We took a TGV from Paris to Collioure. Western Europe has a system of fast trains that travel upto 300 kmph (190 mph) non-stop between major cities – nice trains – easy to reserve based on our Eurorail pass that we had bought in the US. It was a balmy 80 degree Fahrenheit when we got off the train in Perpignan! Collioure is in the deep southeast of France and is located along the Pyrenees range which divides Spain from France. The people here are Catalan and Collioure used to be the main city for the King of Majorca.
We stayed with David and Ellen Hall who are family friends from our days in Brusselles in the late 1970s. David very kindly picked us up at the Perpignan train station. Driving back to Collioure (about 30 minutes away), a number o f memories started coming back about when we had visited Collioure in the late 1980s – the deep blue Mediterranean waters, the house on the hill, the view of Collioure etc.
The Halls have a fantastic home on a hill overlooking Collioure. David cooked us some fantastic dinners which went very well with the local wines! And we had very nice breakfasts – baguettes, multi-grain bread, jam, butter, fruit etc. Having read recently that a healthy lifestyle increases lifespans by over 10 years, we strove to keep to that lifestyle – that lifestyle has four basic tenets
* a Mediterranean diet (fruit, vegetables, white meat, etc.)
* 4 glasses of wine a week
* 30 minutes of exercise a day
* no smoking.
Here's the view of Collioure:
We greatly exceeded the 4 glasses of wine per week and also the 30 minutes of exercise per day through walking! I believe I have discovered the secret to eating the terribly smelly French cheese that we get here – take a clothes pin and clip it to your nose so that you don´t smell anything! On our final night there, Andrew and his friend Delphine came over for dinner – it was wonderful to meet him after so many years (15 years, I believe)!
We went for a wonderful 15 k hike with Ellen which took us about 3 hours. The route included an old olive mill, two forts (Fort St Elme and Fort Dogummier) and a Christian refuge called the Hermitage which serves as a place for pilgrims to stay. Many who took the road to Santiago Composetella also came this way as was shown by the scallop shell in this photo. 
We wound our way through a couple of wineries also – picking season is in full gear and we even saw various places where the pickers had dropped grapes. Ellen pointed out several plants that wereinteresting, including wild coriander, heather, wild berries, olives trees and more. We had to continually fight against the summer wind which is called the Tramontane – the wind is pretty constant and whips away all the moisture in the air. 
There were weekend markets in Port Vendre and Collioure on Saturday and Sunday. Cheese, wine (Banyuls, Rousillon, Collioure), jams and bread were in full abundance. We bought an excellent fig & almond jam along with local cheese. The Saturday market closed down rapidly due to the Tramontane wind! 
Collioure village itself has about 2500 inhabitants and consists of a chateau and a town with several small alleyways. 
We drove into Spain one afternoon. With the integration of the EU, borders have become somewhat useless – nobody really checks passports and residents of Spain and France drive over into each others countries regularly to take advantage of better prices, sightseeing, seeing friends etc. With the same currency everywhere, it is somewhat tough to differentiate between the countries. We went to a fantastic memorial in Portbou (Catalunya) to Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher, who tragically commited suicide. The memorial had a steel tunnel drilled right through a mountain side at a 45 degree angle, ending in a glass door overlooking the sea. The philosopher was buried in the cemetery next door and the memorial aims to symbolize constant movement (the sea) into eternity. The monument is entitled "Passatges" in Catalan. Not only Benjamin's suicide is evoked here, but also the thousand of refugees crossing illegally, for decades, that boarder in both directions according to the various political conditions.
All-in-all, this was a wonderful weekend in Collioure and it was great to see the Halls!
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