Zaragoza

Finally made it back to the blog. It's been a bit of a busy time since we left Azpeitia - Zaragoza, London, Cornwall, London, Bruges, London, and right now we're speeding through the English countryside on the train to Leeds to visit my niece, Alysha, and her family - husband Paula and almost 4 year old daughter Jennifer plus her father and mother, my brother and sister-in-law, who arrived from NZ 4 days ago. We're only in Leeds for the one night and will return to London on the 4pm train tomorrow and then the countdown for home really does begin. Funny to think that this time next week I'll be back in Aroha Avenue, Auckland.

However, before I get there I must finish off here and so - Zaragoza.

As always, Zaragoza was wonderful, even the unexpected and out of character seriously heavy downpour early Saturday evening couldn't put a damper on my enjoyment of being there with my Zaragoza amigos -  eating and drinking, walking and talking and laughing, a lot of English and a little Spanish. 

To finish the night off Saturday night, Barry and I went with Yolanda and Jose Antonio went to watch some flamenco dancing which is the thing in Andalusia but not in Zaragoza. For one week a year at the end of May, under a very big marquee people gather - some to watch and some to dance 'The Flamenco'  Some of the dancers are dressed in the colourful flamenco gear and some are not and it doesn't seem to matter. Everyone seems to be having fun. There's nothing formal about it - a wooden board about 2 meters wide ran the length of the marquee and this was the dance floor. The dancers were almost shoulder to shoulder and seemed to manage to have enough space to dance with verve and energy. The spectators were right up to the 'dance floor' - standing room only although there were table and chairs on one side. We were standing right a long side the 'dance floor' so got a very good view of the dancing, costumes, expressions etc. I thought it was fantastic.

 first thing on Sunday morning under the blue, blue Zaragoza sky on the Roman Bridge on more time! 

We all met up again on Sunday around 11ish and more walking and talking and laughing and eating etc etc. We went to the big park for one last walk up to the top of the waterfall/fountain and the obligatory photos at the top.

the park

the people

 I was full of conflicting emotions that was for sure, cherishing this time with these people who'd become such good friends, in the city I very much enjoy being in, knowing that this time there was no 'see you in September', this time it would be 'goodbye'. 

All too soon it was time to head back to the hotel, load our bags into the car and off to the airport. This time Yolanda and Jose Antonio took us to the airport and then we were on our way to London.

Yes, I was looking forward to seeing Emma and Sam and everyone else but boy oh boy I was very sad to say goodbye to Zaragoza - the city, the people, my Spanish interlude. 

Sergio, Lourdes, Yolanda, Jose Antonio - gracias y hasta luego, besos y brazos.

My farewell to Azpeitia

I ended td previous blog with 'getting out the door to go to Kew Gardens' - we didn't go there because there were dark clouds looming and sure enough, before long it was raining.Instead we went to a Matisse exhibition at the Tate Modern, then chilled out at Sam and Mikes' new flat in Soho and that night we went to see the extremely popular musical 'The Book of Mormon'.

The Matisse exhibition was fantastic. I'm totally unknowledgeable about art, artists and related things so I didn't know anything about Matisse or his art and didn't have any idea about what I was going to see.

What I saw was amazing. All the exhibitions were from his 'cutting period' from how his cut out shapes evolved from being a precurser to a painting to becoming an art form in its own right. His work called 'Jazz' was there along with 'The Snail' both of which are apparently famous. The four of us thought that it was one of the best exhibitions that we've seen, not that I've seen a lot but Sam and Emma certainly have

But, I'm getting ahead of things - my final week in Azpeitia was indeed a week of goodbyes - to all the people i've come to know, to the teachers and hundreds of students, to the bars I frequented (understand that bars here are very different from the bars in NZ)  and the people working in them who were always friendly, the buildings, the river, my apartment - it was one hell of a tiring week. Also, a sad one because this was the end of my Spanish experience and all that that entailed. Miren and her partner, whose name I know and can pronounce but cannot spell, took Barry and I and our luggage to San Sebastian to get the bus to Zaragoza and off we went. 

