Tuesday 26th November - The morning that Barry left ...

... for summertime. Yes, he's on his way back to NZ -  barbeques, swimming, sunshine, beer on the deck, (have one for me) family and friends. Oh, yes, and work! At this time he should be at Bilbao airport waiting for his flight to London where he'll have a a couple of nights with Emma and Sam before starting the long journey home on Thursday, with a 5 hour stop over in San Fransico, arriving back in Auckland early on Friday morning, NZ time. Well, I think it's Friday morning. I'm in a bar doing this and my diary is at the apartment so I can't check. Once we'd settled into our apartment, my school schedule and become comfortable in Azpeitia and then began going places, having visitors (wonderful) the time seemed to go very quickly and suddenly the 26 November is here.

Yes, I miss him, and yes I know he's only been gone a few hours, that's how it is.

We'd sorted out a pretty good, loose kind of routine here, walking to school, meeting up after school, stopping here and there for a beer and maybe a pintxo or two, he seemed to enjoy his domestic work and I certainly enjoyed not having to do any cooking, shopping, cleaning etc (I'm trying not to think too much about having to do it all myself now), talking about the things we'd like to do and places we'd like to see and he had got into walking 7 - 10kms every day and had lost a fair amount of weight which he is very happy about. So much nicer walking along the river in the countryside than along a footpath beside traffic. We had time to just be with each other because there simply wasn't the busyness which seems to be the reality of our lives in Auckland. It"s certainly food for thought - how we live our daily lives (talking only about me and Barry here) and what we choose to clutter it up with. 

Now it's up to me to make the best of my time here, and he'll be back at the end of March, and then we have lots more traveling to do and fun to have as well as enjoying being here in Azpeitia. I'm very happy to receive emails, ordinary mail, skype calls from anyone and everyone.  Probably I've been a little slack in the email writing department but now I'll make up for lost time.

Winter has well and truly arrived in Azpeitia and for most of the past week and a half it has been raining and cold, not heavy rain just an almost constant light rain, and now we understand why people here always carry an umbrella, so do we now, well, probably Barry won't be but I certainly will be. The river which runs through the town and has had hardly any water in it since we've been here, more like a little stream really, became a raging torrent from bank to bank and the sound of the rushing water was wonderful. The water was very brown at first but in the weekend it changed to clear green and it has gone down quite a lot now. The daytime temperature has been between 6° - 8° and last week Barry said that he saw snow on the hill behind the one next to us when he was out for his walk. I have no idea what the temperature is at night because I don't look to find out. There is no wind though which is a plus. This morning was a fabulous cold, blue sky and sunshine morning but there's no warmth in the sun and I think that the temperature is dropping. Soon I will have to go outside and then I'll surely feel it.

Yesterday I did a blog about Sunday with Emma and Brit but for some reason there was a problem publishing it. It still wasn't done this morning and in trying to find a solution and getting it published I managed to repost the previous one. So, I apologise for the repetition though I won't make any promises that such a thing won't happen again because I don't have any idea why this happened nor how to avoid it happening again. I can only hope that it doesn't.

I'll get blogging  about our time in Barcelona tomorrow, perhaps.  In the meantime I've got to go to the supermarket and then back to school for a couple of classes.

Sunday - the day we went to Vitoria

It was a fairly dismal day, weather-wise, but we went off in good spirits regardless. Although, I must confess, when I woke up I wasn't all that enthusiastic about walking around yet another city. It didn't seem such an attractive prospect. However, it turned put to be well worth while, both the city and the drive were interesting and we had fun. Even though it was a bit drizzly we could still see the countryside that we drove through.

Brit and Emma set their GPS to 'no motorways, no toll roads' which meant that we went along the back roads which took us up and over the hills and down through the valleys. There is an extensive motorway network over here and It's possible to drive from here to Madrid in 5 hours going on the motorway although they always seem to involve  toll roads. We all enjoyed the drive. Fortunately, Brit being Norwegian, is a 'wrong side of the road' driver and also, she loves to drive.  She was very comfortable behind the wheel and we just sat back and enjoyed the scenery. I think Emma had some navigating duties, particularly when the GPS, or 'the lady' as it was affectionately referred to, sworn at and then apologised to, seemed to be issuing odd instructions or turns were missed. 

The countryside was very green and was dotted with enormous farmhouses called baserri in Basque language. We wondered why they are so big but didn't really have any idea. We thought of animals, farm implements, a cidery as well as the family, possibly more than 1 all being housed under the one enormous roof. I have since read some interesting information on Wikipedia about them. I hope that I have a chance to visit one before I leave in June so I can see what they're like in real life.

