FromSwamptoSummit

Except fortunately, it didn’t, in Spain. At least, unless you count a few drizzly moments, which I refuse to do.

From Rye, in East Sussex, we took train and plane to Bilbao, in the Basque Country of Northern Spain. Along the way, we disembarked in Hastings, where it really did rain. To avoid a very long wait for our 7 pm flight from Gatwick we decided to check out Hastings, which turned out to be a singularly unsuccessful pit stop.

We lugged ourselves and all our luggage into the Old Town; we could see the Castle up on the hill and thought about the Battle and 1066 and all that, but that’s about as close as we got to any sights. The beach/boardwalk runs along the front – there were loads of people, but let’s just say the glory was more than faded. It didn’t take us very long to decide to trudge back (in the rain) to the train station.

We finally took off from Gatwick for a short and uneventful flight to Bilbao – except for the part where J’s water bottle (which he had cleverly stowed in the outside pocket of his back pack and placed in the overhead bin) started to leak on everyone below.

We arrived in Bilbao after 10 – there’s an hour time difference for reasons that date back to Franco and WWII – only to find we’d missed the last shuttle to the Holiday Inn Express where we were staying for a night. In any event, a taxi safely delivered us, sans any further mishaps.

After a truly excellent “continental” breakfast – why are coffee machines so much better in Europe? – we managed to take the shuttle to the airport and figure out how to purchase bus tickets to San Sebastián. It turned out the ticket machine was broken, so as always, the answer was “download the app and buy online.” At least J was able to extract my credit card when when in a moment of desperation I pushed it into the only other slot available in the ticket machine – which turned out to be for bills only.

After a longish bus ride, we arrived for more lugging of luggage, and finally made contact with A and son in law N at the Deutsche Bank where we were getting euros. Travelers note – there are two Deutsche banks near the water in San Sebastián.

The major dining experience in this part of Spain is pintxos – basically the Basque word for tapas. A language note – Basque is considered a “language isolate”, not related to any other language. It likely dates back to the indigenous peoples of the area. “X” is pronounced “ch”, similar to the pronunciations you see in the Yucatán.

Pintxos take all forms – mushrooms in rich sauces, small sandwiches, scallops, oxtail, and ubiquitous fried potatoes, to name just a few.

After sampling several for lunch, we made our way to our Airbnb, where daughter S and boyfriend T arrived at almost exactly the same time. They’d been in Biarritz the night before and appeared to have had a more seamless journey than J and I.

The Airbnb was on one of the city’s many pedestrian streets. There are wonderful clothes shops and elegant, balconied apartment buildings edging the avenues, The beach is a long crescent of sand packed with bathers, cliffs on either side of the bay.

As fate would have it, we were in town at the same time as a college friend, C, and his two sons and son in law. They’d been in Pamplona for the running of the bulls (which sounds as gruesome as I had feared) and were staying in Bilbao. In fact, when we arrived in Bilbao we were greeted by numerous men and women all wearing white outfits with red bandanas in honor of the event (C himself had grown a Hemingway-like beard just for the occasion). We were able to rendezvous with him and his son, and enjoyed even more pintxos (by now I had a potato overload), gelato, and a beautiful walk along the beach to see the sunset.

The next day was rainy and dreary. We found a hole in the wall pintxos place that was just as good as the higher end one from the day before, and then ventured off to the Museum to try to learn a little more about Basque culture, although very few explanations were translated into English.

We had an absolutely marvelous dinner at a restaurant across the street from the Airbnb – prawns served with heads fully attached, fried peppers, samples of hand pulled dry cider. The star was dessert – a French toast type thing that was stuffed with custard and caramel i Ed, and a Basque Cheesecake with a vanilla sorbet. And a cheeseboard with walnuts in their shells – which led to a walnut cracking competition among certain of our party.

By the way, we found Spain unbelievably inexpensive, both for food and drink. A good bottle of wine could easily be found for under 4 euros.

We only had two nights in San Sebastián before our next move – to the beach town of Plentzia, about thirty minutes outside Bilbao. All of us left feeling we needed another night in San Sebastián- but perhaps not anymore patatas bravas!