Here's some photos of 'my Azpeitia' 

my home away from home which is in the 2nd to last building on the right, with Xoxote behind it. 

My school

with my last class and the Basque Flag which they gave to me to bring back to NZ.  The students brought in food and we had a feast. I ate chocolate on a bread roll for the 1st time. kind of delidious and kind of sickly sweet.

part of my walk along the river to or from school, sometimes on the. left side amd sometimes on the right. I loved walking to amd from my workplace.

  My Azpeitia home away from home - Etxe Zuri where Miren works and Daviah is the cook

 inside Etxe Zuri with Miren and Oiane

 Ametsa, locally known as The Green Bar, is the bar which became 'my office' where people met me to practice their English speaking and listening.

 inside Ametsa during siesta time which is why it's looking rather empty

 Pastorkua, the bar where we had dinner most Sundays

 my internet cafe where I did almost every blog from - the internet here was always reliable and gast inlike the internet at my place.

The library

a little drop of NZ - one cabbage tree in the park at Loiola

The enormous Loiola Cathedral which has the house where San Ignatius was born inside it. Tis is about a 15 - 20 minute walk from the apartment.

looking down the river to the Loiola end of Azpeitia. I lived at the other end of the town.

the milk vending machine, the only place where we could buy fresh milk, everywhere else sold only long life milk

  A vegetable garden coming to life in spring. This garden is in front of the library. I really enjoyed being close to the gardens, river and the countryside

 one of the many 'old town' streets. This one is opposite Etxi Zuri and leads  to the Town Square

 The Friday mini market beside the town squareI couldn't gat a decent phot of the big Tuesday market because it's so big and also the stalls are covered so all I got was not much of the market or a mass of white canopies. The milk vending machine is on the other side of the square from this little market. Most Fridays I would buy delicious bread and occasionally cheese, a lettuce, tomatoes etc.

 My end of Azpeitia looking right from the bridge

and finally Azpeitia mestled among the hills of Gipuzkoa in The Basque Country

so ends my Azpeitia experience and to everyone in Azpeitia - eskerrik asko hainbeste guztia xxxx

Arantzazu - my final Friday excursion with Miren and Nerea

Our final Friday excursion was to Arantzazu and it was raining, our first wet excursion Friday.

 It's a church, apparently, one cannot see enough churches, however it seemed that this one is rather special for some people in Gipuzkoa, the province of the Bazque Country where Azpeitia is and Arantzazu sits down in the south east of Gipuzkoa. It is1 of the 3 places that San Ignatius visited before he set off on his walk around Europe. When people were telling me about it during the week it was easy to see from their body language that this place is special to them - they clutched their hands in front of their chests, their eyes were bright and their faces were glowing.

Arantzazu is about an hours drive from Azpeitia in a fairly isolated spot in a national park amongst some spectacular mountain scenery. However, because it was a wet day the clouds and mist were hanging fairly low down over the countryside so we didn't get to see the scenery in all its spectacular glory. It was just like driving through from Wanaka to Milford Sound, and back again, on a mist rainy day with the clouds hanging down the down the mountains to just above the road and knowing that all around is magnificent but not being able to see it grrrrrrrrrrrr yes, this did happen to us! We did get glimpses of the mountains and deep, deep valleys so it wasn't all bad on the way to Arantzazu and back to Azpeitia and it wasn't raining all the time.

We had another wonderful day together and it was great to be out driving through the countryside, albeit a rather wet one.

On the way I took a photo of the entrance to the cemetery in Azkoitia, the town just down the road from Azpeitia, rather grand, don't you think?

Now some photos of getting to Arantzazu - 

A lot of the photos taken from the car didn't come out very well because of the rain. There were some very steep drops down to the valleys way down below and we could only imagine what it would be like on a clear day.

here's Arantzazu.

