October 7
Last night. I did nothing today other than wander around and think about how much I have done in three weeks and how much these three weeks have done for me. Below are some leftover shots from the many I've captured. Martha (best wife ever) told me today that because of how easy it was to maintain the house by herself and how happy I've sounded for the last three weeks, I should absolutely feel free to do this sort of thing anytime. I am so in.

My first week here, there was a food-truck festival in Parque de Cituadella called "Van Van" where all the food trucks had to be vintage American trailers. I was able to get a veggie burger here, and the guy selling them gave me some fries for free because his name was also Daniel.

If you really, really hate paying property taxes, called "IBI" in Spain, you can do something like this. But you still have to pay your taxes.

Some people in Barcelona have the job of blowing really big bubbles. My guess is that it doesn't pay very much, but it's a job.

So many dogs, everywhere. You got your lab mixes and shepherds, but also some breeds that just aren't, I don't know, "American" looking. Like what is this?

A "small" assortment of local, quirky cheeses, all made within a few miles of the restaurant. Were they good? Yes. Did I feel slightly nauseous after eating all this cheese? You bet.











And finally, I have heard so much music everywhere, good bad and ugly, I can't even remember all of it. Here is a tiny sampling:

October 6
OK, back in Barcelona and winding down. Here are just a few of many random shots from this trip.

My friend John mentioned that Barcelona has the best graffiti of any city. He might be right.

The beginning of dinner in a bar somewhere, but I don't remember exactly where.

The beginning of dinner in San Sebastian. 

                    Breakfast in San Sebastian. 

I was not expecting to see a car pass me here. There is a several hundred foot drop straight down off the right side of the "road" here. I was walking. 

October 5
Today I said hasta luego to the last real destination of my trip, Fuente De, the place at the end of the road. I have begun the trip back home, which will still take a couple of days.

It is really fortunate that I didn't plan my mountain hike for this morning. Today I could barely even see the mountain.

                           

After a slight departure delay, I headed out of town and drove to San Sebastian, from where I'll get an early morning train back to Barcelona.

October 4
Today was a day of hiking on a "trail" in the mountains. At the recommendation of the park ranger, I skipped the walking up the mountain part and rode the cable car up to start hiking from there.

The mountain beckoned this morning and I did not resist the call.

                           

I don't think there is a word in English for this. We were packed so tightly in the cable car that it was claustrophobic, but the clear glass walls of the car were the only thing that separated us from thousands of feet of open air in every direction.

The skinny line in the middle of the picture is the beginning of the trail, before it starts to ascend.

This layer of rocks and gravel that we all followed is why I put quotes around the word "trail." It's more like a moonscape than any trail I have experienced before. You can see some people ahead of me in the picture.

From the trail, we could all see beautiful mountains that are probably more fun to walk in.

There were signs everywhere warning about fog. In the evening the fog rolled in and I could see why. The whole trail experience would have been quite different in conditions like this.

Monday October 3
Today I am literally (and I don't use "literally" to mean "figuratively" as many people do. I actually mean "literally") at the end of the road. Or more accurately at the end of a road. Specifically the road to Fuente De in Picos de Europa National Park. The road pretty much ends at a sheer wall of mountain (shown below). This is my blast of total solitude before heading back into civilization on Wednesday.

                                      

This is the view from my room in Fuente De. I'm pretty high up. For the first time since sometime in March, I am wearing a long-sleeved shirt.

                                            

This is my hotel. I don't know the dog's name because the people who own and run the hotel aren't very friendly and I don't want to anger them. The dog is pretty friendly and doesn't care that I don't know his/her name.

                                            

From what I can tell, this is who pretty much lives here - sheep and horses. They seem to have a nice life.

                                            

If you look carefully around the middle of this picture, you'll see a red dot. That dot is the cable car that I'm going to take up to the top of the mountain tomorrow so that I can hike around and enjoy the view.

October 2
Fueled by a borderline toxic combination of sugar and caffeine, I powered through Bilbao today with the confidence of someone who knows how to get his car going in reverse. That and my almost flawless Spanish, which hit a tiny snag this evening when the bartender asked me if I would be eating my tapas outside (which costs slightly more) and I thought he was asking me what kind of wine I wanted. The conversation went something like this:

Him: "Will you be eating these outside or inside?"
Me: "It doesn't matter to me, whichever one you like the best."

But we eventually sorted things out, resulting in his decision not to have me thrown out of the place.

Anyway, Bilbao is a city that seems, for every single municipal project, to think "well, we're going to have to design something anyway, let's just get an artsy designer to do it for us." As a result, the walk/don't walk signs have animations of stick figures walking, the bridges are more complicated then they have to be, colorful and beautiful, the buses are bright red and are called "Bilbobus," and so on.

