POSTED Jan 26, 2024
Jan 24, 2024 Musée d'art moderne de Céret
My obsession with the “1001” paintings is the purpose of our trip today. There is a 1001 painting at the Musée d'art Moderne in Céret, France. The extra challenge is that Google Maps cannot plot our trip to Céret, France!! Google Maps can get us to Perpignan, France that is ‘close’ to Céret. Getting to Céret took some internets searching. I used a couple of travel web sites to find a bus from Perpignan to Céret. The liO 530 bus will get us to a stop in Céret that is close to the museum. The challenge now was to coordinate the train and bus times to and from to Céret. The RENFE train we took from Barcelona to Perpignan was: Lv 8:19 Arv 9:41 19€ ea. When we were sitting on the train, Sue looked at her watch and started to say “lets light this….” and the train started moving before she could “candle”!! After our train to Perpignan made a stop in France a group of four French policiers (policemen) came into our car and checked tickets/passports. The guy who inspected our passports didn’t just glance at two old travelers and look at our photos in the passports. He really went through them, looking at the stamps; we passed the inspection. But they lead a young man out of his seat, along with his luggage to the end of the car. When we reached Perpignan they lead him off into the station. There was some kind of issue with his papers, or lack thereof. I’ll jump ahead a bit; when we were at the same Perpignan station waiting to go home. We saw another group of police lead another guy off a train and take him into the station. I assume for a similar reason.
Back to our travel plans that you can’t wait to hear about. There is a 530 bus at 10:10 from Perpignan that gets us to Céret stop Rond Pont du Toreador 10th stop Arv 10:57; it is an 8 min walk to the museum. But I also had another site for the 530 bus that took us to Rond pont Des Croix Guerre and then a 15 min walk to the museum. The bus fare was 2€ per person each way. During my searching I downloaded the liO bus app to buy our tickets and load them on my phone. (Hint for anyone who takes this trip, pay for your ride with two 1€ coins. We boarded the bus and had a problem scanning the QR code with my phone to validate our tickets. The bus driver eventually helped us, but he wasn’t happy. Our stop was the 10th on the route, so Sue counted each stop as we passed them. I used the app to watch our progress on a map and look for our stop RP du Toreador. After a few stops we reached a stop where two bus line officers got on the bus to check tickets! The guy who checked our tickets had to look them up on my phone, but we’re good. As we were getting closer I walked up to the front of the bus and asked the driver “stop Toreador?” He nodded yes (?) so I went back to our seat. I couldn’t see Toreador stop on the app map when stop Des Croix Guerre was the next stop. So we got off; I didn’t want to end up outside of Céret. We ended up walking at least 15 min to get to the museum, but we did get to the museum, I think about 11:30. As I write this I’ve used the liO app and Google Maps to find out we somehow missed the Toreador stop. I think we got off one stop too soon the, one before the Toreador stop. I just was too panicky, my fear was that we would be going away from the museum. Anyway, we did get to the museum.
Now, what you’ve been waiting for, my description and photos of the paintings; no all the comments are in the album link below. There weren’t many people in the museum. We saw two ladies sitting in the room with the 1001 painting, they were sitting down, each reading a document. Sue did see them in another room later on, again sitting down and reading. I think they were the only other people in the museum. It is a nice museum, if you like art museums. I think we left the museum around 12:00, and went to find the return stop for bus 530 at Rond Pont du Toreador. It was about an 8 min walk from the museum. There were already a few people sitting at the stop. Our bus was due at 13:00, so we headed back up into town to get a sandwich and something to drink. On our way back we came across an ‘older’ couple we had passed on the way to the stop. I mean “older” they were moving very slowly; the man appeared to be very fragile. The old gentleman was sitting on the curb, he had apparently fallen. A younger lady (maybe 40) who had stopped, and gotten out of her car was standing behind him. She was holding him with her hands in his armpits, as if she wanted to lift him up. I stepped up and took hold of his left arm, and the younger lady took hold of his right arm. We then helped him standup. He wanted to start walking, and I asked how far did he need to walk? The young lady said only a 100 meters. So we started walking, slowly back toward the bus stop. After a few minutes when we were at the bus stop, where there was a raised wall that people waiting for the bus could easily sit on. The gentleman made it known that he didn’t want us holding him anymore, the other helper who spoke French indicated that we could let him walk on his own, which we did. She and I slapped hands as she returned to her car, and we headed back up the slope to town. We got a sandwich we could split, and bought a can of Coke Zero and headed back to the bus stop. By the time the bus showed up there were probably 20 people waiting to get on. We had to wait 15 min before the 530 showed up. I was still not using my phone app properly, but this driver could see that we had purchased the tickets and he waved us on. We sat in the first place with two open seats. It turned out to be over the front wheel, so there wasn’t a lot of leg room. The bus ride was uneventful because we knew the bus would stop at the Perpignan train station, so we didn’t have to worry about picking the right stop!! I was free to take photos along the ride, as you’ll see in the album. Just to keep us on everyone on their toes, at the same stop where we stopped on the way to Céret to have our tickets checked, the same two bus line officers got on the bus to check ticket again! And once again our tickets passed the test, but the officer had to find them on my phone. I guess those two guys do the same for every bus that stops there. We arrived at Gare Perpignan (train station) at about 13:48. Our train was due at 15:09. We walked around the town near the station, but there wasn’t much to see. While we at the station we saw police get off another train leading, individual they in their possession into the station. Our train showed up a few minutes before the scheduled departure time. We got into our car and went to our seats, and of course there were people sitting there! Our seats were two seat facing forward and two facing backward. One lady said someone was in her seat and that we should just find an open seat. Sue told her that could mean someone would then show up and want their seat. These folks should just go get into their seats. So they all left, and we were the only two sitting in these four seats. After that the ride was uneventful. The Spanish police didn’t come through our car when we crossed back into Spain. I did take a few more bad photos on the ride.
That evening we went out to a wonderful Italian restaurant. The food was terrific, and the staff were great. We will be going back.
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