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Saturday, March 25. 2006Leaving Morella and España for Andorra
(written 11/4/06 13:30 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
I was up very early to watch the sunrise, which proved to be a great spectacle over the mountains. Paying for the night's accommodation proved to be just as time wasting as trying to get into the place the night before, as the guy on the desk couldn't work the card machine and the guy on the bar decided he wanted to sell the locals 1euro coffees rather than take our 55euros for the night's accommodation. Still, we eventually sorted it and decided not to give them the added satisfaction of making us a coffee, so we set off to explore the town and find coffee elsewhere. The cute little town with steep windy streets was good to explore, with plenty of old buildings, squares, monuments and places to get lost. We made it to the top where there was of course the castle, but it was yet to open. Having set off so early there were no bus-loads of tourists here yet, so we enjoyed the empty streets with only locals for company. Along Calle de Don Blasco, lined with Roman columns, we found a little quiet café where we grabbed the required morning coffee, before deciding to move on after grabbing a few last Valencia oranges from a little shop. Still keen to make some distance over parts of the world we had seen before, we pushed on hard through changing gorgeous countryside past huge rivers and through small towns along mostly small roads towards and finally into Andorra. Friday, March 24. 2006Outskirts of Valencia, Morella
(written 11/4/06 13:30 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
Waking up, we tried to make the best of the high price of the hotel by using the wireless internet area - but didn't have any more blog written to upload. Having too much fun holidaying instead! We drove out around edge of the Mar Menor, but weren't all that impressed with what we found. Nothing resembling a beach could be found, but there were plenty of places for tourists or expats to pretend they weren't actually in España. So, we jumped on the road and headed north to Valencia. This is interesting because other than Paris it is the first time this trip took us to somewhere we made it to last time. One of our best Spanish memories was paella on the beach in Valencia, and were keen to repeat it. A few lucky guesses later found us at roughly the right part on the outskirts of town where we wanted to be, and a wrong turn turned out to be gold as we found ourselves in a parking lot behind the paella restaurants! At Restaurante Tropica we stocked up on a great lunch of paella (of course!), salad and coffees, enjoying the amazingly well cooked food just as much as the previous time. Getting back out of town as easily as we had made it in (much to our relief after Granada and other big cities), Liz piloted us north up the coast on ever smaller roads gradually leaving more and more traffic behind us. The target was Morella, a town where on our last trip our friends Penny and Jono were visiting while we sat on the coast at Castello waiting all day for a bus that never turned up. No such hassles this time, as Schnee Three the trusty Citroën powered us through gorgeous hilly countryside, up and down mountain passes towards the ancient hill town. We parked outside the intact town walls and wandered into town to try and find somewhere to stay. The tourist office had long closed, but a little shop was open where we bought a book for a few euros about the history town which helpfully contained a map. Using this and Lonely Planet, we located Hotel El Cid. Here the not at all helpful receptionist took almost ten minutes to finish her obviously personal phone call before bothering to acknowledge us. Still, the room was new and good enough, plus it had fantastic views across the valley out of town so we went with it. I was still not feeling all that well, so Liz went down to the nearby supermarket for supplies as I watched both her and the car below us while crazy locals parked around it to visit the pub below us. We had dinner in our room watching the sunset over the valley in front of us before retiring to bed. Thursday, March 23. 2006Sierra Nevada, Mar Menor
(written 11/4/06 12:58 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
Leaving Granada behind, we set off for a big driving day. The city sits at the base of the Sierra Nevada, so we set off to sight-see through that on our way out. The sign-posts were rather poor, and we ended up on a dead-end road up to a ski-field, not at all what we had intended. Still, the scenery was spectacular so we grabbed some shots and turned around. A larger road took us south, before we turned off east on the A-348 to wind through the mountains rather than take the easy fast way along the coast. There were plenty of snow-capped mountains all around us, as well as with great views along the valleys. We stopped to make tea and enjoy the scenery for a while. Due to our stopping for photos all the time, we ended up stuck behind the same slow truck three times, each time groaning as we saw it overtake us many minutes after we had stopped! Eventually we started winding south towards the coast, where the scenery