Ruth in Spain!: a couple more trips and some other stuff

Well, hello again.

Less than a week until we're off on our holiday and we've got a plan at last, however, before I get talking about them I'll get up to date with some other stuff.

I'm slowly adjusting to Barry being here i.e. - sharing 'my space', remembering to include him when I'm thinking about mooching off to bars to blog, email, have some company etc. It's all kind of a bit weird but I'm getting there. Funnily enough, I had no trouble not thinking about food and cooking!

Yesterday he came on his first Friday excursion. This time it was Barry, myself and Miren but not Nerea because she had some things to do so couldn't come with us. This trip was almost a repeat of our previous excursion, for reasons which will become clear, so I'll put them both together.

Friday, 2 weeks ago we'd decided have a look at a church called Gaztelugatxe, and then go to Gernika, and drive back along the coast, of course including stops for coffee and lunch. So off we went first to Gaztelugatxe

Here it is - perched on a rock joined to the mainland by a causeway with 231 steps to get to the top

plus there's about a 1km walk to get to the causeway. San Juan de Gaztrlugatxe is its full title and it is apparently 'a must see' for visitors to the Basque Country. It's about a 2 hour drive from Azpeitia, however, it turned out that the road to it is closed and we couldn't find an alternate route and, we needed to get back to Gernika before it got too late. After making the decision to turn around because, even if we'd found another route there wasn't enough time to do the walk to the top, and that we'd come back another time off we went to Gernika.

Gernika is a town which was bombed to bits by Hitler's bombers and with Franco's blessing April 26th 1937, virtually everything was destroyed, Apparently, it was an experiment on the effects of concentrated bombing runs and the bombing of Gernika lasted for 3 hours non-stop. They must have deemed it a success because they then went on to do the same to London on a much bigger scale and then the British bombed the hell out of Dresden and so on it goes. Picasso's painted his famous painting 'Guernica' to commemorate the bombing.

One of the very few things to survive the April 26th bombing was an oak tree of some importance.

Traditionally people in the Basque Country and much of Medieval Europe held assemblies under oak trees to pass laws etc and each new tree was grown from an acorn from the tree before it. The oak tree which survived the bombing is no longer living but its trunk is still on display in the garden of the Assembly House as its living descendent.

So off to the Museo de Paz (Museum of Peace) and 'The Tree'. The museum is great, not very big, but full of displays and information and we spent quite a bit of time there, leaving just before closing time. One of the neat exhibitions, if that's the right word, is the floor, in the area where photos taken before and after the bombing are displayed on walls and partitions. The floor is glass and under the glass is rubble picked up after the bombing. As we walked about looking at the photos we were also looking at what we were walking on - amongst the rubble there are partially burnt books, photographs, crockery etc. The longer we looked the more we saw. It was fairly amazing and quite touching.

We went back to put some money on the parking meter because we were then going to walk to 'The Tree' and discovered that this wasn't possible. Miren talked to someone looking like a parking official who said that 2 hours is the maximum for a vehicle to be parked and because the registration is entered at the time of parking and paying there isn't a way around it, or so we thought, except to shift the car to a different park. Easier said than done of course. After driving around the block a couple of times we came across an empty space further up the road from where we first were. Miren went to put money in the meter and it wouldn't accept it, grrrrr. So, after deciding that maybe we had to wait a little longer, and we weren't interested in leaving the park and driving about, we went across the road to a bar where we got a coffee each and sat outside where we could see the car, and any parking official coming, to wait until 30 minutes had gone by and hoping that this would be ok. Fortunately, before very long Miren spotted the guy who she'd talked to before, coming along so she went off to ask him and lo and behold there is a way - added an extra letter to the registration and we had legal parking again.

Happy again off we went to find the tree, which wasn't difficult but - the bloody gates were shut and locked for the night. What!!!! yes that's the story - gates shut and locked at 6pm. If it hadn't been for the rigmarole re the parking we'd have got there in time. We decided that we'd come back another time just to see the tree, it's a fairly significant for Basque people, and Miren and Nerea are no exception so we decided that we'd pass through Gernika another time and stop off to visit 'The Tree'.

Back to Azpeitia we went except that by now it was dusk and was dark be dark before long so we didn't see much on our trip back along the coast.

When we got back to Azpeitia Miren invited me to have dinner with her and Merea, Maite her sister, and about 10 other people. I was feeling a bit tired, not hungry at all after a big lunch of the usual 3 plates and not much exercise afterwards so I declined and left her to it.

Not a wonderfully successful excursion although thoroughly enjoyable. We were still keen to see Gaztelugatxe and the tree so at some point in the next week or so, we decided to go back on our next trip. This time we'd go to the church first and then get to Gernika before 6pm. Daylight savings has started so there was a good chance that we'd be getting back in daylight so would see the countryside and the coast along the way.

another view of the church

On the last excursion we bought a lottery ticket between the 3 of us and here is Miren and Nerea checking to see if we'd won anything.