Update

We're back in France, actually in Perpignan, which is just over the border from Spain. It's all part of the district of Catalonia, so in a way it's more Spanish than French.
For those Tradestaffer's this is pretty much the area in which Alex lived for a couple of years.

After Barcelona we travelled just up the road to Figureres for 2 reasons; it reputedly has one of the best restaurants in Spain and the Salvador Dali Museum.
Both were superb and I'll post more on Dali later.
The restaurant was also a treat. Rachel asked for agua (water) and they bought her an agua menu which had a choice of 16 still waters and 12 sparkling.
They didn't have any Chch tap water which I personally thought was pretty poor.

Having said that, being Spain we ate 3 courses each with 2 glasses of Cava (Spanish champagne) espressos and a bottle of pretty good wine for 120 Euros.
In France the same meal in a similar restaurant would be over 300 Euros which when you double it to get $NZ is the reason we did it in Spain.

Tomorrow we head up towards the Rivieria probably with a stay in Avignon or somewhere similar. Alex has given us plenty to do while we are there.

Any-one checking against our schedule will see that we are a bit ahead of ourselves, we are only supposed to get to Perpignon tomorrow. The reason is our quick trip across Spain to escape the cold. We are also thinking of dropping Marseille as all the Kiwis we have met on the trip didn't rate it at all.

So, our plan is to take an extra 2 days in Italy after Nice and go to Turin.
The reason for Turin is these 2 people.
We met them way back at Oktoberfest where they invited us to come and stay in their town for a day or two. We have kept in contact since and the thought of a home cooked meal and hanging out somewhere other than a restaurant or hotel room is pretty exciting.