changed dramatically as we pushed east. Pretty much every crop planted was under a huge white cover, totally dominating the landscape in all directions. Not sure exactly what they were for - insects, the heat? Driving on further on the fast A-7 motorway, we eventually stopped in a servo as Liz, our driver, was getting sleepy. Mar Menor, a large section of water protected from the sea looked like a good place to stop for the evening, and the promise that the water was warm enough to swim in year-round was a lure also. However, this place was not set up for people like us. Almost totally invaded by British moving to warmer climates, the radio stations and pre-fabricated neighbourhoods really didn't invite the tourist. Figuring that something had to be available for us to stay in, we found pricey hotels, a closed Pension and a campground. Not really wanting to, but having spent so long driving, we settled on the campground. We did all the paperwork and drove off to find our site, where it turned out someone else had parked their camper. Then another strange thing - the site was completely covered with rocks. They all were! Back at the office, they explained that they had no grassy spots for tents, despite having a large tent on their sign and map of the grounds! This was campervan/caravan only. We were not amused, and gave in, driving to the expensive Hotel Entremares, just paying and being done with it. This place was not us at all, filled with package tourists all over sixty, us walking in with our belongings in plastic bags (haven't replaced our luggage yet), we couldn't have felt more out of place. I had decided that dinner amongst such a crowd was not going to help us at all, we set off in search of food. A quick beer at a bar across the road where there was also a Chinese restaurant nearby, and we decided to head to a place we had found earlier, Los Belones. This was practically a little piece of Britain tucked away in southern Spain. English supermarkets, pubs and all the signs in English, it was just the homely place we were after. Randomly wandering into The Village Restaurant, we couldn't have picked a better place to spend the evening. Dinner of shepherds pie, broccoli (for Liz!), yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes, etc. was exactly what we needed, and Jill the friendly owner proved to be rather charismatic. After dinner she got chatting with us, put us onto some locals who were all most excited to be chatting to some Aussies. Everyone had either been there, had family there or really wanted to get there one day. Us too, not long now! Once we let on that we were honeymooning, we had drinks brought for us, Waltzing Matilda (badly) sung to us, and a really good night. A few silly hats were put on us (Jill's thing, apparently), and photos taken, we felt we had made friends in a little oasis of Englishness. Honking as we drove off, we headed back into package-tourist-land where we didn't enjoy our expensive hotel half as much as we had the inviting little pub. Wednesday, March 22. 2006Granada
(written 11/4/06 12:42 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
Feeling much better after a good night's sleep, we headed off to find where the locals ate breakfast. We found a great buzzing little café near the tourist office where we had more fresh zumo (juice), coffees and a great feed. The main reason we had wanted to come to Granada was the Alhambra. Dating from the Islamic times, this truly impressive piece of architecture sits atop the hill overlooking the city. A short walk to the bus stop later, a crazy woman bus driver shot us up the hill to the entrance at surely-not-legal speeds as we clung on with the rest of the passengers. We decided that purchasing the audioguides was a good way to go, and this turned out to be a great way to get an understanding of what we were seeing as we spent several hours wandering around the site. The main palace itself, Palacios Nazaries is so popular they have instigated set entry times, so we looked at much of the rest of the site while we waited for our slot. There we great views down across the city, where you could see on one side the older islamic-style white buildings and on the other sides newer more varied architecture. The palace itself was lushiously appointed, but despite the staggered entry times it was still hard to get a feel for the place with huge bus-loads of all nationalities hogging all available space and blocking photo opportunites. Oh well, we found enough other places to escape them and enjoyed the look around. After that we walked down the hill, where we looked at some tea houses before deciding on a lunch of felafel. This was nice and filling as we ate in the Plaza Neuva sitting with some locals. One even had some puppies presumably for sale which we were both admittedly rather taken by, but we somehow resisted their charms and walked on. We popped into the post office in town to send some things, before a naughty snack at the Häagen Das ice cream place. After this, we had a lazy siesta in the room for the afternoon to do some blogging. Liz got stuck into this while I went out and found a place for a haircut and when I came back she was still going! Seems she gets as carried away as I do once we get started. Eventually hungry (still can't quite get the hang of such late dinners) we headed out and found a great Japanese restaurant where we had a nice variety of things, quite a change from Spanish fare. An American student there said hello and helped us work out what we had ordered, not that we could eat it all anyway as we were rather full after foolishly having some tapas first. Back to our little room to rest for the night. Tuesday, March 21. 2006Leaving Sevilla for Granada
