Its December and winter is well and truly set here in Sweden, with darkness all around at 4 pm and temperatures dipping occasionally below 0. The only sunshine I can get now is by thinking of the summer that went past , and I realized that I had not yet completed the Spanish trip update.
By evening we had reached Santander town. As would be the cause through out the trip, we had to spend time trying to locate our hostel and also spend time getting a parking spot for the car. We only had
the evening to cover what ever we could of the city and we decided to head straight to the Sardinero beach. Since it was late evening, venturing out to the sea didn’t seem a good idea and we instead walked along the promenade and rounded off with dinner outside the Casino. We could not spend as much time as we hoped we could , mainly because of the various detours and delays on the road earlier in the day. Next morning , it was travel time again. Along the coast towards San Sebastian . We had heard from many people that the this route along the coast will be perhaps the best drive and it turned out to be one. With the sea on one side and green covered hills on the other side , the drive indeed was quite breathtaki
ng. Except for a slightly longish traffic jam due to an accident , which robbed us of a precious hour or two, things went as planned. We were in the Basque country by afternoon and we drove straight to the La concha beach The weather again was looking to play spoilsport with clouds looming large. Thankfully , soon the clouds gave way for glorious sunshine and within no time the beach was full of people. Sun, sand and beaches. This was what we had in mind when we set out for Spain and here it was right before us. Unlike Santander, we had quite some time in hand in San Sebastian and we spent all of them in the beach, not bothering to check any sights and sounds in the city.
We had booked our hostel for the night in Bilbao , since we could not find any reasonably priced hostels in
San Sebastian. Next morning , we decided to check out the Guggenheim musuem, which was the only thing we had heard about in Bilbao. This Art musuem is more famous for its structure that what is on display inside. The Frank Gehry designed building has been hailed as one of the most spectacular buildings of the world. I had heard of the structure and its famed design from an architect friend many years ago and ever since was looking forward to seeing the building, and not much the musuem it itself. And that is what we did , we drove towards the museum, walked around the building and did the tourist thing of taking pictures around it and not bothering to go inside. One more in the list of places to see was covered.
After Bilbao, we set out on the longest drive of the trip towards Barcelona. We reached there in a little over 6 hours which was faster than expected. The only exciting part of the drive was at a certain point where a board said that we were crossing the Greenwich meridian. I don’t really now understand what is the big significance of crossing the meridian, but we were quite kicked about that on that day.
After spending almost 3 days in Barcelona, we kicked off the penultimate part of the trip. To Valencia. We drove along the Medditeranean coast. An uneventful but picturesque drive with the blue Mediterranean giving us company all along the way. In Valencia , we first checked out the City of Art and S
ciences , a set of different buildings hosting a planetarium, an Opera house, an oceanographic park and a Science museum. The buildings were awesome and captivating. With artificial water bodies surrounding the buildings, the place had a distinctly modern feel to it and fitted the bill of a Science city. Next we went to the Valencia Cathedral , which many people believe is holds the Holy Grail . Yes, the very same Holy grail about which all the big fuss was created in the book “ The Da Vinci Code” . Never knew that finding the holy grail was so easy. Board a flight to Valencia, go to the cathedral and lo the Holy Grail is there for you. But we were late in getting there and so we missed catching a glimpse of the Holy Grail. Later in the day, finding our hostel for the night turned out to be more tougher than finding the grail , as we spent more than an hour trying to get to our hostel. Ironically the hostel was quite near to where we had started out first. Lesson: people of Valencia not to be trusted with giving directions. Thanks to them we were on the road going in circles and having an extended trip around the city.
Barcelona and Madrid were of course the cities that were first on the list when we drew up the plan for Spain. The question was which other part of Spain should we cover as part of the week long trip. We decided to do the North coast ; ride up North from Madrid to the Asturias country and travel along the coast towards San Sebastian and Bilbao , and from there do a coast to coast marathon and drive all the way down to Barcelona. It seemed we were biting more than what we could chew and decided to join the North coast further down at Santander and gave up the idea of Oviedo and Gijon. And in hindsight it turned out to be a right decision.