Actually, there's a lot more here than just the church - it's also a sanctuary and ghere's a new conference center as well a couple of restaurants and what was interesting to us, thousands (itseemed, we didn't count them) of car parks. In the summer holidays it is crowded!!!! There are also little Basque country hotels nearby on the road just below and just above the church.

This is the church and the entrance is down the steps

here's some info about it from outside the church.

 this is inside and the little figure in the light represents the aparition of the Virgin amongst the bushes 

this photo was taken from further up the road looking back . We walked up from the car park, one of them, which is just on the other side of this down below the modern buildings up on the right. This is the new conference cenrter.

It always amazes me that buidings could be built in which  seem to be almost inaccessible places a long time ago, and that they seem to just rise up out of the rock and that they have bben there along time. All over Gizpuzkoa there are churches high up on the top of barren hiils of rock - who goes there???

 taken from the same place as the photo above and turned to the right a little

I don't know what all this is for exactly, but I do know that it is all church related. 

We had lunch in a restaurant  beside the place where I took the 2 photos above and this is on the left of the road as we walked into the restaurant - the sign for the Camino de Santiago. It is one hell of a walk, that is for sure.

Lunch was, for me, a disappointment, and for Miren too. She said a couple of times that she wished we'd chosen the one down by the church but 'them's the choices we make', she also said "next time we'll go there"!!!! NEXT TIME - it's a wonderful thought.

This is looking down from the car park next to the church. We had no competition for a carpark, there weren't many visitors that day. 

It's really high up on the side of a steep valley amd we wondered where this road, far below us, went to

Because of the weather, we  didn't hand about for long after lunch. If it had been better we ould have gone walking along one of the tracks into the hills above. 

This is the road we walked up from the church to the restaurant

We did have a good poke about in the shop, obligatory, I think, to look in the shops attached to the places we visit.

Then it was time to go. Taken from the car somewhere on the way down the mountain from Arantzazu. I like it despite, or because of, the raindrops on the windscreen. 

closer to Azpeitia the sky cleared 

and then we were in Azpeitia once again.

Barry , Miren, Nerea and I meet up with Daviah amd Maite to have a last chat and drink with them. Daviah is the cook in the bar where Miren works and has cooked me many dinners over the past few months. She has been off work sick for the past couple of weeks so I hadn't seen her for a while and Maite is Miren's sister who I've mentioned in prebious blogs. A frw drinks and it was time for us to sya goodbye and go - to the vodofone shop to stop the contract on our wi-fi connecter thingy.

 and that was that for our Friday excursions in The Basque Country

It was a shame about the weather and about the lunch bit we enjoyed each other's company and I certainly enjoy trying to improve my Spanish with Miren and Nerea's never ending help and patience.

Thanks to them I've sen a fair bit of the countryside, been to some amazing and interesting places, had a lot of fun, eaten some lovely food and I can't thank them enough but anyway Miren and Nerea - thanks so much. You helped to make my time in Azpeitia so much more than it would have otherwiase been. Eskerrik asko xxx

The next day I began my final week at school in Azpeitia with all the goodbyes that have to be said.

When I think back to the day we arrived there and everything was so strange and I didn't know anyone, I didn't know my way around any of it, not even the school and the language I heard everywhere was like nothing I'd heard before and now, 8 months layer - how different it is.

We are now in London with Emma and Sam and associated people having left Azpeitia, been and gone from Zaragoza. Sometime over the next few days I will be back to blog some more - to finish Azpeitia, tell you about Zaragoza and our time with our fabulous Zaragoza amigos and then to London.

