Breakfast at the Peppermill

Back in Reno, Hotwire special for the Peppermill, looking for something more "permanent" ... one advantage of still being on a somewhat screwy schedule here is that you can take advantage of the early morning (before 6 am) breakfast special at the coffee shop, anything on the menu for $6.99. Joe's San Francisco omelet would feed at least 4 Europeans!

Where we spent our last night in Spain

With a great view of the Picos de Europa in Western Cantabria.

Gaudi building in Cantabria

In the cool town of Comillas on the Atlantic coast. Next door there were great gargoyles on a gothic church.

Road trip again

We've left San Sebastián, we rented a car planning to do day trips until Saturday, but due to the problems of parking it, and the urge to fit as much travel in as we could during the remaining few days, we moved out Friday morning, and we're now back in Santillano del Mar, after exploring the Basque Coast on the way. Tomorrow we'll probably head into the mountains of Cantabria and Asturias, maybe get to Galicia, before coming back to Santander on Sunday to fly to London for 2 days. We'll arrive in San Francisco Tuesday evening and probably take the train to Reno on Wednesday. E-mail and w-fi access will be spotty, so I'm not sure how many more blog entries there will be! But I'll post when I can.

Mt. Urgull

Last week we explored the central mountain of San Sebastian that is above the oldest part of town and offers great views of the city from the reconstructed ruins of a church/ fort/ castle. The other mountain in the background is Mt. Ulia, where there is an interesting hidden fort, Monpas, that was built during the Spanish American War to protect the coast.

On the ocean side of Mt. Urgull is an "English Cemetery" with statues honoring the volunteers who died fighting in the first Carlist War in 1833.
One interesting feature was the guide to Graffiti.

One more fiesta parade photo

Fiesta parade

There was a fiesta in our part of town over the past few days, amplified music, parades, mariachis, drummers, street fairs ... and this is a parade on our street. Our apartment building can be seen in the far distance.

Update

Let´s see ... Ellen was here for 10 days, and we did some exploring around town and she came along on a USAC field trip to the French Basque Country, and she tried surfing and stayed up all night at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona and saw the running of the bulls, and we went to Bilbao, she visited the Guggenheim and I visited a friend, and I also took care of a little bit of library business ... and now this is my last week here :-( so I´ll be busy. Tonight the USAC group is going on a boat ride along the shore to a fishing village.

Evening in San Sebastián

Walks in the evening are the best!

A Basque fishing boat

A window along the harbor

San Sebastián sunset

Hey, family members

How about an email? You all seem so far away ... I´m missing you.

Basque witches

I noticed this bar because witches (or rather witchHUNTS to the extreme) were a gruesome part of Basque history.

Supermercado en Gros

Despite its unappetizing name (to Americanos), this is our favorite grocery store so far. Marimar agrees that food tastes better in Donostia (San Sebastián) than in Reno, especially tomatoes.

The beach at Biarritz

Ellen in San Sebastián

Back in the routine

Went to Bayonne and Biarritz on Saturday with the USAC group and Ellen. Then she went to the San Fermin festival in Pamplona and stayed up all Saturday night. I was a little nervous until she got back at noon on Sunday. She had a great time. I was happy to skip that experience ...

Fashionista dog

Lunch with Marimar!

I met up with Marimar today, it was so good to see a familiar face and to compare impressions of her home town that she is seeing with somewhat fresh eyes after more than a year in Reno. We ran into someone else she knows from Reno -- who worked at Starbucks in the student union and is a student in the USAC program along with me.

 

I´ve been meeting with an "intercambio" (conversation partner), someone of my generation (approximately) on the faculty in the university, whose English is much better than my Spanish ... she´s polishing her English for a vacation in Scotland next week, while I´m still trying to learn a little more survival vocabulary (not much hope for complete sentences). She has helped me learn a few new things about being in San Sebastian. Ellen arrives tomorrow! We´re signed up for a Saturday excursion to the French Basque coastal towns Biarritz and Bayonne.

 

Nobody who lives here believes that we can hear a donkey in the mornings in our apartment, but it is true -- and we saw it up on the hill above Gros (Mt. Ullia).

