LIVING ABROAD

I Kept Saying We Were Driving Down To Mexico for the Day

We live in France

Heading from France into Spain (all photos by author)

I lived in Southern California for years. Although the Mexican border town of Tijuana is only an hour south, depending on traffic, it was always fun to go down there. Cross the border and you’re in a different world. Crazy traffic, billboards bidding you here and there. Avenida Revolución, Tijuana’s main drag, lined with bars, souvenir shops hung with pinatas and ponchos. Cheap garden pots, knock-off designer clothes. Handbags, perfume, booze.

For the past eleven years, I’ve lived in France, less than a two-hour drive, depending on traffic, from the Spanish border town of La Jonquera. The same anything-goes border town feeling — cheap garden pots, discount booze and tobacco stores, all-you-can-eat buffets, block-long mercados and sleazy hotels. I’ve never been down there without thinking of Tijuana.

La Jonquera, away from the main drag

Anchois Cantabria Pain Tomate

But head a few miles, even a few blocks, from the main drag and it’s a different world…