Impressions

We came to Montserat from Berga, from the Pyrenees side and the big strange mountain with sticking fingers from it opened in front of us still enveloped in clouds. Following the signs of parking we found ourselves at the bottom parking lot by a train  (in Spanish that train is called Cremallera – to me it sounds more like some desert than a train ) station:

- the train was taking tourists and pilgrims up to the outstanding monastery, the most sacred place for Catalonians.  The Black Mary (Mare De Deu) with her Baby Jesus in the main altar of the church are considered to have magical powers. Those trains leave every hour, not so convenient for us who like freedom, also the price is not very cheap. There are options – you can buy an excursion in the monastery and a meal together with the ticket, or just a ticket. But we chose to find a route up to the mountain ourselves. It was not hard, we drove steeply up over another nicely built town of Montserrat, tucked at the bottom of the mountain and then past some other picture perfect monastery:

And here we easily found parking but had to walk a little to reach the main square of the complex:

Crowds of God loving people were leaving the monastery, evidently the Mass just ended. So we came in time. The Basilica is tucked in the complex of buildings on the right.  One has to walk to the end of this street than turn sharply

right and walk up towards another square in front of the monastery:

And then again you enter another gate and get into the third cluster or inner garden with the Basilica in front:

The front of the Basilica is not as impressive as the whole cluster with its floors:

and lots of sculptures and frescoes  (themed with the same Virgin of Montserrat) all around there:

On the right side of this cluster by special doors  we saw a line of people standing and joined them.  We figured out that that was a line waiting to see and touch the Virgin:

It was not boring to stand in the line while admiring the decors of the Basilica:

There are little bronze bugs on this alabaster pole over there – kind of cute and funny for a Basilica decor – those Spaniards, they have their humor!

She was there, once we went up those steps decorated with different Virgins on the left and saint women on the right. We didn’t take her picture, I think it is not appropriate to do it, she is too sacred/ but we touched her globe she has in her right hand. Her and her baby Jesus are covered in plastic cover, only the globe sticking from it, where everyone is touching to get some sacred energy.  It was exciting! So many people come with their wishes, so many energies mingling in one spot. here is one of modern detail in this not very modern building (as I have mentioned they like mixing old and new and do it with success, I think):

The views from the monastery square and from its road:

And that was it. We ate in their cafeteria, the food was not tasty, and it was cold – try not to eat there. Paid as if 4 euros for the parking and left for the Barcelona airport. In its area we already had a reservation to this 4 star hotel:

The hotel was very good, it had a spa with lots of different underwater currencies in the pool, different massaging showers and saunas, a good place to relax before a long flight. There were only 2 problems waiting for us – to find a way to the Sixt – the car renting place…it was somewhere close, but so many wide one way roads so many highways going here and there, so many closed office buildings (it was Sunday) that we drove around for a while till managed to see Sixt…Another problem was in the terminal. From the car rental their shuttle took us to the terminal, where we had to wait for more than an hour for our shuttle to the hotel… But their shuttle early in the morning left in time and we were in the gate area in time, though the plane left later because of the fog.  And therefore we had to run like crazy in Paris to catch our plane.  This was it.  This is how we saw Spain.

It was the 12th of March and we were planning to see more of those wonderful Pyrenees, but the morning was not promising at all. It was raining cats and dogs…Non stop. The clouds low in the sky…So here we are in Balaguer, which we didn’t manage to see yesterday for it got dark, we saw only the river in front of our hotel:

We had to park the car on the other side of the bridge on a street and then come to this side and stay in a hotel here because there was the only hotel in sight. But it was literally in the old part of the town which is usually the place of interest. So in the morning, in the pouring rain we walked a little in the central square of the town:

The square was empty of cars for a reason it was Saturday – a farmers’ market for the town, so the cars had to leave the square for trade booths making it much more attractive. The traders were also not in a hurry – who is going to rush on such a morning…

Through the corner of the square we went up towards the wall that was seen from the central square (there over the square you can see a grey top line- that is a wall bordering maybe a monastery or a castle on top of the city) but I was scared to climb the stairs, them being so wet and also – very high…and so I didn’t see their big cathedral from close by, only from the bottom of the hill:

