Today is our final day as we’ve got to be at the airport by 8:30 tomorrow morning (we’ll probably be there at 7:00), so we’re just having a quiet day round La Rambla today.
The breakfast at the market was the usual fair of wine, beer, whisky for the locals and a Tortilla and a steak sandwich for us. The temperature here is hot as well (31 degrees at 10am), but the humidity is what weighs you down. Like Paris, Barcelona also shuts down in August and this is starting to happen now, with some of the stands in the market closed. Out on La Rambla and Placa de la Catalunya tourists are everywhere and it seems busier than when we were here at the start of July. The queue to the topless tourist bus is over 100m long – you’d think it would be quicker to walk, or do your own thing, but that doesn’t stop people queueing in the full on sun.
We had lunch down on the wharf and will then go to Placa Reail for a Sangria this evening followed by a light dinner somewhere later on.
From Barcelona, we retrace our steps, stopping briefly in Milan (to pick up the bulk of the passengers on the plane, I suspect), before heading on to Singapore, where we have only an hour before we catch the flight to Auckland (no time for the regulation BK double whopper this time), where we arrive about midnight on Saturday night. We get back to Wellington 10:00 on Sunday morning.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the blog, thanks for reading and we’ll see you soon.
Cheers,
David and Anne.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Week 5 – Wednesday 30th July – Barcelona
Everybody has their funny little quirks and ours is that on travel day, we like to get to the airport WELL in advance of the flight to make sure that we have plenty of time to get to where we need to be, beat the queues and if we have any unforeseen glitches that we have time to remedy them so that we don’t have any hassles with getting on the designated plane.
The flight to Barcelona that we had changed onto was at 11:30, but before then we had to negotiate our way around Madrid’s ring road, drop the car off and get to the airport. Leaving at 8:30 would have been fine, and 9:00 a tight fit, so we left at 6:30 to make sure we missed all of the traffic and got very close the airport in masses of time.
Fortunately (??) Mum and Dad were leaving Milan today on their way to Australia, and had to get to there from Nice, so they had an early start and were up at 5am to text the family. This gave us an ever earlier start and so we were parked back outside the car drop off depot at 7:15 in the morning. Fortunately (and this time it was), the drop off point is beside a very large airport hotel, so we were able to head in there for an extended breakfast (with the Spanish Olympic Team, who were all decked out in there very smart outfits – blue track pants, and bright yellow shirts with red highlights).
The trip to Barcelona is 1 hour 15 minutes and we were boarded on time to a half full flight. Actually to say it is 1 hour 15 is not quite right. It’s a 50 minute flight, with a 25 minute taxi to get to the start of the runway in Madrid. The plane is in two classes – business and ours. The curtain that is always so tightly closed in New Zealand was only partially closed, so I was able to see that the business class customers were having a pleasant time and also that the pilot’s view was unobstructed, as the cockpit door was open from two minutes into the flight, until a couple of minutes before we landed. Security doesn’t seem to be quite as tight here as it is in other places.
The scenery on the flight to Barcelona astounded for how dry and flat all the land between Madrid and Barcelona is. It’s just a sea of beige for as far as the eye can see. The landscape only changed minutes before we got to the sea at Barcelona.
Barcelona airport is under reconstruction, so we were parked out on the runway and bused from one end of the airport to the other, then walked back to the other end of the terminal building to wait for our bags to be delivered, which were duly delivered after a 30 minute wait.
The taxi into town was back to quick and efficient and after checking back into the hotel, we headed up La Rambla, past Plaza de la Catalunya and up the next Rambla to find a place for lunch.
This evening, we’ve just had another walk down La Rambla and onto the Marina area amongst all the crowds of people. The living statues are still there, but in four weeks seem to have transformed themselves into an almost totally new cast. There are also a number sci-fi moonscape artists here that weren’t here last time, so I guess they travel around to different places, so as to always have a new audience to perform to.
The flight to Barcelona that we had changed onto was at 11:30, but before then we had to negotiate our way around Madrid’s ring road, drop the car off and get to the airport. Leaving at 8:30 would have been fine, and 9:00 a tight fit, so we left at 6:30 to make sure we missed all of the traffic and got very close the airport in masses of time.
Fortunately (??) Mum and Dad were leaving Milan today on their way to Australia, and had to get to there from Nice, so they had an early start and were up at 5am to text the family. This gave us an ever earlier start and so we were parked back outside the car drop off depot at 7:15 in the morning. Fortunately (and this time it was), the drop off point is beside a very large airport hotel, so we were able to head in there for an extended breakfast (with the Spanish Olympic Team, who were all decked out in there very smart outfits – blue track pants, and bright yellow shirts with red highlights).
The trip to Barcelona is 1 hour 15 minutes and we were boarded on time to a half full flight. Actually to say it is 1 hour 15 is not quite right. It’s a 50 minute flight, with a 25 minute taxi to get to the start of the runway in Madrid. The plane is in two classes – business and ours. The curtain that is always so tightly closed in New Zealand was only partially closed, so I was able to see that the business class customers were having a pleasant time and also that the pilot’s view was unobstructed, as the cockpit door was open from two minutes into the flight, until a couple of minutes before we landed. Security doesn’t seem to be quite as tight here as it is in other places.
The scenery on the flight to Barcelona astounded for how dry and flat all the land between Madrid and Barcelona is. It’s just a sea of beige for as far as the eye can see. The landscape only changed minutes before we got to the sea at Barcelona.
Barcelona airport is under reconstruction, so we were parked out on the runway and bused from one end of the airport to the other, then walked back to the other end of the terminal building to wait for our bags to be delivered, which were duly delivered after a 30 minute wait.
The taxi into town was back to quick and efficient and after checking back into the hotel, we headed up La Rambla, past Plaza de la Catalunya and up the next Rambla to find a place for lunch.
This evening, we’ve just had another walk down La Rambla and onto the Marina area amongst all the crowds of people. The living statues are still there, but in four weeks seem to have transformed themselves into an almost totally new cast. There are also a number sci-fi moonscape artists here that weren’t here last time, so I guess they travel around to different places, so as to always have a new audience to perform to.
Week 5 – Tuesday 29th July – Madrid and Toledo
Today we planned to see both the Thyssen Bornemisza gallery and the Prado gallery. After breakfast at the hotel we packed up the meager possessions that we’d bought in from Toledo and headed for the Thyssen. I’d seen the Thyssen many (many, many) years ago when it visited Dunedin and was interested to see it again. The sun was already high in the sky (9:45am) as we made our way to the gallery, so we had to chose the side of the street that would protect us from the sun.
The Gallery is now owned by Spain, but at the time I had seen it in Dunedin it was still a private collection that was on a world tour. That was about 1982-83. In 1988 the Spanish government agreed to host the collection for 9.5 years (don’t know why that long) and then in the early 1990’s, they had agreed to buy it from the TB family. We were interested to learn why it was sold, as it had been brought together by the TB family over two generations since the 1920’s. We never did find out, but given that it had been on tour in the early 1980’s and was then farmed out for 10 years at the end of the 1980’s, maybe they just felt like something new.
The collection is amazing, but like all art galleries, I find that there is only some art that I am interested in and the rest I can only give a passing interest to. My interest is mainly in 19th and early 20th century art – particularly the impressionists and post impressionists, but as this collection dates from the early 15th century it was good to see a wide range of art, appreciate the early stuff for what it was and then spend time looking at the art that I really enjoyed.
Art for me is a bit like a switch – it’s on or it’s off – I like it or I don’t, so we spent time at the stuff that we liked and moved more quickly past the stuff that didn’t interest us. Having said that, by the time we left it had been over 3 hours at an art gallery and that is as much as I can handle in one day.
Emerging just after 1:30, we went for a walk around some of the gardens, with the intention of catching the 3:50 train back to Toledo. Fortunately, we were close to the train station at 1:30, so went in to buy our tickets back to Toledo. This was fortunate, as we then found out why catching the train in Madrid can be difficult.
Expecting to get a self service vending machine, where you punch in your destination, chose your trip time and seat number, we were surprised to find that there were only very long queues to buy your tickets off a human ticket seller. The queues were for either the individual trains if they were about to leave, other ticket sales for that day and ticket sales for other days. The queues were huge and so we decided we’d better get our tickets before we did anything else. The whole process was massively inefficient and even the locals were getting very frustrated by it. The sellers in the queues for the upcoming trains, wouldn’t sell tickets for any of the later train services that day, the sellers in the other days sales were completely under utilised and the sellers of the rest of today’s sales were completely over worked. People were pushing to the front of the queue to try and get tickets for soon to be departing services.
Once we’d got our tickets, we were able to go and have lunch at a nearby café and wait for the return train to Toledo.
Dinner was a quiet affair that night, catching up on part of this blog entry, before we head for Barcelona tomorrow.
Every night, we get musicians coming round the restaurants and playing to the crowd in general. It ‘s good to hear them and we always give them a Euro for their trouble. There’s only two instruments they play – piano accordion or guitar, but there is one song that we get every time, it’s always played really fast and we’re over it – “Those Were the Days my Friend”. Here’s a little bit of it just to get you in the mood.
“Once upon a time, there was a tavern, Where we used to raise a glass or two. Remember how we laughed away the hours, Think of all the great things we would do.
Those were the days, my friend, We thought they'd never end, We'd sing and dance forever and a day, We'd live the life we'd choose, We'd fight and never lose, For we were young and sure to have our way.”
Now my recollection of the song was that the first verse was slow and the chorus was medium paced. The way the musicians play it, “Those were” is played slowish, and from then on, it’s a race to prove your manlihood and virility by playing it as fast as is humanly possible. From Barcelona, to the Costa Verde, to Segovia in Central Spain it is the same. I was reminded of this last night when we were watching the video that Anne has been creating, and there in the Placa Reail in Barcelona was that same bloody song again. Musicians playing that particular song are on the exclusion list when it comes to donations.
Fortunately, in the malls you also get musicians, but they are more varied in both their choice of instrument and the songs they play. Two that come to mind are the classical violinist in Salamanca and the guy playing a very good rendition of dire straits Sultans of Swing, so it adds a nice atmosphere while you are walking home from dinner.
The Gallery is now owned by Spain, but at the time I had seen it in Dunedin it was still a private collection that was on a world tour. That was about 1982-83. In 1988 the Spanish government agreed to host the collection for 9.5 years (don’t know why that long) and then in the early 1990’s, they had agreed to buy it from the TB family. We were interested to learn why it was sold, as it had been brought together by the TB family over two generations since the 1920’s. We never did find out, but given that it had been on tour in the early 1980’s and was then farmed out for 10 years at the end of the 1980’s, maybe they just felt like something new.
The collection is amazing, but like all art galleries, I find that there is only some art that I am interested in and the rest I can only give a passing interest to. My interest is mainly in 19th and early 20th century art – particularly the impressionists and post impressionists, but as this collection dates from the early 15th century it was good to see a wide range of art, appreciate the early stuff for what it was and then spend time looking at the art that I really enjoyed.
Art for me is a bit like a switch – it’s on or it’s off – I like it or I don’t, so we spent time at the stuff that we liked and moved more quickly past the stuff that didn’t interest us. Having said that, by the time we left it had been over 3 hours at an art gallery and that is as much as I can handle in one day.
Emerging just after 1:30, we went for a walk around some of the gardens, with the intention of catching the 3:50 train back to Toledo. Fortunately, we were close to the train station at 1:30, so went in to buy our tickets back to Toledo. This was fortunate, as we then found out why catching the train in Madrid can be difficult.
Expecting to get a self service vending machine, where you punch in your destination, chose your trip time and seat number, we were surprised to find that there were only very long queues to buy your tickets off a human ticket seller. The queues were for either the individual trains if they were about to leave, other ticket sales for that day and ticket sales for other days. The queues were huge and so we decided we’d better get our tickets before we did anything else. The whole process was massively inefficient and even the locals were getting very frustrated by it. The sellers in the queues for the upcoming trains, wouldn’t sell tickets for any of the later train services that day, the sellers in the other days sales were completely under utilised and the sellers of the rest of today’s sales were completely over worked. People were pushing to the front of the queue to try and get tickets for soon to be departing services.
Once we’d got our tickets, we were able to go and have lunch at a nearby café and wait for the return train to Toledo.
Dinner was a quiet affair that night, catching up on part of this blog entry, before we head for Barcelona tomorrow.
Every night, we get musicians coming round the restaurants and playing to the crowd in general. It ‘s good to hear them and we always give them a Euro for their trouble. There’s only two instruments they play – piano accordion or guitar, but there is one song that we get every time, it’s always played really fast and we’re over it – “Those Were the Days my Friend”. Here’s a little bit of it just to get you in the mood.
“Once upon a time, there was a tavern, Where we used to raise a glass or two. Remember how we laughed away the hours, Think of all the great things we would do.
Those were the days, my friend, We thought they'd never end, We'd sing and dance forever and a day, We'd live the life we'd choose, We'd fight and never lose, For we were young and sure to have our way.”
Now my recollection of the song was that the first verse was slow and the chorus was medium paced. The way the musicians play it, “Those were” is played slowish, and from then on, it’s a race to prove your manlihood and virility by playing it as fast as is humanly possible. From Barcelona, to the Costa Verde, to Segovia in Central Spain it is the same. I was reminded of this last night when we were watching the video that Anne has been creating, and there in the Placa Reail in Barcelona was that same bloody song again. Musicians playing that particular song are on the exclusion list when it comes to donations.
Fortunately, in the malls you also get musicians, but they are more varied in both their choice of instrument and the songs they play. Two that come to mind are the classical violinist in Salamanca and the guy playing a very good rendition of dire straits Sultans of Swing, so it adds a nice atmosphere while you are walking home from dinner.
Week 5 – Monday 28th July – Madrid
Set the alarm today (woohoo…almost like being at work), to get up bright and early to take the RENFE fast train into Madrid. We’d read that catching the train was problematic, but after a brief taxi ride to the train station we purchased a ticket for the train – no problems. Seriously, it’s a train service, they sell tickets to allocated seats, how hard can that be……read on gentle reader – the situation in Madrid tomorrow will be a totally different matter, but at this stage, we are living in blissful ignorance of what was to confront us.
The train service is great – very modern fast trains, that don’t go clickety-clack, clickety-clack. There is a security check before you get onto the train, so it was good to see that the ETA threat is being taken seriously and it did make us feel safer, particularly as our seats were right beside the luggage rack at the very front of the train. The trip into Madrid takes 28 minutes , with no stops. The thing that amazed us was that for all but about the last two minutes of the trip you are in the baron, arid countryside around Madrid. I had expected that for a city of 3.5 million people that we would spend most of the trip winding through the outer suburbs of Madrid.
The impression that we got as we left the train and headed through the Railway Station was that everything about Madrid was big, modern and efficient. The railway station itself is an impressive building, built as two long parallel brick buildings, about the length of a rugby field, built about the width of a rugby field apart, with a huge roof arching between the two of them. The centre section under the roof contains an indoor tropical garden that has humidifiers atomizing water above it constantly.
Heading into the city, we walked up Paseo de Prado, toward the Prado Museum. The Paseo is a 4 lanes each way artery, with trees lining one side, and a large tree lined Rambla style centre section. At 10:00am, the temperature was already at 30 degrees, but with the big oak trees all the way up the road, the walk was very cool and pleasant.
Finding an information centre outside the Prado (where perfect English was spoken), the first bit of news was that the Prado was closed on Mondays, so having obtained a map we headed further up Paseo de Prado to the Grand Via to head in the direction of the hotel we had booked for the night.
As I said, Madrid is magnificent – the buildings, with their ornate decoration, the monuments, fountains, tree lined streets were great to walk amongst and this was before we even got to the palace. It’s a very fast paced city, particularly the traffic and has many more multi laned streets and more fast moving traffic than we had seen even in Barcelona. The much lower population of scooters and what two wheeled transport there is, is much larger motor bikes seems to be testament to this fact.
Finding our hotel, right in the centre of the main pedestrian precinct, we were fortunate to be able to check in early and were really impressed with the service that we got from the hotel staff. It’s a very nice hotel in a perfect location and we’d only checked in early so I could drop off our bag and not have to carry it all day.
We spent the next couple of hours on a walking tour, taking in the main sites of Madrid. The Placa de Sol, with its statue of Madrid’s symbol, the bear eating out of the strawberry tree (??? – who came up with that), Plaza Mayor – big central town square, with three storey buildings on all sides – similar to Salamanca, but not quite so impressive and then on to the Palace and the areas surrounding it.
The day was hot, sunny and clear, but as I’ve mentioned above, it’s a very dry heat, so quite manageable and walking in the middle of the day was no problem for us. Leaving the Palace, we went into Plaza D’Espagne, which is a much more intimate area that the other squares we had been in – trees all around it and a big monument in the centre. We stopped there for a while and had a seat under the shade of the trees and observed the mounted police loading their horses into their very plush truck float.
After a further walk to another square, which didn’t rock our world, we headed back down towards the royal palace for lunch. This was back to our preferred standard – white table cloths, large wine glasses, cane chairs – and settled in for a relaxed and lengthy lunch people watching. The food was very nice – grilled monk fish, a mushroom risotto and an seafood salad, so we were pleased to be back into good food again. The mist dispensers we’d seen in the railway station were also in action here, and this time it was us who were being “misted” upon. I’m not sure how much good it does in the open air, as all the mist just seemed to blow away.
After lunch, we walked back to the hotel via the pedestrian precinct that makes up a good portion of central Madrid. On the way, we found a leather shop that had an orange leather jacket which Anne fell in love with, so it was good to buy that for her, as we’ve bought very little on this holiday. The jacket was on sale at 40% discount, but while Anne was trying it on, the woman informed us that “just today” it was on 60% discount. While I was paying for it, she fastidiously prepared a tax return voucher to make sure that we got a further 10% discount on the price we had paid.
After an evening siesta, we retuned to the Palace area, where we found a restaurant serving Montadito’s – small bread rolls with a filling. After a large lunch, these were just what we felt like, so we devoured a couple of courses of them and some beer and wine.