I will post this without proofreading so that we can get out the door to visit Kew Gardens, I hope that there're aren't a lot of mistakes.

photos missing

It seems that the last 2 photos haven't posted on the blog for some reason. I copied and pasted them from an email instead of my photos.  I don't know that had anything to do with it. Anyway here they are

Saturday in La Rioja

At about 9.15 on Saturday morning Jaione and Kepa arrived to pick us up and soon after that we were off to La Rioja to have a look at a vineyard called 'Vivanco'. Vivanco sits beside a little pueblo called Briones, population 853, which dates back to the 1st century AD. It is in the La Rioja region, the major wine producing region in Spain. It borders Gipuzkoa in the Basque Country and is about 1hour 45minutes drive from Azpeitia. The day was cloudy and warm, a very nice day to be driving through the countryside to a vineyard.

First, we were driving through the green hills and valleys of the Basque Country north of Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country, and then the countryside changed to wide, flat valleys and then we were in the wheat growing region of Castille y León whit acres and acres of wheat stretching across the land and which would, Jaione told us, turn the landscape golden yellow in August. After a while we were in La Rioja and the acres of wheat became acres of grape vines marching across the landscape for miles and miles on either side of the road.

 wheat fields I think there must be an anti-sun film over the car wondows which have made the photos taken from the car to be a bit off colour. I thought I'd put some on here anyway.

Along with the wheat and the grape vines are the villages which are scattered across the countryside like mushrooms and usually looking like they've just risen up out of the dirt because the buildings are the same pale, biscuity colour as the dirt.

The road wound through the town of Hora which is about the same size as Azpeitia, 11,000 people, and then down the road a bit to Briones and there we came to the Vivanco vineyard, which turned out to be just one of quite a few vineyards around the little village. All of them have very grand buildings and are very prosperous looking enterprises.

Briones

We were booked in to do a tour at 11am and had arrived in good time. 

Vivanco - the main entrance building taken from the back on the way to where we went down into the cellars.

from the same place as the photo above looking down the grape vines to Briones

At the end of every row there are roses growing, and the reason for this, the guide told us in response to a question, is that the roses are very clever plants and tell the growers what diseases and/or pests are around in time for the appropriate action can be taken to save the grapes. I'm not sure if I knew this already or if I did and am a bit cynical about it. 

The photo I took of the huge vats didn't come out, was very dark, for some reason. This is one of the small barrels, some of the thousands of them.

Jaione was told that the English language audio guides weren't working very well so not to use them, and the tour guide spoke in Spanish, so Jaione translated as we went. It was a bit tricky because there was no allowance for translating time so it was done 'on the run,' so to speak. I did understand some of what the guide was saying but not everything, not by a long stretch. I imagine that we missed a lot of information, not because Jaione didn't do a good translating job, but because it wasn't possible to do more than a quick chat as we went along with the guide and the tour group. 

As well as the huge wine vats and the cellars with thousands of smaller barrels in them there was mock ups of the machines used for the processes which happen to turn grapes into wine. 

From the cellars we went back up to the main building and into a lovely room overlooking the vines and had a wine tasting of 2 red wines. The first one was a Crianza and the 2nd was a Reserva. Crianza reds must be aged in oak for at least 1 year and Reserva reds must be aged for at least 3 years and 2 of those years must be in oak. I've come to enjoy red wine after donkey's years of being a white wine only drinker and since being in Azpeitia my favourite is crianza. I must say that the reserva that we had at the vineyard was a very, very nice drop.

 between the main building and the cellar building

After the wine tasting we went to the vineyard museum. It is a very extensive collection of all the paraphanalia to do with wine growing, making and drinking - an enormous amount of stuff over 4 floors. We all found it hugely interesting but had to cut our time there short because we were booked into a restaurant in the town of Hora at 2.30pm. 

This is in a section in the museum about wine growing areas and the history of the growth of wine making across the globe.  Yes, they found NZ.

