After what will be nine nights in one place, we are flying to Amsterdam tomorrow out of Bilbao, Spain. We’ve learned a lot here. It has really been worth the stay. Those tiny specks on the beach are people. This country is vertical. But it’s prized for it’s outdoor trails and beaches as well as camping locations. We definitely felt among kindred spirits. There’s even a surfing camp up the road!
Our AirBnB rounded out about $145 a night (something a bit less in Euros), but we had a kitchen and laundry. We also had the most amazing outdoor space with seating and a Balinese bed and citrus trees. It’s rained the last 24 hours, but we made a lot of the outdoor space before that. We also learned how to use a pellet stove for heating.
As I mentioned in the last post, what brought me over for four weeks (shortened from six!) was the idea that we’d stay in one place long enough to gain a true understanding of what it might feel like to live there. That’s been accomplished. We settled on our long stay here after I asked Twitter, “where would you go to relax?” Lots of replies, but this one fit the general schedule and also overlapped the desire for a new location.
Tom enjoyed very active days hiking and exploring beaches. I had a little beach time but mostly rested and set us up for great meals. There was an Aldi in a nearby town that gave us a great base. We found other fish and ingredients at local markets. One thing we hadn’t planned was how much the area shuts down for Easter. Much like Greece a year before (but on a different ecclesiastical calendar) the retail closes. And also like Greece, the churches are rather empty, but the people are vacationing everywhere. We’d been warned and planned ahead. By the time Monday rolled around we had a quiet day on the beach (with parking!) and no worries at all.
Friday of that weekend a bike race rolled into town. While the bikers were swift to clear, we had a lot of fun in the cheering section with a couple of elderly women from our neighborhood. Travel is a blast when you don’t let language get in your way. At one point Tom asked in his high-school Spanish, “Do you speak English?” One of the women replied either, “You are in Basque country,” or maybe “Do you speak Basque?” I say it was the second, but Tom says the language has another name.
This is a community who demands to stay unique. Many of the signs have the Spanish blacked out. Don’t know the local language? Hang out someplace else. But we’ve run into a couple of spots where language isn’t what you expect. A table beside us in Porto was speaking Franconian. And at some point you begin to realize that most of what you were taught about Europe was a convenient American explanation. The regions in Italy are made to be a clever part of the history, but they are very real. The same is happening on the Iberian peninsula.
It does make sense. After all, we made a move to the Republic of Texas a few years ago. Yeehaw.
(I have a bunch of political observations that I’ll be putting to Facebook. No need to mix things up right now.)
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