Tuesday 18 June 2013 There are lots of reasons to visit Bilbao, but the Guggenheim Museum must be high on everyone’s list. It demands at least a day; and a day is all we had. So we spent it at the Guggenheim. Still, we had to get to the Museum, and the natural way to…
Tag: Spain
San Sebastian—Bilbao day 1
Monday 17 June 2013 After we bid farewell to our hosts at the Pensión Amaiur in San Sebastian, we caught a taxi to the bus station and boarded the 9:10 a.m. ALSA bus service to Bilbao. And then at the Bus station in Bilbao we switched to the metro for a few stops, and walked…
San Sebastian day 3
Sunday 16 June 2013 For our last day in San Sebastian we decided to walk to the Western end of Bahia de la Concha to see the iconic sculpture Peine De Los Vientos (‘Comb of the winds’), and then ascend the funicular railway up the hill for what promised to be more amazing views of…
San Sebastian day 2
Saturday 15 June 2013 We walked to a nearby café for breakfast and then checked out the local bookshop. There were three shelves of books in English but alas not the Hemingway novel we were searching for. The next stop was the aquarium in the marina we had visited the day before. Aquariums can be…
Zaragoza—San Sebastian day 1
Friday 14 June 2013 If Zaragoza is a sultry serendipity spliced onto an arid plain by a raging torrent, then San Sebastian is a riotous row of can-can dancers teetering on the brink of the Bay of Biscay. You just don’t know where to look or what to bite next: the whole thing is a…
Zaragoza day 3
Thursday 13 June 2013 While Susie slept in, I went for a walk along the river to warm up my aching back. The river is called the Ebro, and its source lies in Cantabria, which is where we will be at the half-way point of our holiday. I paused a while in the middle of…
Zaragoza day 2
Wednesday 12 June 2013 On the 8th June I wrote that one might as well pick a base in Spain and avoid the hassles of constantly re-locating. I now see the folly of this view. This recount is written retrospectively: I must now recount our adventures in Zaragoza from a hotel room in Bilbao. Had…
Madrid—Zaragoza day 1
Tuesday 11 June 2013 Our host, José, kindly agreed to look after a bag full of our winter clothes and non-essential accessories until we returned to Madrid in July. This allowed us to lighten our packs a little. We then caught a fast train from Madrid via Guadelajara to Zaragoza, which is the capital of…
Madrid day 3
Monday 10 June 2013 The weather was fine on our third day in Madrid, so we decided to spend it at El Retiro, a large formal park in the centre of Madrid that was established by a bloodless Spanish noble who erected a ridiculously large statue in honour of Himself. The park was originally the…
Madrid day 2
Sunday 9 June 2013 In the morning we visited Madrid’s famous flea market, El Rastro. This was a fairly intense experience. We arrived before the crowds had built up. Susie was in heaven, browsing through stalls full of bags and artisan jewellery. She found one jeweller whose work she admired—a good-looking, middle-aged woman with impeccable…
Cuenca—Madrid day 1
Saturday 8 June 2013 We booked a taxi from Hostel Tabanqueta to the train station and boarded an AVE to Madrid which took under an hour. Have I sung the praises of Spain’s national railway, RENFE, loud enough yet? When can we have something like this in Australia? Perhaps we need to send all the…
Cuenca day 2
Friday 7 June 2013 We breakfasted in a local cafeteria and then walked across an iron footbridge that spanned the gorge to visit a museum of modern art on the other side. Alas, this had permanently closed, and so we re-traced our steps back to the main part of the old city where we visited…
Wundercliffe 