The train service is great – very modern fast trains, that don’t go clickety-clack, clickety-clack. There is a security check before you get onto the train, so it was good to see that the ETA threat is being taken seriously and it did make us feel safer, particularly as our seats were right beside the luggage rack at the very front of the train. The trip into Madrid takes 28 minutes , with no stops. The thing that amazed us was that for all but about the last two minutes of the trip you are in the baron, arid countryside around Madrid. I had expected that for a city of 3.5 million people that we would spend most of the trip winding through the outer suburbs of Madrid.
The impression that we got as we left the train and headed through the Railway Station was that everything about Madrid was big, modern and efficient. The railway station itself is an impressive building, built as two long parallel brick buildings, about the length of a rugby field, built about the width of a rugby field apart, with a huge roof arching between the two of them. The centre section under the roof contains an indoor tropical garden that has humidifiers atomizing water above it constantly.
Heading into the city, we walked up Paseo de Prado, toward the Prado Museum. The Paseo is a 4 lanes each way artery, with trees lining one side, and a large tree lined Rambla style centre section. At 10:00am, the temperature was already at 30 degrees, but with the big oak trees all the way up the road, the walk was very cool and pleasant.
Finding an information centre outside the Prado (where perfect English was spoken), the first bit of news was that the Prado was closed on Mondays, so having obtained a map we headed further up Paseo de Prado to the Grand Via to head in the direction of the hotel we had booked for the night.
As I said, Madrid is magnificent – the buildings, with their ornate decoration, the monuments, fountains, tree lined streets were great to walk amongst and this was before we even got to the palace. It’s a very fast paced city, particularly the traffic and has many more multi laned streets and more fast moving traffic than we had seen even in Barcelona. The much lower population of scooters and what two wheeled transport there is, is much larger motor bikes seems to be testament to this fact.
Finding our hotel, right in the centre of the main pedestrian precinct, we were fortunate to be able to check in early and were really impressed with the service that we got from the hotel staff. It’s a very nice hotel in a perfect location and we’d only checked in early so I could drop off our bag and not have to carry it all day.
We spent the next couple of hours on a walking tour, taking in the main sites of Madrid. The Placa de Sol, with its statue of Madrid’s symbol, the bear eating out of the strawberry tree (??? – who came up with that), Plaza Mayor – big central town square, with three storey buildings on all sides – similar to Salamanca, but not quite so impressive and then on to the Palace and the areas surrounding it.
The day was hot, sunny and clear, but as I’ve mentioned above, it’s a very dry heat, so quite manageable and walking in the middle of the day was no problem for us. Leaving the Palace, we went into Plaza D’Espagne, which is a much more intimate area that the other squares we had been in – trees all around it and a big monument in the centre. We stopped there for a while and had a seat under the shade of the trees and observed the mounted police loading their horses into their very plush truck float.
After a further walk to another square, which didn’t rock our world, we headed back down towards the royal palace for lunch. This was back to our preferred standard – white table cloths, large wine glasses, cane chairs – and settled in for a relaxed and lengthy lunch people watching. The food was very nice – grilled monk fish, a mushroom risotto and an seafood salad, so we were pleased to be back into good food again. The mist dispensers we’d seen in the railway station were also in action here, and this time it was us who were being “misted” upon. I’m not sure how much good it does in the open air, as all the mist just seemed to blow away.
After lunch, we walked back to the hotel via the pedestrian precinct that makes up a good portion of central Madrid. On the way, we found a leather shop that had an orange leather jacket which Anne fell in love with, so it was good to buy that for her, as we’ve bought very little on this holiday. The jacket was on sale at 40% discount, but while Anne was trying it on, the woman informed us that “just today” it was on 60% discount. While I was paying for it, she fastidiously prepared a tax return voucher to make sure that we got a further 10% discount on the price we had paid.
After an evening siesta, we retuned to the Palace area, where we found a restaurant serving Montadito’s – small bread rolls with a filling. After a large lunch, these were just what we felt like, so we devoured a couple of courses of them and some beer and wine.
Week 4 – Sunday 27th July – Toledo
Breakfast saw what looked like a nomination for this year’s Darwin awards. Hotel toasters are always a lottery and if they’re the press down kind you never know if your toast is going to “pop”, barely warmed, or completely black. My solution is to try and look down the side of the bread while it is cooking to determine when it is changing colour and then pop the toaster. One of the other guests had a much better idea. She grabbed the metal tongs that you use to pick the bread up with, stuck them in the toaster, pulled out the toast, saw it wasn’t done so dropped the toast back in. I was so ready to see her get flung to the other side of the restaurant as 240 volts surged through the tongs, but fortunately her sensitive woman’s touch prevailed and she was able to complete the maneuver without incident.
All the hotels we’ve stayed in in Spain have been designed the old fashioned way, with a central lift shaft, with a stair well that wraps around the lift shaft. The stairs are wide and although this is not a good design for minimising fire risk, the stair well is at least available and not hidden behind fire doors that only open one way. These stairs are inviting to people to use them and Anne and I do. It was only the Royal Ramblas in Barcelona where we caught the lift to the 5th floor, but always walked down.
Leaving breakfast this morning to our room on the second floor, we walked up 10 stairs, crossed two steps on the landing, then another 10 stairs to the first floor. Pausing briefly to say “ola” to the guests waiting for the lift to take them down to breakfast (they weren’t checking out as they had no bags with them), we thought “come on you lard arses – do some exercise – it’s only 22 paces and the lifts are so slow in these buildings, you’d get to breakfast minutes before you will at your current rate”. Continuing on to the second floor (that’s another 22 steps), we noticed that the lift was actually on the second floor and were tempted to jam something in the door, but then thought the better of our evil thoughts.
At this hotel, the car is parked in a parking building which is about 10 minutes walk away. It’s just beyond the end of the old town, so it’s a pleasant walk through the old town and it’s all down hill. The drive back up to the hotel is however, not so pleasant. I did say I’d video it in a previous post, but then forgot the video camera, so sorry about that. It’s only a couple of minutes from the time that you come through the gate in the city wall at the bottom of the town until you are parked outside the hotel, but in that time I had to stop and reverse twice as the car wouldn’t make it around the hair pin bends, avoid cars on one side of the road while buffing the outside of the tyres on the opposite curb because it was so narrow, pull in the external mirrors to avoid hitting the stone walls on the really tight sections, get hassled by taxi drivers who know the roads so much better and attempt (successfully) in Spanish to get an electronic bollard in the middle of the road lowered so that I could get right to the centre of the historic city.
The drive from Segovia to Toledo was an easy couple of hours on motorways. We are due to drop the car off next Thursday, so we decided to break up the trip with a quick detour to the Peugeot depot to make sure we knew where we had to go. Jane threw us a bit, by taking us straight through the centre of Madrid, rather than round the ring road as we’d expected. We didn’t know anything about Madrid and were a bit shocked when we were instructed to go past the ring road exit at the top of Madrid and continued on into the centre of the city. Fortunately, it was a Sunday so there wasn’t too much traffic around, but Jane had a fast route and what we didn’t know was that there are lots of tunnels under Madrid and that was indeed the fastest way (how could we ever have doubted her).
Having found the industrial waste land where Peugeot takes customers to pick-up and return their leased cars to, we continued on to Toledo. The last stop on our trip before we turn for home next Friday. We stayed in Toledo as the first stop on our trip to Andalusia and Portugal 4 years ago, so were looking forward to a return visit – even staying in the same hotel we stayed in last time.
As you will have learnt from our recent postings, the food in Central Spain hasn’t been of the same quality as we had been experiencing earlier in the trip, so for lunch today, we found a nice little restaurant (although a bit noisy) in the main square in Toledo that had a meal that sounded just perfect – 2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled onion on a sesame seed bun (remember the ad) – and just today I’m loving it!
Lunch was followed by a walk around the town – with the temperature flirting with 40 degrees. It’s a very dry heat and is what, at the time of writing this (Tuesday night), we have experienced for the last 3 days in both Toledo and Madrid.
As I said before, Toledo was our first stop on our last trip and the last stop on this one, and after the time we’ve spent in Santiago DC, Salamanca and Segovia – this time it seemed to pale in comparison to those wonderful cities. The shops that were open were all selling exactly the same tourist tat – swords, armour, ornate porcelain, chess sets etc and this time the city feels very much like it’s turned into a cheap day excursion for tourists from Madrid.
We stopped at two information centres in Toledo to get a map and ask directions to some attractions. We stopped at two because the woman at the first one didn’t speak any English. But then the man at the second one didn’t either. This is the first time in all of Spain that we had experienced this and although there was one more information centre in Toledo, we didn’t rate our chances of having any more success with it, so didn’t go to find it.
During our early evening break, we connected the video camera up to the TV in our hotel room and started watching the footage that we have shot over the last 4 weeks. Seeing the sites and sounds of Barcelona all over again, made us realize what a great city that is and that just having one night there before heading home wasn’t the best use of our remaining time. We decided then and there that we should leave Toledo a day earlier after visiting Madrid. That then required reworking some of the logistics of changing flights, hotels and the return of the car. With the wonders of the internet and a mobile phone that was all achieved in reasonably short order, particularly thanks to Jodi our travel agent in New Zealand who changed our flights over with an absolute minimum of fuss and a maximum of efficiency.
When we booked the hotel in Toledo, we got a deal of 4 nights for the price of 3 With all the rearranging and staying the night in Madrid, we had now achieved the remarkable feat of paying 5 nights for four nights accommodation.
All the hotels we’ve stayed in in Spain have been designed the old fashioned way, with a central lift shaft, with a stair well that wraps around the lift shaft. The stairs are wide and although this is not a good design for minimising fire risk, the stair well is at least available and not hidden behind fire doors that only open one way. These stairs are inviting to people to use them and Anne and I do. It was only the Royal Ramblas in Barcelona where we caught the lift to the 5th floor, but always walked down.
Leaving breakfast this morning to our room on the second floor, we walked up 10 stairs, crossed two steps on the landing, then another 10 stairs to the first floor. Pausing briefly to say “ola” to the guests waiting for the lift to take them down to breakfast (they weren’t checking out as they had no bags with them), we thought “come on you lard arses – do some exercise – it’s only 22 paces and the lifts are so slow in these buildings, you’d get to breakfast minutes before you will at your current rate”. Continuing on to the second floor (that’s another 22 steps), we noticed that the lift was actually on the second floor and were tempted to jam something in the door, but then thought the better of our evil thoughts.
At this hotel, the car is parked in a parking building which is about 10 minutes walk away. It’s just beyond the end of the old town, so it’s a pleasant walk through the old town and it’s all down hill. The drive back up to the hotel is however, not so pleasant. I did say I’d video it in a previous post, but then forgot the video camera, so sorry about that. It’s only a couple of minutes from the time that you come through the gate in the city wall at the bottom of the town until you are parked outside the hotel, but in that time I had to stop and reverse twice as the car wouldn’t make it around the hair pin bends, avoid cars on one side of the road while buffing the outside of the tyres on the opposite curb because it was so narrow, pull in the external mirrors to avoid hitting the stone walls on the really tight sections, get hassled by taxi drivers who know the roads so much better and attempt (successfully) in Spanish to get an electronic bollard in the middle of the road lowered so that I could get right to the centre of the historic city.
The drive from Segovia to Toledo was an easy couple of hours on motorways. We are due to drop the car off next Thursday, so we decided to break up the trip with a quick detour to the Peugeot depot to make sure we knew where we had to go. Jane threw us a bit, by taking us straight through the centre of Madrid, rather than round the ring road as we’d expected. We didn’t know anything about Madrid and were a bit shocked when we were instructed to go past the ring road exit at the top of Madrid and continued on into the centre of the city. Fortunately, it was a Sunday so there wasn’t too much traffic around, but Jane had a fast route and what we didn’t know was that there are lots of tunnels under Madrid and that was indeed the fastest way (how could we ever have doubted her).
Having found the industrial waste land where Peugeot takes customers to pick-up and return their leased cars to, we continued on to Toledo. The last stop on our trip before we turn for home next Friday. We stayed in Toledo as the first stop on our trip to Andalusia and Portugal 4 years ago, so were looking forward to a return visit – even staying in the same hotel we stayed in last time.
As you will have learnt from our recent postings, the food in Central Spain hasn’t been of the same quality as we had been experiencing earlier in the trip, so for lunch today, we found a nice little restaurant (although a bit noisy) in the main square in Toledo that had a meal that sounded just perfect – 2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled onion on a sesame seed bun (remember the ad) – and just today I’m loving it!
Lunch was followed by a walk around the town – with the temperature flirting with 40 degrees. It’s a very dry heat and is what, at the time of writing this (Tuesday night), we have experienced for the last 3 days in both Toledo and Madrid.
As I said before, Toledo was our first stop on our last trip and the last stop on this one, and after the time we’ve spent in Santiago DC, Salamanca and Segovia – this time it seemed to pale in comparison to those wonderful cities. The shops that were open were all selling exactly the same tourist tat – swords, armour, ornate porcelain, chess sets etc and this time the city feels very much like it’s turned into a cheap day excursion for tourists from Madrid.
We stopped at two information centres in Toledo to get a map and ask directions to some attractions. We stopped at two because the woman at the first one didn’t speak any English. But then the man at the second one didn’t either. This is the first time in all of Spain that we had experienced this and although there was one more information centre in Toledo, we didn’t rate our chances of having any more success with it, so didn’t go to find it.
During our early evening break, we connected the video camera up to the TV in our hotel room and started watching the footage that we have shot over the last 4 weeks. Seeing the sites and sounds of Barcelona all over again, made us realize what a great city that is and that just having one night there before heading home wasn’t the best use of our remaining time. We decided then and there that we should leave Toledo a day earlier after visiting Madrid. That then required reworking some of the logistics of changing flights, hotels and the return of the car. With the wonders of the internet and a mobile phone that was all achieved in reasonably short order, particularly thanks to Jodi our travel agent in New Zealand who changed our flights over with an absolute minimum of fuss and a maximum of efficiency.
When we booked the hotel in Toledo, we got a deal of 4 nights for the price of 3 With all the rearranging and staying the night in Madrid, we had now achieved the remarkable feat of paying 5 nights for four nights accommodation.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Week 4 – Saturday 26th July – Segovia
I got into trouble this morning. Anne called out to me from the shower, so I dutifully went to find out what assistance she required. “Can you pass me a face flannel please”. This sort of question always gets me, it’s a bit like asking for a desert spoon and not a tablespoon – Que. Anyway, I had a look around the hotel bathroom and their were a range of towels for me to choose from. There were the showering ones, so not them, some smaller ones – hand towels I thought, and some small ones hanging on a rail in the far corner. “That must be them”, I thought, so grabbed one and passed it to her. Anne stared at me disbelievingly and didn’t extend her hand to take the “face flannel”, so I sort of shook it at her – you know, take it. “There’s a reason there hanging beside the bidet, you know” Oops.
Actually, the morning didn’t get off to a great start. We got a text from Mum and Dad at 6am to say that their cruise ship was docking in Nice at 8am at the end of the cruise, so they were up early to get ready to disembark. You might have seen it on CNN if you were watching, it was obviously news worthy. Then at 8am, the alarm clock that had been silent the previous morning decided to burst into life to get us into the day. The towel incident happened after we got up at 9:30.
Anne has just reminded me about breakfast. The waiter was a real treat. He was obliging, without being friendly and effective without being efficient. Everything we asked (which wasn’t much) could be done, but it seemed to pain him that we were there. Anyway, while we were munching our way through breakfast, it was obvious that we were late, as there were several tables with dirty dishes on them. The waiter very carefully and meticulously cleared the tables, stacking plates and cups on his hands and wrists and arranging things neatly to maximise how much he could carry. All this was done with the usual waiters grace, and once he had loaded himself up, he would glide out of the restaurant to the kitchen. It seemed that as soon as he passed through the doors into the kitchen there was some miraculous transformation and Jeeves became the belligerent kitchen hand as there was an almighty crash as all the dishes were dumped unceremoniously into the sink. This would have been OK if it happened once, but it was a regular occurrence over the entire time we were in the dining room.
Today we were sightseeing locally and the transport was all on foot. First stop was the Alcazar, which is a magnificent building and grounds at the foot of the town. We’d driven past in on our way into town two days ago, but such is the abundance of sights to see in Segovia, we hadn’t been back to it since. The pictures on Flickr show the building, which was built in the 15th century, gutted by fire and fully restored in the 19th century and now is owned by a trust and houses Spain (and one of Europe’s) top military academies.
Again we had an audio guide, which gave us just enough information. Impressive things about the Alcazar (which is an Arabic word for Royal Palace) were the reconstructed armour in the first few rooms, the stained glass windows, the ceilings in all the rooms. (I’ve put up some photos to show you) and the tower, with its 152 steps.
After the Alcazar, we went for a walk round the town on the way to the aqueduct, which we were going to walk from one end to the other. Now that we have been here a couple of days, we realize what the local cuisine is like. Walking past the restaurants we checked out what people were eating, and it was all pork, which in one extreme case was a whole baby piggy, head and all – a bit gross really, unless its your custom I suppose.
One thing I’ve noticed over the last two days is the babies have pierced ears and I mean tiny babies – new borns. Again, I guess this is a custom thing. Some societies circumcise their baby boys, so why shouldn’t the girls get pierced ears. Besides which, given that Spanish woman seem to exit the womb with matching shoes, belts, necklaces and earrings, having pierced ears is probably as natural as cutting the umbilical chord. (Note: As I write this at 11:30 at night, the most popular drink being served is warmed water to new mothers, so that they can formula feed their babies. The children are still playing soccer in the pavilion in the centre of the square. The teenagers were playing tag, but they seem to have left, so I’m not sure what that lead to. Grand parents are sitting on the chairs in the centre of the square talking and some people have just arrived for dinner. This is what we love about Europe.
Our time in Segovia is nearly over, we head to Toledo tomorrow morning. Segovia is a very ‘local’ town. The receptionist at the hotel speaks English, but nobody else does and they speak Spanish to us at 100mph and give us funny looks when we look gormlessly back at them. They watch us going over the menu with our phrase book (this is the first town to have no English menus), but are appreciative of our attempts at Spanish when we have finally interpreted what we would like and are ready to order.
