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| The shrine of St John in the distance |
BILBAO--We are completing two full days of visiting here. We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and will depart tomorrow morning for the Pyrenees. We have fallen in love with Bilbao and the countryside. Of course this was helped by the superb weather. It generally rains here, but we had only one night of rain--after we went to bed last night and, like Camelot, it had stopped by breakfast. |
| Basque is hard! |
Today we explored the north coast. We visited the lovely north coast of rocky islands and bays. One site contains islands with a shrine and two natural sea bridges. Just lovely. Gaztelugatxe (Gaz-tey-loo-ga-chay) is a shrine St John, where mass is only said once a year on his saint's day, June 23. It's 300 steps up to the shrine, sort of a pilgrimage. This coast is also a must-do for surfers, though today it was low-tide so there wasn't much to see. |
| Wine is such fun |
Our last stop was the Berroia Winery where we enjoyed pintxos (pin-chos) and two superb whites made with txocali grapes. It is a wine that is similar to a good albariño or vinho verde with a bit more character than many of them. We will explore for it in DC. |
| A view to the ocean |
The vineyard is not far from the sea, though you cannot see the Bay of Biscay from the winery building itself. After a tour of the winery, our lunch included a local sheep's milk cheese and four traditional pintxos: a fried anchovy, cod on local cheese with a béchamel sauce, a small pancake stuffed with a mushroom past and albacore tuna. A lovely lunch with friendly people and the winemaker himself.
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The trunk of the old oak tree where the Kings
guaranteed Basque rights--
until the Franco fascists took them away |
Along the way to the winery, we made one big stop of the day: Guernika. It was bombed by the Italian and German fascists during the Spanish civil war, and still is remembered as a place where air bombers "trained" to destroy civilians, as portrayed in Picasso's great painting we saw in Madrid during our last trip to Spain. Guernika has nothing in the way of military importance. However, the Basques are very proud that John Adams talked of the foundation of democracy perhaps coming from the representative system set up by the Basques hundreds of years ago. So, it became important for Franco to destroy the city as a citadel of self government.
Its Assembly today is divided between five parties, some supporting independence or at least more control of their own activities from Madrid and others who are content with the Basque region's autonomy, in place since the late 1970s. It's a complicated issue that our guide described in detail.
The Basques believe they are the original Europeans, speaking a language unlike any other. Here's thank you in Basque. It's pronounced Scarey Costco:
We completed a full and enjoyable day with a walk into the residential/commercial area near the hotel looking for an interesting dinner. We found it at Ca Silda, a lovely restaurant with a dining room lined with diagonally stacked wine bottles and an upscale mostly middle-aged clientele. The women, of course, were beautifully dressed and coiffured--a standard practice among the people of Iberia. Dinner was fun, but difficult to chose because the waitress spoke no English and the menu was all in Spanish. We ended up with a lovely plate of cecina with dried tomatoes, (cecina is a dried beef, like carpacchio), tempura style vegetables with a mayonnaise sauce, and a small entrecôte of beef. This was a guess, not exactly what we thought we wanted, but it turned out beautifully done with grilled red bell peppers and patatas bravas. The wine was an excellent godello from the Ribeiro district.
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