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Published: March 3rd 2008
Last weekend we went on a trip to the Basque Country. The weather was fabulous and we got to see both the countryside and the city. I would recommend visiting Northern Spain to anyone who makes it over here; it is an entirely different part of the country.
We flew into Bilbao on Friday morning and took a bus to San Sebastian. It was a lot of fun getting to see the country from the bus. It was one of the first times I've seen a farm or lots of grass and trees since I've been here! Barcelona is such a concrete jungle! Once we got to the hotel we met up with a tour guide and got a short walking tour of San Sebastian, including walking along El Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimmage route along Northern Spain to the cathedral of Saint James in Santiago de Compostela (even cooler since I did my term paper on it last semester.) Unfortunately it was foggy, so we didn't get any beach time in. But we were all pretty tired, so we went back to the hotel for siesta. Two meals were provided everyday by the hotel, and they were pretty fabulous.
The breakfast was the best, especially since we could snag fruit and Nutella to take with us for the rest of the day!
Friday night was spent out at some of the local bars. The custom in San Sebastian is to go to lots of small bars, have some of their local white wine and a few "pinchos", which are just tapas there. We took full advantage and went to one small club where a friend of mine got hit on by an old guy and we called it a night.
Saturday was almost 80 degrees. We went by bus along the mountains and saw lots of "peregrinos" (pilgrims) walking the Camino de Santiago. It was beautiful; exactly what you picture as the countryside of Spain. JEREMY: there were tons of road bikers along the route. I fell in love (not with a biker... which I'm sure I may have if I could have talked to them... but with the route. We are going to plan a trip to do part of it. Check out the pix). We ended the day in a small fishing village where we could take a 5 minute ferry to the south of France! We
went and played on the beach and then headed back to San Sebastian.
Sunday was spent mostly in-transit, but we did get to go to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. We were lucky enough to have a tour guide and it helped a lot so that we could get extra info on the art pieces. It was one of my favorite art museums I've been to. Conveniently the main exhibit was "Art from the U.S." and went from the 1700's to modern art! It was fabulous.
Once back in Barcelona we were exhausted. Our flight was delayed a bit, but it gave us some time for homework. We were greated by the great news that someone in the program had gotten bacterial meningitis. They had to shut down the entire school so that they could disinfect it all... thankfully she was the only one who got it and is now doing much better.
My first round of exams are almost over, but are nothing compared to back home. I am slowly learning how to be in the mindset that my grades don't transfer... but I'm trying not to be too lazy about it!
It was beautiful today and we spent
oldest building in San Sebastian
during the war there were lots of fires and basically the entire city of San Sebastian was burned down. this is the only building left... and now it's a bar. typicalmost of the day walking by the beach. I had a little bit of a bursted bubble, though, when I heard that it was almost 70 back home!
So sad that Monday is already here again :-(
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