Actually, the morning didn’t get off to a great start. We got a text from Mum and Dad at 6am to say that their cruise ship was docking in Nice at 8am at the end of the cruise, so they were up early to get ready to disembark. You might have seen it on CNN if you were watching, it was obviously news worthy. Then at 8am, the alarm clock that had been silent the previous morning decided to burst into life to get us into the day. The towel incident happened after we got up at 9:30.
Anne has just reminded me about breakfast. The waiter was a real treat. He was obliging, without being friendly and effective without being efficient. Everything we asked (which wasn’t much) could be done, but it seemed to pain him that we were there. Anyway, while we were munching our way through breakfast, it was obvious that we were late, as there were several tables with dirty dishes on them. The waiter very carefully and meticulously cleared the tables, stacking plates and cups on his hands and wrists and arranging things neatly to maximise how much he could carry. All this was done with the usual waiters grace, and once he had loaded himself up, he would glide out of the restaurant to the kitchen. It seemed that as soon as he passed through the doors into the kitchen there was some miraculous transformation and Jeeves became the belligerent kitchen hand as there was an almighty crash as all the dishes were dumped unceremoniously into the sink. This would have been OK if it happened once, but it was a regular occurrence over the entire time we were in the dining room.
Today we were sightseeing locally and the transport was all on foot. First stop was the Alcazar, which is a magnificent building and grounds at the foot of the town. We’d driven past in on our way into town two days ago, but such is the abundance of sights to see in Segovia, we hadn’t been back to it since. The pictures on Flickr show the building, which was built in the 15th century, gutted by fire and fully restored in the 19th century and now is owned by a trust and houses Spain (and one of Europe’s) top military academies.
Again we had an audio guide, which gave us just enough information. Impressive things about the Alcazar (which is an Arabic word for Royal Palace) were the reconstructed armour in the first few rooms, the stained glass windows, the ceilings in all the rooms. (I’ve put up some photos to show you) and the tower, with its 152 steps.
After the Alcazar, we went for a walk round the town on the way to the aqueduct, which we were going to walk from one end to the other. Now that we have been here a couple of days, we realize what the local cuisine is like. Walking past the restaurants we checked out what people were eating, and it was all pork, which in one extreme case was a whole baby piggy, head and all – a bit gross really, unless its your custom I suppose.
One thing I’ve noticed over the last two days is the babies have pierced ears and I mean tiny babies – new borns. Again, I guess this is a custom thing. Some societies circumcise their baby boys, so why shouldn’t the girls get pierced ears. Besides which, given that Spanish woman seem to exit the womb with matching shoes, belts, necklaces and earrings, having pierced ears is probably as natural as cutting the umbilical chord. (Note: As I write this at 11:30 at night, the most popular drink being served is warmed water to new mothers, so that they can formula feed their babies. The children are still playing soccer in the pavilion in the centre of the square. The teenagers were playing tag, but they seem to have left, so I’m not sure what that lead to. Grand parents are sitting on the chairs in the centre of the square talking and some people have just arrived for dinner. This is what we love about Europe.
Our time in Segovia is nearly over, we head to Toledo tomorrow morning. Segovia is a very ‘local’ town. The receptionist at the hotel speaks English, but nobody else does and they speak Spanish to us at 100mph and give us funny looks when we look gormlessly back at them. They watch us going over the menu with our phrase book (this is the first town to have no English menus), but are appreciative of our attempts at Spanish when we have finally interpreted what we would like and are ready to order.
Week 4 – Friday 25th July – El Escorial and Pedraza
We’re sitting in the square in Segovia at 9:15 on Saturday night, with hopefully an hour of daylight left to get the blog all up to date. A band is playing outside a couple of restaurants away, children are tearing around the square, the café’s are filling up and the temperature has dropped to a very respectable level from the highs we’ve been experiencing the last couple of days.
Anyway, off cruising in the car today. Being Friday, we decided we’d do the traveling today, so that we could be around Segovia on Saturday and avoid the Madrid traffic that might be escaping the city on the weekend. Two quite different stop offs today – firstly El Escorial – the monastery of San Lorenzo el Real. It’s a very austere building that was built in the 16th century to reaffirm the Catholic faith in central Spain and fight off the threat that was coming from the upsurge in Protestantism. The monastery is situated between Segovia and Madrid about ¾ of an hours drive away.
The drive out was on the motorway and uneventful, except for the 3.5k tunnel, which is quite an airy experience to drive through with the roof down. The exit to the tunnel was only a couple of ks from the exit to El Escorial and as we came out of the tunnel, we noticed the traffic going in the other direction backed up for miles. Never mind, we’d be in the monastery for 2-3 hours, so it would be well cleared by then – yeah right.
When I say the Monastery is austere, I mean it is very plain on the outside. Although it is a large building, there is no exterior decoration and as you can see from the photos it is somewhat plain. For the tour inside, we picked up an audio guide, which was great as you can listen to what interests you and not get bogged down if the detail gets too much to bear. We passed several tour groups on our way around and I was glad not to be with them, having been talked at on enough tours in my life where you are given an endless stream of immediately forgettable dates and facts.
The monastery houses many works of art, tapestries, architectural tools and models of the monastery, books and dead monarchs and these were on display as part of the tour. Unlike the Guggenheim, the art was “real art”, people painted pictures, which suits me much better. We particularly liked the war art. It came in two sorts – the war journalist type that was a painting of a battle scene that was reasonably reflective of the “what” and “where” of the battle, and the “propaganda” art that was usually created for a monarch so that he could boast to all who would listen of his magnificence and military prowess. The interesting thing was the perspective and scale used in the propaganda art, where the people were made much bigger such that they were about the same size as the castle they were conquering. There was one long room – 52m – which had been dedicated to this propaganda art, which the kings of the time obviously entertained in. Historians found the art interesting as it showed the weapons and tactics that had been used in various battles, but from a lay mans perspective, it appeared more as a monument to the kings ego.
There were some very good exhibits of the building tools and models to show the construction techniques that had gone into building the monastery.
As a purchaser of an audio guide, we were privileged to get to see the royal mausoleum and this was very impressive. The first room you go into contains marble caskets containing the remains of the past kings and queens. It is a very impressive room, all the caskets are black marble, with gold plaques identifying who is in each casket. The room has been in use since the 16th century and there are two un identified caskets that are for the current King and Queen of Spain, so I don’t know what they do when it goes beyond that – maybe build a new room. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos, so I can’t show you what the room was like, but it was very impressive.
After that, were 9 rooms with white marble caskets that contained the remains of the Princes and Princesses of the Spanish Monarchy. Again, it was impressive.
As we finished the tour, we stopped in for a comfort stop. Nothing unusual about that, except that the loos were at the end of a long corridor that had some of the most impressive murals we’d seen on the whole tour and if you didn’t go to the loo you wouldn’t have got to see them.
Outside the monastery in the grounds they were setting up a massive stage for a concert that night. All of Europe is either a soccer ground or a concert venue, but what is frustrating is that you can’t find out what the concerts are, as there is no banners advertising who is playing. It could have been anybody from the 10 tenors to the wiggles, but we will never know because there was nothing around the stage to tell us who was playing and even google could give us the answer.
We went for a walk around the town of El Escorial and then headed off to our second stop Pedraza de La Sierra. Heading out of El Escorial and onto the motorway, we immediately hit the same traffic ham we had seen building up 3 hours earlier. Needless to say, it delayed us for a while and caused us to take some detours to try and get past it, but never mind, it’s the first traffic jam in the entire holiday, so we can’t complain. Unlike the guy in the new Citroen C5. We noticed him pull over a few hundred metres ahead of us pop his bonnet up and as we went past him, there was this dreadful stink – an engine awfully overheated stink. “He’ll be here for a while”, I thought. Five minutes later he cruises past on the hard shoulder, with his hazard lights flashing and the same dreadful smell in the air. We passed him another couple of times before we got fully clear of the jam, so that will be one sick Citroen for someone to buy down the track.
Anyway, Pedraza, when we got there, was a tiny Spanish town, with it’s car park at the far end of the town. The gates into the town (shown in the photos) should have been an indication, but we charged on in, and then had to wind our way through ludicrously narrow streets, past parked cars, pedestrians and rock walls to the car park. The town which is a rated Michelin stop is very small and not any better than other little towns that we’ve visited, so we did the customary walk around the town before heading back to Segovia, and beers, wines and blogging in the square before having dinner.
Anyway, off cruising in the car today. Being Friday, we decided we’d do the traveling today, so that we could be around Segovia on Saturday and avoid the Madrid traffic that might be escaping the city on the weekend. Two quite different stop offs today – firstly El Escorial – the monastery of San Lorenzo el Real. It’s a very austere building that was built in the 16th century to reaffirm the Catholic faith in central Spain and fight off the threat that was coming from the upsurge in Protestantism. The monastery is situated between Segovia and Madrid about ¾ of an hours drive away.
The drive out was on the motorway and uneventful, except for the 3.5k tunnel, which is quite an airy experience to drive through with the roof down. The exit to the tunnel was only a couple of ks from the exit to El Escorial and as we came out of the tunnel, we noticed the traffic going in the other direction backed up for miles. Never mind, we’d be in the monastery for 2-3 hours, so it would be well cleared by then – yeah right.
When I say the Monastery is austere, I mean it is very plain on the outside. Although it is a large building, there is no exterior decoration and as you can see from the photos it is somewhat plain. For the tour inside, we picked up an audio guide, which was great as you can listen to what interests you and not get bogged down if the detail gets too much to bear. We passed several tour groups on our way around and I was glad not to be with them, having been talked at on enough tours in my life where you are given an endless stream of immediately forgettable dates and facts.
The monastery houses many works of art, tapestries, architectural tools and models of the monastery, books and dead monarchs and these were on display as part of the tour. Unlike the Guggenheim, the art was “real art”, people painted pictures, which suits me much better. We particularly liked the war art. It came in two sorts – the war journalist type that was a painting of a battle scene that was reasonably reflective of the “what” and “where” of the battle, and the “propaganda” art that was usually created for a monarch so that he could boast to all who would listen of his magnificence and military prowess. The interesting thing was the perspective and scale used in the propaganda art, where the people were made much bigger such that they were about the same size as the castle they were conquering. There was one long room – 52m – which had been dedicated to this propaganda art, which the kings of the time obviously entertained in. Historians found the art interesting as it showed the weapons and tactics that had been used in various battles, but from a lay mans perspective, it appeared more as a monument to the kings ego.
There were some very good exhibits of the building tools and models to show the construction techniques that had gone into building the monastery.
As a purchaser of an audio guide, we were privileged to get to see the royal mausoleum and this was very impressive. The first room you go into contains marble caskets containing the remains of the past kings and queens. It is a very impressive room, all the caskets are black marble, with gold plaques identifying who is in each casket. The room has been in use since the 16th century and there are two un identified caskets that are for the current King and Queen of Spain, so I don’t know what they do when it goes beyond that – maybe build a new room. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos, so I can’t show you what the room was like, but it was very impressive.
After that, were 9 rooms with white marble caskets that contained the remains of the Princes and Princesses of the Spanish Monarchy. Again, it was impressive.
As we finished the tour, we stopped in for a comfort stop. Nothing unusual about that, except that the loos were at the end of a long corridor that had some of the most impressive murals we’d seen on the whole tour and if you didn’t go to the loo you wouldn’t have got to see them.
Outside the monastery in the grounds they were setting up a massive stage for a concert that night. All of Europe is either a soccer ground or a concert venue, but what is frustrating is that you can’t find out what the concerts are, as there is no banners advertising who is playing. It could have been anybody from the 10 tenors to the wiggles, but we will never know because there was nothing around the stage to tell us who was playing and even google could give us the answer.
We went for a walk around the town of El Escorial and then headed off to our second stop Pedraza de La Sierra. Heading out of El Escorial and onto the motorway, we immediately hit the same traffic ham we had seen building up 3 hours earlier. Needless to say, it delayed us for a while and caused us to take some detours to try and get past it, but never mind, it’s the first traffic jam in the entire holiday, so we can’t complain. Unlike the guy in the new Citroen C5. We noticed him pull over a few hundred metres ahead of us pop his bonnet up and as we went past him, there was this dreadful stink – an engine awfully overheated stink. “He’ll be here for a while”, I thought. Five minutes later he cruises past on the hard shoulder, with his hazard lights flashing and the same dreadful smell in the air. We passed him another couple of times before we got fully clear of the jam, so that will be one sick Citroen for someone to buy down the track.
Anyway, Pedraza, when we got there, was a tiny Spanish town, with it’s car park at the far end of the town. The gates into the town (shown in the photos) should have been an indication, but we charged on in, and then had to wind our way through ludicrously narrow streets, past parked cars, pedestrians and rock walls to the car park. The town which is a rated Michelin stop is very small and not any better than other little towns that we’ve visited, so we did the customary walk around the town before heading back to Segovia, and beers, wines and blogging in the square before having dinner.
Week 4 – Thursday 24th July – Avilla and Segovia
Santiago DC to Salamanca was our last big drive on the trip and we will now spend our last week circling round Madrid, our final destination before a night in Barcelona and then heading for home. We are staying 3 days in Segovia and stopped off in Avilla on the way to take in one of Europe’s oldest and most complete walled cities.
The walls around Avilla were built in the 11th century and are still in perfect order – it must have been the only place in Europe with nothing worth ransacking. The drive into Avilla provided a perfect view of the ramparts and were a perfect Kodak opportunity before finding a park just on the outskirts of town and spending a couple of hours walking round the cobbled streets, terraces and ramparts.
We arrived in Segovia in time for another late lunch and found a suitable restaurant under the aqueduct. Getting to the hotel was a somewhat hair raising experience as we had to drive up into the centre of the old part of town, which like many of these ancient hill top European cities is accessed by extremely narrow cobbled streets. I didn’t take out a tape measure to confirm that I had to retract the wing mirrors, but it certainly felt necessary and was one less thing I had to worry about hitting on the stone walls of the ancient stone buildings I was weaving my way between. The hotel is 10m from the Plaza Mayor, so a perfect location.
The restaurants in Segovia have, for some reason, very formal service with all the waiters dressed in black tie, including the women. They are also meticulous at clearing tables and bringing the bill, but it seems to take about 20 minutes to get any attention from them when you sit down. This was a frustrating experience the first two times, but once you latch onto the protocol, it’s interesting watching the frustrated looks of the newbies who aren’t up with the play yet. Drinks are always served with nibbles of some kind – melon and ham, crostini with chicken and red peppers, or salami. Beer is bought in a large stemmed glass (girly according to Liane) and the wine is always poured from the bottle at your table if you are only having a glass.
Having been in central Spain for a few days now, our initial impression of food in the central part of Spain is that it is dearer and not as good quality as the food we had in the Northern Part of Spain. Pigs are the big thing here, and the meals tend to be heavy. I guess this is because of their long harsh winters, but it’s a bit much in the full-on heat of summer. We also see a lot of stews and omlettes on the menus, so we’re on a bit of a limited diet. There is Tapas at the bars, but it’s not eaten outside the way it is in Northern Spain.
As a result we have taken to eaten a number of entrees and anyway, when you are dining outside in an ancient characterful square with lots of other people, the vibrant atmosphere and the ambience more than make up for any deficiencies in the cuisine. Solution, pay a bit more, chose a bit more wisely.
What is the fascination that people have with wild small animals. We’re sitting in the square having a drink and the guy at the next table has pushed a bread roll to the edge of the table so that some sparrows can eat it. That’s right, sparrows – nature’s plain Jane. Consternation reigns supreme as people bring out cameras, point, look on in awe. Get over it people – they just want the food. When winter comes and the tourists leave (i.e. you) they will all die because they don’t know how to find their own food. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pidgeons, squirrels, sparrows or what signs are put out saying don’t feed the animals, there’s always some clown who thinks he’s Doctor Doolittle that will pull a crowd with his ridiculous antics.
Segovia – Cathedral – brilliant, Alcatraz – looks good, but haven’t been there, narrow streets – been there and it’s special. I will get Anne to video it next time we drive in and put in up on the blog – it really is a squeeze and some local putting on pressure from behind does nothing to reduce the anxiety levels of the driver.
But the real highlight is the aqueduct. Built in the 1st Century AD, it is a marvel of engineering. Two layers of arches, solid block only, absolutely no mortar holding it together – it’s a real contrast of complexity and simplicity – complexity in the design and construction that was done not long after the birth of Jesus and simplicity in it’s aesthetic beauty. I’m not good with heights (have I mentioned that already) and just standing underneath it looking up makes me feel queasy. I’ve taken some photos which I’ve put on the blog and although the design is fantastic, I’m not sure that the as-built should have been given sign-off. There’s one particular bit where the final block that goes in the middle to support the arch is not one block (best practice), two blocks (acceptable), but three blocks, which I’m not happy about. To make matters worse, the final block is not the perfect fit of every other final block, but rounded and ill fitting. Anne sites historical precedence (it’s been here for 2,000 years) as the reason it should pass, but I’m not sure. Standing underneath it looking up, I felt particularly uneasy. Let’s put that on the Wellington fault and see how it stands up.
Anyway, we’re here, it’s here and we’re having a great time. We’ve got some good sight seeing coming up over the next few days, both out in the country side and around Segovia, so we’re looking forward to some busy days ahead.
The walls around Avilla were built in the 11th century and are still in perfect order – it must have been the only place in Europe with nothing worth ransacking. The drive into Avilla provided a perfect view of the ramparts and were a perfect Kodak opportunity before finding a park just on the outskirts of town and spending a couple of hours walking round the cobbled streets, terraces and ramparts.
We arrived in Segovia in time for another late lunch and found a suitable restaurant under the aqueduct. Getting to the hotel was a somewhat hair raising experience as we had to drive up into the centre of the old part of town, which like many of these ancient hill top European cities is accessed by extremely narrow cobbled streets. I didn’t take out a tape measure to confirm that I had to retract the wing mirrors, but it certainly felt necessary and was one less thing I had to worry about hitting on the stone walls of the ancient stone buildings I was weaving my way between. The hotel is 10m from the Plaza Mayor, so a perfect location.
