Last weekend I went to see the Basque country. Valentina wanted to go to Salamanca but I convinced her to come along and see the Pyrennes and San Sebastian, she wasn´t disappointed. The mountain towns and valleys were very beautiful and everything was extremely green. We ended up going up through Roncal Valley going through the Piedra de San Martin Pass entering France. Heading west, to reach the next pass, we reached Larrau and hiked to a suspension bridge which was quite impressive. We entered Spain again through Larrau Pass and headed for Pamplona. I´m not sure which is more difficult, the French pronuciation or the Basque, at least reading French I could more or less figure out what it was saying. Next stop was Estella and San Fausto for a little bit of rockclimbing. Sunday evening we ended up in San Sebastian to attend a little evangelical church. We went out to dinner afterward with a friendly group from the church. The beach/bay at San Sebastian gives the city its feel and has the ´wind combs´ sculptures by Chillida.
Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona
Monday we went west along the coast and ended up in Gernika for a menú del dia. We joined tables with a talkative, well-travelled Irish couple in their 70´s. My first plate was a whole pot of red beans with sausage which I had no hope of finishing but which was delicious, next I had the cod in the traditional red sauce, with flan for desert. Next we went to the woods near Oma to see some colorful artwork by Basque artist Agustin Ibarrola. Hiking through the woods I was excited to find a mountain bike trail with jumps and dropoffs. The art is in the middle of a forest and is made up of groups of painted tree trunks. Then we hit the road for Alcañiz stopping briefly in Vitoria and arriving at home at 2:30 in the morning.
Bosque de Oma
2 comments:
so the you´re saying the highlight of your trip to see me was that you could use my internet, huh? i see how it is. . .
-amy
..i'd say the highlight of this post is the fact that Amy actually participated in the blog called 'Phillip AND AMY'!! Now that we know you have a laptop Amy, we'll be expecting some of those well-managed photos to be showing up on here...
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