Areatza(near Bilbao) to Hendaye(near San Sebastian)

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We have a fairly short run ahead of us today to our next destination and so there is no hurry to be on the road.
The hotel here in Areatza has been very nice and being only open two months they still have a few things to sort out like the smell from the indoor swimming pool and spa area in the basement which seems to permeate throughout the three floors of bedrooms. You couldn’t smell the chlorine in the room thank goodness only when you stepped into the passageway and up and down the stairwell.
As when we checked in, the reception person seemed to be having trouble on checking people out too. At our check in they couldn’t seem to be able to get my passport number to fill the number of spaces they had available and then go onto whatever they had to fill in next on the computer. At one stage there were four people all trying to get the NZ passport number into the gaps available!!At one stage Gretchen suggested that they just fill in the gaps with asterix!!Not sure if they understood what she was suggesting but there were a lot of smiles.Eventually after about 10 minutes something seemed to work and the registration was complete.
This morning the problem was with two older Spanish women and with other people waiting to either check out of ask for some assistance it looked like we would be in the queue for a while.Then everything seemed to come together and we were next to be served!!The checkout was a breeze,seems their credit card machine was working as it should be.
One thing we have had trouble with over the past 2 days in Basque country is that their language is nothing like the simple Spanish we know although we have got by with a smile and a nod and a little bit of English.In saying that though we have come across less people in this area that understand or speak even a little English than in any other place we have been in Europe.
Direction signs on the roads have also been in two languages in most cases and it has made us watch carefully to try and figure out what we can when we have been looking for place names which are written differently to the way they are in our atlas/map.Thankifully numbers are all the same in Basque,Spanish and English!!so getting on the right road is not too difficult.
Our road to the border with France is to be the N634 and we have already been on it in the direction of Bilbao twice.This time though we want to take it in the direction of SS.
The road runs parallel with the toll road the A8 which certainly looks a faster route.However we have opted for the local road and it takes us through a relatively narrow valley with subsequent towns basically running into each other.It is a very industrial area and like the outskirts of Bilbao there is very little flat land for housing the only option to house the people needed for the businesses is in tall dour looking apartment buildings jammed packed onto whatever space can be found for them.Again,of all the places we have visited in Europe only the outer suburbs of Moscow where we stayed while we were there had apartments buildings uglier than the ones around Bilbao.It was really quite incredible as to how they have packed industry,apartments and sizeable town centres into such a small space in a valley that even now still a month and a half from the shortest day, won’t see a lot of sun!!
Mercifully the road turned towards the coast and eventually we were on the seaside at Deva.We took a short break here to catch what the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Biscay looked like.The deep weather lows that have been to the north for the past few days have been pushing the sea swell ups and there is a high surf running down on the beachfront.In fact it was to be the same all the way up the coast.
It had been a straightforward drive with not a lot of other traffic and we just cruised along enjoying our pace and watching out on the seaward side of the road at the breakers rolling in.
Then at the seaside town of Zumaya a deviation on the road we were driving threw us in a tailspin as there was no clear direction of which of 3 routes to take to get around whatever the road blockage was. So we followed the vehicle in front thinking they must know where to go and started up a steep road that would take us high above the town.There was enough traffic coming in the other direction on the narrow road to make us believe we were on the right track and so it turned out to be,eventually!!
We rejoined the N634 at Zarautz and took a break for lunch even though we were only a short distance to our destination otherwise we were going to be there too early for check in.
We parked on the main road and walked the short distance down to the beach where there was a wide promenade that stretched the whole distance of the beach,about 2 or 3 kilometres.There were a number of cafes open all though there weren’t that many people around.In fact there were more people in the sea surfing than on the promenade.
Wesat a table outside on the promenade and did the European thing by facing our chairs on the scene to watch.In this case the surfers out trying their skills in the large swell rolling into the wide bay.
Gretchen wasn’t too keen to try something local from ‘the greasy spoon cafe’and went for a hamburger and chips while I stepped outside the comfort zone and went for the Basque sausages and chips.When the meal came out there were 4 huge reddish coloured and quite highly flavoured sausages and a large amount of chips.Not a bad deal for €4.50!!It was very tasty and I just hoped,as Gretchen did too,that the lunch wouldn’t take revenge on me later!!
We easily passed an hour sitting there in the watery sunshine and temperatures in the low 20’s(the wind is still from the south)watching the surfies and having lunch.
From there it was just a short run to SS which the road skirted around the back of(we will be back to look at SS more closely tomorrow)and onto the French border.hendaye where we are staying is right on the border which in fact doesn’t exist at all as you wouldn’t know you were in Spain or France as the writing on the signage is the same.
However in the hotel we were greeted with ‘bonjour’so we guessed the receptionist wasn’t a local Basque!!
We took a walk up to the village of Hendaye, about 1 kilometre away, so we could buy some dinner and again got sidetracked at the boulangerie/patiserrie bringing home more pastries for desert!!!We also found a free internet facility and will call back tomorrow as we need to print off our train tickets for the trip up to Paris from Marseille and also some information for the flight back home.
The hotel doesn’t have Sky TV options so I spent a bit of time trying to find a website that is streaming the World Cup qualifier between NZ and Bahrain to be played tomorrow morning our time.I found a couple and will have those ready for the laptop in the morning so we can be part of what we hope will be a victory for the All Whites and inclusion in the World Cup finals in South Africa next June!!

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Photos

Another for good measure
You can see we didn't take many photos!!

Comments

[Helen Fenwick]

Go the All Whites!
Glad the TEAM had a win since you were so far away and watching - should be a great world cup. Love Helen xx

[Rin]

We caught a funny little tram/train thingy from San Sebastian to Hendaye and when we hopped off, we hadn't even realised that we had crossed a border until, while waiting for the train to Paris, all the announcements were made in French!