The restaurants in Segovia have, for some reason, very formal service with all the waiters dressed in black tie, including the women. They are also meticulous at clearing tables and bringing the bill, but it seems to take about 20 minutes to get any attention from them when you sit down. This was a frustrating experience the first two times, but once you latch onto the protocol, it’s interesting watching the frustrated looks of the newbies who aren’t up with the play yet. Drinks are always served with nibbles of some kind – melon and ham, crostini with chicken and red peppers, or salami. Beer is bought in a large stemmed glass (girly according to Liane) and the wine is always poured from the bottle at your table if you are only having a glass.
Having been in central Spain for a few days now, our initial impression of food in the central part of Spain is that it is dearer and not as good quality as the food we had in the Northern Part of Spain. Pigs are the big thing here, and the meals tend to be heavy. I guess this is because of their long harsh winters, but it’s a bit much in the full-on heat of summer. We also see a lot of stews and omlettes on the menus, so we’re on a bit of a limited diet. There is Tapas at the bars, but it’s not eaten outside the way it is in Northern Spain.
As a result we have taken to eaten a number of entrees and anyway, when you are dining outside in an ancient characterful square with lots of other people, the vibrant atmosphere and the ambience more than make up for any deficiencies in the cuisine. Solution, pay a bit more, chose a bit more wisely.
What is the fascination that people have with wild small animals. We’re sitting in the square having a drink and the guy at the next table has pushed a bread roll to the edge of the table so that some sparrows can eat it. That’s right, sparrows – nature’s plain Jane. Consternation reigns supreme as people bring out cameras, point, look on in awe. Get over it people – they just want the food. When winter comes and the tourists leave (i.e. you) they will all die because they don’t know how to find their own food. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pidgeons, squirrels, sparrows or what signs are put out saying don’t feed the animals, there’s always some clown who thinks he’s Doctor Doolittle that will pull a crowd with his ridiculous antics.
Segovia – Cathedral – brilliant, Alcatraz – looks good, but haven’t been there, narrow streets – been there and it’s special. I will get Anne to video it next time we drive in and put in up on the blog – it really is a squeeze and some local putting on pressure from behind does nothing to reduce the anxiety levels of the driver.
But the real highlight is the aqueduct. Built in the 1st Century AD, it is a marvel of engineering. Two layers of arches, solid block only, absolutely no mortar holding it together – it’s a real contrast of complexity and simplicity – complexity in the design and construction that was done not long after the birth of Jesus and simplicity in it’s aesthetic beauty. I’m not good with heights (have I mentioned that already) and just standing underneath it looking up makes me feel queasy. I’ve taken some photos which I’ve put on the blog and although the design is fantastic, I’m not sure that the as-built should have been given sign-off. There’s one particular bit where the final block that goes in the middle to support the arch is not one block (best practice), two blocks (acceptable), but three blocks, which I’m not happy about. To make matters worse, the final block is not the perfect fit of every other final block, but rounded and ill fitting. Anne sites historical precedence (it’s been here for 2,000 years) as the reason it should pass, but I’m not sure. Standing underneath it looking up, I felt particularly uneasy. Let’s put that on the Wellington fault and see how it stands up.
Anyway, we’re here, it’s here and we’re having a great time. We’ve got some good sight seeing coming up over the next few days, both out in the country side and around Segovia, so we’re looking forward to some busy days ahead.
Week 4 – Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd July – Salamanca
Drive, Drive…Drive, Drive…. About 4 and a half hours from Santiago DC to Salamanca along mainly motorways, so it’s very easy driving with any speed feeling almost pedestrian as the roads are so smooth and wide, with only the gentlest of corners and there was virtually no traffic on the road.
The hotel we are staying at in Salamanca is also very nice and after a bit of a lull across the Costa Verde, we are now back into the best that Spain has to offer in terms of beautiful villages and towns to visit.
I have again got a bit behind with our blog and am now writing this in the square in Segovia (50ks north of Madrid) enjoying a beer, while Anne has a Blanco (white wine - which we have found to be much better than the last time we were here).
Salamanca is a university town, and is popular with international students to visit for summer schools. We have run across heaps of American College kids in the town and the general population is all very young and trendy. Salamanca also has the most impressive square in Spain – it was the set for the movie Vantage Point, which we saw on the plane on the way over – a cathedral and various other impressive buildings and monuments. Like so many of these European Cities, the historic centre is a pedestrian precinct with restaurants set up on every thoroughfare, terrace or square available.
The square is used for hosting events, bull fights etc and is surrounded on all sides by a 4 storey building which houses apartments, offices and a hotel. On one side, is the city hall, with large balcony adorned with various flags of the region, country and continent. Ground level contains fashionable shops, restaurants and bars, which are set back under arched pillars. Restaurants tables and umbrellas are set out on all four sides, the different table cloths and chairs depicting different restaurants. The open central area has a number of stone bench seats and decorative street lamps.
At night in Salamanca we went into the square to have a drink and people watch. A medieval band (in pantaloons, tights and puffy velvet jackets) played at one of the restaurants on both nights, which drew a large crowd of onlookers. At 10pm each night, all the lights in the square are turned on, on the buildings around the square to create a quite magical effect. It was obvious that most of the people in the square are tourists by the gasps of amazement that occur when the lights are turned on.
The buildings in the town are amazing and at every turn you come across buildings that take your breath away. We went into the cathedral, which was beautifully decorated with frescos over all the ceilings and beautiful chapels. All the buildings are totally flood lit at night (no power crisis on here) and it was fun to take out a camera and tripod at night to photograph in a different light.
I don’t know why, but all the buildings that we have seen in central Spain are completely free of mould or dis-colouration due to pollution. My assumption is that the climate is so dry that the pollution doesn’t have anything to stick to the buildings with. I can’t justify this argument and it may well be wrong because this part of Spain suffers from very harsh winters (much to our surprise, but apparently worse than what you’re having), but because ALL the buildings are the same colour, it can’t be some massive restoration effort. After writing that (I’m proof reading the following day), Anne has spotted that one side of the cathedral is quite mouldy, so the mystery deepens regarding how all the other buildings are so pristine looking – maybe somebody ran amok with 30 seconds in the spring to give all the cities in Central Spain a spruce up prior to the tourist season.
We had a superb lunch in Salamanca on Wednesday and our overall impression of the town is that it is alive and buzzing, in an agreeable way, the same as Santiago DC was composed and relaxed – both really enjoyable, but totally different in their feel and pace of life.
We had booked 4 nights in Toledo at the end of our trip and had planned to commute to Madrid on two days to visit the Prada, Thyssen-Bornenmisza, the Palace and the rest of the central city. Anne came up with the brilliant idea of just commuting once and finding a hotel to stay in Madrid overnight. This is something that would have meant trapsing the steets a few years ago to find somewhere to rest our heads, but thanks to www.wotif.com, we were able to get a last minute cheap rate at a four star central city hotel, which we booked before we left the Salamanca Hotel and headed to Avilla and Segovia.
The hotel we are staying at in Salamanca is also very nice and after a bit of a lull across the Costa Verde, we are now back into the best that Spain has to offer in terms of beautiful villages and towns to visit.
I have again got a bit behind with our blog and am now writing this in the square in Segovia (50ks north of Madrid) enjoying a beer, while Anne has a Blanco (white wine - which we have found to be much better than the last time we were here).
Salamanca is a university town, and is popular with international students to visit for summer schools. We have run across heaps of American College kids in the town and the general population is all very young and trendy. Salamanca also has the most impressive square in Spain – it was the set for the movie Vantage Point, which we saw on the plane on the way over – a cathedral and various other impressive buildings and monuments. Like so many of these European Cities, the historic centre is a pedestrian precinct with restaurants set up on every thoroughfare, terrace or square available.
The square is used for hosting events, bull fights etc and is surrounded on all sides by a 4 storey building which houses apartments, offices and a hotel. On one side, is the city hall, with large balcony adorned with various flags of the region, country and continent. Ground level contains fashionable shops, restaurants and bars, which are set back under arched pillars. Restaurants tables and umbrellas are set out on all four sides, the different table cloths and chairs depicting different restaurants. The open central area has a number of stone bench seats and decorative street lamps.
At night in Salamanca we went into the square to have a drink and people watch. A medieval band (in pantaloons, tights and puffy velvet jackets) played at one of the restaurants on both nights, which drew a large crowd of onlookers. At 10pm each night, all the lights in the square are turned on, on the buildings around the square to create a quite magical effect. It was obvious that most of the people in the square are tourists by the gasps of amazement that occur when the lights are turned on.
The buildings in the town are amazing and at every turn you come across buildings that take your breath away. We went into the cathedral, which was beautifully decorated with frescos over all the ceilings and beautiful chapels. All the buildings are totally flood lit at night (no power crisis on here) and it was fun to take out a camera and tripod at night to photograph in a different light.
I don’t know why, but all the buildings that we have seen in central Spain are completely free of mould or dis-colouration due to pollution. My assumption is that the climate is so dry that the pollution doesn’t have anything to stick to the buildings with. I can’t justify this argument and it may well be wrong because this part of Spain suffers from very harsh winters (much to our surprise, but apparently worse than what you’re having), but because ALL the buildings are the same colour, it can’t be some massive restoration effort. After writing that (I’m proof reading the following day), Anne has spotted that one side of the cathedral is quite mouldy, so the mystery deepens regarding how all the other buildings are so pristine looking – maybe somebody ran amok with 30 seconds in the spring to give all the cities in Central Spain a spruce up prior to the tourist season.
We had a superb lunch in Salamanca on Wednesday and our overall impression of the town is that it is alive and buzzing, in an agreeable way, the same as Santiago DC was composed and relaxed – both really enjoyable, but totally different in their feel and pace of life.
We had booked 4 nights in Toledo at the end of our trip and had planned to commute to Madrid on two days to visit the Prada, Thyssen-Bornenmisza, the Palace and the rest of the central city. Anne came up with the brilliant idea of just commuting once and finding a hotel to stay in Madrid overnight. This is something that would have meant trapsing the steets a few years ago to find somewhere to rest our heads, but thanks to www.wotif.com, we were able to get a last minute cheap rate at a four star central city hotel, which we booked before we left the Salamanca Hotel and headed to Avilla and Segovia.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Week 4 – Monday 21st July – Santiago De Compostella
To cap off our love affair with this hotel, the breakfast in the garden bar was fantastic and set us up for a late start to wandering around the old town, round the botanic gardens for panoramic views of the old town and the university area.
Today has been a nice quiet day, with lunch followed by reading a book (with my eyes shut some of the time) and now just relaxing over a beer in the garden bar. We’ll go out again later for some Tapas and to see what show is being put on on the stage.
Tomorrow, we head inland to Salamanca and the start of the last leg of our trip in central Spain. Hopefully the weather won’t be too hot, but it won’t matter because Salamanca, Segovia, Madrid, Toledo and the areas around them have some great sounding areas, so we are really looking forward to the change of scenery and kicking on with the last part of our trip.
Today has been a nice quiet day, with lunch followed by reading a book (with my eyes shut some of the time) and now just relaxing over a beer in the garden bar. We’ll go out again later for some Tapas and to see what show is being put on on the stage.
Tomorrow, we head inland to Salamanca and the start of the last leg of our trip in central Spain. Hopefully the weather won’t be too hot, but it won’t matter because Salamanca, Segovia, Madrid, Toledo and the areas around them have some great sounding areas, so we are really looking forward to the change of scenery and kicking on with the last part of our trip.
Week 3 – Sunday 20th July – Santiago De Compostella
Today we headed for Santiago De Compostella – about a 3 hour drive away. The drive through Green Spain helped explain why Green Spain is Green, as it rained for most of the way. Now that we have cleared France, Bilbao and Santander and all the reasons for trucks to congregate (borders and ports), the driving was much more pleasant, with campervans, a very rare truck and one obnoxiously slow driver the only minor obstacles on the trip.
The road itself was a combination of motorway and back road driving with one section being through a high mountain pass. About an hour out of Santiago, it cleared into blue skies. Jane delivered us to the front door of the hotel, which is a beautiful little hotel just on the edge of the historic city.
The hotel is a renovated historic building and is probably the nicest we’ve stayed in. I’m not sure what makes a 2-star hotel only have 2 stars, but our room is on the third floor and includes the bedroom, which is in the historic part of the hotel which leads through 3 ft thick walls to a glassed in sitting room and a small bathroom, both on the new extension that has been made to the hotel. From the window we get views over a nearby church and then the local country side, so it’s very picturesque and light. It is beautifully cool in the morning as it is west facing and when the sun streams in in the evening, the only solution is to head to the hotels very popular garden bar and enjoy a vino or cerveca (which is what I’m doing now as I type this) sitting under the shade of the wisteria..
After checking into the hotel we headed off for a walk around the historic part of the city. Ten minutes later, we returned to the hotel for me to change my shirt as one of the local seagulls landed a major league strike all over my back in tow places and my shoes – bastard. Returning to the site seeing, we wandered round more of the historic part of the city. There are lots of people there would have walked there as part of the pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostella. The walk which goes from various locations in France and Spain is one of the three most popular Christian pilgrimages in the world, along with Jerusalem and Rome and is known as the Camino de Santiago. We have been crossing the path of pilgrims since our day in St Jean Pied De Port and saw on that day a sign saying that Santiago De Compostella was 790ks away, so it’s quite a walk. You can recognise the walkers because they usually have a scallop shell swinging from their back packs, which is the official symbol of the Camino.
Santiago is the final burial place of Saint James (apparently he moved around abit after popping his clogs), hence it’s attraction to christian pilgrims. We heard it was a really nice town, hence its appeal to us. Having been here for just over a day, it really is a nice town and with the appeal of the hotel it has been one of our highlights of the trip. Funny that this was the one place that we weren’t sure if we would come to. Certainly the town and hotel have made up for the last couple of days along the top coast, which hasn’t been as good as the other stop-off points on the trip.
We stopped for a late lunch at one of the more characterful looking restaurants and then spent the evening in the garden bar of the hotel doing a catch-up of the blog for the last few days of our trip.
After our drinks, we went for a walk around the old town, as there is a stage set up outside the cathedral and they were having a local folk music and dancing festival and one of the acts was putting on a show.
Deciding to forego dinner, as the drinks in the bar came with a bowls of crisps and a bowl of olives with each round, we appeared to inadvertently move ourselves from the top of the food chain to the bottom as some small insect enjoyed the night dining on us. What was even more galling was that the previous night we’d been kept awake by one of those annoying wee midgees that buzzes in your ear all night, but was obviously feeding on something else. This night, the silent assassin was out and now both Anne and I are covered in insect bites.
As I said, I’m not sure what separates hotels from being two or three star, but maybe sound proofing is one of the criteria. Our hotel is lovely, but the guy in the room above us stomps around as if he’s got horses hooves. I hope that I didn’t make as much noise during the night. Fortunately, horse hoof man headed to bed prior to the end of the USA MotoGP and apart from a few obvious pit stops in the middle of the night and the midgee, we enjoyed a good nights sleep. Anne, who has the ability to sleep like the dead, even through the MotoGP heard nothing.
The road itself was a combination of motorway and back road driving with one section being through a high mountain pass. About an hour out of Santiago, it cleared into blue skies. Jane delivered us to the front door of the hotel, which is a beautiful little hotel just on the edge of the historic city.
The hotel is a renovated historic building and is probably the nicest we’ve stayed in. I’m not sure what makes a 2-star hotel only have 2 stars, but our room is on the third floor and includes the bedroom, which is in the historic part of the hotel which leads through 3 ft thick walls to a glassed in sitting room and a small bathroom, both on the new extension that has been made to the hotel. From the window we get views over a nearby church and then the local country side, so it’s very picturesque and light. It is beautifully cool in the morning as it is west facing and when the sun streams in in the evening, the only solution is to head to the hotels very popular garden bar and enjoy a vino or cerveca (which is what I’m doing now as I type this) sitting under the shade of the wisteria..
After checking into the hotel we headed off for a walk around the historic part of the city. Ten minutes later, we returned to the hotel for me to change my shirt as one of the local seagulls landed a major league strike all over my back in tow places and my shoes – bastard. Returning to the site seeing, we wandered round more of the historic part of the city. There are lots of people there would have walked there as part of the pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostella. The walk which goes from various locations in France and Spain is one of the three most popular Christian pilgrimages in the world, along with Jerusalem and Rome and is known as the Camino de Santiago. We have been crossing the path of pilgrims since our day in St Jean Pied De Port and saw on that day a sign saying that Santiago De Compostella was 790ks away, so it’s quite a walk. You can recognise the walkers because they usually have a scallop shell swinging from their back packs, which is the official symbol of the Camino.
Santiago is the final burial place of Saint James (apparently he moved around abit after popping his clogs), hence it’s attraction to christian pilgrims. We heard it was a really nice town, hence its appeal to us. Having been here for just over a day, it really is a nice town and with the appeal of the hotel it has been one of our highlights of the trip. Funny that this was the one place that we weren’t sure if we would come to. Certainly the town and hotel have made up for the last couple of days along the top coast, which hasn’t been as good as the other stop-off points on the trip.
We stopped for a late lunch at one of the more characterful looking restaurants and then spent the evening in the garden bar of the hotel doing a catch-up of the blog for the last few days of our trip.
After our drinks, we went for a walk around the old town, as there is a stage set up outside the cathedral and they were having a local folk music and dancing festival and one of the acts was putting on a show.
Deciding to forego dinner, as the drinks in the bar came with a bowls of crisps and a bowl of olives with each round, we appeared to inadvertently move ourselves from the top of the food chain to the bottom as some small insect enjoyed the night dining on us. What was even more galling was that the previous night we’d been kept awake by one of those annoying wee midgees that buzzes in your ear all night, but was obviously feeding on something else. This night, the silent assassin was out and now both Anne and I are covered in insect bites.
