Towards the Basque Country

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We boarded our coach this morning on our way to San Sebastian. Compared to my last 2 Contiki tours, the coach was extremely spacious. Mainly because there were only about 20 of us in a bus that seats 52. Colin gave us the usual spiel about what to expect on the tour and about the places we were going to. We also discussed the optional excursions. There were only 3 optionals: a trip to the Valley of the Fallen in Madrid, Flamenco dinner and show in Barcelona, and the final dinner in Madrid. We ended up paying for the 2 dinners. We were also introduced to our morning song. For this tour, we had No Doubt’s “It’s My Life”. After driving for about an hour through the suburbs of Madrid, we eventually made it to Segovia. The bus dropped us off at the eastern end of the city center, where we immediately had a view of the aqueduct built by the Romans in the 1st century. We walked through the city center going through narrow pedestrian thoroughfares. When we reached the main square, Plaza Mayor, we had our first glimpse of the cathedral. This was my first sight of a Spanish cathedral. The cathedrals here in Spain are extremely huge and elaborate. For such a small city, it seems as if the cathedral didn’t belong here. You don’t really understand the scale of the cathedral until you are standing at the base and just looking upward. Incredible!!! Even for a non-Catholic like myself, it was still awesome and inspiring. We continued walking through narrow roads with a slight incline until we reached the Alcazar. During the Middle Ages, the Alcazar was one of the favorite residences of the monarchs of Castile. This fairy-tale like castle reminded me of the Excalibur in Las Vegas with the shape of it’s turrets. We paid our $5 euro entrance fee and decided to go inside and have a look. Surrounding the Alcazar was an empty moat, just like one you would imagine when thinking of a medieval castle. When we entered, we were approached by one the workers who was seeking a Florida quarter. What a strange request. We looked through our change and only found an Ohio and kindly gave it to him. There was nothing too spectacular inside. We saw a series of elaborately decorated rooms like the Royal Bedroom and the Throne Room. There was also a display of weapons from medieval times, an armored knight’s suit, and an armored knight mounted on a horse complete with his joust. After snapping a few pictures, we decided to climb the tower. Ascending the tower was extremely tiring and claustrophobic. It was a spiraling staircase of 152 steps no more than 3-4 feet wide. It seemed as if it would never end. Once it did, we had nice views of the city of Segovia and it’s surrounding countryside including the snow capped mountains to the south.

Back on the bus, we had a few hours to kill before we arrived at our next stop in Burgos which would pretty much be just a lunch stop. Burgos is famous mostly for being the birthplace of El Cid. During our lunch stop in Burgos, we had our first experience with siesta. Businesses close down for a few hours between 1 and 4pm and the workers nap, have lunch, or just relax. According to Colin, many Spaniards today do not like siesta as it stretches out the day and people generally have to work until 8pm. From a tourist standpoint, it is a bit of an inconvenience. We are only in a place for such a short amount of time. If many places are closed then we don’t get the full feel of a particular place. We arrived in Burgos in the middle of siesta and had a quick little walking tour and the group was let go in front of the Burgos cathedral, the 3rd largest in Spain. As the group dispersed for lunch, most people drifted towards the left of the cathedral to get something to eat. Me and Shea opted to wander around the cathedral to admire and photograph it. Afterwards we wandered around looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately, there weren’t many places to choose from as most places were closed or were too “Spanish” and we were a bit intimidated to enter. We just continued to wander looking for anyplace to eat. We eventually found a sandwich place comparable to Subway. To our surprise, we saw Colin sitting there having lunch when we walked in. We had our lunch and used the restrooms and ventured back over to the meeting point as there wasn’t much else to really see. Walking back towards the bus, it started to get really warm. Hopefully, it’s as warm as this in San Sebastian.