But the crown jewel of all this artsiness is of course the Guggenheim, which is astounding. First of all, how much money does Peggy Guggenheim have? This museum is literally built out of materials that didn't exist until Frank Gehry decided that they had to be invented to give physical shape to his dream. But putting aside the banalities of how this thing got built, it is really amazing. I recommend a visit someday.

                                            

Who thinks up a building like this? Frank says that he traveled out here to look at the site and then started drawing on a piece of paper (of course not thinking consciously of design, per se, but rather just letting his emotions guide the pen) and came up with this.

The largest room in the museum (and possibly the largest room ever, period) has an installation of a sculpture that you can get lost in. This is a scale model.

This is the real thing.

You say "Why a thirty-foot dog made out of flowers?" Bilbao says "Why not a thirty-foot dog made out of flowers?"

Tomorrow, I say "Arrivederci" to Balboa and head out to the mountains for the last separately-identifiable adventure of this trip.

One last thing. Do you have any idea how expensive toothpaste is here? If you choose to visit, I recommend you bring an extra tube.

October 1
Quick stop in San Sebastian to mingle with the hipsters and then off to Bilbao.

These are some pictures from where I ran this morning along with dozens of other runners who were also trying to maintain the fit, youthful look of which we have all become so fond.

Anyway, funny story. I rented a car (a Renault, in case you are ever making a list of cars never to buy) in San Sebastian. I left there headed for Bilbao. The drive was incredibly beautiful, and those who love me will be pleased to know that I neither took pictures nor shot video while I was driving over and through the mountains at 80 mph.

I kind of had an idea where I was, but not entirely, because all the signs are in Catalan, a language that uses a lot of "k"s, "x"s and "z"s, which pretty much makes the whole thing indecipherable unless you are a member of the club. Here's an example. If you can figure out what this says, please let me know.





I thought I would stop at a rest area in the mountains to figure out exactly how to get to my hotel in Bilbao and discovered that I didn't have the paper with the hotel name on it and that I couldn't connect to anything on my phone because I was in the mountains. 

This wasn't the problem. The problem was that when I decided just to head into Bilbao and improvise, I realized that I couldn't get my car into reverse. The shift knob definitely had a reverse on it, but every time I tried to get the car into that gear and lifted my foot off the clutch, it went forward. I had about 12 inches to test with before I would hit a wall and have to push the car backward so that I could keep testing. I tried pushing the knob, pulling the knob, twisting the knob, looking for levers or switches. I'm going to make a very long story short here by summarizing:
1. I swallowed my pride and actually called Avis customer service to ask them how to get the car into reverse, but I got voice mail because they were at their siesta for several more hours (ironically, a topic I wrote about yesterday)
2. I found the owner's manual, but it unfortunately went on for 200 pages in several languages about how to use the sound system, but nothing more.
3. I couldn't search on Google because I had no connectivity
4. I called Martha to ask her to do a search, but she was out doing a 5K

After a half hour of messing with the car, I finally lucked out into discovering that if you pull up on the boot covering the shift stick, you can shift into reverse. Why, why would anyone ever design a car that way without giving any indication of how to make it work?

Anyway, I was off to Bilbao, where I realized that just going into town and winging it was kind of like going into Manhattan and winging it. I helplessly went with the flow of whatever traffic I happened to find myself in, crossed the river several times, went around many traffic circles, and eventually parked illegally at a bus stop, pulled out my laptop, turned on my phone hotspot and opened the email that identified the name and address of my hotel. I also realized how incredibly fortunate I was to have my car struggle on the top of a mountain instead of in downtown Bilbao. And, last thing, I will never make fun of Google maps again. They saved me.

September 30

Today was 12 hours of cars, buses and trains to get from S’Aguro to San Sebastian. Since there is nothing tripwise to report, I’ll mention a few things I’ve noticed about Spain:



Good Job, Spain!

1. No Smoking - Even though many people here smoke, smoking is allowed almost nowhere. Even most of the beaches I’ve been on prohibit smoking. I have actually seen people on the beach leave the beach to smoke on the street and then come back to the beach.
2. Napkins on the floor – In the tapas bars in the north, it’s customary to throw one’s used napkins on the floor. This initially struck me as odd, but then I realized how brilliant this is because we walk on floors and eat at tables. For example, if you are about to sit at a table that has just been vacated by a family of 6 with three toddlers who just finished a dinner of crab dip, spaghetti with meatballs and vanilla pudding (of course, I have made this example culturally appropriate for Americans), would you rather have their used napkins go on your table or on the floor?
3. Defibrillators – There are public defibrillators everywhere. There have been at least a couple even in the smallest towns I have visited. I don’t know if any of them have ever saved someone’s life, but hey, “A” for effort.