(written 11/4/06 12:27 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
After another wet night, we decided to make use of the campground's laundry to wash all our clothes. After this and making some tea, we packed our sopping wet tent up into bags rather than their proper places - we would have to find some way to dry it later. The next target was further East, so we set off along the fastest roads we could find in the right direction. This meant using the A-380 to cross between two motorways, which turned out to be a glorious little road. Lined with fields, it was a nice piece of almost-empty countryside with little other traffic to annoy us. After that we hit the A-92 which was much bigger and took us all the way to Granada. Getting into this city turned out to be one of the least enjoyable experiences - very heavy traffic on the way in (if you intend to drive much in cities here, use a scooter. Forget cars) and then I followed a sign the wrong way which ended up in me driving along a bus and taxi only lane for about three kilometres with a police car right on our tail. Turns out they must make allowances for tourists, so we looped around again and found a more useful road. After all the stress, we parked underground (still wary with the car) on a street lined with shops and set off wandering attempting to find either the tourist office or a cheap enough hotel - no camping after two nights in the rain for us, although it would have meant not having to drive in. There's always a trade-off in cities, and it's often very hard to decide. Walking for far too long with little food in our stomachs we collapsed at a smoke-filled café where I felt quite sick. I asked the guy where to find the tourist office, and he pointed up back the way we had been. So, we trudged back and noted a tiny sign pointing off to the next square we had missed before. Once we had located it, the lady in there was extremely helpful, and provided us with a huge list of pensions. Picking a direction with a few luckily not far from where we were, we headed there. One of them, Hostal Los Arrayanes turned out to meet our desires of price and also have parking available. We quickly were very happy to drop our things, move our car to their parking (in the basement of a bigger hotel, not far away), and be done with the matter of getting into the city. Not a fun afternoon. We wandered towards the centre later and found a cheapy dinner not really to our liking, but for some reason couldn't find the restaurant strip in town so just settled for it. We were both sick and run down so headed back to bed early. Monday, March 20. 2006Update
As per last time it´s proving a little hard to find wireless or somewhere to connect the laptop, so this is coming from an internet place in Seville.
Our car was broken into in Portugal, they took clothes and electronic equipment, the most annoying of which is the charger for my camera which needs special batteries. So we are trying to locate another one of those but it is proving hard to find and annoyingly slowing us down as we travel around. On the whole though everything is ok, we are slowly replacing what was stolen, it was all insured, the car is back on the road (one window was broken), and we are now back in Spain. Still very much enjoying each others company on our Honeymoon! Will do a more thorough update when we get the chance. Next stop will be Madrid if we can´t find a camera place here, otherwise along the southern Spanish coast. More Sevilla
(written 11/4/06 11:50 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
We awoke and made tea, deciding that we would spend another day exploring the city. On our walk to the bus stop some friendly French people with a huge motorhome picked us up, explaining (we think) that the previous two days they had had to walk to the bus stop and the didn't want us to have to! Very nice of them, and an interesting look into a rather different way of travelling around Europe. Also stretched our brains to come up with the appropriate French words in the muddle of languages we were beginning to accumulate in there. As it happens the motorway's design meant that they couldn't take us all the way, so we walked the rest of the way to the bus stop and waited until it came. Once it did, we got off a little early at a large electronics shop we had seen the previous day, in the hope of locating a camera charger. It turns out that the place wasn't open and wouldn't be for a month (according to one of the workers stocking the place), despite the huge neon signs on the front proclaiming otherwise! No matter, we pulled out the trusty GPS and headed further into town, stopping for a couple of coffees and a slightly dodgy breakfast. One of the reasons we had decided to stay an extra day was that the town was