After marveling at the sights of Segovia , we were in for a longish trip Northwards towards Santander. At some point along the way , we missed a turn and instead of being on the right road as per our via Michelin printouts , we were on some sort of state highway towards Santander. It was the second slip up the same day ,nevertheless we were on the way to Santander. The trip began with the familiar sight of parched plains and bare yellow-brownish countryside. But soon the scenery started shifting. We encountered ragged mountains and hills with the roads starting to twist and turn along the climb. As we started climbing further up the temperatures outside started dropping and mist and fog descended out of nowhere.. The visibility was down to a few feet and with a shaky yours truly at the wheel , things weren’t exactly hunky dory inside the 8 seater Volkswagen. After sometime we got back to the plains and it seemed we had reached a whole different place. With lush greenery all around it seemed we were a world away from the dry settings of Madrid and Segovia.
By evening we had reached Santander town. As would be the cause through out the trip, we had to spend time trying to locate our hostel and also spend time getting a parking spot for the car. We only had
the evening to cover what ever we could of the city and we decided to head straight to the Sardinero beach. Since it was late evening, venturing out to the sea didn’t seem a good idea and we instead walked along the promenade and rounded off with dinner outside the Casino. We could not spend as much time as we hoped we could , mainly because of the various detours and delays on the road earlier in the day. Next morning , it was travel time again. Along the coast towards San Sebastian . We had heard from many people that the this route along the coast will be perhaps the best drive and it turned out to be one. With the sea on one side and green covered hills on the other side , the drive indeed was quite breathtaki
ng. Except for a slightly longish traffic jam due to an accident , which robbed us of a precious hour or two, things went as planned. We were in the Basque country by afternoon and we drove straight to the La concha beach The weather again was looking to play spoilsport with clouds looming large. Thankfully , soon the clouds gave way for glorious sunshine and within no time the beach was full of people. Sun, sand and beaches. This was what we had in mind when we set out for Spain and here it was right before us. Unlike Santander, we had quite some time in hand in San Sebastian and we spent all of them in the beach, not bothering to check any sights and sounds in the city. We had booked our hostel for the night in Bilbao , since we could not find any reasonably priced hostels in
San Sebastian. Next morning , we decided to check out the Guggenheim musuem, which was the only thing we had heard about in Bilbao. This Art musuem is more famous for its structure that what is on display inside. The Frank Gehry designed building has been hailed as one of the most spectacular buildings of the world. I had heard of the structure and its famed design from an architect friend many years ago and ever since was looking forward to seeing the building, and not much the musuem it itself. And that is what we did , we drove towards the museum, walked around the building and did the tourist thing of taking pictures around it and not bothering to go inside. One more in the list of places to see was covered.After Bilbao, we set out on the longest drive of the trip towards Barcelona. We reached there in a little over 6 hours which was faster than expected. The only exciting part of the drive was at a certain point where a board said that we were crossing the Greenwich meridian. I don’t really now understand what is the big significance of crossing the meridian, but we were quite kicked about that on that day.
After spending almost 3 days in Barcelona, we kicked off the penultimate part of the trip. To Valencia. We drove along the Medditeranean coast. An uneventful but picturesque drive with the blue Mediterranean giving us company all along the way. In Valencia , we first checked out the City of Art and S
ciences , a set of different buildings hosting a planetarium, an Opera house, an oceanographic park and a Science museum. The buildings were awesome and captivating. With artificial water bodies surrounding the buildings, the place had a distinctly modern feel to it and fitted the bill of a Science city. Next we went to the Valencia Cathedral , which many people believe is holds the Holy Grail . Yes, the very same Holy grail about which all the big fuss was created in the book “ The Da Vinci Code” . Never knew that finding the holy grail was so easy. Board a flight to Valencia, go to the cathedral and lo the Holy Grail is there for you. But we were late in getting there and so we missed catching a glimpse of the Holy Grail. Later in the day, finding our hostel for the night turned out to be more tougher than finding the grail , as we spent more than an hour trying to get to our hostel. Ironically the hostel was quite near to where we had started out first. Lesson: people of Valencia not to be trusted with giving directions. Thanks to them we were on the road going in circles and having an extended trip around the city.Next morning we were on our way back to Madrid, back to where we started our trip. I had a flight back to Sweden in the evening and by night i was at my apartment in rainy and wet Gothenburg uploading pics. It was an eventful trip , covering so many places over a period of 9 days and having a fun time all around. For me , Spain was the best part of this Summer.
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