Kaixo, familia eta lagunak!
“Hello family and friends” in the Basque language. Just don’t ask us how to pronounce it! We left Seattle at noon on Valentine’s Day for a 22 hour journey, including an 8 hour layover at Paris’ CDG airport, before we touched down in Bilbao, Spain, being regaled in our aircraft descent with the jade green hillsides and high cliffs bearing their white, sandy facades down to the waves of the Atlantic Ocean’s Bay of Biscay (Bizkaiko Badia, or Golkoa) and tankers and cargo ships anchored off multiple breakwaters, a contrast of commerce and the pristine. It would be the beginning of our discovering the wonders of Euskal Herria (Basque Country), a fiercely independent part of Spain that does everything to retain its history and character. Wherever there is a street sign on the corner of a building, it will have both Spanish and Basque naming conventions, e.g., calle and kalea, the respective names for street. As we were staying only one night here, we went out to explore the center of Bilbao on a Wednesday night, which turned out to be energetic and crowded at 8 p.m., meal time for consuming pintxos (pronounced pinchos), tapas-like snacks traditionally pierced with a cocktail stick, attaching crab, fish, jamon, etc. to a small piece of baguette-like bread.
We executed our typical deambulando (wandering) style of checking out the architecture, both early 19th century municipal buildings and the modern, e.g., the glassed Biscay Statutory Library, rising 6 stories, lights on inside showing off the plethora of tomes through the glass. A combination of the old and the new was the Azkuna Zentroa, an old fortress exterior with a modern interior, hosting cultural, athletic and entertainment activities. We also took in the throngs of people along Ledesma Kalea, a four block long party with heating lamps in the center, revelers having boisterous and intense conversations over drinks and food, standing inside areas in the center of the street which were serviced by the restaurants on either side of the street. The atmosphere was electric. In the U.S., this kind of intensity would be viewed as arguments, potentially ending up in fights. Here, it’s a reflection of their passionate nature. One thing of note was the high percentage of smokers. We later figured out it was not just a Basque thing. However, Maggie noted that the women were meticulously dressed and mostly keeping their hair short and stylish in the Basque region versus elsewhere in our Spain travels.
We started the next day with cappuccinos and chocolate caliente con churros which generated a sugar high that we took with us to our time at the Museo Guggenheim, where we entered near the massive stainless steel/soil/flowering plant sculpture by Jeff Koons, named “Flower Puppy”, with dimensions of 40x40x27 feet We spent a couple of hours there, starting at the 3rd floor’s Masterpiece exhibits, riding up in the glass elevator. We were regaled with Robert Motherwell’s elegies to the Spanish Republic and Nazi-influenced paintings by Anselm Kiefer, e.g., “Sunflowers”, Rauschenberg’s 10 meter-wide “Barge” and a special showing of the Hermann & Margrit Rupf’s collections of the works of Braque, Picasso, Gris, Klee & Kandinsky among others. The 2nd floor of Abstract Expressionism exhibits hosted works by Rothko, de Kooning, Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock, et al.
Leaving the Guggenheim, we walked along the Ria de Bilbao to the 8 foot wide cobble-stoned streets of Old Town to visit the 2 story Merkatua La Ribera, one of the biggest covered markets in Europe, where we wandered around ogling all the meats and vegetables on display, fish being filleted while customers watched and waited for their ‘catch-of-the-day’. On the 2nd floor, we purchased a light lunch from La Ribera Gastro Plaza (est. 1929) and ate outside, standing on the 4 foot wide concrete deck, enjoying the 68 degree weather and the view of Bilbao riverside dwellings. Returning to the main part of the city, we sat in Plazuela de Santiago, engaging with a table of Cypriots who flew 5 hours to attend a futbol match between Cyprus and Bilbao. There was much shouting and singing of songs only dyed-in-the-wool soccer fans would know the words of, let alone in a foreign tongue. Aside from that sideshow, there were pigeons underfoot, old men nose-to-nose in very intense conversations, gesturing with their entire bodies, a sight to behold and embrace. We had to leave this wonderful town after only 24 hours, but we packed in a lot and were now taking our lives in our hands by renting a small, burgundy-colored Fiat 500 for 5 days and experiencing the mysteries of roundabouts and misinformation from Google maps’ verbal directions. We barely missed a head on collision getting out of Bilbao due to the strange arrangement of traffic lights. Apparently I should have been looking at one next to me, not above and directly in front of me! Once we escaped the city, we had a leisurely 1.5 hour drive to San Sebastian (Donostia), arriving around 6 p.m., parking underground near Pension Casa Nicolasa, our home for the next 3 nights.
