Monday 29 October 2012
Day 10 Intrepid Tour – Bagneres-de-Luchon to San Sebastian/Donostia
This morning, as a treat, everyone in the group decided
to invest 5 euros each into upgrading our transfer. Instead of a 7 hour bus and
train trip, we opted for a 2 hour private vehicle to take us to San Sebastian
from Luchon.
So we crossed the border from
France into Northern Spain, or to be more specific, Basque Country. The people
in this area speak Euskera (Basque) and Castellano (Castilian Spanish), and all
the signage has both languages too – The Basque language is very old and its
origins are unknown, but it consists of a lot of x’s and z’s, and is almost
impossible to pronounce. We did marginally better with our efforts at Spanish.
San Sebastian was as wonderful as I had hoped, and the
weather was on our side, with a lovely blue sky. We arrived at our
accommodation, the Pension Maite, which was basic but nice. We had a cafe con
leche (Spanish coffee with milk, one of the few terms I got to know) at a place
across the road called Isabella’s, then all hopped on a bus for the 10 minute
trip straight down the road to the main part of town. We looked at what was on
offer at the Tourist Information Centre, before getting kicked out
unceremoniously at 1:30pm on the dot as “it is now Siesta”. Hmmph. Fair enough,
it is an important time of the day, clearly.
Our group went for a walk around the historic area, which
was very old and beautiful. For a late lunch, we tried a cafe/bar with an
amazing display of pintxos (the Basque word for tapas), food out in the open,
on the counter. Each piece was about 2 Euros, and when we chose what we wanted,
they mostly sent the pieces out the back to the kitchen to be cooked. And it
was really delicious.
After heading out of the Old Town, we found a path which
overlooked the beautiful bay, the first time we had seen coastline for a while.
We climbed a deceptively steep track with many stairs (proving again my low
level of fitness and stamina), up Mount Urgull, which used to be a military
fort, and to see the 12th Century La Mota Castle. The view over the
water was pretty amazing.
Our tour guide Sonja, left us to fend for ourselves after
the castle, so once the Tourist Info Centre re-opened after Siesta, we all
bought a ticket on the Hop On-Hop Off bus and “took a turn” around the
different parts of the town. Although it had been a gorgeous sunny day, in the
evening it got very cold, and so we went into a bar for some drinks and more
pintxos for a snack (as it wasn’t 9pm yet, the acceptable time to start
thinking about eating dinner).
We met up again with Sonja later on, and went along to a
few different bars, which were mostly crowded with people and mostly with huge
arrays of pintxos on their counters. I can’t imagine how Pintxos would work in
Australian bars – most of the bars in San Sebastian had one or people max
working behind the bar, with people patiently waiting their turn and not
nicking the food from the counter. Also, having the food in the open air on the
counter – I reckon it would not last too long on an Aussie summer evening.
Anyway, much later on, we were at a bar with many photos on the walls, of
celebs (some we knew, most we didn’t) with the staff, during the San Sebastian
film festivals over the years. After sticking to sangria all night, for a last
drink, Kim & I got one more each, and some late night snacks. This finished
us off for the night:
Tuesday 30 October 2012
Day 11 Intrepid Tour - San Sebastian
Kim and I had an early start, grabbing breakfast at the
only bar open nearby. It was across the road from our Pension, and had really
good coffee! We hardly had a bad coffee in all the places we had been, although
the only options were with or without milk – no lattes, cappuccinos etc in most
places, unless you were at Starbucks or the like... back to the story – we
booked our tickets and set off on the 1 hour bus trip for an adventure in
Bilbao. All on our own, with no guide, and limited Spanish – so proud of us!
The expert map-reader and navigator (Kim, not me) found
our way to the Guggenheim Museum. We walked from the bus station, at first
following the tramline that was heading there, then took a shortcut through a
fantastic park and into the main town area. One of our travel books said Bilbao
was “not a pretty city”, but the writer obviously had not walked the route we
did! The outskirts of the city had rows and rows of high rise apartment
buildings all the same, but where we went in the centre was really lovely.
The Guggenheim stands out from blocks away – the building
is so modern and unique amongst the older more traditional Spanish buildings,
and there is a wonderful, building-size dog made out of flowers that sits out
the front, looking out to the city. Depending on the time of year, he can be
different colours due to the flowers blooming, but on this day he was mainly
green with a few yellow and red flowers dotted across his body. I loved him!
On the other hand, the collections inside had me
confused. Contemporary art - I just didn’t get most of it. With the
interpretations and descriptions on the walls near each exhibit, it became
clearer, but I really couldn’t appreciate what was on display. All except on the
top floor, there were about three big rooms dedicated to an artist called Egon
Schiele – he drew and painted landscapes, nudes, children, portraits in the
early 20th Century. And while I didn’t take to some of it, the story
behind his life and works were really interesting – and redeemed the Guggenheim
day for me! Along with the incredible building and cute giant flower-puppy.