As I said, I’m not sure what separates hotels from being two or three star, but maybe sound proofing is one of the criteria. Our hotel is lovely, but the guy in the room above us stomps around as if he’s got horses hooves. I hope that I didn’t make as much noise during the night. Fortunately, horse hoof man headed to bed prior to the end of the USA MotoGP and apart from a few obvious pit stops in the middle of the night and the midgee, we enjoyed a good nights sleep. Anne, who has the ability to sleep like the dead, even through the MotoGP heard nothing.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Week 3 – Saturday 19th July – Oviedo and Cudillero
These couple of days are getting us across the top of Spain to Santiago De Compostella, so today’s trip is going to get us half way there and let us do a bit of sight seeing along the way.
Two hours of motorway driving got us to Oviedo. Considered one of the most beautiful cities in Northern Spain, it is also the oldest Christian city in Spain. On top of that, its location meant it was a good point to have a stop off along the way. Being Saturday lunch time when we arrived in the town square, weddings were the order of the day, with all the Spanish women dressed in their finery to celebrate the day with friends and relatives. Making everything match in Spain is very important and they are exceptionally good at it, although I’d have to say that the standards in Northern Spain aren’t quite as high as they are in Andalucia. I thought the woman in the dress crocs was, however, letting the side down somewhat even if they were fluorescent green, so passed the colourful test.
Unbeknown to me, the Spanish have bag pipes. There are several different types, but there was a band playing Asturian pipes in the town square. Of the two types of bag pipes that I’ve now heard, the sound of the pipes and the dress that the musicians wear seems to reflect the climate and mood of the people – Scottish being deep and dark, while the Spanish pipes have a much more jovial tone and the musicians wear much more colorful uniforms.
From Oviedo, we headed to Cudillero a very small fishing port about 60ks along the road to Santiago to find our hotel for the evening. It was tucked away in an even smaller town and after a very late seafood lunch in Cudillero, accompanied by the heavy beat sounds of the local boy racer car meet and sound off, we retired to our hotel for the evening to watch the qualifying for the US MotoGP
Two hours of motorway driving got us to Oviedo. Considered one of the most beautiful cities in Northern Spain, it is also the oldest Christian city in Spain. On top of that, its location meant it was a good point to have a stop off along the way. Being Saturday lunch time when we arrived in the town square, weddings were the order of the day, with all the Spanish women dressed in their finery to celebrate the day with friends and relatives. Making everything match in Spain is very important and they are exceptionally good at it, although I’d have to say that the standards in Northern Spain aren’t quite as high as they are in Andalucia. I thought the woman in the dress crocs was, however, letting the side down somewhat even if they were fluorescent green, so passed the colourful test.
Unbeknown to me, the Spanish have bag pipes. There are several different types, but there was a band playing Asturian pipes in the town square. Of the two types of bag pipes that I’ve now heard, the sound of the pipes and the dress that the musicians wear seems to reflect the climate and mood of the people – Scottish being deep and dark, while the Spanish pipes have a much more jovial tone and the musicians wear much more colorful uniforms.
From Oviedo, we headed to Cudillero a very small fishing port about 60ks along the road to Santiago to find our hotel for the evening. It was tucked away in an even smaller town and after a very late seafood lunch in Cudillero, accompanied by the heavy beat sounds of the local boy racer car meet and sound off, we retired to our hotel for the evening to watch the qualifying for the US MotoGP
Week 3 – Friday 18th July – Santillana Del Mar and San Vincente de le Barquera
With two nights in Suances, today is road trip day. Just down the road from Suances is Santillana Del Mar, which is a very old well preserved Spanish town. Despite its name, it is not by the sea, but about 3ks inland. No mind, there’s plenty to see by the seaside around here, so this was a nice change. I’m not sure why, but cows and bison are the big thing in the town – lots of statues and tourist shops selling “cow”y things. It has an old church, some very rustic old buildings, a wide range of tourist tat, some nicely decorated squares, some uneven cobbled streets – all that sort of stuff. We did see an ATM machine that was installed behind the iron bars over the window of a bank, which was something a bit different.
Although its not coastal, it is a much nicer town than Suances, and in hindsight we should have stayed there. One of the reviews we read of one of the hotels in Santillana, said it was really noisy, but looking at it, I’d have to doubt that very much. The town isn’t big enough and there aren’t enough people around to throw a decent party.
From Santillana we did a drive through the countryside and around the coast to San Vincente de la Barquera. This coast of Spain is known as Green Spain and with all the mountains around, the whole area from across the Pyrenees all the way across the coast of the top of Spain is very green. The drive today was no exception and with the rolling hill sides, fields, forests it is a scene much more reminiscent of parts of New Zealand than what I usually think of as Spain - the dry arid olive grove covered countryside we experienced in Andalusia a few years ago.
San Vincente is on the coast, with a castle and church on the hill over looking the town. The harbour is tidal, so when we arrived it was a mud flat with little boats all sitting on the bottom, waiting for the tide to return. We did our customary walk around the town, up to the top of the hill, past the castle, round the church and then back down the other side to find a restaurant for lunch – nice chairs, white linen table cloths, large wine glasses being the criteria to identify possiblities. A walk up and down the strip identified the candidates, and then a selection criteria as rigorours as that for the candidates was used to select the actual restaurant (I think it was the one that didn’t have the sewerage truck outside it pumping out the storm water drains). Lunch was a very nice Paella.
After lunch (about 4:30) we wandered back to the car, which was parked by the harbour. By this stage the tide had returned and all the boats were bobbing in the water and the arched bridge across the harbour had the incoming tide sweeping past it – a much prettier scene. (Anne’s just told me I’m sounding poetic so apologies if I’m prattling on too much).
Although its not coastal, it is a much nicer town than Suances, and in hindsight we should have stayed there. One of the reviews we read of one of the hotels in Santillana, said it was really noisy, but looking at it, I’d have to doubt that very much. The town isn’t big enough and there aren’t enough people around to throw a decent party.
From Santillana we did a drive through the countryside and around the coast to San Vincente de la Barquera. This coast of Spain is known as Green Spain and with all the mountains around, the whole area from across the Pyrenees all the way across the coast of the top of Spain is very green. The drive today was no exception and with the rolling hill sides, fields, forests it is a scene much more reminiscent of parts of New Zealand than what I usually think of as Spain - the dry arid olive grove covered countryside we experienced in Andalusia a few years ago.
San Vincente is on the coast, with a castle and church on the hill over looking the town. The harbour is tidal, so when we arrived it was a mud flat with little boats all sitting on the bottom, waiting for the tide to return. We did our customary walk around the town, up to the top of the hill, past the castle, round the church and then back down the other side to find a restaurant for lunch – nice chairs, white linen table cloths, large wine glasses being the criteria to identify possiblities. A walk up and down the strip identified the candidates, and then a selection criteria as rigorours as that for the candidates was used to select the actual restaurant (I think it was the one that didn’t have the sewerage truck outside it pumping out the storm water drains). Lunch was a very nice Paella.
After lunch (about 4:30) we wandered back to the car, which was parked by the harbour. By this stage the tide had returned and all the boats were bobbing in the water and the arched bridge across the harbour had the incoming tide sweeping past it – a much prettier scene. (Anne’s just told me I’m sounding poetic so apologies if I’m prattling on too much).
Week 3 – Thursday 17th July – Bilbao and Suances
Boy, do the Europeans love their small yappy dogs. Everywhere we go we have to watch to make sure we don’t step on them. I’m reminded of it, while we listen to three of them having a ding-dong fight on the other side of the street.
Checking out of the Hotel Pampinot in Hondarribbia, we got on the motorway to Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum. It was a cooler day, so it made driving with the roof down very pleasant, until it started to rain. That was OK, it stopped before we got to Bilbao.
So, the Guggenheim – what a building, in fact what an area. Outside the museum is “puppy” the 30m high floral sculpture of a puppy that started off as a temporary exhibition, but because of it’s popularity is now a permanent feature of the entrance to the museum. The building itself is a masterpiece construction of titanium, glass and stone, set in a large park beside the Nervion River. The museum, which is a stylized rendition of a ship is set between two bridges on the river and had a garden and river walk way surrounding it, so it is possible to get many different views of the building from lots of different elevations. The inspiration for the design is to create the illusion that the ship is moving up the river towards the city. Between the museum and the river is a shallow pool, with a bridge walkway over it, to create the link between the museum and the river.
We walked all the way around the Museum and over both the bridges. The bridge at the bow of the ship is accessed by climbing the stairs in a large tower that represents a sail. Although I’m not good with heights, I was ok with the metal meshed stairs that took you up to the level of the bridge, because they were all within the structure of the sail. It was the solid metal bridge that went over open space from the sail back to the bridge that made me feel a bit queasy. From the bridge, we looked out over another pool on the other side of the ship. Lots of people had thrown coins in the pool beside the river, but this other pool was about 40metres below the level of the bridge and so throwing a coin from there seemed like much more fun – so Anne and I did. And we watched our coins sail down and go ‘plop’ in the pool. Because the pool is only shallow, we could see the coins sitting on the bottom and ours were the only two coins in that pool.
Having walked right around the Museum, viewed it from a range of angles and elevations and been impressed by what we saw, we decided we should “pays our money and takes our chances” about what might be inside. Art galleries can be a bit of a lottery, you never quite know what you are going to get inside and we were quite disappointed by the Peggy Guggenheim we’d visited in Venice last year. Nonetheless, this was a great building and the art inside would surely be great, wouldn’t it….surely.
Anyway, a quick summary. Ummm, interesting, but a lot of space for interesting. There isn’t really that much in it. If you took all the items in it, you wouldn’t fully clutter up a large room and it’s all very interpretive…hence the reason they give you the audio guide as part of your entrance fee. In one room, was a largish model of a train wreck, with the streets of a town built on the inside of the train. Also in the room were some paintings, so after learning about the train wreck, I pushed the audio guide number for the paintings, but instead got a dialogue about the artists fascination with hand rails and balconies. Huh? I had a look around, and sure enough on a 20 m wall, was an 8 foot handrail, nothing else on the wall just the hand rail. The audio told me the artist had attached a flick knife to the back of the hand rail to illustrate the hidden dangers that await us all. I wandered over to the hand rail and sure enough, there was a flick knife taped to the back of it….call me an artist… 1 million dollars….thank you…. Caching… How much dope did he smoke to come up with that.
The other major exhibition was by a guy who was fascinated with people, so lots of the rooms had human figures standing round, looking at balconies, listening to walls, talking in groups. In one massive room, the whole floor was covered in a 3-dimensional patterned lino. On one wall, was a model of a small child sitting on a ledge on the wall. That was all….that whole big room for that. After an hour and a half of that, I said to Anne, “somebody had better paint a picture pretty soon, or I’m outta here. And soon we both were.
Overall: Loved the building, could walk around it for hours. As for the art……tick…seen it.
Shamefully, we stopped for lunch at Burger King in the shopping mall where we had parked the car, as we wanted to get on the road to Suances. A shame really, because although it was a food court, the restaurants looked like they all served really nice food and all had linen table cloths and large wine glasses on the tables…not your average food court by any stretch of the imagination.
So off we went to Suances. Just a bit of a blast along the motorway, past Santander, which as the large ferry port is a large part of the reason for all the trucks on the road.
Suances is a beach resort on the Costa Verde. It’s a bit down market compared to what we’d seen at Biarritz, Hondarribbia and San Sebastian.
Checking out of the Hotel Pampinot in Hondarribbia, we got on the motorway to Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum. It was a cooler day, so it made driving with the roof down very pleasant, until it started to rain. That was OK, it stopped before we got to Bilbao.
So, the Guggenheim – what a building, in fact what an area. Outside the museum is “puppy” the 30m high floral sculpture of a puppy that started off as a temporary exhibition, but because of it’s popularity is now a permanent feature of the entrance to the museum. The building itself is a masterpiece construction of titanium, glass and stone, set in a large park beside the Nervion River. The museum, which is a stylized rendition of a ship is set between two bridges on the river and had a garden and river walk way surrounding it, so it is possible to get many different views of the building from lots of different elevations. The inspiration for the design is to create the illusion that the ship is moving up the river towards the city. Between the museum and the river is a shallow pool, with a bridge walkway over it, to create the link between the museum and the river.
We walked all the way around the Museum and over both the bridges. The bridge at the bow of the ship is accessed by climbing the stairs in a large tower that represents a sail. Although I’m not good with heights, I was ok with the metal meshed stairs that took you up to the level of the bridge, because they were all within the structure of the sail. It was the solid metal bridge that went over open space from the sail back to the bridge that made me feel a bit queasy. From the bridge, we looked out over another pool on the other side of the ship. Lots of people had thrown coins in the pool beside the river, but this other pool was about 40metres below the level of the bridge and so throwing a coin from there seemed like much more fun – so Anne and I did. And we watched our coins sail down and go ‘plop’ in the pool. Because the pool is only shallow, we could see the coins sitting on the bottom and ours were the only two coins in that pool.
Having walked right around the Museum, viewed it from a range of angles and elevations and been impressed by what we saw, we decided we should “pays our money and takes our chances” about what might be inside. Art galleries can be a bit of a lottery, you never quite know what you are going to get inside and we were quite disappointed by the Peggy Guggenheim we’d visited in Venice last year. Nonetheless, this was a great building and the art inside would surely be great, wouldn’t it….surely.
Anyway, a quick summary. Ummm, interesting, but a lot of space for interesting. There isn’t really that much in it. If you took all the items in it, you wouldn’t fully clutter up a large room and it’s all very interpretive…hence the reason they give you the audio guide as part of your entrance fee. In one room, was a largish model of a train wreck, with the streets of a town built on the inside of the train. Also in the room were some paintings, so after learning about the train wreck, I pushed the audio guide number for the paintings, but instead got a dialogue about the artists fascination with hand rails and balconies. Huh? I had a look around, and sure enough on a 20 m wall, was an 8 foot handrail, nothing else on the wall just the hand rail. The audio told me the artist had attached a flick knife to the back of the hand rail to illustrate the hidden dangers that await us all. I wandered over to the hand rail and sure enough, there was a flick knife taped to the back of it….call me an artist… 1 million dollars….thank you…. Caching… How much dope did he smoke to come up with that.
The other major exhibition was by a guy who was fascinated with people, so lots of the rooms had human figures standing round, looking at balconies, listening to walls, talking in groups. In one massive room, the whole floor was covered in a 3-dimensional patterned lino. On one wall, was a model of a small child sitting on a ledge on the wall. That was all….that whole big room for that. After an hour and a half of that, I said to Anne, “somebody had better paint a picture pretty soon, or I’m outta here. And soon we both were.
Overall: Loved the building, could walk around it for hours. As for the art……tick…seen it.
Shamefully, we stopped for lunch at Burger King in the shopping mall where we had parked the car, as we wanted to get on the road to Suances. A shame really, because although it was a food court, the restaurants looked like they all served really nice food and all had linen table cloths and large wine glasses on the tables…not your average food court by any stretch of the imagination.
So off we went to Suances. Just a bit of a blast along the motorway, past Santander, which as the large ferry port is a large part of the reason for all the trucks on the road.
Suances is a beach resort on the Costa Verde. It’s a bit down market compared to what we’d seen at Biarritz, Hondarribbia and San Sebastian.
Week 3 – Wednesday 16th July – Biarritz and Saint Jean de Luz
I’ve got a bit behind, as I’m writing this on Friday night at Suances (pronounced Sue-on-Thes – Think Simons Says, with a lisp on the Says)
Wednesday, we headed to Biarritz, which is just up the coast from Hondarribbia. We think it’s because of the French border being so close, but we can’t believe the number of trucks on the roads. I know I mentioned it in yesterday’s blog, but that was on the motorway. Today, we got the same thing on the back roads and it’s a bit off putting when you’re cruising around with the roof down.
Anyway, Biarritz – very nice, up market, beautiful beach and rocky headland, Chairs and umbrellas for rent on the promenade and tents (an umbrella with sides) and chairs for rent on the beach, majestic palatial hotels (actually, I think they were former palaces), expensive shops, nice restaurants etc etc.
First stop – Breakfast of coffee, croissant, jam and orange juice at one of the restaurants in the main town square. Actually, the first stop was park the car. So that we didn’t lose it, I got Anne to write down some nearby land marks – Galleries Lafayette and the Hotel right beside the car park entrance – Hotel Climatise, was the name above the door. Hmmmm says Anne, that’s air conditioned hotel – she then spotted the name sprawled all the way down the side of the 10 storey building – Hotel President – Silly me.
We went for a walk along the main shopping street, down into the square (where we stopped for breakfast), then out along the beach, to the rocky headland to get a view (and some photos) all the way back along the beach. From the headland, there was firstly, a small enclosed marina, then an amazing rock pool, where heaps of kids were fishing with nets, then a bridge out to a smaller headland, before the very large main beach with all the sun bathers in front of the promenade down to the Palace Hotel, which is magnificent. Biarritz, as I said is very up market, renting a tent and two chairs was 10 Euros a day, the Palace Hotel’s children’s menu was 33 Euros and the main menu 65 Euros per person, excluding wine or water.
Finding the car again beside the Hotel Climatise – imagine saying to a policeman, “Can you tell me where the Hotel Climatise is, I’ve parked by car beside it”. We headed to Saint Jean De Luz – a small town between Biarritz and the French Border – where we had a fantastic lunch.
We had drinks in one of the squares in Honda at night – surrounded by heaps of kids on bikes, scooters, prams. It must be quite tough growing up on cobble stones, because all the small kids toys and prams have hard plastic wheels which don’t go very well on the small cobblestones. It’s quite funny watching them vibrating there way across the square
Wednesday, we headed to Biarritz, which is just up the coast from Hondarribbia. We think it’s because of the French border being so close, but we can’t believe the number of trucks on the roads. I know I mentioned it in yesterday’s blog, but that was on the motorway. Today, we got the same thing on the back roads and it’s a bit off putting when you’re cruising around with the roof down.
Anyway, Biarritz – very nice, up market, beautiful beach and rocky headland, Chairs and umbrellas for rent on the promenade and tents (an umbrella with sides) and chairs for rent on the beach, majestic palatial hotels (actually, I think they were former palaces), expensive shops, nice restaurants etc etc.
First stop – Breakfast of coffee, croissant, jam and orange juice at one of the restaurants in the main town square. Actually, the first stop was park the car. So that we didn’t lose it, I got Anne to write down some nearby land marks – Galleries Lafayette and the Hotel right beside the car park entrance – Hotel Climatise, was the name above the door. Hmmmm says Anne, that’s air conditioned hotel – she then spotted the name sprawled all the way down the side of the 10 storey building – Hotel President – Silly me.
