Allie in the north of Spain

March 01, 2011

This weekend Jose and I took advantage of yet another day off of work for a holiday in order to plan a trip to the north of Spain. We left Friday afternoon, spent the night in Malaga and flew out early on Saturday morning. We arrived in Bilboa and caught a bus to San Sebastian where we met up with two of Jose´s friends from when he studied abroad, Ibon and Arantxa (which are Basque names). Even though it was cold and raining on and off the whole day, we spent a few hours touring the city, riding the funicular up a hill to see the views as well as the creepily delapidated amusement park at the top and later trying pintxos which are this region´s answer to the tapa.

Pinxtos

When we walked into the first bar at lunch time, our eyes lit up. The entire bar was covered in deliciousness in snack sized versions. We tried skewers of shrimp, bacon and goodness, grilled things and fried things, nomnomnomnom. Later that night we went to a sidreria which is a restaurant that makes its own cider and serves a hearty meal to go with it. The sidreria makes the cider and then stores it in giant wooden barrels. You get a glass, they open a hole in a cask and you stand in line to get your cider from a stream that is shooting out before it hits the floor.

At the sidreria

This sidreria was family owned and a very mustachioed dad was in charge of opening the holes in the barrels. He was quite intimidating and I felt a lot of pressure to make sure not a drop of cider hit the floor. I psyched myself up and when it was finally my turn, shoved my glass under the stream of what looked and smelled a lot like pee (when in Rome I guess). Needless to say, I splattered cider all over my hand and feet. Thank God for rain boots that I hadn´t taken off from earlier that day. All in all, my first fill was a success. The cider itself was alcoholic and sweet but I still would prefer beer. In any case, we also ate the traditional sidreria meal which consisted of a huge omelette, followed by cod with peppers and then a gigantic slab of rare meat. In the south of Spain we don´t eat a lot of red meat so this enormous hunk of bleeding beef was welcomed. Overall, an interesting experience.
What was even more curious though, was being in the Basque Country with Basque people. I guess, like everyone else, I had my preconceived notions about what it would be like and in some ways I was right. Yes there was a pretty obvious presence of ETA-esque propaganda and flags but I never once felt unsafe, though I asked a lot of questions about the meanings of words and symbols. Both of Jose´s friends spoke Euskera (the Basque language) but we never once spoke politics. They were great people and even better hosts.

The next day we caught a bus to Pamplona to see our friend Manu and his girlfriend Lucia. We spent another rainy day sight-seeing. We walked the track where they have the annual running of the bulls, saw an awesome castle (my favorite thus far in Spain where you can´t swing a dead cat without hitting one as my mom would say), had a coffee in the same place that Hemingway would hang out and ate more pintxos. All in all another great day.

Pamplona in the rain

Olite castle. Beautiful and a great surprise!

On Monday morning we caught another bus to Bilboa where we wandered about until it was time to get our plane. Unfortunately, the museums including the Guggenheim were all closed (not that modern weirdo art is really my cup of tea). Instead of going in anywhere, we caught the tranvia to the center of the city to walk around. In Bilboa we experienced another day of rain, but like someone told me during this trip, for it to be that green, it has to rain. This is certainly true because the north of Spain is a lot more green than the south. However, rain does not a good vacation make and I would like to go back during the summer (after I have worked off all the calories I consumed over the weekend).