Following the one hour bus trip back to San Sebastian,
Kim & I walked all along the foreshore, around the crescent-shaped bay, past
the Playa de La Concha (beach) to the base of Monte Igueldo. We walked into a
building where a man wandered out of an office and asked “funicular?” We
answered “Si, por favour, if it is still open”, as we were the only people in
there. He told us to get into the funicular and after sitting for at least 5
minutes, he “drove” the funicular up to the top of the mountain, where we, the
only passengers, hopped off and paid our 2 or so euros for the return ticket.
Bargain!
At the top of Monte Igueldo, there is a fun park with rides
and big slippery slides etc. This was not open though, as it was after 6pm when
we got there, right at sunset. There was also a good ol’ Novotel, and a large
open air terrace with the most incredible view across the Bahia de La Concha (La
Concha Bay) to San Sebastian. It was here that I saw a fabulous sunset, the
lighthouse on the side of the mountain, then the lights of the city and a huge,
full, round, orange moon rise in the night. This is where I took my favourite
photo of the trip:
After about 40 minutes, we got called back to catch the
last funicular of the night, back down the mountain. There were about 8 people
on the way back, so it didn’t have the special-transfer-feel we had on the way
up! I was so happy I got to go up to the top – a definite highlight.
Walking back to the main town, we stopped at Cafe de La
Concha (yep, La Concha Beach, Bay, Cafe, it’s all about La Concha in this
place) for some dinner. After greeting the gentleman behind the bar and asking
“habla Ingles?”, he answered with “habla Espagnol?” which threw me, as they
should ideally say yes of course I can speak English, not, do you speak
Spanish? After I said “No habla Espagnol, that’s why I asked!” we all had a
chuckle at my expense, but he was actually one of the friendlier people we’d
encountered so far in Spain... Anyway, as it was only about 8pm, it was far too
early for a restaurant kitchen to be open in Spain for dinner! However, the
pintxos was able to be cooked up, so we shared some calamari & chips from
that menu... I'm still not sure why hot pintxos can be purchased early but not
dinners.
Wednesday 31 October 2012
Day 12 Intrepid Tour – San Sebastian to Segovia
Another early morning, this time, to catch a bus to the
train station, then the train to Segovia, which took about 5 hours. It was
quite a nice trip though, as we had reserved seats on a nice train, and didn’t
have to change anywhere. Arrived at Segovia, to see the most fantastic station
I had seen so far. It was modern, spacious, clean, almost empty, and had lovely
escalators! But, was in the middle of nowhere. Our group all jumped on a bus
for the 20 minute trip into town. Getting off the bus, this is what we faced:
Quite breathtaking. The aqueduct has been there since
about 188 AD, and is one of the best preserved Roman monuments in Spain. There
is no mortar or concrete between the bricks... clever Romans.
After walking for about 5 minutes, we arrived at our
accommodation, the Hostal Don Jaime. I had been concerned about staying in a
hostel, but we still had private rooms in a separate building, away from the
dormitory rooms, so I was pretty happy about that. After getting rid of our
bags, it was about 2:30, right in the middle of siesta, but there was a
restaurant open next door, so we all ate way too much for lunch, served by a
lovely lady who spoke very rapid Spanish and no English whatsoever. We got by
somehow!
Segovia is a very old, atmospheric city, and has 3 major
monuments – the aqueduct, the cathedral, and the Alcazar, a fairy tale-looking
castle which is supposedly one of the inspirations for Walt Disney’s Sleeping
Beauty Castle. We saw all three monuments on our orientation walk with Sonja.
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| Aqueduct |
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| Cathedral |
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| Alcazar |
It
was getting really cold late in the afternoon, and we stopped at a cafe where
the owner was friendly and spoke English. Jane had heard about a local
speciality, which we ordered, called Ponche Segoviano, a cake which is a bit of
a mystery, but tastes great! Kirsten & I had unbelievably good hot
chocolate to go with the cake, luckily, as the others had fairly average,
lukewarm, weak coffees, which was a disappointment as everything else about the
cafe was really welcoming and pleasant. Then when the group split up in the
late afternoon, I did some pretty good shopping, buying earrings, hair clips
and bits & pieces.
Dinner that night was at Restaurante El Bernardino. The
traditional dish in Segovia is suckling pig, so in the windows of many
restaurants are pictures of poor little cooked pigs, which was off-putting, but
that’s how it has been for a long time in this part of the world, like the traditional
duck & duck liver dishes in Sarlat, France. So Chris, the only guy in our
group, was hanging out to try some of this roast pig, and ordered it at our
restaurant. I think he got the guilts as he was eating it, with reasons given,
but he said it was really delicious otherwise.
