Quote of the Week, Perhaps a Bit Longer

"The biological community is a vast and complicated system for sharing and distributing the energy of the sun among a diversity of life forms." ~Martson Bates

2/10/10

Euskadi; The French Side

Erin and Dan in Garazi

On Friday we met Jose Luis in Donostia. Jose Luis does the book design for most of the books published by the Center of Basque Studies and he lives in Donostia. He really wanted to take us to the French Basque Country for lunch. The town we went to was called Garazi. The drive there was long and windy. It got me feeling car sick, I was so glad when we finally got there and I could get out of the car. Although it got me feeling a little ill, the drive was beautiful.

Erin, Jose Luis, Dan and me in Garazi

We got into Garazi around lunch time so we decided to eat first. Jose Luis really wanted to take us to this one restaurant, but it was packed and had a fairly long wait so we decided to go to another little restaurant. It was good we all got the pasta with interesting steak sauce, it was different than anything I have ever eaten before, but it was very good.

After we ate we took a walk around town and explored the city. It is a neat city with a lot of pretty buildings. It is amazing how different the French Basque cities look, you can tell by the scenery when you cross the border.

Buildings in Garazi

The River in Garazi

A beautiful house on the coast

We didn't stay too long in Garazi because we were going to have dinner at Sabin's, a friend of Dan's, house. We were also going to spend the night there before we drove to Madrid to catch our flight home. Sabin lives just outside of Bilbao in a cool house with his mom and wife. Dan went to Sabin's house for dinner before I got to Euskadi and had a great time. I had met Sabin for two seconds on the Friday I was super sick and he seemed really nice. I was really looking forward to dinner at his house and getting to know him better.

However, when we left Getaria we realized that there was more snow on the ground than we had expected. Drivers were going very slowly, it took us over a half an hour to get to Zumaia which is not that far from Getaria. We discussed it for awhile and decided that it would take us too long to get to Bilbao at the speed we were going and it seemed that the road was only going to get worse from Zumaia. So we turned back and stayed one more night in Getaria.

The next morning there was still a lot of snow on the roads so we decided to go to Donostia, return the rent-a-car and take the train to Madrid instead of driving. The train ride was easy and smooth, we were glad we choose that option. We got into Madrid late and stayed at a hotel that was right next to the train station. The next morning we got up and took the subway to the airport. Erin went with us to the airport, although she stayed in Madrid for two more days before she went back to Romania. Erin stayed with us until we checked in, then she headed out to explore the city. The plane ride home was smooth, but long.

It was a wonderful trip, I'm so glad I decided to go with Dan. I hope we get to go back next year and explore more.


2 comments:

Erin said...

yay! i haven't been here in a while, so i just caught up. nice entries, brought back alot of fun memories :) for some reason that lunch on the french side sticks out in my memory as being delicious! and i loved our morning coffee runs. i really wish i coulda checked out the flysh...they look totally rockin' (heh). love and miss you!

Renee said...

I'm glad you liked it. I wish you could have seen the flysh too, they were rockin'. It was a fun trip and I'm glad we were able to meet up even if it was kinda short.