rather large, so somewhere had to have something capable of charging the camera battery. The tourist office suggested Le Court Ingleis (a huge department store), who had lots of things but suggested we try a little Optica place on a small square a while away. On our way there we had a lunch of juice ("zumo" is juice here and the stuff is fantastic - always freshly squeezed from local oranges), coffee and boccadillos (rolls with various fillings). The camera store turned out to be closed for siesta - annoying if you want to shop at lunch time but a blessing at night. So, we found a few other things to do while we waited - first being a walk around some of the many gardens in town. Into the impressive Plaza de España, back along the edge of the Guadalquivir River, and past the cathedral, one of the many places where we could have embarked for a horse and cart ride around town. Back towards the camera shop, we sat in the next square at a café and had some lunch, and on a whim I wondered whether there was wireless anywhere - turns out there was! We quickly uploaded as much blog as we could before the battery gave out on us (old battery on this laptop unfortunately) and grabbed emails. Come 5pm all the shops around us were opening again for the evening's trading, so we headed back to the camera shop. The staff there knew their stuff, but couldn't quite get a generic charger they had to charge the battery. I asked if I could have a look, as the manual for it insisted it would work for this camera, and a bit of fiddling later we were away! The most annoying problem the break-in had caused was finally solved. To celebrate, we picked Bodega San Jose from Lonely Planet as an interesting-sounding place for a few beers and wandered down towards the river to get there. Turns out it wasn't really to our liking due to the stench of the resident cats and the non-appealing décor, but we had a good chat there anyway. After a quick tapas stop in the old town at Cerveceria el Cordobe, we ate dinner a rather touristy but nice place where we got some really nice food. Having spent a little more that day, we decided to risk the bus and walk back to camping, which turned out to be fine, and we settled into the tent where it yet again rained all night, but we stayed dry. bus back to camping - rained all night Sunday, March 19. 2006Around Mérida, into Sevilla
(written 28/3/06, in Santa Margherita Lígure, Italia, by Liz)
After a fairly good night sleep with noisy Spaniards in nearby rooms, we made our way by foot back into the center of town where we stopped at a café for a breakfast of coffee and toast. We then spent the morning wandering around the town and looking at various Roman ruins. Our first stop was at one of the first Roman bridges ever built, still apparently in original condition, and very much in use. We then walked through the town to the other side, and on our way passed some fenced off Roman ruins. Some of these were in very good condition, and just sitting in the middle of a bunch of modern houses. Something nice to wake up in the morning and admire anyway. Our next stop was at the ruins of Teatro and Anfiteatro Romanos. These were two huge sites right next to each other. The first was like a theatre for plays and so on. It was in very good condition, with faded marble columns, statues and a semi circle of seats rising up to form the theatre. The second was not in quite as good condition, but it still looked pretty amazing - it was a gladiator's ring, like the Collusseum in Rome, although quite a bit smaller. We were given lots of information on these two sites along with our tickets, but it is all in Spanish, so I can't say much more about the history of them, other that the first theatre was built in 15 BC, and the Gladiator's ring was built 7 years later. To give an idea of their original size, together they seated 20 000 people. After a good look at these two sites, we went back to our car which we had left parked outside our hotel and drove out of Merida. Our next destination was Sevilla (Seville), but it took us a little while to drive there, as the rain started pouring down, and we got stuck behind some quite slow traffic. Eventually arriving on Seville's outskirts, we decided to head straight to the camp ground, instead of trying to negotiate Seville without a proper map. It had stopped raining, so we thought camping would be our best option. We found the camp ground (Camping "Sevilla") quite quickly, but were a bit disappointed. We were close to the freeway, and at the end of the airport's runway, so it wasn't exactly peaceful. It also turned out that our guidebook's promise of a shuttle bus into Seville didn't actually exist, and that we had to walk along a section of the 120km/hr freeway to get to the bus stop two kilometers away. We weren't too excited about staying here, but didn't really want to try and drive through Seville to find a different accommodation option either. After putting up our tent, we walked to the bus stop, keeping a careful eye on the traffic shooting past us, caught a bus quite quickly, and found ourselves in the middle of Seville. On our way into town, we had seen huge crowds of what we presumed were soccer (football) fans getting off buses and going into a stadium. Once we