We went for a walk along the main shopping street, down into the square (where we stopped for breakfast), then out along the beach, to the rocky headland to get a view (and some photos) all the way back along the beach. From the headland, there was firstly, a small enclosed marina, then an amazing rock pool, where heaps of kids were fishing with nets, then a bridge out to a smaller headland, before the very large main beach with all the sun bathers in front of the promenade down to the Palace Hotel, which is magnificent. Biarritz, as I said is very up market, renting a tent and two chairs was 10 Euros a day, the Palace Hotel’s children’s menu was 33 Euros and the main menu 65 Euros per person, excluding wine or water.
Finding the car again beside the Hotel Climatise – imagine saying to a policeman, “Can you tell me where the Hotel Climatise is, I’ve parked by car beside it”. We headed to Saint Jean De Luz – a small town between Biarritz and the French Border – where we had a fantastic lunch.
We had drinks in one of the squares in Honda at night – surrounded by heaps of kids on bikes, scooters, prams. It must be quite tough growing up on cobble stones, because all the small kids toys and prams have hard plastic wheels which don’t go very well on the small cobblestones. It’s quite funny watching them vibrating there way across the square
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Week 3 – Tuesday 15th July – St Jean Pied De Port and Pamplona
Well, what a day of sight seeing we’ve had today. We covered a triangle between Honda, St Jean Pied de Port in France and Pamplona in Spain. With a holiday in France yesterday, the trip started very slowly as we had to negotiate our way through more trucks that I’ve ever seen before. Getting onto the Motorway in France involved negotiating our way between lanes of “big rigs” queueing up to pay their tolls to get onto the motorway. We came onto the motorway just before the pay station. Whereever the trucks were coming from, they were already on the motorway feeder road, in the two inside lanes. We had to snake our way between these monster trucks. We were so much lower than they were, we weren’t even sure that they could see us and they didn’t seem to be giving us any more room than we needed.
After a short burst down the motorway, we headed off onto the scenic back roads to St Jean Pied de Port, a small town that John and Rebecca Clarkson had recommended to us, from their time living in Biarritz. The road to St J P d P was beautiful, running along the floor of a valley, with vineyards lining the sides of the valley. The town itself, is “picture postcard”, set on a small trout filled stream, with 3 arched bridges over it, flower adorned buildings running down the main street and an ancient citadel on the hill above the town. The surrounding country side is a combination of vineyards, fields and forests.
A walk along the main street identified some prime candidate restaurants for lunch, which we were both very much looking forward to having yet again missed breakfast and the mandatory coffee to start the day. We did our usual walk around the town and up to the Citadel on the top of the hill. The day was perfect, with deep blue skies and crisp green fields. Lunch was a lengthy affair of Mixed Hors D’oeuvres, a large of portion of a large chicken done Basque style (with a tomato and green pepper sauce) and a crème brulé for me, and a Basque Omlette (with tomato and green peppers), veal and a Basque Gateau – yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
After lunch we drove to Pamplona a bit over an hour away. The road is over a mountain pass, that rises to over 1000m. On the way, we saw lots of people walking with back packs and a scallop shell tied to them. This is symbol for walking the Camino de Santiago – The Christian Pilgrimage from Lourdes in France to Santiago De Compostella in North Western Spain (where we will be staying for a couple of nights next week). I’m not sure how long the whole route is, but we saw a sign on our trip to Pamplona saying that Santiago De Compostella was 790ks from there – get walking Pilgrims.
Pamplona was, I would have to say, slightly disappointing, in that I’d expected a smaller more historic town. However, we found a map of the town, so we could walk the route the bulls took. Although the festival had finished the previous day (and it was apparently a massive party on the last day), the town was entirely back to normal. We did get into the Bull Ring, where the “running” finishes and they were literally hosing it out. On our walk we saw lots of shops selling T-shirts of the event. There was one really neat cartoon T-shirt, that looked really cool, until you looked at it closely and realized it contained pictures of people getting gored by the bulls. Anne asked if the bulls were still in the bull ring, but I had to tell her that the end game for the bulls was not good and was quite literally “The End”.
The drive back to Honda was via a very scenic valley round that winded it’s way along beside a pretty river. It was slightly windier than normal because of the detours required to get around the massive excavations and constructions that are going on to put an elevated motorway through the valley. We were pleased to have done the road before the Motorway is completed, but traveling down the road amongst lots of trucks going both ways, on a road under construction, with the roof down, meant we got back to Honda feeling pretty dusty and dirty. A shower fixed that and we felt that we’d had a really good days sight seeing, with the lunch at St John Pied de Port one of the highlights of the holiday.
We’re just finishing this off, in near darkness sitting in the square outside the Parador having had another meal of Pintxos and a bottle of Blanco.
After a short burst down the motorway, we headed off onto the scenic back roads to St Jean Pied de Port, a small town that John and Rebecca Clarkson had recommended to us, from their time living in Biarritz. The road to St J P d P was beautiful, running along the floor of a valley, with vineyards lining the sides of the valley. The town itself, is “picture postcard”, set on a small trout filled stream, with 3 arched bridges over it, flower adorned buildings running down the main street and an ancient citadel on the hill above the town. The surrounding country side is a combination of vineyards, fields and forests.
A walk along the main street identified some prime candidate restaurants for lunch, which we were both very much looking forward to having yet again missed breakfast and the mandatory coffee to start the day. We did our usual walk around the town and up to the Citadel on the top of the hill. The day was perfect, with deep blue skies and crisp green fields. Lunch was a lengthy affair of Mixed Hors D’oeuvres, a large of portion of a large chicken done Basque style (with a tomato and green pepper sauce) and a crème brulé for me, and a Basque Omlette (with tomato and green peppers), veal and a Basque Gateau – yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
After lunch we drove to Pamplona a bit over an hour away. The road is over a mountain pass, that rises to over 1000m. On the way, we saw lots of people walking with back packs and a scallop shell tied to them. This is symbol for walking the Camino de Santiago – The Christian Pilgrimage from Lourdes in France to Santiago De Compostella in North Western Spain (where we will be staying for a couple of nights next week). I’m not sure how long the whole route is, but we saw a sign on our trip to Pamplona saying that Santiago De Compostella was 790ks from there – get walking Pilgrims.
Pamplona was, I would have to say, slightly disappointing, in that I’d expected a smaller more historic town. However, we found a map of the town, so we could walk the route the bulls took. Although the festival had finished the previous day (and it was apparently a massive party on the last day), the town was entirely back to normal. We did get into the Bull Ring, where the “running” finishes and they were literally hosing it out. On our walk we saw lots of shops selling T-shirts of the event. There was one really neat cartoon T-shirt, that looked really cool, until you looked at it closely and realized it contained pictures of people getting gored by the bulls. Anne asked if the bulls were still in the bull ring, but I had to tell her that the end game for the bulls was not good and was quite literally “The End”.
The drive back to Honda was via a very scenic valley round that winded it’s way along beside a pretty river. It was slightly windier than normal because of the detours required to get around the massive excavations and constructions that are going on to put an elevated motorway through the valley. We were pleased to have done the road before the Motorway is completed, but traveling down the road amongst lots of trucks going both ways, on a road under construction, with the roof down, meant we got back to Honda feeling pretty dusty and dirty. A shower fixed that and we felt that we’d had a really good days sight seeing, with the lunch at St John Pied de Port one of the highlights of the holiday.
We’re just finishing this off, in near darkness sitting in the square outside the Parador having had another meal of Pintxos and a bottle of Blanco.
Week 3 – Monday 14th July – San Sebastian
After a long drive on Saturday, a day off on Sunday was a nice break for us, so today we hit the road again, but just down the coast to San Sebastian. We’d been a bit undecided about what we should do, but once we consulted our global calendar and realized that the running of the bulls was having it’s last day today, Pamplona was ruled out. Being July 14th, heading to Biarritz or St Pied de Port didn’t seem like a great idea either as we assumed that most things in France would be closed for Bastille Day.
The weather is still a bit cool and the day dawned overcast. We got on the road before having breakfast, not that it was either particularly early, nor a long trip to get to San Sebastian. We spent some time getting lost in the “old town” before finding ourselves on Place De La Constitution, the main square in the old town. There we stopped for a Café con leche and some Pintxos (pronounced pinthoss) – the Basque version of Tapas. The Pintxos are all laid out on the counter and you get given a plate to individually select the items you want. Apparently the locals use Pintxos as a snack between meals, but the tourists have taken to having them as complete meals. The Pintxos are generally seafood (Tuna, Anchovies and Prawns being particularly popular), meats, cheeses or paté served on top of a slice of French bread – each bar doing their own rendition. The presentation of the food is the thing that makes it so special, and it’s really nice to be able to pick many small tastings, rather than having a whole meal of just one dish.
Having had some food, we went for a walk around the waterfront, which was crowded by seafood restaurants and small fishing boats in the harbour. San Sebastian is a beach town with a Mount Vic type hill at each end of two large beaches. We went for a walk to the top of Mount Urgull, which has castle of La Mota (originally constructed in the 12th century) and the Sacred Heart Monument (large statue of Jesus). Starting at the bottom of the hill, the skies were overcast and we even got a few spots of rain, but by the time we reached the top the sun had finally broken through and clear blues skies arrived.
Lunch was again Pintxos, had over a beer and a wine in the town square. After another burst of sightseeing we returned to Hondarribbia to watch the last half hour of the Tour De France.
Pre-dinner drinks were held in one bar in Honda, accompanied by the usual range of children and dogs of all ages running round the square we were sitting in. For dinner we moved to a small café just around the corner from our hotel and outside the local Paradore (up market Spanish hotel chain housed in historic buildings) and had – you guessed it – Pintxos and wine.
When we were in Southern Spain, we were particularly disappointed with Spain’s White Wine (Blanco), but either our tastes have softened, or the wine here is significantly better, particularly that from the Rioja region.
At 11:45pm, there was a huge sound of explosives being let off, as the French celebrated their national day, less that a mile away over the border.
The weather is still a bit cool and the day dawned overcast. We got on the road before having breakfast, not that it was either particularly early, nor a long trip to get to San Sebastian. We spent some time getting lost in the “old town” before finding ourselves on Place De La Constitution, the main square in the old town. There we stopped for a Café con leche and some Pintxos (pronounced pinthoss) – the Basque version of Tapas. The Pintxos are all laid out on the counter and you get given a plate to individually select the items you want. Apparently the locals use Pintxos as a snack between meals, but the tourists have taken to having them as complete meals. The Pintxos are generally seafood (Tuna, Anchovies and Prawns being particularly popular), meats, cheeses or paté served on top of a slice of French bread – each bar doing their own rendition. The presentation of the food is the thing that makes it so special, and it’s really nice to be able to pick many small tastings, rather than having a whole meal of just one dish.
Having had some food, we went for a walk around the waterfront, which was crowded by seafood restaurants and small fishing boats in the harbour. San Sebastian is a beach town with a Mount Vic type hill at each end of two large beaches. We went for a walk to the top of Mount Urgull, which has castle of La Mota (originally constructed in the 12th century) and the Sacred Heart Monument (large statue of Jesus). Starting at the bottom of the hill, the skies were overcast and we even got a few spots of rain, but by the time we reached the top the sun had finally broken through and clear blues skies arrived.
Lunch was again Pintxos, had over a beer and a wine in the town square. After another burst of sightseeing we returned to Hondarribbia to watch the last half hour of the Tour De France.
Pre-dinner drinks were held in one bar in Honda, accompanied by the usual range of children and dogs of all ages running round the square we were sitting in. For dinner we moved to a small café just around the corner from our hotel and outside the local Paradore (up market Spanish hotel chain housed in historic buildings) and had – you guessed it – Pintxos and wine.
When we were in Southern Spain, we were particularly disappointed with Spain’s White Wine (Blanco), but either our tastes have softened, or the wine here is significantly better, particularly that from the Rioja region.
At 11:45pm, there was a huge sound of explosives being let off, as the French celebrated their national day, less that a mile away over the border.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Week 2 – Sunday 13th July – Hondarribbia
It’s your and our day off today, so not much to read. After two weeks of solid traveling, and with the weather in the mid teens and overcast, we felt like a day off, so after a walk around Honda, we settled in to watch MotoGP and the Tour De France on TV, ahead of a road trip inland to Pamplona tomorrow.
We had a very nice meal in a small local restaurant tonight – probably the first meal we’ve eaten indoors, as the temperature is still cool.
They’ve just advertised the anti calcium tablets we bought as our laundry detergent in Barcelona, on one of the Spanish channels we can’t understand on TV – if only we’d seen that and understood its significance a couple of weeks ago. Hey, we could have saved ourselves a full 2 euros 50. Note to self, “must keep things in perspective”.
Still having a great time. We're in Honda until Thursday, so will update you on our travels over the next couple of days. Take Care.
We had a very nice meal in a small local restaurant tonight – probably the first meal we’ve eaten indoors, as the temperature is still cool.
They’ve just advertised the anti calcium tablets we bought as our laundry detergent in Barcelona, on one of the Spanish channels we can’t understand on TV – if only we’d seen that and understood its significance a couple of weeks ago. Hey, we could have saved ourselves a full 2 euros 50. Note to self, “must keep things in perspective”.
Still having a great time. We're in Honda until Thursday, so will update you on our travels over the next couple of days. Take Care.
Week 2 – Saturday 12th July – On the Road to Hondarribbia
Here’s a question for you, do you know who the 9th member of the G8 is – it’s been causing Anne significant concern since they’ve had their conference. Actually, it’s the representative from the EU, so now you know.
Not much doing today, just the drive from Carcassonne to Hondarribbia. It’s not a difficult drive, 430ks of mostly motorway driving (according to Jane), but the day is overcast and rain is forecast. We started in grey conditions and sure enough, the rain started about an hour into the journey. Because of the low cloud and the very smooth motorways, which atomized the water and created a fine foggy mist, it was like driving in a white-out, which slowed our progress quite considerably. I found Anne’s polarizing sun glasses gave me better visibility, but it still took a lot of concentration for most of the trip. We made a couple of stops for petrol (French diesel is much dearer than Spanish diesel, so we only gave ourselves enough to give us confidence in the reserves in the tank) and comfort.
We arrived at about 3:30pm, with Jane delivering us painlessly to the front door of the hotel (I’d typed the address in the previous night). “Honda” is a tiny, but very authentic Spanish town right on the border with France. The Hotel we are staying in is a family run hotel in the old part of Hondarribbia. It is in a 16th century palace and the hotel itself is only 8 rooms. The family are great – it’s all the little extras that they do that make it a great place to stay – a bottle of wine and some fruit on our arrival, a chocolate and a bottle of mineral water each night, individually served breakfasts – it’s just great. To please the accountant in me, we even have free parking and free internet, so one of my gripes fully catered for. The ceiling in our room has a “heavenly” sky / bird scene fresco painted on it. It’s almost a bit Dali-esque and not to everyone’s taste, but it adds to the overall anbience of the place. Add a chandelier in the centre of the room and it really does feel a bit special.
Parking is in a restricted area, with a bollard that raises and disappears in the centre of the entrance to the car park. We managed to get into it, but don’t quite know how, so getting out tomorrow will be fun. Anne ran round waving the sensor card in front of everything that looked like it was associated with the bollard (and a few things that weren’t), and pushed all sorts of panels to try and make it disappear, which eventually it did. As I said, we don’t know what it was that made it work, so the next time we try to leave will be interesting.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Honda and had bread and some cold cuts for our food for the remainder of the day.
Not much doing today, just the drive from Carcassonne to Hondarribbia. It’s not a difficult drive, 430ks of mostly motorway driving (according to Jane), but the day is overcast and rain is forecast. We started in grey conditions and sure enough, the rain started about an hour into the journey. Because of the low cloud and the very smooth motorways, which atomized the water and created a fine foggy mist, it was like driving in a white-out, which slowed our progress quite considerably. I found Anne’s polarizing sun glasses gave me better visibility, but it still took a lot of concentration for most of the trip. We made a couple of stops for petrol (French diesel is much dearer than Spanish diesel, so we only gave ourselves enough to give us confidence in the reserves in the tank) and comfort.
We arrived at about 3:30pm, with Jane delivering us painlessly to the front door of the hotel (I’d typed the address in the previous night). “Honda” is a tiny, but very authentic Spanish town right on the border with France. The Hotel we are staying in is a family run hotel in the old part of Hondarribbia. It is in a 16th century palace and the hotel itself is only 8 rooms. The family are great – it’s all the little extras that they do that make it a great place to stay – a bottle of wine and some fruit on our arrival, a chocolate and a bottle of mineral water each night, individually served breakfasts – it’s just great. To please the accountant in me, we even have free parking and free internet, so one of my gripes fully catered for. The ceiling in our room has a “heavenly” sky / bird scene fresco painted on it. It’s almost a bit Dali-esque and not to everyone’s taste, but it adds to the overall anbience of the place. Add a chandelier in the centre of the room and it really does feel a bit special.
Parking is in a restricted area, with a bollard that raises and disappears in the centre of the entrance to the car park. We managed to get into it, but don’t quite know how, so getting out tomorrow will be fun. Anne ran round waving the sensor card in front of everything that looked like it was associated with the bollard (and a few things that weren’t), and pushed all sorts of panels to try and make it disappear, which eventually it did. As I said, we don’t know what it was that made it work, so the next time we try to leave will be interesting.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Honda and had bread and some cold cuts for our food for the remainder of the day.
Week 2 – Friday 11th July – Around Carcassonne
We went off on a road trip today after completing some domestic chores – without drama. The first stop was the small town of Limoux which is slightly South of Carcassonne. The intention for the day was just to visit some very small French towns. Limoux was having its market day today, which was a much better effort than the Carcassonne effort than we had seen the day before, which was basically a fruit and vegetables market.
We’ve just read on BBC world that French Authorities have ordered a nuclear plant to close in the nations South, following a urnanium leak – I did think that my Crème Brule was well toasted tonight – very nice though.
