Apartamentos Granados Laredo

Our final day, and from Madrid it was off to Bilbao and the Guggenheim, followed by a night encamped at the ferry port.... Lym was STILL cooking, folks, even sat on the concrete of the ferry port... as our posh caravan neighbours came out in the morning to wish us good morning, shaking out their table cloth ...

Having disembarked the Pride of Bilbao, following our two day mini-cruise (the highlights of which were DVD horse races, bingo, Geordies on the lash and two memorable dining experiences at Langans Brasserie), we faced the delights of industrial Bilbao, which proved to be a fitting introduction to North Spain. Undaunted we headed to ...

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Bilbao, Spain

We've traveled for about 18 hours now and will arrive in Bilbao in a matter of minutes. Our trip from Albuquerque to Washington was pretty uneventful and, in fact, because of tremendous tailwinds made it about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight from DC to Munich was pretty uneventful as well (with the exception of about an hour of mild ...

Bilbao, the capital of Viscaya in the county, with the nice weather and climate that is milder than in most other parts of the peninsula, rarely falling below freezing in winter or rising above 35 degree C in summer.

One of the best features of this place is the collection of Museums that exhibit the artifacts that well ...

Leaving San Sebastian behind we drove to Santander to spend the night. With nothing more then the car, no place to stay and no plan. As luck turns out we found a cheap Pension to stay at, and ate in their quaint little restaurant, treated to warm hospitality, good food, and free Grappa and Lemonchelo

... the tube to head to camping Soplena. After the blow out in Ibiza we thought we'd keep it cheap and camp. The plan was to spend a few days here, then head to San Sebastien and then into France.

Camping Sopelana - DONT STAY HERE! Although the beach it is is AMAZING and beautiful, the campsite here is not. It's dirty, dirty, dirty and really ...

... opening and closing times is frustrating as can be. ARGH. On we go towards Miengo, but I see a cool looking town and we venture in to Orena. Another pit stop for the kids to play ... and we find an amazing medieval bridge that has been kept up/restored so well that its still able to be crossed with our car. Great fun. Back to Miengo for fun in the sun and me to work a bit. We run in to a traveling Billabong bus festival thing promoting Women's ...

... salads, great entrees of paella and a stuffed potato, and dessert. My chocolate/carrot cake with chocolate drizzle was one of the best desserts I have ever tasted, while Meredith's strawberries in yogurt were a fresh way to finish the meal. All of this was part of the fixed-price menu for 10.50 euros each (lunch being the main meal of the day, this was a very good deal). Not far from Bilbao's fine arts museum, we walked west to whet our artistic appetites for the next day's ...

... is so complex that you can easily forget where you are or what level you're on...you can also get lost as to where you enter/exit. I saw a neat painting that I liked. It was a large square canvas that had a top view of people walking around on a street. They were small in scale and there were lots of them all over the canvas, much like you would see if you were in a helicopter looking down at a city plaza. When ...

... time I felt the plane shake the **** out of me. We landed, made our way into town and hit the pinchos bars. Drinking all day was great as we didn't have far to go before we found our bed, as we were based in the old part of the city. Well, we tried to go to bed, but in the old parts of the town are where all the bars where these ****ing ****ed bloody Spanish like to drink. About 2 am in the morning, I couldn't take it any longer. We threw on our clothes and went and ...