and I can't wait to see her again in September.