As well as Limoux, we also visited the towns of Allet-Les-Bains, Brenac and Nebias. Limoux was small, but Allet Les Bains was smaller and Brenac even smaller. We skipped breakfast this morning, so by the time we got to Brenac at about 2pm we were pretty hungry, but we manage to perform the remarkable feat in France of finding two small towns, neither of which had any form of food – either store or restaurant. In Brenac, we found a map that indicated that Nebias had all sorts of facilities, but when we got there, it had one very small café, where the locals were sitting outside playing scrabble, so we headed back to Carcassonne to have a baguette and a coke at a local restaurant.
Why is that French squatties are always beside streams or rivers – coincidence or something more sinister. On our trip today, we had the need for a comfort stop when we were in Brenac, an absolutely tiny town, well off the main road. I was wandering around taking photos and when I caught up with Anne, she was standing outside the convenience I’d spotted. “It’s a squattie” she said. Hmm, “Do you want to wait”, “Nope, can you stand guard outside – I’m not as flexible as some of these French women, so I’ll have to strip off a bit”. So while I waited outside, Anne gave me a commentary from inside about what was happening and how progress was going. “Bonjour”, I said to nobody in particular, actually it was nobody, but it struck the appropriate fear in her. After she finished it was my turn for the much simpler guy task. I entered the perfectly clean facility and noticing the lock on the door that would have made Fort Knox proud, I turned the handle and proceeded – why was I standing guard again?
Pedestrian Crossings in France are an interesting proposition. In Spain, pedestrians are treated as sacrosanct to the point of causing significant disruption to the traffic as we discovered last Sunday night when we went on a drive from Tossa De Mar and were constantly held up by long streams of pedestrians meandering across the roads of busy towns and basically causing a major traffic problem. Imagine the main street of Levin on a public weekend with a pedestrian crossing every 100m and you get an idea of what the migration from beach back to town was like. In France it is totally different. You almost feel that the white stripes on the road are a means of getting rid of a surplus of white paint while providing some decoration to the road. Certainly stepping out onto a pedestrian crossing is like taking your life in you hands.
It must be said that the French are not known for their macho dogs – the burly poodle being top of the muscle dog heap. To highlight this sorry state of affairs, we walked past a Dog Shop near the old Carcassonne city, which had a front window full of doggy outfits for all the small dogs. The ultimate doggy accessory for the ultimate accessory dog. These were precious little outfits that dressed your pride and joy as a French sailor, rugby player, surrogate child. Al just wrong on so many levels – it’s a dog for god’s sake, just let it get out there and terrorise children and old ladies and don’t try and dress it up like some silly toy. We did however, see a very cute beagle at dinner on our last night in Carcassonne, perfectly behaved and beautifully groomed.
French Postman have also come under the spotlight in the last three days, as a limited survey of three posties indicated that each postie has an accomplice to help them with their rounds. In Carcassonne, we have seen three postie duos. One pushes the bag, and puts the mail through the box, while the other takes notes on a clip board and holds a separate bundle of mail. It all seems very inefficient, but the situation isn’t much better in Spain, where we’ve observed a Barcelonian postman walking down the street, pushing the buzzer on an apartment building, waiting for the buzzer to be answered, then delivering the mail to that building – it all seemed very pedestrian.
We’re off to Hondarribia tomorrow, so I’ll update you in a couple of days time.
We’ve just read on BBC world that French Authorities have ordered a nuclear plant to close in the nations South, following a urnanium leak – I did think that my Crème Brule was well toasted tonight – very nice though.
As well as Limoux, we also visited the towns of Allet-Les-Bains, Brenac and Nebias. Limoux was small, but Allet Les Bains was smaller and Brenac even smaller. We skipped breakfast this morning, so by the time we got to Brenac at about 2pm we were pretty hungry, but we manage to perform the remarkable feat in France of finding two small towns, neither of which had any form of food – either store or restaurant. In Brenac, we found a map that indicated that Nebias had all sorts of facilities, but when we got there, it had one very small café, where the locals were sitting outside playing scrabble, so we headed back to Carcassonne to have a baguette and a coke at a local restaurant.
Why is that French squatties are always beside streams or rivers – coincidence or something more sinister. On our trip today, we had the need for a comfort stop when we were in Brenac, an absolutely tiny town, well off the main road. I was wandering around taking photos and when I caught up with Anne, she was standing outside the convenience I’d spotted. “It’s a squattie” she said. Hmm, “Do you want to wait”, “Nope, can you stand guard outside – I’m not as flexible as some of these French women, so I’ll have to strip off a bit”. So while I waited outside, Anne gave me a commentary from inside about what was happening and how progress was going. “Bonjour”, I said to nobody in particular, actually it was nobody, but it struck the appropriate fear in her. After she finished it was my turn for the much simpler guy task. I entered the perfectly clean facility and noticing the lock on the door that would have made Fort Knox proud, I turned the handle and proceeded – why was I standing guard again?
Pedestrian Crossings in France are an interesting proposition. In Spain, pedestrians are treated as sacrosanct to the point of causing significant disruption to the traffic as we discovered last Sunday night when we went on a drive from Tossa De Mar and were constantly held up by long streams of pedestrians meandering across the roads of busy towns and basically causing a major traffic problem. Imagine the main street of Levin on a public weekend with a pedestrian crossing every 100m and you get an idea of what the migration from beach back to town was like. In France it is totally different. You almost feel that the white stripes on the road are a means of getting rid of a surplus of white paint while providing some decoration to the road. Certainly stepping out onto a pedestrian crossing is like taking your life in you hands.
It must be said that the French are not known for their macho dogs – the burly poodle being top of the muscle dog heap. To highlight this sorry state of affairs, we walked past a Dog Shop near the old Carcassonne city, which had a front window full of doggy outfits for all the small dogs. The ultimate doggy accessory for the ultimate accessory dog. These were precious little outfits that dressed your pride and joy as a French sailor, rugby player, surrogate child. Al just wrong on so many levels – it’s a dog for god’s sake, just let it get out there and terrorise children and old ladies and don’t try and dress it up like some silly toy. We did however, see a very cute beagle at dinner on our last night in Carcassonne, perfectly behaved and beautifully groomed.
French Postman have also come under the spotlight in the last three days, as a limited survey of three posties indicated that each postie has an accomplice to help them with their rounds. In Carcassonne, we have seen three postie duos. One pushes the bag, and puts the mail through the box, while the other takes notes on a clip board and holds a separate bundle of mail. It all seems very inefficient, but the situation isn’t much better in Spain, where we’ve observed a Barcelonian postman walking down the street, pushing the buzzer on an apartment building, waiting for the buzzer to be answered, then delivering the mail to that building – it all seemed very pedestrian.
We’re off to Hondarribia tomorrow, so I’ll update you in a couple of days time.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Week 2 – Thursday 10th July – Carcassonne
Back up to the present and a late start today, with us not getting to breakfast until 9:45. We’ve spent the day around Carcassonne, both in the Medieval and the “new” parts of the city. Again it’s been very hot, so after a couple of hours walking the streets, we settled down for a coke in the town square and to watch the locals enjoying lunch and packing up the local market.
France is very much the kissing nation, with everybody kissing each other on each cheek whenever they greet, sometimes the waiters even greeted their customers with the two cheek kiss, which is completely different to Spain. Also unlike Spain, the locals do not wear shorts at all and the only people who were wearing shorts were the tourists. It might seem very sophisticated to wear long pants all the time, but when the temperature is in the high 30’s, it must also be quite unbearable at times.
The wind has been getting up a wee bit today, which is a pleasant relief, although it did catch the locals out as a couple of umbrellas sent a table full of glasses smashing to the ground. Retrieving and putting right the umbrellas involved smashing another table full of glasses as the man rectifying the umbrella lost control of it in another gust of wind. Along with a further tray of glasses that got broken when a waiter dropped them, it wasn’t a good day to be a glass in Carcassonne.
Bad news on the hot police front. Anne has seen the French version and they just don’t rate the way the Spanish Police do. Like the Spanish Police, they carry an impressive array of hardware on their belts, but within those belts are nylon track pants and polo shirts, with no evidence of hats of any sort. It was a sad let down for her and although she tried her best to conceal her disappointment, the little down turned mouth and pouty lips gave away the grief that she was feeling inside – but I jest.
Tomorrow is laundry day – not usually a highlight, except that last time had some dramas and I forgot to mention that we had bought some detergent from the supermarket the day before we went to the Laundromat. Well we thought we had bought some detergent. It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel room and got out our phrase books that we discovered that what we had bought was a packet of decalcifying tablets. I swear to you, that to Anne and I it looked just like a packet of Persil, and I’m sure the things around it were laundry detergent. Anyway, Anne said to me today as we walked past a supermarket “shall I go in and buy some laundry detergent for tomorrow”. My look was enough to tell her that the packets that are dispensed at the Laundromat will be just fine.
On the money for nothing front, we had been getting free internet in the hotels since Barcelona, although here in Carcassonne, we have had to pay 10 Euros for 3 non-continuous hours. I noticed today as we walked past that McDonalds has Free and unlimited WiFi in Carcassonne, so I’ll keep my eye out to see if that is standard at all their restaurants. Parking has been the big ticket money for nothing item, with us paying 24 Euros per day in Tossa and then 17 Euros per day in Girona – it’s back to being free in Carcassonne, so it seems you either get one or the other for nothing.
We’ve just got back from Dinner (I wrote everything before this in the bar at the hotel) and had another fabulous meal in the restaurant right next door to the one from last night – it’s a quiet part of town. Anne had the Foie Gras, the duck confit and a Paris Brest , while I had Goat’s cheese salad with strips of cured duck, duck confit and a Crème Brule.
We’re really pleased with the hotel we are staying in, which is about 200m from the old city. It’s not a huge room, but has a very nice bathroom and the dining room, bar and gardens are great. It’s also very quiet, as it’s on a back street away from all the traffic around the old town.
That’s it for the moment. Tomorrow is our last day in France, before we head back into Spain. We are staying in Hondarribia, which is just over the border and right beside Biarritz. We’ll give another update from there.
France is very much the kissing nation, with everybody kissing each other on each cheek whenever they greet, sometimes the waiters even greeted their customers with the two cheek kiss, which is completely different to Spain. Also unlike Spain, the locals do not wear shorts at all and the only people who were wearing shorts were the tourists. It might seem very sophisticated to wear long pants all the time, but when the temperature is in the high 30’s, it must also be quite unbearable at times.
The wind has been getting up a wee bit today, which is a pleasant relief, although it did catch the locals out as a couple of umbrellas sent a table full of glasses smashing to the ground. Retrieving and putting right the umbrellas involved smashing another table full of glasses as the man rectifying the umbrella lost control of it in another gust of wind. Along with a further tray of glasses that got broken when a waiter dropped them, it wasn’t a good day to be a glass in Carcassonne.
Bad news on the hot police front. Anne has seen the French version and they just don’t rate the way the Spanish Police do. Like the Spanish Police, they carry an impressive array of hardware on their belts, but within those belts are nylon track pants and polo shirts, with no evidence of hats of any sort. It was a sad let down for her and although she tried her best to conceal her disappointment, the little down turned mouth and pouty lips gave away the grief that she was feeling inside – but I jest.
Tomorrow is laundry day – not usually a highlight, except that last time had some dramas and I forgot to mention that we had bought some detergent from the supermarket the day before we went to the Laundromat. Well we thought we had bought some detergent. It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel room and got out our phrase books that we discovered that what we had bought was a packet of decalcifying tablets. I swear to you, that to Anne and I it looked just like a packet of Persil, and I’m sure the things around it were laundry detergent. Anyway, Anne said to me today as we walked past a supermarket “shall I go in and buy some laundry detergent for tomorrow”. My look was enough to tell her that the packets that are dispensed at the Laundromat will be just fine.
On the money for nothing front, we had been getting free internet in the hotels since Barcelona, although here in Carcassonne, we have had to pay 10 Euros for 3 non-continuous hours. I noticed today as we walked past that McDonalds has Free and unlimited WiFi in Carcassonne, so I’ll keep my eye out to see if that is standard at all their restaurants. Parking has been the big ticket money for nothing item, with us paying 24 Euros per day in Tossa and then 17 Euros per day in Girona – it’s back to being free in Carcassonne, so it seems you either get one or the other for nothing.
We’ve just got back from Dinner (I wrote everything before this in the bar at the hotel) and had another fabulous meal in the restaurant right next door to the one from last night – it’s a quiet part of town. Anne had the Foie Gras, the duck confit and a Paris Brest , while I had Goat’s cheese salad with strips of cured duck, duck confit and a Crème Brule.
We’re really pleased with the hotel we are staying in, which is about 200m from the old city. It’s not a huge room, but has a very nice bathroom and the dining room, bar and gardens are great. It’s also very quiet, as it’s on a back street away from all the traffic around the old town.
That’s it for the moment. Tomorrow is our last day in France, before we head back into Spain. We are staying in Hondarribia, which is just over the border and right beside Biarritz. We’ll give another update from there.
Week 2 – Wednesday 9th July – Carcassonne
We awoke this morning to watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona on TV again today. It’s become something of a morning feature to see who gets it in the daily stampede. Advice to anyone planning on doing it would be to avoid the outside of the corners, as the bulls seem to take a wide line and sometimes fall over on the outside of the turn. It’s certainly where people seem to stumble and fall most often as well, so it can be a bit of an accident black spot. The most viewed mishap this morning was the man lying spread eagled face down in the middle of the street. Who would have picked that the bulls hoof would have landed right between his legs – amazing pinpoint accuracy. The paramedic with his clip board was interviewed soon afterwards to find out the days tally, but of course, being in Spanish we couldn’t understand a word of it. These guys must get on the cover of Paramedics Monthly, as they are the stars of the after match show and sometimes we even get to see them outside the hospital.
The other night when we were in Tossa, we were given one of the local specialties a Crème Catalan. It’s a vanilla equivalent of a baileys and was very yummy. Well worth a try for something a bit different if you get a chance.
Today we left Girona and headed to France for 3 days. On the way we stopped off at the town of Figeures, which is the birth place of Salvador Dali and the home now of the Dali Theatre-Museum. Figeures seemed like a medium sized modern town, but after we’d parked the car and had gone for a walk into the town centre, the older part of town opened up to have the usual character of so many European towns, with a large central Rambla and lots of little single lane cobbled streets.
The museum itself was conceived in 1961 when the mayor asked Dali for a painting as a donation for the local museum. Dali replied that he would give them an entire museum, which was then begun in 1970 and opened in 1974. It was developed and changed until the artists death in 1989.
It’s an amazing building both in terms of the exterior decoration and the size and variety of the collection inside. We spent a couple of hours at the museum and like Picasso, from our perspective anyway, Dali is known for one particular type of art, but when you visit the museum you get to see the full breadth of the work that he undertook over a very long career. I’ve included some photos in the blog to give you some idea of some of the art we saw there.
Upon leaving Figeures, we typed the address of the hotel in Carcassonne into Jane (TomTom GPS) and headed off on the motorway to France. I apologise to all of you suffering through the New Zealand winter, but 37 degrees really is too hot to be driving with the roof down, but that’s what we did for the 150 odd ks from Figeures to Carcassonne. Jane estimated that we would get to the hotel at 3:14 and we got there within two minutes of that time, which is easily accounted for by the stops at motorway pay stations. Jane delivered us to the door without any fuss, so we were very pleased and although we still like to keep an eye on where she is leading us, it does make navigating a painless experience. Anne still acts as a second set of eyes on the road (and on the speed limit signs), which is great (grate). With a speed limit of 130 on the motorway, it’s only a minor grate and don’t let me understate the value that Anne adds to driving, with the way she does keep her eyes on things and points out any obstacles or things that I might have missed. When you are driving on the wrong side of the road, the extra help really is Great!
We haven’t been to Carcassonne since we visited with Mum and Dad when we were living in the UK back in the early 90’s. Last time we were here was in May and it was a charming medieval town with few tourists. This time it is tourist central and there is a month long music festival, with a different act on each night. There are some big names – Diana Ross, Deep Purple, ZZ Top and tonight, Pete Hodgson of Super Tramp was playing. We went for a wander round the restaurants and after initially selecting one, but deciding we didn’t like it once we had sat down, we settled for a nice little restaurant with only about 10 tables outside in a quiet part of town well away from the main square. I had the Gazpacho and Anne had a Goat’s cheese salad for entrees and then Anne had the scallops and I had the duck for main, finishing off with a Crème Brule for Anne and the poached pear in chocolate and whipped cream for me – yum.
The other night when we were in Tossa, we were given one of the local specialties a Crème Catalan. It’s a vanilla equivalent of a baileys and was very yummy. Well worth a try for something a bit different if you get a chance.
Today we left Girona and headed to France for 3 days. On the way we stopped off at the town of Figeures, which is the birth place of Salvador Dali and the home now of the Dali Theatre-Museum. Figeures seemed like a medium sized modern town, but after we’d parked the car and had gone for a walk into the town centre, the older part of town opened up to have the usual character of so many European towns, with a large central Rambla and lots of little single lane cobbled streets.
The museum itself was conceived in 1961 when the mayor asked Dali for a painting as a donation for the local museum. Dali replied that he would give them an entire museum, which was then begun in 1970 and opened in 1974. It was developed and changed until the artists death in 1989.
It’s an amazing building both in terms of the exterior decoration and the size and variety of the collection inside. We spent a couple of hours at the museum and like Picasso, from our perspective anyway, Dali is known for one particular type of art, but when you visit the museum you get to see the full breadth of the work that he undertook over a very long career. I’ve included some photos in the blog to give you some idea of some of the art we saw there.
Upon leaving Figeures, we typed the address of the hotel in Carcassonne into Jane (TomTom GPS) and headed off on the motorway to France. I apologise to all of you suffering through the New Zealand winter, but 37 degrees really is too hot to be driving with the roof down, but that’s what we did for the 150 odd ks from Figeures to Carcassonne. Jane estimated that we would get to the hotel at 3:14 and we got there within two minutes of that time, which is easily accounted for by the stops at motorway pay stations. Jane delivered us to the door without any fuss, so we were very pleased and although we still like to keep an eye on where she is leading us, it does make navigating a painless experience. Anne still acts as a second set of eyes on the road (and on the speed limit signs), which is great (grate). With a speed limit of 130 on the motorway, it’s only a minor grate and don’t let me understate the value that Anne adds to driving, with the way she does keep her eyes on things and points out any obstacles or things that I might have missed. When you are driving on the wrong side of the road, the extra help really is Great!