Tonight was Halloween night, so Sonja went out after
dinner looking for some kind of celebration. Earlier in the night, there were
quite a few small and larger kids dressed up and heading out, but later on,
Sonja had no luck, and it was all fairly quiet, Halloween-wise.
The radiator in our room was on when we got back , which
was nice when we came in from the freezing cold night, but not so good when the
windows could not be opened and it got too hot and stuffy! I think it got
automatically turned off at about 11pm-midnight, but was back on early in the
morning. Too hot! Good preparation for weather in Dubai, maybe.
Thursday 1 November 2012
Day 13 Intrepid Tour – Segovia
After a bit of a sleep-in and a later breakfast (which
was served till midday!) in the hostel’s dining room, I handed in some dirty
clothes to reception to be washed, for the bargain price of 4.50 euros! The
nice lady at reception assured me it would be dry in time for us to leave the
next morning, even though I could see they just hung the washing in the room
behind reception, not outside. The previous afternoon when we arrived, the
not-so-nice girl was at reception, and she had told us the washing machines
weren’t working... a likely story! We knew she just didn’t want to do it. This
day, she had no choice as the nice lady was accepting everyone’s washing and
she must have been on the laundry shift. Heh.
Kim & I followed the aqueduct out of the old town, to
where it starts. This was unintentional, but it was nice to see. Then getting
back to the map, we re-oriented and headed in the opposite direction towards
the castle. The people working at the castle’s information centre and the
waitress in the cafe are worth a mention, in that they were very friendly,
contrasting with the majority of Spanish people we had dealt with thus far. The
people weren’t nasty or horrible to us, just fairly uninterested and blasé
really.
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| Segovia - there's snow on them there hills! |
The audioguide tour of the Alcazar castle was the best on
the trip. There were places we’d been where we couldn’t work out the numbers or
how to use the audioguides, making them kind of useless, but this one was easy
to use, informative and interesting without going on and on about boring stuff.
And the castle itself was really lovely, well-maintained and with beautiful
artwork and views over the land beyond. I pretended I was a queen looking out
over my kingdom. Not really, but tried to imagine them doing that hundreds and
hundreds of years ago. The history in Europe is mind-blowing, with so many
towns, buildings and monuments being older than anything built in Australia. I
love how old things are over there!
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| A view of "my" kingdom from the Castle |
It was very cold and overcast in the afternoon when we
left the castle. With excellent timing to avoid the rain, we ventured into the
Cathedral for a look around. It was very large, with lovely stained glass
windows, and a big choir loft in the centre. I found it quite chilling, as
there were many chapels around the sides, which had sensor lights, so they were
dark until someone walked in and then the lights would sometimes turn off
leaving you in the dark spooky chapel again. Out the side were the Cathedral
Archives, with ornate furnishings and artworks, and housing the first book printed
in Spain.
At night we trudged out in the rain, not too far from our
hostel, to a place where we could eat dinner before 9pm... It was a restaurant
upstairs from a bar, and it was a funny dinner. Kirsten was not with us, so the
5 of us there all ordered dishes we were quietly confident of, thinking we knew
what we were going to get. Jane’s dinner stood out the most – she ordered pork
with some kind of cream sauce, which I can’t remember, but it was purple. Pork
in purple cream sauce! She cleaned the plate though, and we all tried it and it
was good! I ordered pork skewers in a honey sauce, which came with surprise
prawns – they were given to Kim. Chris ordered something that looked fantastic,
as it was surrounded by mushrooms, which he hates. So we all shared the pile of
mushrooms he didn’t want. I can’t remember the other 2 dishes, but I think they
all came with unexpected extras that ended up being shared around. It was all good
food though.
Friday 2 November 2012
Day 14 Intrepid Tour – Segovia to Madrid
After breakfast at the hostel, I collected my washing
from the not-so-nice girl, who turned out to actually be quite nice after all.
I helped her collect my clothes from the lines, which I think she must have
appreciated, as she smiled and said thanks for helping. Maybe she just has good
and bad days, like all of us.
After saying goodbye to the Segovia Aqueduct and another
20 minute bus trip to the train station, our group cleared security checks (a
first for the trip) and took the super-fast train (not its actual name) to Madrid
– the trip taking all of 55 minutes. But then, we had to catch two metro trains
to get to our hotel, near Legazpi station. Our hotel was called Gran Legazpi
Hotel, and it was unexpectedly fabulous! The nicest, most modern hotel we had stayed
in so far on our whole trip, saved till the end of the tour.
Once we checked in around midday, we jumped back on the
train for about 15 minutes to get to the centre of Madrid, Puerta del Sol.