  There is/was a lot of manufacturing in the Basque Country and factories seem to spread along the valley floors, sometimes they go for a long way, usually  beside a river. A lot of the factories are now closed as a result of the downturn in the economy. 

Some of the many farmhouses along the way.

  I'm not sure if this one is a farm house in the traditional sense but I liked the look of it. Even though it has what looks like a street light at the side of it it wasn't in a town. 

 

This photo is of a tiny village that we drove through. 

 and here they are with their trusty, little car. I took the previous photo from here. I can only imagine how beautiful this must look in the summer. I mean, the little village across the lake, not Barry standing beside the car!

We made it to Vitoria in good time. Emma and Brit were flying back to London from Bilbao at 7.30pm so we had to leave Vitoria in time to get back to Azpeitia and then on to Bilbao, drop the car at the car rental location and then to the check-in etc without being stressed about the time. 

Vitoria is actually called Vitoria-Gasteiz which is the Spanish and Basque name for this city of just over 242,000 people. It's the capital of the Alava province and the capital of The Basque Country. 

We didn't go into any museums, galleries, shops, etc. We got maps from the tourist office after first having coffee, and then we just walked around looking at different places and generally enjoying being there and enjoying each others company. We all liked the city and thought it had a really nice feel to it. 

One of the many churches, enormous as is usual!!

The big plaza from the steps at the end.

The right hand side of the plaza which leads into the town square

One of the buildings on the side of the city square, ex' means 'no' in Basque and ETA is the Basque nationalist and separatist group. I have no idea what this is about. The other banner on the right was about stopping violence against women. 

The tourist office is in through the doors in the middle of the photo. Barry, Emma and I were inside and realised that Brit wasn't with us. Emma went out but couldn't see her so I went to look just as Brit came walking along across the square waving out to me. I turned around to go back in and tell Emma and Barry that she's here but unbeknown to me, Barry had come out and was just to the side of me and as I turned he lifted his arm up to wave to Brit but connected with my nose instead. Of course, I let out a yell/howl/squawk, not sure how to describe the noise, maybe more than one, and put my hands to my face thinking that my nose would be bleeding for sure. Fortunately, the whack didn't cause a blood-nose but it did bloody hurt and tears were coming out of my eyes! In the meantime, the group of men on the right of the photo had moved off and were walking along the walkway in front of the tourist office and they all turned around to see what the noise was about and saw me with my hands on my face and tears coming down and one man came up and looked at me, I shrugged my shoulders (what else was there to do in the land of shoulder shrugging) and he turned and gave Barry a piece of his mind. We were standing under a banner protesting about violence against women after all! Then they all walked off.

We, on the other hand, thought that it was pretty funny, well, what the guy did was funny, my nose still hurt but that passed after a while - no blood and no black eyes the next day.

At one end of the city square there was a big group of people all ages trading 'cards', we don't know exactly what they're called but there a many different kinds and people collect them, I guess 

like some people collect stamps. Apparently Vitoria is a producer of playing cards and there is a museum called the Fournier Museum of Playing Cards which exhibits about 60,000 cards. We didn't worry about finding it.

At some point we realised that we could get onto the Camino de Santiago in the city so we set off to find it - this is the symbol of Camino de Santiago

Barry on the Camino de Santiago, you'll just have to take my word for it because I missed getting the symbol in the photo grrrr

Not far from the top of this road the walk went on up the hill and out of the city so we left it and wandered around some more and we found this guy

you can tell he's from Basque Country because he's got an umbrella. Everyone, from young children to the very old, carry umbrellas because it rains so much. We also have umbrellas that we carry with us every where. Never in my life have I used an umbrella so often!

Another plaza,  I love these open spaces in the cities and towns. Amazing public spaces.

We found Monty Python's parrot

 and some artwork. 

here, outside the main post office, we posted some postcard into the mouth on the left.

 a couple of geezers

These huge bells are being either made or restored as part of the restoration of one of the old chrches.

 

Another narrow 'pedestrian street', no traffic is bliss

  part of the city walls from Roman times. 

 A rather modern looking building. I don't know what it is and as it doesn't have any flags hanging off it I don't think it's a government building.

We eventually found our way back to the main part of town and had a lunch of pintxos and beer in 2 different bars as you do when you're in this part of the world and then it was time to find the car park and the car and hit the by-ways back to Azpeitia.