Areas for Improvement

1. Old Clocks – The old towns I have stayed in have (probably centuries-old) clock towers that loudly chime every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. I realize that there is some historical attachment to this, but (1) every single person I have seen over the last 14 days has a smartphone, so everyone always knows exactly what time it is, and (2) I would imagine that if I can’t sleep at 3:00 am, the last thing I want is to be loudly reminded that I’m still awake at 3:00 (and 3:15, 3:30, 3;45, etc.). So Spain, would you consider limiting the frequency and hours of operation?
2. Unsynchronized Clocks – In Girona, there are two very loud competing old clocks. That are about 25 seconds off from each other. So four times each hour, as soon as I had recovered from the disruption of one clock chiming, the other one went off. Being that this is Spain, I can only imagine that both clock owners would agree that synchronization is a good idea, but that they both think the other clock is the one that should change.
3. Hours of Operation – There is a very strong cultural institution of everything closing down for the afternoon siesta. That means that between 4:00 and 8:00 pm in anywhere but the large cities, it is literally impossible to get something to eat, whether in a small food store, supermarket or restaurant. Given the fact that the entire world is going to shit, Spain doesn’t have a functioning government and all of Catalonia is desperately trying to secede and form its own country, I do not think it would be that disruptive for a shop or two to buck tradition and stay open for a few extra hours. 

But all in all, good job, Spain!

Bike Ride - Day 5
Today I rode about 20 miles on the coastal road, which was part of the 2009 Tour de France. The people who rented me the bike wrote to me last night and said "make sure to have a good breakfast because tomorrow's ride is a stunner," which made me think that the views would be stunning. Which they were, but I think what they really meant was that the ride would stun my leg muscles, kind of like, I don't know, maybe a Taser.

The ride was indeed visually stunning. There was absolutely no level roadway for the entire ride; I was either going up a mountain or down a mountain, so it was also the other kind of stunning.

Even a dip in the ocean upon my return and a delightful lunch at a seaside cafe have only slightly reduced my hobbling. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

And a short video:

Bike Ride - Day 4
Today's ride took me about 25 miles down the Costa Brava, and to many beaches, some more accessible than others. There is a lot of zig-zagging on the route, which reflects 1 - times I thought I was lost but I wasn't, 2 - times I thought I wasn't lost, but I was, or 3 - paths toward the ocean that looked interesting.

This ride included gravel paths, trails through woods, residential areas and some pretty congested urban roads.

A few miles in, I got to ride on this path, which apparently used to be a tiny railroad that connected some of the coastal towns. It's been converted to a running/biking path that people who look just like us seem to use a lot.

This was a place on the coast I found after taking a few wrong turns, proving that "wrong" is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.I rode through several paths in the woods to get here, so there is zero chance of me ever showing you this spot.

And . . . a closer view.


I also stopped at many beaches, but we've all seen many beaches, so I will keep my photos of them to myself.

Here's some footage of the ride:

Once I got to my destination, I learned that the bike tour company had booked me at a four-star hotel on the beach in S'Aguro. I am sure that the other guests, who were well-dressed, drinking white wine and chatting at tables around the perfectly-manicured grounds and spotless blue-water pool were thrilled to have me weave through them with my bike, sweating, smelly and leaving a trail of dirt and the occasional granola-bar wrapper.

For some reason, the receptionist insisted on speaking to me only in broken English, which caused me to speak to her only in broken Spanish. It was kind of a weird conversation.

Still slightly overheated from my ride, I decided to go for a swim in the ocean, which turned out to be delightfully refreshing.

Between you and me, I am not really accustomed to staying in places of this caliber. But I am rapidly getting used to it, and am considering lodging a complaint with management about the fact that the view of the ocean from my private patio is partially obscured by this frosted glass..

Bike Ride - Day 3
For the third day of my bike ride, I decided to leave my bike in the garage and walk down to Sa Tuna beach on the Costa Brava and do nothing for a few hours. It has taken me eleven days to be willing to do nothing for a few hours, and I consider this a major accomplishment (I will refrain from making a joke about doing something to celebrate).

The beach is about 1 1/2 miles from where I'm staying. On the way, I passed two women in designer outfits standing next to their respective spotless BMW hatchbacks at the town's cardboard recycling bin, and I was reminded that the Costa Brava is not for the light of wallet. You can learn more about it here if you're interested.

I am actually slightly outside the most affluent area of the Costa Brava, but I'll be riding tomorow to where people tell me the other half live. I believe it is more like the other half percent.

Houses near the beach, and the beach: