Off to Spain

Since my first day on my trip things have much improved – of course there was an awful lot of room for improvement. The cigarette smoke odor in the car seems to be diminishing and I’ve gotten used to loading my luggage though the folded down rear seats.



I didn’t have much time, or desire, to fully investigate Lourdes. I did venture out in the early morning to take Angel for a walk and discovered that a huge part of the town is a cemetery. I guess people must go there for the cure and stay to die. The town itself is quite small so the size of the cemetery seems quite out of proportion to the population.

There were a lot of tourists in the town. They fell mainly into two groups – outdoors enthusiasts (back packers and mountain climbers) and religious groups. I spotted two young nuns walking along. I didn’t think there were any left.
The view from the top of my hotel was very nice – in fact it was the only nice thing about other than it had great Internet connectivity (which I am discovering is not that common).

I left the hotel by 9 am and drove up to Cirque Garvernie, or actually drove as far as the town of Garvernie and viewed the Cirque from there. The Cirque is the group of Pryrenees mountain faces forming a near-circle. It was very beautiful in the morning light which was a good thing as the drive to get there took a long time and was challenging. Obviously it was mostly uphill and most of the way on a quite narrow road with no shoulders and often with a cliff on one side. Other times the cliff was above the road and there was sometimes a net which catches boulders falling from the cliff (as evidenced by many boulders in the net). Also making the drive more challenging were the many bicycling groups on the road with the road so narrow that there was only room for one car to pass a time.
Not only was the Cirque worth the drive, the scenery all along the way was truly beautiful. It was brilliant green, thickly forested, rushing streams, and charming little houses way up the mountainside. Later further up the road there were picturesque small hotels. This is a ski area although I can’t imagine driving here with snow on the road.

Here are backpackers getting ready to climb the Cirque.

Angel much prefers this hotel in Bilbao to the dump we stayed in last night.

Inside the central core of the Guggenheim.

Bilbao had a quite a few beautifully architectural bridges. Here is a pedestrian one by my hotel.

These were gigantic sculptures in the central atriam of the museum.

Looking staight on at the museum.

Bilboa is a much bigger city than I expected. I thought I would have no trouble spotting the Guggenheim and then finding my hotel as I knew it was near the museum. For some reason my TomTom GPS didn’t recognize the street name for my hotel (probably because it was only one block long). I wasted 2 hours trying to find the hotel. At one point I parked the car where I saw another car pull out. I asked some bystanders to point me in the direction of the Guggenheim and they told me to walk along the river and I would find it. I did and I did.

Next to the Guggenheim there was a tourist information office. The young woman there gave me a map and circled the location of my hotel. I used retraced my steps, found the car, and it turns out I was just around the block from the hotel. The hotel was very, very nice and quite a change from the place I had been the last night. I don’t usually take pictures of my hotel rooms but I did take one as it was such a welcome change.

It was an easy walk to the Guggenheim but since I didn’t get to it until 5 pm, and the Museum closes at 8 pm, I worried that I wouldn’t have time to adequately see it. Not to worry - 3 hours was more than enough time for me. The building itself and its internal design is absolutely breathtaking. Every line is curved other than the floors (although some of them are curved too). I much prefer the design to the NYC Guggenheim.

Most of the artworks themselves are not to my liking. I do like some abstract modern art, although I must say I do prefer impressionism, post-impressionism, surrealism, and modern not-so-abstract art. The paintings here are things like Jackson Pollack and the like. Huge canvases with big blotches of color that shout at you or else giant paintings of one solid color (usually black) with maybe a few white blotches in one corner. The acoustic-guide discussed many of these “masterpieces” sometimes with actual commentary by the artist himself or herself. For one of these paintings which was an unpainted white canvas with random yellow lines (all the same color of yellow) the artist explained that it was a true work of art as there are no brushstrokes, nothing added by the artist, just it is what it is for art. Sorry but I just don’t get it.

There was also quite a lot of performance art e.g., a film showing the “artist” carefully washing a human skeleton and some interesting sculpture type stuff – my favorite was a huge construction that contained many rooms and walkways that were all covered with brown packing tape and then in some places there were things on the wall like newspaper articles. I liked that one even though it made me highly claustrophobic.

After my museum tour, I went back to the hotel, walked Angel, and then ventured out to find something for dinner. I didn’t really want pinxtos (Basque equivalent of tapas) too much bread. I was hoping to find a Basque restaurant but instead found, of all things, a Mexican one. Since I’ve actually been craving Mexican food (and Asian too) I decided to try it although I expected it to be the kind you find in most tourist areas with standard canned red sauce on everything and beans and rice with everything. Instead I was completely taken with it and only sorry I hadn’t brought my camera (to take a picture of the food).

