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Published: July 22nd 2007
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I know we haven´t updated you for the last 2 weeks, so here it is.
From Sarlat, we headed to Millau (SouthEast of France) to stretch our legs and get our heart rates up in the outdoors. Millau is known for its bridge called the Viaduc de Millau and the little engineer left in me was just fascinated by this bridge. It ranks as one of the tallest road bridges in the world. Not only is it tall, it is also quite a modern beauty. We tried to do a long hike in the nearby trail that is part of the Grands Causses but our hiking trail book (written in French) proved to be useless and a waste of 8€. Our guide book promised us that éven though the trail book is written in french, we should have no trouble deciphering the directions but that was not the case at all. Somehow in the middle of the hike, the trail ended and we ended up making up our own trails, found other trails which lead us to nowhereland and found ourselves very lost, frustrated and tired. At least we got a good workout out of it.
At this
point, we wanted no more tours, no more looking at medieval buildings, no more sight seeing and no more museums. In short, we´ve had enough of France so we drove west to San Sebastian (SB), in the Basque Region of Spain. We wanted to be near the beaches basking in the sunshine and be someplace where I can understand more than 1 or 2 words at a time. San Sebastian was just the perfect town, hot, cheerful and full of life. Dan and I had a pretty interesting gastronomic experience there. As we stepped in every bars we were greeted with these trays of mouth watering, eye popping appetizer-looking food called Pintxos (pronounced "pink sauce"). Pintxos are little tapas in which something like a slice of ham or shrimp salad or crab salad is bedded on a small piece of bread Apparently, San Sebastian is the Pintxo paradise of Spain. Basically, you walk in the bar (which by the way SB´s Old town has more bars than any other neighborhood in the world), ask for a plate and you just grab any pintxos you want. It´s a pretty cool eating experience, fast, cheap and good too. Apparently, you should only
have 1 or 2 pintxos per bar so you can imagine the bar hopping we did. Another amazing thing about SB is that it has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world (according to our guide book) which I think is true but it´s hard to tell by the amount people on the beach. I have never seen so many people on a beach in my life. It´s a great place to cool off and people watch. Most females here worship the sun topless. Bad thing about SB is that at night, at least where we stayed, especially on the weekends, it´s impossible to get sleep. We´ve been unfortunate to have stayed at places where our room faces the street and people are making all kinds of noises until the crack of dawn.
From SB, we went to Bilbao, which I found to be Bil-boring. I saw the whole city in 3 hours and I was done with it. The Guggenheim museum was definitely worth seeing, very eclectic architecture. The next day, Dan and I took the train to the beaches near Bilbao and parked ours lazy bodies on the beach for hours. After Bilbao, we drove
to Cudillero which according to our guide book is one of the most picturesque fishing town in Spain. It´s the only fishing town we´ve been so I don´t know if I agree. It´s cozy and cute but there´s not much to see or do. It has really cool outdoor seafood restaurants where I gorged myself with fresh seafood. We went to Cudillero with the hopes of seeing spectacular beaches but once again it rained. It rained all day so on the 3rd day we left for Santiago de Compostela and of course the sun came out. I couldn´t leave Asturia and waste the precious sun without seeing Playa de Silencio which the guide book boasted as one of the most beautiful beaches in Spain. On the way to Santiago we stopped at Playa de Silencio and it really is beautiful. We ended bumming around on the beach and it took us everything we had to peel ourselves off the beach and drive 3 hours to Santiago.
Now, we´re in Santiago de Compostela in the province of Galicia, northwest of Spain. We arrived on Friday and leaving tomorrow, Monday. Santiago is a beautiful medieval town, the Cathedral del Apostol alone
will blow your socks off. The food here is good (especially the "special dessert" Dan got...make sure to ask him about it!) and the people are very friendly. Dan and I realized at this point that we are well adjusted with the spanish life. We have little cups of strong coffee every morning and afternoon at a bar just like the spaniards. We spend a good 2 or 3 hours drinking coffee/beer eating tapas at an outdoor cafe before dinner and we eat dinner at 10PM like the spaniards. Gosh, it´ll be hard going back to the American way of life.
Again, the rain followed us here today. I´m so sick of it. We´ve had more wet days than dry days, is it really summertime in Europe?
So, Dan and I came to a realization that we miss home. We miss eating in, we´re sick of eating out. We want quite nights and clean clothes. There is no such thing as laundrymat here in Spain so we´ve been wearing the same dirty clothes. We miss fried eggs, pancakes and hasbrowns for breakfast. Here we only see eggs on our hamburguesa and pizza (weird!). We miss our friends and
family. I miss all the good food we have back home, that seems to be a lot on my mind lately, I wonder why?
And incase you´re wondering, I feel great. I´ve only had 1 morning sickness in the afternoon (yes, I´m prego for those of you who didn´t know yet, 11 weeks now). Sometimes I forget about my condition because I feel so normal. Since I can´t drink alcohol I make up plenty for it with food. I don´t know if my belly is getting bigger coz I´m getting fatter or coz the baby is growing.
So from here, we´re slowly making our way back to England. We´re driving to Pamplona tomorrow then to Lourdes France on Tuesday. We´re hoping to catch part of the Tour de France on Tuesday on the way to Lourdes. We leave for London on Thursday where we´ll be recuperating from our trip in Devon with my relatives for a week before coming home.
I hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as we have. We really miss everyone and we are looking forward to seeing you again soon. There´s no place like home.
Hasta luego!
Besos
y Embrazos, (Hugs and Kisses)
Jen and Dan
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