 The front entrance/exit 

And so it was off to Hora for lunch. I was impressed with Jaione and Kepa's knowledge of Hora and when I finally said to Jaione that she seemed to know the town quite well, she said that she did because Kepa's parents have a campervan permanently parked up in a campsite nearby and her and Kepa spend a lot of time there and consequently also a lot of time in Hora.

here's some photos of Hora although I don't have one of where we had lunch which was delicious and quite flash. It goes without saying that we were stuffed to the eyeballs by the time we'd finished.

 the town was very quiet because it was siesta time! 

most of the buildings had glassed in balconies like in the towns on the coast and in Beyonne and Paris. Was an interesting observation, we thought.

After lunch we had a walk about and then another drink here, under the sign for the Camino de Santiago amongst other things. The Camino de Santiago sign pops up all over the place, there must be many ways to go. Barry's doing his best to tell the waiter what he wants which turned out to be cointreau

and then it was time to head back to the car. On the way I spied this relic. I'll never get used to seeing such ancient things just sitting there as they've done since forever.

The way back to Azpeitia was uneventful ... except for .... THE SNAKE!!!!

Not far out of Hora we came to an ancient bridge, not so ancient to be Roman, though, and we stopped to have a look at it and Jaione and I were walking together over the bridge and suddenly she shrieked  and rushed backwards. At the same time that she shrieked I spotted the same thing that she had - a snake! a very long snake! I grabbed my camera and stupidly walked towards it and of course, it started slithering away and so this is why I got a photo of a part of it and not the whole thing.  If I had of just stayed still and used the zoom I would have got all of it. When I say that I walked towards it, I was still a decent distance away. It went through the hole in the bridge and ended up curled up in a weed growing out of the bridge on the other side.

By this time Jaione was almost back at the end of the bridge, she hates them with a phobic passion.

After that excitement it was in the car and back to Azpeitia

It was a fairly quiet trip back. Jaione drove and Barry went to sleep! Kepa and Jaline chatted to each other, mostly and I looked at the passing countryside, I coild never have enough of that.

 We got home at about 8pm. It had been another wonderful day thanks to the generosity of a couple of lovely people - thanks a bunch, Jaione and Kepa.

We lay about on the sofas trying to decide if we would have something to eat before we went to bed and in the end, at about 10.30 pm, Barry cooked us some scrambled eggs, not a lot given the amount of food we'd eaten for lunch. Goodnight, Saturday.

Sunday was wet and cold and after talking with Sam on skype for a little while we decided that we should pack all our 'stuff' to make sure that we would be under the weight restrictions for the flights. Ryan Air from Zaragoza to London - 20kgs checked in and 10 kgs cabin bag. Everything must be in the 2 bags, can't carry anything. London to Singapore to Auckland - 30kgs checked in and 7kgs cabin bag and we can carry somethings like a handbag, coat, umbrella and such like. It took a good chunk of the day to get sorted. Just remembered that we've paid for an extra 15kg bag on Ryan air and we'll have another sort out when we get to London.

On Saturday night we had dinner with the our land lady and her family. Another good feed and a lot of fun. They are a very nice family and with their bit of English and my bit of Spanish we had a very good night.

Just before we left to go home

Here they are in Paris (could you guess that) the 4 of them together.

It's a 5 minute walk from their place to ours except that this Sunday night, on the way home, we called into the bar called Pastorkua, to say goodbye to one of the staff there. A youg guy called Eneko,  who had talked to us the first time we went there when we first got to Azpeitia, in very food English. When I asked how come he spoke such good English he said that he'd lived in Wellington for 2 years. How about that!  He now lives in Getaria, where he grew up, and works there as a draughtsman and works on Pastorkua on Sundays. We got into a routine of going to Pastorkua for dinner on Sunday nights, and he'd come over and have a chat with us and as we'd be gone next Sunday night we just called into say goodbye. No, I don't have a photo of him, damn it. He has all of our NZ contact details so who knows, maybe one day,  he'll turn up on our doorstep.

And then it was home. The next day, Monday,  began the countdown to my final class on Thursday afternoon.