I ordered a margarita and a chile relleno filled with meat. First of all the margarita was perfect – the kind you get in Mexico not the iced slurpy they usually give you in chain restaurants. Then the relleno arrived. It was the only thing on the plate and was a work of art. It was obviously from an old family recipe and my guess it that the old family is from the Sonoran desert. I saw something that looked just like it in the movie “Water For Chocolate” which is one of my favorite movies of all time!! It is a beautiful love story fantasy and also a hymm to Sonoran family cooking. The relleno was a large green chile stuffed with a delicious ground beef and nut mixture. I don’t believe that there was any kind of breading on the chili. The relleno was sauced with a very delicate light cream sauce and had pomegranate seeds sprinkled on it. Unfortunately my limited Spanish didn’t permit me to convey just how I enjoyed my meal. (When I get home I am going to check the “Water for Chocolate” book and see if the recipe is there.
The next day (Wednesday) I took Angel for a nice walk along the river and passed a store with fruits and veggies displayed. Check out the white asparagus. I haven’t seen them in France or even green ones.

I LOVED SANTANDER!!!! So glad I stay there again on my way back.

My hotel in Santander. Very grand.

Looking out at the sea from the restaurant at desk.

Looking out my window at the Santander hotel when I got up in the morning.










Then we headed to Salander. This is in the Cantabria region. The drive was pretty short. Got to the hotel, Hotel Real, and it is even nicer than the one in Bilbao. The only problem is that the Wifi won’t work for me. Apparently their system in incompatible with Windows 7. I am disappointed since I have a conference call at 5:30 pm and wanted to do it on Skype. Last month my cell phone bill was almost $900 (most of which should get reimbursed but still this is a waste of $$$ when Skype is almost free). The hotel was very “grand” and definitely based in times past. The female housekeeping staff wore black dresses, white smocks, and lace hats!

Santander is a very pretty and prosperous looking city. There is a beach on the “Centro” side and a much nicer one on the El Sardinero side. That beach is more eastern facing, has a more gentler surf, and no boats. It is walking distance from the hotel.

The area where the hotel is located is on top of the Peninsula that form the division between the Centro side and the El Sardinero side. This is the area where in the early part of the 20th century King Alfonso XIII summered. Many of the present-day buildings here were part of his court, including my hotel. I really enjoyed walking the neighborhood here. Next to my hotel was what I am sure the King’s palace but it is now completely closed off and you can’t see the buildings. Many of the other building in this area are now luxury apartments I would estimate being built in the early 1930s. Many of the larger single residences are sealed up.
The beach was within easy walking distance from my hotel. It is a beautiful beach – long and sandy with a mostly gentle surf. There are some rocky ledges as well. While it was pretty crowded it didn’t have the “Coney Island” feel of the beaches I go to in the South of France. Somehow it felt more upscale and not nearly as tacky. There are lots of what look to be pretty good restaurants with good beach views along the waterfront.

I walked to one of these places at about 8 pm thinking I would have a nice dinner and then go back to the hotel for an early night as I wanted to get up early to head down to my next stop. It turns out that the restaurant kitchens are closed until 8:30 pm and at that time they only serve tapas. Apparently dinner doesn’t start until after 9 pm. So I dined on tapas type food – grilled octopus and shrimp. I also ordered asparagus hoping it would be the fresh ones I’d just seen in the market. No luck they were canned but good anyway.

A cemetary in Comillas on the way to Oviedo. The ruins of Gaudi's summer home is supposed to be there but I couldn't find it so I settled for this picture.

The cathedral in the old town in Oviedo.















In the morning I got up pretty early for Spain (7:30 am) and took Angel on a nice walk in the old royal neighborhood. I had breakfast at the hotel – quite a spread – which was definitely plenty to hold me for the whole day.

I drove along the coast to Orvieto avoiding the super freeway. It was a beautiful drive. The Pyeneese mountains lie very near the coast. The hills between them and the Atlantic are brilliant green farmland. I drove through a number of beautiful villages.

The two regions I drove through are Cantabria and Asturias. They don’t feel “Spain-like” in the sense of Madrid, Sevilla, and Granada. This is probably because they lack the influence of the Moors. Apparently the mountain range prevented the Moors from getting here so in a sense these areas are actually more Spanish than the south.

I arrived in Ovieto around 3 pm and found my hotel without difficulty. The bad news it is quite ugly inside. The good news it has excellent Wifi and is located right across the street from the heart of the old quarter of the city which is a museum in itself. It was the capitol of the Kingdom of Asturia in 800 A.D. Today is some sort of holiday so there were lots of families enjoying themselves eating “all day” lunch. Most of the shops were closed as was the Art Museum that I wanted to go to. I’ll check it out in the morning.

I was hot and sweaty from my long walk and decided to try the local drink which is hard cider (call Sidre). The waiters pour it from a high elevation filling your glass about ¼ full. You are then expected to drink all that has been poured in one continuous chug a lug. I failed this and drank mine slowly. It was actually pretty good with a slightly tart taste but I think it is pretty alcoholic, I came back to the hotel and had a very nice nap.

This is how they pour the Sidre. As you can imagine the amount that misses the glass is about the equivalent of the amount that a 3 year old male misses the toilet.