The trusty lady GPS got is out of Vitoria-Gasteiz and we were on our way. The rain set on quite heavily and the light was very gloomy as we climbed the hills and descended into the valleys so no photos. The terrain is very hilly, sometimes very steep with lots of the big farm houses but we didn't see many animals although I have been told that there are a lot of sheep here.

We were back in Azpeitia in good time and we bid farewell to Emma and Brit and then they were off To Bilbao, the airport and back to London.

All in all, another damn good weekend - thanks Emma and Brit. See you soon for Xmas.

On Wednesday afternoon we headed to San Sebastian-Donastia to catch the train to Barcelona for little 5 night 4 day holiday. And that's for another day.

a weekend with Emma and Brit

After our fabulous weekend in Zaragoza we were looking forward to Emma and Brit coming on Friday. They had arrived in Barcelona, Spain on the Saturday that we were in Zaragoza, and had a few days exploring Barcelona before taking the train to Bilbao where they picked up a rental car. They drove off to explore the wonders of La Rioja and then to wend their way to Azpeitia, Soreasu 2 where we were eagerly waiting. They finally came driving over the bridge and up our road.

It was so wonderful to see them and once they'd parked the car, got their bags and themselves up into our apartment we had a great time catching up. We finally got ourselves up and out to show them around 'our town'. Unfortunately, the weather had turned wintery and wet so we couldn't walk up to the Loiola Basilica and have an icecream in the park but we did take them to a couple of bars that we go to for pintxos and beer and then dinner and home to decide what we would do on Saturday.

The fact that they had a car and were insisting that we could go anywhere "we could drive to France" said Brit. "we could drive to France." WELL,YES WE CAN!!! IT'S ONE HOURS DRIVE AWAY WOO HOO LET'S GO TO FRANCE" I said. And that's what we did. 

We went to Bayonne, to be precise, which is about 20 minutes over the border - that is the non-existent border. We were looking out for a sign when Emma suddenly laughed and said that we were in France because the language all around us was no longer Basque/Spanish but French. Talk about an anticlimax - no stamp on our passport, only, eventually a little round sign on the side of the road, blue with the yellow stars around the outside (the EU flag) with France written across the middle of it. It was so small, just sitting on the roadside, that we'd gone past it before I could even get my camera in my hands, let alone take a photo. The same happened on the way back. I seem to be making a habit of missing the photos that I should have.

not sure if the flag is a good as a border sign

Anyway, we were all suitably excited about being in France, even though it was still drizzling.

We found our way to the Information Centre with car parking right outside the building. 

Armed with maps of the town and information about the things we should see off we went ... to the nearest cafe for a 'cafe au lait'. It was a very small cafe with only about 6 little tables although there were more tables outside on the footpath. After we'd finished we picked up our stuff and wandered off still feeling chuffed about having made it to France when suddenly we realised that people behind us were calling put, turned around to see the cafe owner running down the road after us. Yes, we'd walked out without paying. All the people sitting at tables along the footpath were having a good laugh, the cafe guy was too, luckily. Barry went back and paid up and off we went to explore.

One of the first things we commented on was the difference in the buildings from here to what we'd seen in The Basque Country or in Zaragoza. We couldn't put our finger on just what it was, something about the shutters, maybe, or the buildings were somehow lighter, maybe.

 some more buildings and a couple of my most favourite people.

 Some of the buildings looked rather rickety

 Not sure the what's going on with this roof

Some houses were very, very narrow

 

others were rather large and sturdy. This is a small,of part of a huge church - why are they so big?

 

Inside the cloisters were graves dating from the 1500s

  It seems as if someone's missing

and then we came to ....

Yes, Eden Park although not quite the Eden Park of our usual neighbourhood. There was also a castle, isn't there always, which was really old. I couldn't get a photo of all of it and the bits that I could get in a photo didn't do it justice so there is no photo of the castle but there is one of the plaque that was on a wall of the castle which gives a bit of an indication of the age, at least 900 years.

I realise that there are places and buildings and a tree or two which are older however I'm still impressed by being able to put my hands on things which have been around for soooooooo long and, what's more, this castle wasn't a ruin.

I just had to take a photo of this sign even though Emma wouldn't pose by her (almost) name

I really enjoyed walking around Bayonne but was struck by a rather curious thing. We'd left Spain and were in France but we were still in The Basque Country, the French part of The Basque Country. There were a lot of Basque souvenir shops, many, many more than I've seen in San Sebastian, and other references to being Basque.

