Blogs from Basque Country, Spain, Europe - page 55

The journey to Bilbao was actually pretty painless. I was anticipating major trouble since, in their foresight, the Spanish and French trains run on different gauges and the whole Spanish public transporation system is not supposed to be very good. You would not know it from our trip though. After an interesting trip to the train station, we just rode the train for forty minutes to Irun, which is the first town on the Spanish side of the border, and hopped on the bus to Bilbao that left ten minutes later. (Patrice got pulled over by the flamboyant French police. Instead of pulling him over in a car, the tight pants and high boots wearing cop stepped out from behind a building and pointed at the car. Poor Patrice managed to talk his way down to ... read more

The room we have at the hostel is nice....good to have our own room for a change...we needed it since we have laundry hanging all over the bathroom¡ I don´t think they have laundrymat here in Spain..I remember they didn´t in Mexico. you simply had someone come into the house to do it, might be the same here. Unless we can find one, or at least a fast running stream we´re going to be pretty rank by the time we get out of Spain and Portugal. Went over travel plans again last night; we´re revising them as we go. We´re off to Leon tomorrow in search of sandals. Gary: mailed the package home today. Don´t hold your breath waiting for it. it went a barco (by boat)...estimated time of arrival 1-2 months. So we´ll stay in ... read more

thank god. thought that the "drought" in the UK would never end. who ever heard of a drought bringing record rainfall? Anyway, we´re in Spain now...we arrived this morning at 11 or so, we had to be at the airport at 6 am...which means that it would have been 11 pm last night for all you at home reading this. yikes. well, the place we stayed at was absolutely beautiful, fell in love with the place. it´s called warrish hall fam and it had the most beautiful english garden. amy if you´re reading this, they had peonys the size of my head!!! all of the roses hadn´t bloomed yet but when they do the place is going to be even more gorgeous. and guess what..it´s for sale!!! which means all i have to do is become ... read more

The title of this blog is "None of this was a mistake"...its my new favorite Spanish song, and well, the only one I can sing along to knowing the words. I had many demands for more pictures, so I added them to my last blog and to this one. As I was looking through them, I noticed that pretty much all of them are "nights out"....hmmm. I swear we don't party very often!! And unfortunetely, my camera that I bought in December decided to die on me, so there will be no more until August when I can come home and fix it. A) it did not die during a night of partying (it died in the mountains for no reason) and B) yes I know I could fix it here but they want to charge ... read more

Today we spent the day out at the seaside Port of San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque) which is about a 20 km drive from Irun. We had read good things about the city in the lonely planet and had some personal recommendations as well, plus we were looking forward to our first real taste of Spain and its culture, so needless to say we had fairly high expectations. But first things first - breakfast. We decided to upload the Ibis buffet breakfast for 6 Euros each which was well worth it, good strong coffee for Gabor, tea for Sarah and Kaspar had his first taste of dried apricot which was a hit. Sarah announced that there would be no more buttery chocolate pastries for her - which is a big ask as we have been having ... read more