We haven’t been to Carcassonne since we visited with Mum and Dad when we were living in the UK back in the early 90’s. Last time we were here was in May and it was a charming medieval town with few tourists. This time it is tourist central and there is a month long music festival, with a different act on each night. There are some big names – Diana Ross, Deep Purple, ZZ Top and tonight, Pete Hodgson of Super Tramp was playing. We went for a wander round the restaurants and after initially selecting one, but deciding we didn’t like it once we had sat down, we settled for a nice little restaurant with only about 10 tables outside in a quiet part of town well away from the main square. I had the Gazpacho and Anne had a Goat’s cheese salad for entrees and then Anne had the scallops and I had the duck for main, finishing off with a Crème Brule for Anne and the poached pear in chocolate and whipped cream for me – yum.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Week 2 – Tuesday 8th July– Sightseeting in the Girona Countryside
We’re staying in a modern hotel in the new part of Girona, which is about 50m from the bridge to the old part of town, so very handy. It’s nicely decorated, but the sound proofing is slightly worse than your average nylon tent and you need to put on thermals if the aircon is set below 24 degrees. I kid you not, it was set to 24 last night and we had to put on a blanket. Other than that, it has an amazing shower (the head is about the size of a medium sized frying pan – I kid you not) and there weren’t too many noises in the night.
Today we’ve gone out and bought a GPS – a TomTom One, with maps of all Western Europe pre-loaded. Anne’s a great navigator, but with just a map, it means she never gets a break, so this will make things a bit easier. We’ve used it for todays sightseeing and it worked well, although you wouldn’t bet the house on it always being right. Nonetheless, with a little bit of attention we got to where we wanted to go. The womans who is “the voice” is called Jane and she’s English. Apparently you can download voices such as John Cleese. I think I’ll see if I can get a Felicity (English Upper Class) or Helga (German, bossy and domineering – in 150 metres you VILL turn right).
Heading out of Girona, our first stop was a small town called Besalu. A quaint little market town (there was a market in front on the church), with an 13th century arched bridge across the river. It was nice to be in a really small town, with no crowds. We are slowly working our way down to the small country towns that we like to do most of our sightseeing in. It’s been a gradual come down from Barcelona (big and bustling) to Tossa (Small and bustling) to Girona (medium sized and pretty quiet) to finally Besalu.
From Besalu we went to Castellfollit de La Roc – an even smaller town built on top of a large basalt rock. The town church is situated right at the end of the rock at the top of a high cliff. The town is currently undergoing extensive rejuvenation, starting at the church and working backwards. So far, they have done about half the town and are now completely rebuilding the main street, which currently looks more like a moonscape – completely dug up.
From Castellfollit, we drove through Olot to Santa de Pau, before returning to Girona to watch some of the time trial for the Tour De France and are now having our sangria. If the mediteranean protects against heart disease, they must surely be dropping dead from lung cancer. We’re sitting beside two young woman (20’s) who have been chain smoking for the last hour. That’s the great thing about being outside all the time. You get a small whiff of the smoke before it is blown on.
Anyway, tomorrow we hit the road to France, where we are staying in Carcassonne for 3 days. Talk soon.
Today we’ve gone out and bought a GPS – a TomTom One, with maps of all Western Europe pre-loaded. Anne’s a great navigator, but with just a map, it means she never gets a break, so this will make things a bit easier. We’ve used it for todays sightseeing and it worked well, although you wouldn’t bet the house on it always being right. Nonetheless, with a little bit of attention we got to where we wanted to go. The womans who is “the voice” is called Jane and she’s English. Apparently you can download voices such as John Cleese. I think I’ll see if I can get a Felicity (English Upper Class) or Helga (German, bossy and domineering – in 150 metres you VILL turn right).
Heading out of Girona, our first stop was a small town called Besalu. A quaint little market town (there was a market in front on the church), with an 13th century arched bridge across the river. It was nice to be in a really small town, with no crowds. We are slowly working our way down to the small country towns that we like to do most of our sightseeing in. It’s been a gradual come down from Barcelona (big and bustling) to Tossa (Small and bustling) to Girona (medium sized and pretty quiet) to finally Besalu.
From Besalu we went to Castellfollit de La Roc – an even smaller town built on top of a large basalt rock. The town church is situated right at the end of the rock at the top of a high cliff. The town is currently undergoing extensive rejuvenation, starting at the church and working backwards. So far, they have done about half the town and are now completely rebuilding the main street, which currently looks more like a moonscape – completely dug up.
From Castellfollit, we drove through Olot to Santa de Pau, before returning to Girona to watch some of the time trial for the Tour De France and are now having our sangria. If the mediteranean protects against heart disease, they must surely be dropping dead from lung cancer. We’re sitting beside two young woman (20’s) who have been chain smoking for the last hour. That’s the great thing about being outside all the time. You get a small whiff of the smoke before it is blown on.
Anyway, tomorrow we hit the road to France, where we are staying in Carcassonne for 3 days. Talk soon.
Lyrics to My Shrona – The Knack
Oo my little pretty one, pretty one
When you gonna give me some time, Sharona?
Oo you make my motor run, my motor run
Gun it coming off of the line, Sharona
Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind
I always get it up with a touch of the younger kind
My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma my Sharona
Come a little closer, over here
Close enough to look in my eyes, Sharona
Keep a little mystery, kissin' me
Runnin' down the length of my thigh, Sharona
Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind
I always get it up from a touch of the younger kind
My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma my Sharona
Ma ma ma my Sharona
When ya gonna get to me, get to me
Is it just a matter of time, Sharona
Is it a destiny, a destiny
Or is it just a game in my mind, Sharona
Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind
I always get it up from a touch of the younger kind
My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma
Myee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma my Sharona
Ooooh my Sharona
When you gonna give me some time, Sharona?
Oo you make my motor run, my motor run
Gun it coming off of the line, Sharona
Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind
I always get it up with a touch of the younger kind
My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma my Sharona
Come a little closer, over here
Close enough to look in my eyes, Sharona
Keep a little mystery, kissin' me
Runnin' down the length of my thigh, Sharona
Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind
I always get it up from a touch of the younger kind
My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma my Sharona
Ma ma ma my Sharona
When ya gonna get to me, get to me
Is it just a matter of time, Sharona
Is it a destiny, a destiny
Or is it just a game in my mind, Sharona
Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind
I always get it up from a touch of the younger kind
My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma
Myee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
Ma ma ma my Sharona
Ooooh my Sharona
Week 2 – Monday 7th July – Girona
We awoke this morning to discover that the running of the bulls at Pamplona was being shown on TV. The running occurs every morning at 8am, and it would appear that it is shown on TV each morning. We caught it yesterday at about 10:50a.m. and thought that it was in the preparatory stages, because there were lots of people standing around throwing sangria all over each other, but because we don’t speak Spanish, we couldn’t tell if people were getting ready to do the run, or were drinking to celebrate that they’d completed it. Anyway, this morning we found out that it is run at 8am in the morning, so we turned on the TV to watch it, which we’ve now done. Lots of people, several bulls, people falling over, bulls falling over, some injuries – one bull hurt his hoof, some people injured worse than that, 800m run through narrow streets into the bull ring, bulls ushered out of the ring by matadors, people stand around and get drunk. The highlight of the aftermatch (or aftermath) is interviewing the ambulance officers about the injuries – don’t tell OSH about this event – it really is Bull Rush.
We had breakfast at the hotel, which was a laugh as Anne got caught in the door on the way out to the terrace and spilt the coffee and the juice all over the floor. I was sitting outside blogging, wondering why my breakfast was taking so long to be delivered.
After breakfast, we checked out, got in the car and headed to Girona, where we are staying for the next two days. It’s only a short drive so we were there just after 12. All through planning the holiday and on the way to Girona, Anne would break into the words of My Sharona by the Knack, whenever was mentioned. In order for you to experience life in my world, I have attached the lyrics to the song, so you can create the mood for yourself. Just substitute the word Girona, wherever Sharona appears.
Girona is a smallish university town with a river running through it. The old part of the town is on one side of the river and the new part is on the other. The old part is a combination of quaint old streets, chique designer shops and some historic buildings such as the church. There is a religious music festival on at the moment and they have built a stage facing the cathedral steps, and then set up rows of chairs on the steps, so it creates an awesome outdoor theatre. After a lengthy walk around the old town, we had a Menu Del Dia lunch at a restaurant. Menu Del Dia (Menu of the Day) is a Franco hangover, whereby he insisted that everybody should be able to get an affordable meal each day, so the restaurants have to put on a cheap lunch menu where you get a choice for each of 3 courses – entrée, main and dessert, bread, water and a half bottle caraf of wine. The Menu Del Dia’s range from as little as 8 Euros up to about 15 Euros.
During our siesta, we took in some of stage 3 of the Tour De France, then went out for dinner. As we weren’t particularly hungry, we confined dinner to a litre and a half of sangria spread over a couple of outdoor restaurants on La Rambla and at one of the nearby Placa’s. So as to not look like complete soaks, we limit ourselves to a jug of sangria per restaurant, so if you aren’t completely satisfied with one, you up sticks and move to another restaurant suitably out of sight of the first one. Fortunately, you hit a limit as to how many times you can do this before it’s obvious you are a complete soak, so we toddle off home before we get to that limit.
I’ve been writing this on Tuesday evening over a sangria at another courtyard restaurant in one of the small Placa’s and a guy has come along and started playing a metal drum, called a hang dram – it’s like a covered in wok, but it makes the most amazing sound. We’ve been getting lots of musicians in Girona – in just over a day and a half, we’ve had two saxaphonists, a piano accordion player and now this percussionist. I’d better put my hand in my pocket for some coins for him.
The Sangria comes in either half or litre jugs, with lots of fruit and ice and a wooden spoon. The wooden spoon, as well as for stirring is also jammed against the spout of the jug when you pour it, to keep all the non liquid contents in the jug – just so you know.
We had breakfast at the hotel, which was a laugh as Anne got caught in the door on the way out to the terrace and spilt the coffee and the juice all over the floor. I was sitting outside blogging, wondering why my breakfast was taking so long to be delivered.
After breakfast, we checked out, got in the car and headed to Girona, where we are staying for the next two days. It’s only a short drive so we were there just after 12. All through planning the holiday and on the way to Girona, Anne would break into the words of My Sharona by the Knack, whenever was mentioned. In order for you to experience life in my world, I have attached the lyrics to the song, so you can create the mood for yourself. Just substitute the word Girona, wherever Sharona appears.
Girona is a smallish university town with a river running through it. The old part of the town is on one side of the river and the new part is on the other. The old part is a combination of quaint old streets, chique designer shops and some historic buildings such as the church. There is a religious music festival on at the moment and they have built a stage facing the cathedral steps, and then set up rows of chairs on the steps, so it creates an awesome outdoor theatre. After a lengthy walk around the old town, we had a Menu Del Dia lunch at a restaurant. Menu Del Dia (Menu of the Day) is a Franco hangover, whereby he insisted that everybody should be able to get an affordable meal each day, so the restaurants have to put on a cheap lunch menu where you get a choice for each of 3 courses – entrée, main and dessert, bread, water and a half bottle caraf of wine. The Menu Del Dia’s range from as little as 8 Euros up to about 15 Euros.
During our siesta, we took in some of stage 3 of the Tour De France, then went out for dinner. As we weren’t particularly hungry, we confined dinner to a litre and a half of sangria spread over a couple of outdoor restaurants on La Rambla and at one of the nearby Placa’s. So as to not look like complete soaks, we limit ourselves to a jug of sangria per restaurant, so if you aren’t completely satisfied with one, you up sticks and move to another restaurant suitably out of sight of the first one. Fortunately, you hit a limit as to how many times you can do this before it’s obvious you are a complete soak, so we toddle off home before we get to that limit.
I’ve been writing this on Tuesday evening over a sangria at another courtyard restaurant in one of the small Placa’s and a guy has come along and started playing a metal drum, called a hang dram – it’s like a covered in wok, but it makes the most amazing sound. We’ve been getting lots of musicians in Girona – in just over a day and a half, we’ve had two saxaphonists, a piano accordion player and now this percussionist. I’d better put my hand in my pocket for some coins for him.
The Sangria comes in either half or litre jugs, with lots of fruit and ice and a wooden spoon. The wooden spoon, as well as for stirring is also jammed against the spout of the jug when you pour it, to keep all the non liquid contents in the jug – just so you know.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Day 8 – Sunday 6th July –Tossa De Mar
I’m sitting outside in the restaurant in Tossa De Mar having breakfast. No oddities in the restaurant this morning – no matching / counter matching families, no tubby chicks wanting two meals. (just to elaborate on the tubbies, they were a bunch of middle aged women on a hen’s weekend - I didn’t’ get what number trot up the aisle it was. They were all universally unhappy with their husbands and having to send instructive texts to them about how to cope in their absence).
The weather is much cooler today (Tuesday), with some high cloud. I’m expecting it will burn off, as the weather map that I saw on TV before we came down to breakfast showed the entirety of Spain covered in sun. There also appears to be much fewer people around today, as a lot of people were just here for the weekend and have now headed back to Girona or Barcelona, or wherever.
Much to our amazement we discovered that Breakfast is included in the price of our hotel. We were surprised, because this no longer appears to be the norm and it’s usually an optional extra – might be for people booking over the internet, I don’t know. We’re also surprised because this is the cheapest hotel we are staying in on the whole trip. Another good thing, is the hotel has free wifi internet, so that brings the average down a bit. An offset is the 24 Euros per day price for public parking in Tossa – a 15 minute walk away – ouch.
After a leisurely breakfast, we went for a long walk around the narrow windy streets (that’s windy as in twisty, not windy as in Wellington. Although Wellington is a popular brand of beach umbrella here, so maybe it gets windy also – but I digress). The day is a real scorcher – mid 30’s again, so it was good to get some shelter from the sun from the high buildings that line both sides of the street. We walked up the castle to get a good view of the Tossa beach and all the thousands of beach umbrellas on it.
For lunch we had ham and Melon, marinated salmon, and a Brandatta of cod. After lunch, we went for a drive along the cliff top road that runs along the Costa Brava from Lloret de Mar (a very large tourist resort) to Palamos, via Tossa De Mar, Sant Feliu de Guixois and Platja d’Aro. It was a fun drive with lots of twists and turns and several very nice view points, which we stopped at. After Palamos, the road turned inland to Palafrugell and then back out to the coast to the small town of Llafranc. Llafranc was the other town that we had planned to stay at, before we settled for Tossa. Llafranc is a very pretty town, smaller than Tossa De Mar and a bit more expensive too.
After a walk around Llafranc, we got back on the road to Tossa at about 7:30 on a Sunday night. Hmmmm. Not our best work. Tossa and all the small towns on the Costa Brava are the Spanish equivalent of the Kapiti Coast and the roads and motorways on a Sunday night are the Spanish equivalent of the Plimmerton round about. It had been our intention to travel back on the motorway, but we soon hit a major tailback there, so we cut in land onto the back roads, but didn’t fare much better there after. We finally got back to Tossa at about 9:30. Because the Spanish eat so late, that was no problem, so we settled down for a meal of Paella with noodles and Sangria. There was no late night entertainment on tonight and no outdoor soccer, so after taking some night shots of the castle, we retired to bed
The weather is much cooler today (Tuesday), with some high cloud. I’m expecting it will burn off, as the weather map that I saw on TV before we came down to breakfast showed the entirety of Spain covered in sun. There also appears to be much fewer people around today, as a lot of people were just here for the weekend and have now headed back to Girona or Barcelona, or wherever.
Much to our amazement we discovered that Breakfast is included in the price of our hotel. We were surprised, because this no longer appears to be the norm and it’s usually an optional extra – might be for people booking over the internet, I don’t know. We’re also surprised because this is the cheapest hotel we are staying in on the whole trip. Another good thing, is the hotel has free wifi internet, so that brings the average down a bit. An offset is the 24 Euros per day price for public parking in Tossa – a 15 minute walk away – ouch.
After a leisurely breakfast, we went for a long walk around the narrow windy streets (that’s windy as in twisty, not windy as in Wellington. Although Wellington is a popular brand of beach umbrella here, so maybe it gets windy also – but I digress). The day is a real scorcher – mid 30’s again, so it was good to get some shelter from the sun from the high buildings that line both sides of the street. We walked up the castle to get a good view of the Tossa beach and all the thousands of beach umbrellas on it.
For lunch we had ham and Melon, marinated salmon, and a Brandatta of cod. After lunch, we went for a drive along the cliff top road that runs along the Costa Brava from Lloret de Mar (a very large tourist resort) to Palamos, via Tossa De Mar, Sant Feliu de Guixois and Platja d’Aro. It was a fun drive with lots of twists and turns and several very nice view points, which we stopped at. After Palamos, the road turned inland to Palafrugell and then back out to the coast to the small town of Llafranc. Llafranc was the other town that we had planned to stay at, before we settled for Tossa. Llafranc is a very pretty town, smaller than Tossa De Mar and a bit more expensive too.
After a walk around Llafranc, we got back on the road to Tossa at about 7:30 on a Sunday night. Hmmmm. Not our best work. Tossa and all the small towns on the Costa Brava are the Spanish equivalent of the Kapiti Coast and the roads and motorways on a Sunday night are the Spanish equivalent of the Plimmerton round about. It had been our intention to travel back on the motorway, but we soon hit a major tailback there, so we cut in land onto the back roads, but didn’t fare much better there after. We finally got back to Tossa at about 9:30. Because the Spanish eat so late, that was no problem, so we settled down for a meal of Paella with noodles and Sangria. There was no late night entertainment on tonight and no outdoor soccer, so after taking some night shots of the castle, we retired to bed
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
