Hasta Luego, España

We started our last day here by going for a run in the park and then walking along the beach hoping to find the room key I lost down there last night while I was having too much fun at the Sardine Festival. But no go on the key situation.

And then we said goodbye to all of our old Barcelona haunts, some of which insisted that we stay for a glass of wine.

In packing, I realized that on one hand it’s pretty ridiculous that I have to drag all of this charging paraphernalia around with me every day to be able to use my various electronic devices. On the other hand, one of the books I’m reading on this trip is Stephen Ambrose’s account of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which makes me realize that I don’t really have it so bad.








At some point, it becomes less “graffiti” and more “street art.”

Farewell to the entertaining store names around here, like:




Duck Store, perfect for a very specific, niche market.

Surprisingly, there was almost nothing in here made of wood.



















I would say something snarky about the name of this store, which only sells sunglasses, but they apparently have locations all over Europe, so I guess it’s my problem rather than theirs.

Your guess is as good as mine.

















Farewell to this guy, whose massive portrait just outside my room in Praia da Sol in Portugal ensured that I could never quite relax unless I locked the door.















And on a self-referential note, Martha and I were walking through the old town yesterday and we passed the manager of a bar we’ve eaten at a couple of times. She recognized me and yelled across the street the Spanish equivalent of “Hey, dude, how’s it going? Come on back and hang out here sometime.” And we had a little yelling conversation for a couple of minutes across the street from each other, which just made me so happy. Now I want to live here.

Back to Barcelona

In an attempt to squeeze every last bit of experience out of our last day or so, we got up real early and flew back to Barcelona, checked into our room, and had a delightful breakfast of mussels steamed in coconut milk and ginger, and a couple of glasses of wine.

Then an exploration (again) of the old town (the neighborhood we're staying in) . . .






















. . .where I learned that even if you live on a winding cobblestone street that’s eight feet wide, you can still order stuff from Amazon.

And on that same street, I was less surprised that there was a speed limit sign than I was that anyone actually has the nerve to drive a motorized vehicle on this.


















A little tip here – this is a small pedestrian crosswalk on a one-lane, one-way road that alternates which way the traffic goes via a stoplight. We saw a driver today try to beat that red light, but as soon as the light turned red this solid metal column sprang up from below the road and destroyed the front end of his car. So, if you’re driving in Barcelona, it’s probably best to stop on the yellow.











But on a more positive note, it’s a weekend so there must be a festival. Tonight it was the Sardine Festival in the Barceloneta neighborhood. What does that mean? I have no idea, but we did enjoy the block parties. The first band was a live karaoke band. The second was a jazz/swing band on the beach – we sat in the sand and watched the ocean accompanied by several hundred people participating in the party. The third band was just on one neighborhood street. I think we may have been the only people there who didn’t live on that block.

Hola, Bilbao

A slow day in Bilbao, but it’s a beautiful city on the Nervión River and a good place to spend a day.

When unlimited funds (the Guggenheim Foundation) meet unlimited imagination (visionary architect Frank Gehry), you get something like this, the Guggenheim Museum, which completely changed Bilbao’s story. The city went from a dying factory town one of the most visited places in the world.

The conversation went something like this:

Funders: “Hello Frank Gehry, we’d like you to design a blockbuster museum on the river.”
Frank Gehry: “OK, but after visiting Bilbao and sketching my vision on a napkin, I think it’s going to be kind of expensive.”
Funders: “No problem.”

Frank Gehry: “I would like the whole outside to be covered with 42,000 custom-made titanium panels that should be hand-installed by mountain climbers.”*
Funders: “You got it.”










Speaking of great art, Martha got to do some painting, which along with her other paintings from this trip look like  . . .

. . . and I got to do some reading, and we had some amazing food.

*True story.

Ciao, Northern Spain

We started our last morning in the remote reaches of northern Spain with a run on the beach.

This was obviously post-run.

