We had no idea all of this was happening back in the city, as we were happily wandering the streets of Bilbao, despite the rain and wind and moments of hail. Highlights include:
-the Guggenheim Museum for its architecture and modern art exhibits
-a market along the river with delicious cheeses and grilled meats
Snapping pics of the spider outside the Guggenheim
We planned to couchsurf as much of the trip as possible, as Janel and Leah had gushed on its benefits: it’s cheap, you get to meet people from the city you’re visiting, and it’s really pretty safe, especially if you’re traveling with other people. In Bilbao Janel and I stayed just outside of the city in Trapagarán with a lovely engineering student who has actually been to South Haven. She’s the first Spaniard (well, Basque) I’ve met who has visited Michigan. (OK, so it was on her way to Canada - flights were cheaper into Chicago so she and her boyfriend camped their way up the coast of Lake Michigan, but still.) And she wants to make the trip again, so I’m hoping to return the hospitality.
After Bilbao, we took a bus to San Sebastian - Donostia, where I learned to love mushrooms. Before, I would eat them, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so. In San Sebastian, lunch was volovanes de champis al foie and dinner was a series of pintxos (Northern Spain’s version of tapas, little munchies to enjoy with una copa o caña), my favorites being a stack of grilled mushrooms with the obligatory Spanish ham on bread and a stuffed mushroom topped with a fried quail egg.
Fancy pintxos
Though we stayed in a hotel in SS, while pintxo hopping we met a group of couchsurfers from the city, and one of them offered to show us around Hondoarribia, a fishing village nearby, the next day. We ended up spending the day driving up and down the coast, getting all the way up to Biarritz in France, and enjoying an amazing meal in a cider house in the middle of nowhere. We ordered crab stuffed peppers, a shrimp dish, and a slab of steak to share, and the cook (being our guide’s brother-in-law) sent us out appetizers of ham (of course) and foie with honey and butter. Delicious. We left stuffed.
Hondoarribia
On our way from SS to Logroño, we met up with Sam and Leah’s next couchsurfer and spent a day wandering Vitoria, the capital of País Vasco, where I had my only bad moment of the entire trip, and spent an hour with the worst abdominal pain of my life curled up on the floor of a spare exhibit room in the art museum. Luckily Leah had 600 mg pills of ibuprofen on her. (This is what Spanish pharmacies sell you when you ask for ibuprofen -- sure, it’s a bit much for your general aches and pains maybe, but great to have on hand for emergencies such as this.) After making sure I wasn’t dying, the other girls got to tour the museum, and by the time it closed for siesta, I was well enough to walk around, and it was warm enough to eat ice cream in a plaza.
Murals in Vitoria: Libertad de expresión. Libros y escuelas. (Freedom of expression. Books and schools.)
When we got into Logroño, we went out for wine (as La Rioja is known for its vineyards, and one of our couchsurfer’s pisomates is studying to become a wine expert) and more pintxos. We toured a bodega the next day and tasted their wines, but we’d had better the night before.
Can you see the vineyard through the window behind me? Beautiful.
That night our couchsurfer and her other pisomates, on study abroad from Poland, wanted to take Janel and I out to show us all of the best bars in Logroño, and made us promise to taste calimocho, red wine mixed with Coke. By no means am I a food or beverage snob, but no. Just say no. Spanish wine on its own is far better and just as cheap. And after a packed six days of traveling, Janel and I didn’t last long out with the girls.
We had an earlyish bus to catch back to Bilbao in the morning, and spent a lazy afternoon there eating and tomando café before making our flight back to Madrid. We even made it to the airport with enough time to switch to an earlier flight.
And now I’m trying to check off my to-do list all of the things I want to get done before my family gets here in 11 days! That’s six more days of teaching, and one more weekend. I’ve got a place for them to stay in my building, and we’ll spend Cory’s birthday and Christmas in Madrid before going to Rome. Then the day after they leave, Trevor gets here, and we’ll be off to Barcelona and Amsterdam before I go back to school. I’m going to be spending a lot more time in the airport.