had gotten off our bus, we headed to a nearby bar to see who was playing - there were lots of locals there watching the game. We then wandered through some of Seville's very pretty gardens - orange trees are everywhere, with huge big oranges clustered all over the branches, and a number squashed on the ground. We could hear the cathedral bells ringing in the distance, so we made our way through a maze of little cobble-stoned narrow alleyways towards the sound. A little while later we popped out into the square that the cathedral dominates, and stood staring. (continued 11/4/06, in Náfplio, Greece, by Tim) The imposing bell-tower was striking the hour, or perhaps just the afternoon with a crazy cacophony of bells doing their best to attract attention. Plenty of people, including ourselves, were happy to hear them ring away for several minutes. We had a look inside the cathedral, as it was free entry that day, where a certificate from Guinness marked it as having the largest area of any in the world. It certainly was huge, although the public weren't permitted to wander around much of it. In fact, a service was about to commence - we had no problems with that as that is what the building was meant for in the first place. Just back up the street a little, we thought the idea of a jug of sangria sitting in the sun under the orange trees was the way to go, and we sat there for quite some time with a few tapas and more bell ringing to entertain us a little later on. We wandered off to a restaurant for dinner, wine and more tapas, which proved to be enough for us for the evening, so we headed back through to the main street leading back to the camp site, where we thought it safest to get a taxi back. The driver dropped us right at the gates for a higher fare than we were expecting, but we had survived and enjoyed our first day in Sevilla. Saturday, March 18. 2006Back to Spain - Mérida
(written 28/3/06, in Santa Margherita Lígure, Italia, by Liz)
The rest of our afternoon was spent driving. We were on a quiet back-road (although maybe it is not usually so quiet, as we saw more police on this road then we have in the whole of Spain), and there were olive orchards all around and little Jamons running around in the orchards. It's nice at least that they live outside, rather than being cooped up in some horrible dark little pig-sty. The weather had cleared up a little, but there was a huge black cloud looming on the horizon as we drove. Our destination was a town called Mérida, once the biggest city in Roman Spain, and now famous for it's large number of Roman ruins. We found our way to the middle of town, and then went on a hunt for somewhere to stay the night. To cut a long story short, we trudged around for quite a while, being told at every place we found that they had no rooms left. It was a Saturday night, but we haven't been anywhere this busy yet, and we couldn't work out why this little town was so popular. In the end, we got the last room at a nice enough hotel, not right in the center of town, but only about ten minutes walk away. It turned out that there was a medieval festival in the town that weekend, and that's why all the accomodation was full. We are still trying to work out why a town, famous for its Roman ruins, was having a Medieval festival. As a bonus, our hotel had it's own parking, so we moved our car there, and then walked down towards the festival. Mostly lots of things being roasted on spits and children running around with little wooden swords while parents stood around chatting. We stopped and had a drink and a couple of tapas in a bar, before moving up the road for dinner at a great little Italian restaurant. For the first time, we were eating dinner with loads of locals - it was 11pm!! My belly usually can't wait that long :) Bed soon followed, with us appreciating a proper bed after our previous couple of nights of camping. Saturday, March 11. 2006Perhaps the weather would be better in Portugal
(written 22/3/2006 in Granada, España, by Liz)
A tasty breakfast was had at our hotel before we continued along the road towards Portugal. Part of the morning was spent driving along pretty riversides, stopping along the waters edge for morning tea, and getting lost again because our map didn't seem to match up with what the roads actually did. The weather was looking overcast again (whatever happened to 'Sunny Spian?!'), but perhaps we would soon come across some better weather. Sometime around midday we drove across the border into Portugal. Friday, March 10. 2006Winding Down the Coast
(written 22/3/2006 in Granada, España, by Liz)