After settling in, we crawled the streets of Old Town (Parte Vieja in Spanish, Alde Zaharra in Basque), settling on Bartolo’s on Fermin Calbeton Kalea to learn how the whole pintxos (pronounced “pinchos”) thing works. It was pretty simple. Get a big plate, pile on whatever you want that is lined up along the top of the bar, show it to the cashier, who eyeballs it, rings it up, BOOM! No prices are listed, but everything was so cheap, who cares? Eating our dinners at this hour, 9 p.m. took a while to get used to, but, “when in Rome…” Other Bilbao experiences included Plaza Constitucion people watching and espying the Carrousel Palace, 1900, Donostia, a 117 year old treasure which had just closed down for siesta time. Due to almost 70 degree weather, we descended to the beach, La Perla, of the Bahia de La Concha (Kontxako Badia), where topless sunbathers lolled, eight teenage boys shed their clothing down to skivvies and ‘polar bear’ plunged into the waves, screaming and cavorting. A change-of-pace dining experience occurred at Raviolina’s, with our waiter having lived near where our son works in La Jolla, CA (it’s a small world), consuming a wonderful house pizza of tomato from Vesuvio, bufala, mozzarella, basil, grana padano, pistachio, walnuts and pinions dressed with pistachio sauce, along with a great bottle of Rioja wine, returning to the beach afterwards to view the beauty of the night.
The primary reason for a car rental was to take a full day to explore the north coast, along the Bay of Biscay, between Bermeo and San Sebastian. As we headed west toward Bilbao on the fast toll road, the sun was rising in back of us, creating warm, glowing hilltops with mauve-colored scrub hill sides, coming across herds of fluffy white sheep in the green grasses, passing by riverside industrial communities with high rise housing for workers (contrasting the pastoral and peaceful villages amongst the green rolling hills) and then shifting north up to San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (near Bermeo) after 122 kilometers (KM), where we parked and spent over an hour hiking down (and back) from the several hundred foot bluff above our targeted unique attraction, a 10th century hermitage (chapel) atop a large rock off shore, connected by a man-made, long, winding, narrow stoned causeway to reach a shrine for shipwrecked sailors. We climbed the 241 stairs to the hermitage, paid our respects inside and returned to the “burgundy express” to head east and complete our 8 hour loop adventure along the coast, passing through Mundaka, viewing the unique tidal action of Playa de Laida, the shallow waters extending inland into the Urdaiba Estuary, a bird sanctuary.
The second key target for us was the sleepy, Sausalito-like pueblo of Lekeitio, which was extremely crowded, being a Saturday, and just as were about to give up trying to find a parking spot, Maggie espied one that was not obvious, but was a perfect fit for our tiny vehicle, for which we were very thankful for its utility in this situation. We proceeded to walk down hill, marveling at all the colorful laundry hanging from so many windows, drying in the gentle breezes off the harbor, which was filled with fishing vessels, sail boats and an old dingy anchored offshore infested with seagulls basking in the sun. We plopped ourselves down at one of the many side-by-side eateries, Oskarbi, facing the sun and harbor, consuming fresh calamari bathed in oil and potatoes and bread topped with Manchego cheese and jamon. In front of us was a promenade of families and their children, motorcycle biker types, African men hawking touristy items no one needs and an accordionist regaling a nearby eatery booth, separated from us by plastic sheeting…a particularly pleasant Saturday afternoon experience.