All the while the temperature was dropping and it had got quite really cold by late afternoon so we decided to call it a day and wandered back to the car and then set off to 'the border'. We made it across, no one came to check if we had a car full of drugs or anything, not without going around in a few circles trying to get put of Bayonne, and so ended my first experience of France (without leaving Basque).  The rain set in and night arrived somewhere along the road well before we got home. The car park  at the back of our building was full so it was decided to try out the underground car park across the road from our place. There would be a cost but what else could we do so we left it there and went off to have dinner. 

The next day, Sunday, to our delight, the car park barrier was raised and we were able to drive out without having to pay. I hope a bill doesn't turn up somehow, sometime.

We drove to Vitoria, the capital, and that will have to wait until tomorrow because it os after midnight and I'm going to bed now.

Going to the village where Goya was born

Goya was born on March 30, 1746, in Fuendetodos, which is a little village about 50 minutes drive from Zaragoza going south and on November 3rd, 2013, we were on our way to visit Fuendetodos. The trip itself was uneventful but the countryside that we drove through was very interesting - so very dry with not a lot of greenery and no animals at all. Well, none that we could see. I took a few photos as we drove along but not many were any good. Actually, I didn't take many photos at all, no idea why not!  Here's a couple of the countryside

   

   

This photo was taken from opposite the village and the sign means 'the ruins of war'

I would have liked to investigate this further but we were short of time. Our bus was leaving Zaragoza at 3.30 so no time for dilly dallying.

 Sergio and Yolanda on the way to the carpark

  

The village from the road which goes past it and walking into the village is like going along a driveway and into someone's property, although there's a little dusty road and no gate. The houses are the same colour as the land.

The way to Goya's house was along to the right once inside of the village, there was another little road going up into the middle (I guess).  This photo was taken on the way, it is really a beautiful place

and then we saw this above the window of a house. This decoration was along the top of the house and according to the two women,who just happened to be going into the house as we were passing by, the house used to be the bakery. I did take a photo of the house but it wasn't very good.

and this. According to my translator 'obrador' means 'workshop'. It's on the side of the bakery.

the bigger version of the tiles

The street to his house just inside the village

  

going along the street is Yolanda

The restaurant next to Goya's house. It was closed so we couldn't eat there but, according to google, it's an interesting place to eat.

and .... the unbelievable thing is .... I don't have a photo of Goya's house!!!!! go figure that one! yes, I'm blushing, well, going faintly pink. 

Taking photos inside his house wasn't allowed but I can tell you that it was rather interesting to see inside such an old house, at least 267 years old. It was 2 floors high and the top floor was all one room. The cooking fireplace was enormous with bench seats along each side of it and pots hanging above it. It was sparsely furnished and seemed in good condition although the floors were on interesting slants. 

 Another old house in the village is a museum of Goya's drawings and pictures, a lot we'd seen in Zaragoza the day before at the Goya Exhibition. Which led me to ask, "where are the originals and how do we know if we are, or are not looking at them or at copies?" It was great to wander from little room to little room in a house to see them rather than in the huge, expansive art gallery spaces. 

I did have a copy of Goya's signature that Sergio got for us from the museum to frame and put on our wall at home. It is a very artistic signature! However, we managed to leave it on the bus and whoever found it didn't hand it into the lost property dept so we don't have that either and YES, I was really furious at myself for putting it into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of me, instead of in our bag. I hope that somehow we can get another one before we leave in June. 

We got back to Zaragoza in time to have a lunch of bocadillos which are huge lengths of bread sticks with a couple of different things inside like bacon and cheese or ham and capsicums, and of course a caña (beer). 

And then it was time to say goodbye once again to Sergio, Lourdes and Irene and be off to the bus station and goodbye, once again, to Yolanda and Jose Antonio and be on our way to San Sebastian and then to Azpeitia.

When we first went to The Basque Country we thought how much like NZ it is and didn't really take in the big difference between Aragon, the region where Zaragoza is, and The Basque Country where Azpeitia is, but going from the very green hills of The Basque Country to the very, very dry barren landscape of Aragon the difference between the two areas, for some reason, really hit us and we now understand why people in Zaragoza told us that The Basque Country is "very beautiful" when to us it's 'just like home'. Driving out to and then back from Fuendetodos we really got to see the dry desert region and I feel very lucky to have been there. Thanks heaps Zaragoza people.