We continued our drive north towards San Sebastian and the Basque country. The Basques of northern Spain are a people culturally and linguistically very different than the rest of Spain. So different that many are in favor of an independent Basque nation. The terrain on the drive became very rugged and the green vegetation was much more abundant. Signs alongside the road began to show the Basque translations. The language is one of the most difficult languages to learn as it is not related to any other European language. From the signs, I notice an abundance of z’s and k’s in their words. Approaching San Sebastian, we see many signs and banners hanging from balconies of the high rise apartments. They appeared to be political in nature. Maybe they were for an upcoming election or perhaps they were to show solidarity with the Basque separatist movement.

The Hotel Silken Amara Plaza was by far the best hotel I have stayed at during a Contiki tour. It was brand new and very clean. Unfortunately our room was again facing the busy main street. Since we couldn’t figure out the air conditioning, we had to keep the window open too cool the room down. This kept me awake for a good portion of the night. After settling into our room, we decided to go for a walk up to the beach. It was rather humid today and I started to perspire after just a few minutes of walking. My first impressions of San Sebastian were very good. It was a city that wasn’t too big or too small. Walking along the streets, we saw quite a few high end clothing stores. I did read that this place is one of the most expensive places in all of Spain. We continued our walk and came across the main cathedral of the city. We snapped our obligatory photos and continued our way. Along the way, we came across a condom dispenser right there along the street. It’s a bit contradictory in such a Catholic country. For such a Catholic country, I here Spain has the lowest birth rate in Europe. That just goes to show that some of the Catholic teachings are just out of step with reality. We finally made it to the beach after about 30 minutes of walking. There weren’t that many people hanging out on the beach but still Shea decided to test out the waters. Since I had on jeans, I opted to wait for another day. We were only here for about 15 minutes when we decided to walk back to the hotel to make it back in time for dinner at 8:30. When we got there, I felt a bit underdressed as most everyone in our group were already dressed to go out later that night. We came to dinner dressed in the same clothes we had worn all day and were still sweaty after our long walk. After dinner, we all met down in the hotel lobby where Colin would walk us into the old town and hang out in a bar. Everyone in the group went out tonight except for the honeymooning couple from Shanghai. Colin brought us to a small bar in the old town that was very intimate. When we arrived, we all got a free shot from the owner. I don’t know what the shot was but it wasn’t too bad. A few of us staked out our spots at a couple of the few tables. Shane decided to sit next to me while he was checking out some of the girls dancing. Apparently, I was just his distraction to make it not look obvious that he was checking them out. A very uncomfortable situation indeed! After the tables were removed, we had no other choice but to stand or dance. The music they were playing was mostly Spanish music that I had never heard of but they did play a few popular tunes like Janet Jackson’s new song. I was a bit uncomfortable dancing as there wasn’t too many people dancing, just a few of us from the group like Carl and Rochelle. For a while I was beginning to wonder what kind of bar this was when I noticed 2 guys sitting rather close to each other in the corner. Apparently people here are just really touchy feely with each other without regards to sex. Tonight, I had a beer and a couple of sangrias. Not really enough to get tipsy. It seemed like people were really trying to hook up tonight. Hazel was really into the bartender. The Philly girls apparently hooked up with 2 French guys and they never came back to their hotel room that night. I also saw Shane and Nicole leave the bar hand in hand to do god knows what. When we heard that a few people were leaving, me and Shea decided to leave with them as well. We walked back to hotel with Carl, Pam, Nikki, Karen, and Amanda. During the walk, I remember having to pee really badly. I went down a small street while everyone continued walking and proceeded to pee right there in the sidewalk. I had to keep looking around hoping nobody saw me. The last thing I need is to get arrested or cited for public urination. Back to the hotel around 2am.