Making our way through the throngs of people to Plaza Mayor, to meet a 1pm city
tour, we still stopped to get some lunch at what seemed to be the slowest
sandwich shop in the city! Still, we made it to Plaza Mayor in time. Plaza
Mayor is the main city square, with a very interesting, brutal history. Today
it is full of tourists and those random painted people that pretend they are
statues – but it is still striking, and beautiful to me.
Sandemans have a daily free city tour, and I highly
recommend doing it. Our tour guide, Sebastian, led a group of about 30 people
around different sights over 2.5 hours, stopping to talk about the history of
Madrid, its rulers from the Hapsburg and Bourbon dynasties to General Franco
and governments up till now, civil wars, tapas, the Opera House and ending at the
Royal Palace, with a plug for the Pub Crawl tour he was leading that evening!
He was really brilliant, so entertaining and knowledgeable, and gave great
insights into the Spanish people. When someone in the group asked which part of
Spain he was from, he told us he was from Columbia! This city tour was another
highlight of the trip, made even better because it was free.
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| Plaza Mayor |
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| Apartments facing the Palace |
After the tour, we all went to a bar and had some tapas
and coffee, as we had been going all day on little fuel. Then Kim & I
returned to the Royal Palace to take photos and wandered around the old city,
back through Plaza Mayor and back to Plaza del Sol. I had been looking forward
to seeing Sol as it is considered the geographical and spiritual centre and
heart of Spain. But the huge crowds of people both in the plaza and along the
streets leading out from it, had to be seen to be believed. The biggest crowds
of people I had seen so far. Also, there were so many life-sized cartoon
characters wandering around – from Elmo to smurfs to all the Disney ones – it was
worse than the fun fairs that followed us around France, and cheapened the
place so much it was really disappointing.
There was a symbol of the city there, a statue of a bear
eating from a madrono tree, so we elbowed our way through the crowd to
photograph it at sunset.
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| Big bear at sunset in Madrid |
Then we wandered up a street to look around the shops,
and saw quite a few very young prostitutes (amongst the tourists) hanging out
in groups - very troubling to see, especially when there was a police station
in the street and police supposedly patrolling the same street.
So we didn’t hang around this area for too long, taking
the Metro back to our lovely hotel at Legazpi. Our group all went out to a
restaurant nearby for our final night together. It was a nice evening, with
more wine consumed than on the previous nights. After passing around each other’s
email addresses and getting a farewell speech from Sonja, we said goodbye to
our group.
Saturday 3 November 2012
Madrid to Barcelona
Prado morning. We spent the previous day in Old Madrid,
and today we were heading for Bourbon Madrid, named after the Bourbon kings’
reign, and containing many galleries and museums. Kim & I had breaky at the
hotel, which was the best of the whole trip – a buffet. Then we checked out of
the hotel, but left our bags with reception, and caught the Metro to Atocha
station, and walked along the Paseo del Prado, which would have been a lovely
walk had it not been raining. We arrived at the Museo del Prado at about 10:30,
to find a long queue of people waiting to get in. After a miserable 40 minute
wait in the drizzle, we got inside armed with our audioguides and map for Kim to
navigate. As the place was so huge, we decided to concentrate on seeing the
Spanish artists, and mainly Velazquez and Goya. I managed to also spot a
beautiful painting of El Greco, called The Adoration of the Shepherds, and one
by Caravaggio called David Victorious over Goliath.
I thought Velazquez’s works were very good, but I really
loved the Goya works – his royal family portraits, and his Clothed Maja and
Nude Maja (described as the first life-size female nude in Western art, and
controversial for its time) – the same woman in the same pose.
After the French
invasion of Spain in 1808, he painted The Third of May, 1808, a depiction of
the French army about to shoot Spanish civilians dead. Horrific, but
mesmerising. His work got darker the older he got, but all fascinating for me. So
many works, so little time to devote to seeing them. I think 2 days would have
been enough to see everything I wanted to, but seeing as we only had 3 hours, I
did see a lot. The Prado is truly magnificent.
We took the train back to Legazpi station, rushed back to
our hotel, collected our bags and hopped on the Metro again to get to Atocha RENFE station, to catch our super-fast train
to Barcelona. We managed to get there with time to spare, and settled into our
bargain First Class seats that we had pre-purchased on-line with Rail Europe
before leaving Australia, and thus scoring cheaper fares for First Class than
Tourist/Second Class! This train was completely brilliant, so much leg room, a
meal provided, so smooth, and speeds getting up to 300km per hour. It took us
less than 3 hours to cover the 620 or so kilometres. Soooo good. Highlight!
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| First class train meal - INCLUDED - Bonus |
Stay tuned for Barcelona, our European stop before
heading to Dubai then home.