Bimbo bread

Bilbao Guggenheim

Me at the Guggenheim

Young Gernika oak tree

This young and well-tended tree is the current ceremonial tree in Gernika, of huge importance to the Basques. It is a grandson of the original ceremonial tree (somehow they are all considered to be boy trees). Prior to the time that the old grandfather tree was used to shade decision-making and oath-taking, important Basques met under oak trees in the forest that was there before the parliamentary buildings were built. Since the 1500s, kings and queens of Spain would go there to take an oath that they would respect traditional Basque laws.

Lightbulb halo

An ornate building along the east bank of the river near the train station in San Sebastián.

Ornate bridge

The third bridge from the ocean crossing the Urumea River in San Sebastián

Too much!

I went to a lecture on Basque nationalism by Cameron Watson (who wrote the textbook for the class I´m taking) on Friday and on a field trip to Gernika and Bilbao on Saturday and we wandered around town a bit today. It´s a little cooler now, still comfortable. In Bilbao we took a boat up the river to a great restaurant and spent the afternoon on a guided tour of the Guggenheim. Fantastic exhibits and of course the building itself is worth the trip. It´s getting easier to be here, we´re finding the good grocery stores and a running trail ... we´re not only near the beach but also two blocks from a steep and wooded hill with great views of the city and a rural forest feel. Lots of places to explore up there.

Abandoned kitties on the jetty

Unfortunately, there were a lot of them :-(

Area where we live

In the evening, when the beach is almost deserted, looking towards the Gros area, our apartment building is in there somewhere. Bermingham St. #7.

Apartment

A view of the dining room, kitchen and bathroom from the bedroom. There is also a living room next to the bedroom.

Yikes, I´m a student!

I have to get to class on time, read stuff, and I have a paper due tomorrow. But at least it´s interesting, and it will be useful to me in my job. And there is still some time for wandering around and shopping and going to the beach ... I´m going to try uploading photos from my camera since I haven´t been able to find free w-fi.

San Sebastián

We´re settled into our apartment -- it´s in an old building in the Gros section, it normally belongs to someone named Ainhoa, who is 34 years old, most of her stuff is still here, she just moved out temporarily. It´s an attic apartment without air conditioning, so we´re learning to manage the windows and the fans and to go outside when it is cooler there, eating salads and sandwiches. It has been unusually warm in SS, they say. The apartment has a lot of personality and charm, it reminds us a lot of Ellen´s attic apartment in San Francisco except that here we´re on the 8th floor and we have to take a scary elevator to the 7th floor. The stairs are scarier. Our arrangement is more casual than with the usual USAC-arranged housing. Ainhoa and her mother Ana, the owner, are great, and they have really encouraged us (and made it easy) to make ourselves at home. I´m taking the Modern Basque History class from John Bieter, the visiting prof. from Boise State, who is an excellent teacher. The other 5 students in the class are bright and engaged. It will be a good month. 

There we are --

Back towards Pamplona

Last day on the road

We've been taking advantage of the last days of renting a car -- covering many miles ... it's been good, but I think it will be nice to stay in one place for awhile!

Sheep holding up traffic in Campos, Spain

Horses holding up traffic in Andorra

A high road through Pyrenees

View from hotel window in Gavarnie, FR

Great luck once more

Lots of driving today, going to Barcelona unprepared and in a car was not such a good idea after all, lots of traffic and the wrong direction. We headed northwest through farmland with castles or ancient cathedrals on almost every hill, and Roman ruins here and there ... starting to get a little nervous about finding a hotel when at 9 pm we found a really great one in Campo, a beautiful place in the Pyreneen foothills -- spacious, tasteful & new, and only 49€. And I think we are the only guests! Dinner at the restaurant was trout and leg of cabrito and pimiento rellenos with clams ... we're just across the mountains from the area we drove through in France. It's more arid and wild.

Rain in Spain

Back in Spain

In an overpriced hotel room in Catalunya in a town called Ponts. Andorra was interesting -- huge ski resort complexes, and in other areas huge shopping complexes. Lots of construction. Most of the day we drove through thunderstorms and hard rain. We are trying to decide whether to take a side trip to Barcelona since we're so close ...

