San Sebastian
We have not been able to access internet for two days. We are now here at our last stop after spending two nights at hotels on the beach away from the main roads and most of the tourists. This is a particularly nice place, with a wide long curved beach (in fact there are three beaches all together) of clean sand, with a promenade running around the main beach about 2km long. Next to the promenade is a well-marked cycle track which is used by both joggers and bicycles. It is a particularly pretty and restful place to spend the last few days - we intended to take a drive into France, and also to Pamplona and Gernika, but have decided to rest up here instead. There is much "people peeping" to be done and coffee to be drunk, and walks in and around the old city and along the beach.
On the way here, we stopped at Bilbao to visit the Guggenheim Museum, which is world-renowned as a fascinating building containing art exhibitions. This month the exhibition is of the history and art of USA. Well worth the stop.
Today we walked around to the point, and took the funicular to the top of the hill where we had an amazing view over the bay, the beach, and San Sebastian, as well as out to sea.
There are many more observations to mention. Dried codfish is a major part of the diet here, and we have seen it in the dried state and also eaten it after the mandatory 4-day soaking in water to reduce the salt level.
The beer and wine are good, and we have tried a mug of Sangria which was surprisingly excellent. The port in Porto was to die for - neither sweet nor heavy!
Still impossible to find somewhere to eat dinner before 8.30 pm or even 9.00 pm, so today we gave in to the local customs and played "if you can´t beat them, join them" - breakfast at 11.30 am, lunch at 4.30 pm, and dinner probably about 9.00 pm tonight.
There is a particular style which women seem to have, as we also observed in Paris. Clothing is chosen so that the whole outfit makes a statement - eg red shoes with a scarf tied ¨just so¨ containing a splash of red, with the remainder of the outfit being neutral or black and white. Gold handbags and matching high heels parading along the promenade is a common sight, and men wearing suits and leather shoes, where the walkers appear to be intent on "being seen". There is definitely a talent in co-ordinating the garments so that the whole effect is particularly chic.
We continue to be amazed at the standard of the major roads and motorways. In Australia we would make a cutting around a hill, but here a tunnel is simply cut through the hill, and where there is a deep valley a long bridge is constructed from one side to another. Some of these are as high as 200m and up to 1 km long. There are few traffic lights - most intersections are controlled by well-marked roundabouts, and the traffic flows extremely well.
We saw an amazing little vehicle with registration 45KM