The next day we left San Sebastian around 11:30 a.m., driving through Rioja, a major wine producing region with acres and acres of vineyards filled with pruned grape vines lying dormant, on our way to a one night stop in San Asensio, leaving a remaining 342 KM to Madrid (3.5 hours) the following day, where we would drop off the Fiat. We had our first petrol stop of the trip, which was interesting, discovering the gas cap needed the ignition key to open (attendant had to show me), and 28 liters, 35 Euros later (about $5.09 per gallon) we had filled the missing ¾ tank and proceeded to take in more of the arid landscape, arriving in late afternoon at our B & B, La Capellania, in the quaint and quiet, 1,200 person strong pueblo of San Asensio, where we were greeted by one of the co-owners, Clara, a small and wiry sort, who oriented us in her good English and suggested that dinner would best be had in the nearby (15 KM ) town of Haro (population 11,000) where there would be a better chance of finding restaurants open on a Sunday night (our timing has sucked a few times). Since we had a car, she suggested an itinerary through the neighboring landscape for various venues before we go for dinner. We dutifully followed her counsel and set off on our mini tour.
We drove east, then north to La Guardia, from whose hilltop we had an expansive view of more grape vines going on for thousands of acres with quite a few bodegas like Vivanco or Ysios, whose architect (Santiago Calatravca) created a rooftop mimicking the rolling hills of the Sierra de Cantabria mountain range that could be seen in the distance. We moved on to another architectural phenomenon in El Ciego, the Frank Gehry-designed Hotel Marquis de Riscal, a luxury Starwood hotel with a winery founded in 1858. We finished this loop and headed west to Haro, where we found the dining venues of note (El Claustro de Los Augustinos and Beethoven) to not be open for another 2 hours. Thus, we consoled ourselves with a glass of wine in the lobby of the Hotel Los Augustinos, a former monastery/convent, dating back to 1373! We later settled on a local cafeteria 20 feet from our car, dining on potato & egg frittata slices and calamares a la Romana. The danger of speaking English lies in someone nearby hearing their own language and joining you, which happened with an interesting Scotsman with some robust conversation, questioning us about U.S. politics, proudly claiming that he has never voted (he is in his 50’s!) and has lived in Spain now for 20 years. Drove back in the dark without events.
We had a hearty breakfast at the B & B, consisting of yogurt, croissants, jamon, pan tomato, while listening to quieting classical music which the other co-owner, Mercedes, had playing in the background. We passed on any winery tours, but took her suggestion to look at Burgos’ cathedral and the small town of Lerma on our way to Madrid. We headed west, espying the town of Briones and, as we approached Burgos and its 15 roundabouts to get to the cathedral, with the aftertaste of our experiences thus far with them, we went directly to Lerma and were very pleased with this folksy, quiet burg of 3,000 inhabitants. Passing through the Arco de la Carcel (Prison Arch, circa 17th century), we climbed through a warren of walled city-like residences and shops, reminding us of Assisi in Italy. In the Mercado Viejo square we had a quick lunch, outdoors in the sun, watching Wheel of Fortune on a large flat screen TV set up outside the restaurant, solving the unfinished Spanish words along with the locals.
One hundred KM from Madrid, we were blessed with the beautiful snow-covered Sierra Nevada Mountains. We arrived in Madrid with terrifying 4 p.m. traffic, stressed out to the max, almost getting side-swiped in a roundabout situation, needing to find a gas station to fill ¼ tank (would have had to pay for a whole tank otherwise), which caused more stress, going around in circles, then finally finding the subterranean AVIS drop off and expelling the breath I had been holding for the last hour. We also just barely eked by on the free mileage (1000 KM)…we were at 1002. No charge! Had another change-of-pace meal, dining on Indian cuisine and called it a day.
Now we could relax, letting a 10:30 a.m. bus take us to our next destination, Granada, where we will start the next dispatch. The bus ride allowed us to pay more attention to the scenery, e.g., pine trees (we are at around 3,000 feet), the beautiful mottled motif tapestry of green scrub-like olive trees against the ochre-colored soil, grape vineyards, solar farms, and solar panels spread out among the vineyards. We were in Man of La Mancha country and passed small, white windmills and some metal sculptures representing Don Quixote. In several instances, we spotted huge metallic bulls silhouetted against the sky and abandoned, forlorn stone dwellings, in disrepair, often with roofs caved in or missing, a testimony to the age of this expansive country. We finished our 5 hour bus ride, excited about not having to drive and moving on to the southern Spain Andalucia region.
Cheers until the next dispatch, Stan & Maggie