On the bathroom wall

Signed Degas, and it didn't look like a print.

Our bathroom at the Chateau de Beauregard

Entrance to a cute hotel in the high. Pyrenees

Viscos was the town. The room was cosy, like a chalet, with hiking
trails outside the door.

Sharing the road ...

And the meadows and the trails and the scenery. Grazing cattle and sheep in the high country is considered a natural activity even in the national park because it has been going on fot so long.

A strong little French horse on a high mt. pass

Adjusted plans

Today we learned that it takes a long time to drive through the Pyrenees on the back roads. After all the winding around and finding ourselves in all kinds of towns, we lucked out by stumbling across an amazing hotel in Saint-Girons, the Chateau de Beauregard, we're in the Arthur Rimbaud room. Lots of antiques and attention to every possible detail. Our best hotel room yet -- also the most expensive but still only 80€. Anyway, we decided not to drive all the way to the Mediterranean but instead to head back to Spain by way of Andorra and see more of the Spanish Pyrenees. Today we saw a lot of paragliders. Every day we see lots of bicyclists training on the steepest routes. Even some with grey hair ...

Mmmm!

They tasted even better than they looked...

A fleur de lys

The flowers here are just amazing.

The very high Pyrenees

We have spent a couple of days near and in the high Pyrenees national park in the middle of S. France -- the most-visited national park in France, so the scene is something like Yellowstone, except that there are lots of people even in the places where you have to hike an hour to get there ... but the scenery is spectacular and the weather has been perfect. Ups and downs with hotels. We are heading east now, along the Pyrenees to the Med. On Sunday I check in with USAC in San Sebastiàn, we move into an apartment there on Monday (with internet!)

Variety

After being thoroughly charmed by the beauties of nature and antiquity, we are experiencing a more ordinary aspect of France in the town of Gan near Pau. There was a punk rock band at the music festival in the town square, the old people fled, the toddlers danced ... we provided quite a bit of entertainment in the boulangerie when we asked if the supermarket was open on Sunday. The possibilities for gaffes in France are infinite. We may head back to the hills for more charm ... but scarce wi-fi.

We crossed this bridge!

165 feet above the floor of Holzarte Gorge ...

Kakuetta Gorge

Larrau

We spent 3 nights in a hotel in a tiny village just on the French side of the Pyrenees. There was a gourmet chef and lots of natural wonders nearby, deep narrow gorges with catwalks and suspension bridges, & hikers wear helmets due to falling rocks. Rivers & waterfalls were spectacular, flowers & birds were everywhere.

A view from the pass into the Northern Basque Country (France)

Hiking in the Pyrenees

We stayed in Zuriza last night -- a beautiful place, but we had to share it with the cows that make the Roncal cheese. A few flies were there along with the cows! But other than that, good weather, great scenery. NOW we´re on our way to France, transitioning from slaughtered Spanish to fractured French. Au revoir ... more photos when we have wi-fi.

Into France

We're getting quite spotty wi-fi (or wee-fee as they say here) access by satellite, storms in the mts. Very green, very beautiful! And very wet.

The village Roncal (yesterday)

Into the wilds...

We're headed into the Irati forest, the second largest old-growth forest in Europe ... hoping to stay a week in a casa rural near Mendilatz which is north of Orbaizeta. I doubt we will have internet access there.

Basque reservoirs are turquoise!

Ernest Hemingway slept here ...

In our room, #23 in the Hotel Burguete.

Staying in Burguete in the Pyrenees

Lamp & art in Pamplona hotel rm

Technical difficulties

I haven´t been able to log into my email account on my iPhone in Europe, so that is cramping my blogging style. I finally have free access to the internet in a hotel, I´ve been too busy to use internet cafes much. Anyway, London was a lot of fun! And now we´re in Santillano Del Mar, a very old town, after flying into Santander. There have been a few glitches, but the weather is perfect and I´m having a great time. I´ll figure out a way to upload photos if I can´t get the iPhone to work ...

Leaving Reno!