The next morning's wake up call was at 7:45 for breakfast before our departure to Bilbao to visit the Guggenheim museum. Only 9 people decided to visit the museum as most used today to sleep in after last night. The drive to Bilbao took us through some rugged territory along the coast line. The views weren’t that great as it was rather cloudy this morning. Approaching Bilbao, I notice that this is a largely industrial town. We were dropped off across the river from the museum and had to walk for a bit. I would have thought we would have been dropped off closer to the museum but oh well, we could use the exercise. We crossed the river on a very modern looking bridge. It was white and looked like a harp laid down on its side. As we got closer to the museum, we approached the large spider statue that was probably more than 30 feet tall. We had to wait here for a while to let everyone catch up who had stopped to take photos. I had seen this museum listed as one of the modern marvels of architecture. Seeing it for myself, I can see why. This structure was huge and made of titanium panels that curved in various different shapes. Near the entrance of the museum was the flower covered puppy statue complete with it’s own built in irrigation system. This puppy was meant to only be temporary but apparently it was such a huge hit with the locals that it is now a permanent fixture. Entrance inside the museum was about 5 euros. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside and this policy was strictly enforced. It seemed as if there were workers standing guard near every pierce of art. The art itself was a bit disappointing. I thought that it was going to be a diverse array of different art styles. However, this museum was solely dedicated to pop art. We had about an hour to explore before we had to go back to the bus. I tried to stay with the group but eventually everyone dissipated to explore themselves. I was finished looking around after 40 minutes. I visited the gift shop and bought a book, postcards and a shot glass. Then it was back on the bus to San Sebastian.

We arrived back in San Sebastian at around noon. Most people who didn’t go to the museum went to the beach today. However, the weather today did not look much like beach weather. We decided to walk into the old town to do some exploring and souvenir shopping. I wanted to go to the top of Monte Igueldo to see the excellent views of the city but it was so cloudy that we probably wouldn’t be able to see much. We just explored the narrow streets of the old town. For lunch, we still didn’t feel very comfortable going into a restaurant so we did the unthinkable. We had Mcdonalds. Looking at the menu, I saw a few things that we don’t have back home. Here they have a McNifico and a McPita. After lunch we did a little more exploring. We decided to go and check out Playa Zurriola beach which is where the surfers hang out. It was still quite chilly and looking at the water, I don’t see why the surfers come here. There wasn’t that many people hanging out on the beach, just a few couples making out and some children playing water balloon games. There was one lady sunbathing topless not too far from us. She was probably here for her siesta as it was that time of the day. We were here for probably a good hour just relaxing before we decided to walk back to the hotel to rest and wash up.

At around 8, we decided to make the long walk back to the old town to look for somewhere to eat. After deciding against a couple places, we finally settled on a small place that seemed to be frequented by the locals. Shea had a turkey sandwich and I had some seafood paella. My first experience with paella and I was impressed. We did a little more walking around the narrow streets. When we came to the Plaza de la Constitucion, we just sat here for a while watching people stroll around. I had a good time watching some local teenagers break-dance. We decided to go when I noticed a seedy looking character making eye contact with us. We walked towards the town hall which was really pretty all lit up at night. We took some photos and to my surprise these night shots came out quite well. We also noticed the statue of Jesus on top of the mountain behind the town hall was lit up as well. Being that we both had atheistic views, we made our jokes and had a few laughs as it kind of looked like Jesus was just floating in air. We tried to take a couple night shots of the bay, but they didn’t come out too well. It was around 11pm and we decided to walk back to the hotel and retire for the night. About half way to the hotel, we came across Hazel, Carl, Karen and Amanda who were just walking around. I decided that I didn’t really want to go back yet so I decided to join them. Shea had to pee really bad so she declined and decided to just walk back herself. We just wandered around for the next 2 hours. We went to the bay where Amanda had to go and test the waters and took some photos in front of the town hall. Then Hazel decided to go back to the same bar that we went to the night before just to have a drink. We all agreed and followed Karl’s lead to the bar. When we got there, Hazel, Amanda and I agreed to stay no more than 15 minutes and to just have one drink. Karen and Karl decided to go search for an ice cream and they would meet us in front of the bar in 15 minutes. Hazel also came here to get the e-mail of the bartender that she met the night before. We went in and had a Fanta with Vodka and left. On the way back to the hotel, we decided to walk along the river. We all just made small talk about our lives back home. It was mostly Hazel doing all the talking though, this girl can sure talk! Again, I had to pee but I decided to just hold it until we got back to the hotel. In bed at around 2am.

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