Behobie, the home of our friends Carmen and Cristina All photographs by Frits van Krevelen (1998)

The map of Behobie at the border

Behobie is a small village in the ultimate south-west of France near the Spanish border of Irun, the Pays Basque.Hendaye is the nearest larger French city.

Many Spanish people have settled here because of the high prices for houses and estates in Spain at the start of the last decade of the 20th century. Carmen and Cristina, both working in San Sebastian, Spain,  had built their house in 1991.After 7 years the garden has become a small oasis of flowers. 

The house of Carmen and Cristina

The house itself is designed in the local Basque style, which resembles much the Swiss chalet-style, as you can see at the left. It is very practical and well designed, and with 3 bedrooms it is quite large.

Down at the river

From the doorstep the view on the French Pyrenées is wonderful, but many times the fog is to dense because of the high level of humidity of the air at the Biscaya area.

The beautiful garden

 
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The kitchen is integrated in the livingroom. As you will notice below the walls of the kitchen are covered with delicate tiles in Spanish style (Spain has a wonderful ceramic industry, the tiles of Sevilla are considered to rank among the finest of the world).

Carmen preparing the barbecue

Carmen and Ans in the kitchen

Filling bottles with the marvellous Villaroya wine

Carmen likes cooking for her guests and she is very good at it. Of course it is the Spanish cuisine, but that is all right with us. Ans likes the Spanish cuisine a lot and Carmen has teached her  lots of tricks and tips.

She likes the Villaroya wine (Villaroya is a small village near Bijuesca) very much and we do agree completely. It is a strong, colorful and delicious wine, combining very well with the spicy Spanish cuisine. She insisted us to take a couple of dozens of bottles with us to Holland. Every now and then we enjoy the taste, reminding us at the wonderful hollidays in Spain in the company of Carmen and Cristina.

They both went with us to Haarlem at the end of the hollidays. This is an other nice story, which will be available perhaps some time later on this site. Stay tuned.

Back to the of our voyage.