Our day started with a wander towards the other side of A Coruña where the Atlantic Ocean meets the coast. The main beach looked like it might be nicer on a warmer day. We stopped for breakfast in a little backstreet café, found our car safe and sound and put our bags in it, and then walked for a while around the old town section. We had to wait to get our car out of it's parking spot, as there was some sort of protest going on, and a huge queue of cars all tooting and waving banners took their time making noise and driving along the narrow one-way street our car was on. At least the protesters had the right idea... why walk and protest when you can make more noise with your car horn and stay warm and dry. A little while later, we were heading out of A Coruña and driving vaguely south. Our idea for the day was to follow some pretty coast roads that wound along the western coast of Spain, making our way further south towards Portugal. Unfortunately on a few occasions, heavy road works meant that we couldn't follow our intended roads, and left us a bit confused as to where we were. All the same, it was a nice driving day, with views of the stormy Atlantic crashing against rocky cliffs, little sheltered harbours, villages sccattered here and there, and Spaniards going about their daily buisness. We stopped a little way off the road for a lunch of soup and bread and other nibbles, and then drove slowly past another car that had taken a sharp bend too quickly, and ended upside down on the wrong side of the road. Late in the afternoon, we found ourselves in the small town of Cambados where we hunted out a hotel room for the night, and then spent a bit of the evening listening to the town bells ringing and enjoying some tapas and a drink. Dinner was hugely enjoyed at a little bar-restorante. Tim's request of mushrooms for an entreé was denied a little while later by the waitress miming that they had no mushrooms after all. Tim chose something else from the menu, but a short while later again, the waitress came back and let us know that they now had mushrooms after all! We were a bit dubious, as we wondered if these mushrooms were going to be some dryed out old ones found at the bottom of the fridge, but they turned out to be perfectly fresh and delicious, as was the rest of our dinner. Back at our hotel, we sat in the bar enjoying a drink and a long winded game of cards with lots of older Spanish holiday makers doing the same around us, before we made our way up to bed. Thursday, March 9. 2006Fixed our car, then gave it a workout
(written 15/3/2006 08:45 CET in Luso, Portugal)
Citroën again gave us the address of a local dealer to attempt to find in the much smaller than Blibao but not at all tiny Burgos. However these proved pretty much rubbish as an address doesn't translate all that easily to a spot on a map, even with the help of a tourist office, a Subaru dealer (there were plenty of other car dealers as well, just no Citroën!) and an hour or so of random driving. Eventually a service station attendant came through, with excellent directions and even pin-pointing it on our map, far far away from the location that Citroën themselves had told us. Eventually arriving after all the hassle this service had caused, we were dismayed to be told that they had no room to do this service today, would we like it done at 4pm the next day?! No thanks, this was supposed to take 20 minutes and this place was huge. The not at all helpful service manager girl (Liz noted her purple eyeshadow as a bad sign) was far superceeded by a random helpful salesman with good English, who told us to go just around the corner to a different dealership who could do it straight away! We liked the sound of that deal, and by the time we drove there, apologised that we didn't speak Spanish and asked if they spoke English, they knew who we were, what we were there for and the bonnet was up! Literally twenty minutes in the park across the road with the cold wind blowing between the uninspiring apartment blocks on either side and Schnee Three was done! (The name combines the car's model C3 with the German word for snow - Schnee - since early on in the journey he got so covered in the stuff). After all that mucking around, and the fact we had no set targets across the top of España, we powered across motorways for several hours towards La/A Coruña at the top of the western coast. We stumbled into what turned out to be one of the few free parking spots in the entire city, asked the i for a list of pensions, picked the cheapest which turned out to be a nice rambling old hotel, lugged our bags most of the way across the city and chilled out. Dinner called a little while later, and we walked back across the city again (getting some exercise to make up for all this eating!) to the Lonely Planet recommended places - one of which didn't appear to exist anymore and the other, Meson do Pulpo, which didn't look all that lively. Turns out this wasn't a sign to worry about as the calamari and pimiento tapas were fantastic, almost a meal in themselves. A couple more bars up the street we ate again a few other things almost as good, before the big walk back to our hotel and sleep. Wednesday, March 8. 2006Bilbao, Burges
(written 15/3/2006 08:17 CET in Luso, Portugal)