The part of Spain we're in, Asturias, is famous for two things in the culinary category - (1) sidra, hard cider made from the apples that grow all around here, and (2) bean stew, flavored with bacon, blood sausage, whatever disgusting animal-related food you can imagine, etc. But anyway, the beans, which, between you and me are pretty much just fava beans, have a government-protected provenance and are sold in stores here as official Asturias stewing beans. Whatever.

After telling Asturias in perfect Spanish what we thought about their beans. . .

. . . we headed east, making a quick stop at Llanes, which has its own charms, which do not include the creepy happy mannequins modeling the latest fashion.


















 Once we got to Bilbao, we enjoyed the much more civilized culture, food and public transport.















However, the language remains a puzzle. This image, from a bus stop, shows Spanish on the left and some Bilbao language on the right. What does it mean? It's just not normal to put k's and z's next to each other in words.They have x's too.














Finally, Martha and I were kind of excited to possibly go out north of Bilbao to see the deserted beach  and unique rock formations that we’d seen in Game of Throne episodes. But then we read that it’s impossible to park there and we saw this flyer at our hotel. Why, as a species, do we just continue to destroy the things we love? No thanks.

Northern Coast of Spain

You haven’t seen everything until you’ve seen someone eating a banana with a fork and knife, looking like that’s just how people eat bananas.

Given what we had done today by around 2:30, I was thinking that I would just write that for the first time since around 1986, we basically just took a walk up the hill to the top of town (at left) and then took naps and read all day. But then at around 2:35 we decided to go for a “ride in the country,” during which I learned that:






1. When you drive down a rural road that is the width of one tiny car and has solid stone walls butting up against both sides of the lane, when you realize that you probably shouldn’t be on that road because maybe it’s not even a place cars should be, the only way to turn around is to go in reverse back to where you started.

2. This part of the Spanish coast is nothing but mountains and if you are planning a trip in which you will be driving an Opel Corsa, it is best to plan for as many downhills and as few uphills as possible.

3. Once you get about a mile west of the town we’re staying in, it feels like you enter an entirely different ecosystem, with mountain passes, cliffs, and pretty remote beaches, like . . .

In our town, there is a square wooden hut-like thing about six feet off the ground. Next to it is a historical plaque explaining that it is a replica of a Hόrreo, a small building for storing grain that was used in northern Spain, as well as Portugal, Switzerland and Scandinavia starting in around the 1400’s. Our town’s historical people built one so that people not from here could see what they look like. But guess what? On our drive in the country we saw about twenty of them, and some of them look like they’ve been renovated, but others look like they’ve been around since the 1400’s. That alone, along with the fact that we survived the trip, made the whole excursion worth it.

Asturias

Today we drove west along the coast from Cantabria to Asturias. These are what we might call provinces, but which Spain calls “autonomous regions,” which is more culturally accurate and is part of why no one can agree on anything around here.

The scenery along the way was very beautiful.

In an attempt not to go another day without eating anything until 5:00, we stopped in the village of Comillas for lunch and then walked around. We ran across this archway that had a plaque explaining that it was designed by Antoni Gaudí himself, who envisioned it while walking on the Comillas beach and sketched the outline in the sand with a stick. Which made me realize that every story I have ever read about a famous architect designing anything always starts with a sketch on an airplane napkin or a coaster or an envelope or something like that. Did they never start by going to work in the morning and making an architectural drawing at their desk or having a brainstorming session with the summer interns?




We ended the day in Ribadesella, where we stayed here, the former summer home of a Cuban tobacco baron who named the home after his wife Rosario. The hotel is called Villa Rosario. This is one of many grand former summer homes along the Ribadesella beach that have been turned into boutique hotels, that even though they can be appropriately called “boutique,” are so much cheaper than similar places in the U.S.

This Ribadesella tree reminds me of our dog.












Couple of questions here:




1. When is the last time you saw a store with this word on the sign?

2. Did you ever get bored with your job and think “I'd like to shut down for a few days. No particular reason; I just want to shut down.” Well that’s what the owner of this store did, who posted this sign saying that he or she just wanted to rest for a few days. Sorry for the inconvenience. So much to learn from these people.