A weekend of fun, friends and sun in Zaragoza 1 - 3 November

13/11/2013 Wednesday

hello/hola/kaixo from somewhere just outside of Barcelona. We're on the train, which is running about an hour late, so thought I'd use the opportunity to write some more 'blog'. It's now 10.50pm so it's rather dark outside - just heard that Barcelona is 30 minutes away, that's if we don't stop again. It's the first time that we've been on a bus or a train that's not been on time in all the trips we've made since we've been here. Not so bad really.

So - about our time in Zaragoza the weekend before last. We went by bus because the trains were booked out by the time we'd got sorted and made the decision to go. Actually, it was our only chance to go before Barry heads to London and then on to NZ and summer time wo hoooo for him!!!

We had to pick up a beautiful piece of pottery, which I'd left with Sergio and Loudes when I went back to NZ last June because I had no space/weight left in my luggage, and had forgotten to get when we were in Zaragoza before going to Azpeitia. The best opportunity to get it back to NZ is with Barry at the end of November so off to Zaragoza we went. Also, Barry wanted to see some of the things that the rest of us had seen and it was a good chance to hang out with our Zaragoza friends as well. We arrived on Friday afternoon and headed back to Azpeitia on Sunday afternoon. 

To our surprise our usual hotel in Zaragoza, The Hotel Paris, was booked out so we went to the Hotel Roma which is down the end of Calle Don Jamie by the Plaza del Pilar and The Le Seo Cathedral, a really nice location though I did think that there may be a lot of bell-ringing noise on Sunday morning but there wasn't, thankfully.

this was taken from our hotel room window - the Le Seo Cathedral

We had a fabulous weekend with lots of beautiful food and great company and the sun was shining every day. . On Friday evening we met up with Yolanda and Jose Antonio for a  chat and walk about. We eventually got the tram to xoxoxoxo  and then walked up all the steps to the top of the waterfall and then wandered our way down again and then walked back onto the city center, the same walk that I did with Thomas, Robyn and Wayne almost 1 year ago. Sergio met us and so it was off to a bar for tapas and beer. After a little while a friend of his, Sumil, joined us. Sumil lives in Barcelona and before he left us we had swapped phone numbers and had the possibility of meeting up when we are in Barcelona. All going well, this will happen tomorrow evening. We then had dinner in a restaurant which used to be a hang-out for bull-fighters back in the day and the walls of this restaurant are covered with old photos and stuffed bulls heads, great big black ones. 

The food was interesting and delicious -  migas (breadcrumbs mixed with stuff);  huevos rotos (hot chips with soft yolk fried eggs cut up and mixed in with the chips and these also had truffles scattered amongst the chips) and madegas (pieces of lamb rolled up in ligaments of some animal and fried and then sliced thinly yummmmmmm). It was all very delicious.  We finally got back to the hotel at about 1am. All in all it was a very good night.

On Saturday, Barry and I went to the Roman ruins dating from the time of Caesar Augustus and then to the Goya Exhibition which is a permanent exhibition showing lots of his drawings of life as he saw it going on around him. Possibly the precursor to photo-journalism - bullfighting, war with its madness and chaos as well as other paintings of his and other artists. 

After some lunch we wandered along the river to visit the latest addition to the Zaragoza scene: 'The Zaragoza Eye'. It's not what it's actually called but I don't remember the actual name of it. See what I mean! It was a neat ride, 5 times around!

  the Roman Bridge taken from up on 'the eye'

   looking out over Zaragoza

  another view. My 'home' in Zaragoza was just behind the round building in the centre of the photo

On Saturday evening, afternoon in Spanish time, we met up again with the others, this time Lourdes and Irene were with us, for a walk about and a look into a museum that I hadn't been to before. The first exhibition from South America, didn't interest me much but Sergio pointed out some of the language differences between Spanish in Spain and South American Spanish and that was interesting. The next one, Japanese photographs of the tsunami,  was ok.  

Once more it was time to eat and this time we went to 3 different places to eat different kinds of tapas, most of which I don't remember except for the place where we ate about 5 or 6 different types of cheese, chosen from a huge range of cheeses, and bread. There's always bread. This bar was all about cheese and as soon as we walked in the smell of all the cheeses was amazing - pure cheese. Barry thought he was in heaven. I took no photos this night. We called it  a night a bit earlier than the night before. 

On Sunday Jose Antonio and Yolanda picked us up from the hotel and then on to pick up Sergio and the off we went to the village where Goya was born and I shall tell you about it tomorrow