We had a bit of a wander around San Sebastián and eventually sat for a cheap breakfast - actually, everything was looking cheap compared to France - fuel, accommodation and food was all notably more within our budget. A little bit of a drive down the road we had parked on took us to great views across the bay to the road we wanted to drive out along the coast on. And we did this, after successfully negotiating the city's streets. This other much bigger beach was massively under renovation no doubt for the coming busy summer season - it would have been a great place to catch some sun, but today there wasn't much of that. Our next target was Bilbao/Bilbo along the northern coast of España, but we got a little lost on the roads there, looping around and eventually deciding a nice break for tea in a park which was in an area no tourist could ever had made it to was a good idea. While there, I rang Citroën. With our little car, since it is brand new, we have to get it for its first service between 1500 and 2500 kilometres - we were now within this range. They told me the addresses of three Citroën places in Bilbao, which I noted and we then drove onwards to find. This was a hugely ugly place, with way to many motorway overpasses, poorly signposted, and we had no map of it at all. The signs eventually got us to the Guggenheim museum, which is the sole thing we really wanted to have a look at while there. We needed a map though to locate the car dealers, so I went inside to ask for one at the i inside. While gone, Liz attempted to pay for some parking, but the machine proved completely non-decypherable for anyone not speaking Basque languages. So she sat in the car, money in hand, to plead with any oncoming parking inspectors. One was approaching as I returned with map, and we decided to hot-foot it out of the place and find somewhere else to stop. It turns out that finding our way to these Citroën places was completely impossible with the info we had, so after wasting an hour we aimed for something smaller. We picked Burgos instead, driving there along our favourite combination of fast and small roads. We parked and trudged back and forward with packs from one end of town to the other to the cheap recommended pension, stopping for directions from a helpful cafeteria lady. Going out a little later for dinner, nothing much else was around (or, strangely for a little town, affordable) so we wandered into give the cafeteria some business to thank them for their help earlier. Big. Mistake. If them turning the lights on as we entered the cavernous empty restaurant didn't warn us enough, the dust in the wine glasses should have, but to cut a long ugly poorly tasting story short this place sucked. We made the best of it, behaving rather poorly in the presence of nobody else at all, before heading home to bed. Tuesday, March 7. 2006Wifi found in St Sebastian
Drove over the border into Spain today, and are staying in a little pension in the middle of town. Horrible rainy weather. Free wifi found from somewhere so making the best of it.
Both well, having fun! Into España - San Sebastian
(written 15/3/2006 08:02 CET in Luso, Portugal)
We were on the lookout for the sign that denotes each European country, but almost missed it in the middle of the bridge due to the graffiti all over it - we remembered from last time just how much España isn't really one tightly-knit country at all. Several states, including the Basque country we were now entering, don't want to be part of the greater entity we know as Spain. Our first target here was San Sebastián (Donoista in Basque), famed for nightlife and tapas. As we approached the outskirts we were a little put off - all huge ugly highrises and jammed streets with cars going nowhere and everywhere. Somehow we found our way to the water - the hardest task in these bigger cities is lining up our Europe-wide road map with the little maps in Lonely Planet of each city. Even harder in medium-size places where Lonely Planet doesn't have a city map at all! So stumbling across the sea made our task easier. We parked there, wandered towards the luckily nearby recommended pensions (in España these places are typically in someone's house or above a bar and offer a cheap basic room for very little money), but ended up in another one in the same area. The helpful lady here spoke English - just what we wanted to ease our transition from French - and the price for the room she had on offer reminded us that we were in a cheaper country now. She even pointed us to free parking further around the sea, so we went out to move the car, grab our big pack of clothes and walk back in the rain and driving wind. Not quite the Spanish weather we were hoping for :( Eventually though we pushed out looking for tapas (little tasty servings of food typically eaten before a main meal which depending on what source you ask may have originated in this city). The technique of serving here was certainly different to anywhere else we had seen, as all the bars near the pension (helpfully located in the best part of the city for this!) actually had the entire bar-tops given over to huge plates of food absolutely stacked with tasty looking morsels. We had no idea how to order or pay, so we resorted to the tried and true method of ordering two beers, standing to the side and watching how everyone else did it. Turns out it is an honour system. When you pay, just tell them what you ate! Brilliant, we can do that. So we did, taking a couple of different things and munching them up just in time for our beers to be empty and us to "tappas-hop" to the next bar and try it again. Turns out that after two bars we had had enough for the day (we'd had to wait until quite late to come out - Spaniards typically eat dinner about 9:30 - any earlier and you're only eating with tourists) so it was back through the rain to the pension.
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