Another old bridge and church with a monastery were seen further, so this city could have been an interesting place to investigate if not for that rain and our crazy plans to see Pyrenees one more time… So we kept to our plan and drove through those low clouds in the mountains that started pretty soon after we left Balaguer. Lots of cars were returning back towards civilization form their ski resorts – skis on tops of the cars. But we didn’t accept it as a sign and diligently drove to La Seu d’Urgel where we met the nicest Spanish guy during the whole trip  – in a visitor’s center. He gave us maps and assured that we can cross some mountains towards Berga where we also very mistakenly made a reservation for that night…He said the mountain road is good and the views are perfect. Just as we needed…But this rain…So we walked a little in La Seu:

Found a library – a really impressively transformed old gothic church into a modern building:

And had lunch…That is it in La Seu, we rushed to manage to cross that part of the mountains, naive us…I remember asking the guy – won’t this rain turn into snow high up in the mountains. He said it is too late to snow over there in mid March. And here is what we got into:

Yes, the couple of towns we saw on the way were very picture perfect -on a sunny day,  of course.

Pubol, a vi;;age where Picaso painted for one summer was supposed to be on the way, that was the main incentive to drive on the crazy narrow, windy and wet road. I guess Pubol looks similar to this…But i can only guess because after struggling for 2 hours and making 40 km the snow was already dripping onto the car and road and it was not melting any more…Being completely alone on the road – it was not reasonable to continue…The only prize we got was this view:

This was the only town we saw past Tuxen and didn’t dare driving further. In Tuxen we still investigated if we could reach Berga on another mountain route. People in the only restaurant said we could, but after giving it a try we still had to turn around and return to La Seu and do all the round trip on better roads all the way to Berga…That was not a very good day, especially for Andrei, to do all that driving on those windy roads – it was not fun at all. But we figured out that it is an interesting and beautiful place to visit a little later in spring or  summer:

So on the March 12th we were heading back towards Barcelona again, stopping at several towns to walk into their old parts. The first one was Corella- it is considered a town of beautiful renaissance houses. Generally teh town looked very much like others we already visited.  Just some houses were decorated in a very deliberate manner:

Next stop was Tudela with its typical jewish quarter:

And storks nesting everywhere they can in a city:

…and its beautiful buildings:

This one was peculiar – it had colorful plates glued into the facade:

…and the cathedral:

…and its squares:

All around this main square each house had a fresque in between windows or balconies on the second and third floors!  Tudela people really like decorations !

Then through Bardenas Reales – a landscape very similar to Utah’s landscapes but far from being that dramatic we drove out of Navarra and in to Aragon again. As we were used to already  -there were wind mills here and there lining mountain edges:

What amazed us in Spain – they are very much into alternative energy sources and into saving electricity as well. The lamps switch off in their toilets even if you are not done, the corridors in the hotels switch on only if you enter them, then they switch off. You get used to it, it is really good for Mother Nature…

This is a typical little village or town you see them on while driving:

And then there was Huesca:

Then we drove again, a lot, on the way noticed Castello de Farfanya – nothing special, nothing mentioned in travel books.  Just it looked attractive from the road and we decided to do a small hike, to move our muscles:

There was a wild path up, used only by local kids. But on the top there was an information board which said that there was a castle and a cathedral built on the same hill. Both of them left for decay…:

It was even scary to walk around – so fragile the walls looked…So we didn’t even try to enter or anything. The views from the hill:

Our car is down there, a little black one. Then we got stuck in super narrow one way streets of this small town , but luckily found our way out and by the very evening reached Balaguer – a city on a river with a hotel right there – facing the river:

And this is where we stayed for a night.

The 10th of March was again one of the most beautiful days we had in Spain – after The Pyrenees. The very morning looked foggy, but then it cleared up and I was already thinking of staying one more night in that wonderful hotel with lots of X-es in its name with the sea waves beating under our window:

But then my willingness to see the mountains one more time conquered this wish to stay and so we just walked one more time in those 4 medieval streets of Getaria:

The church is very strange there-  it is built over a street! So the altar part of the church is higher and all the floors are lifted towards the altar, so tat if you drop a ball by the altar, it wall roll down towards the entrance, or if you go for a communion – you would feel like climbing a mountain, or if you sit in a chair – you feel like you are in there to have a nap:

Spaniards like having coffins in their churches, some of them with a very realistic body, so that I was happy I visited them only now, when I am “over the hill” and not so sensitive, fo rin my childhood – i couldn’t bear such a view:

There is  a fortress by the road, which you can climb up and see the town from high up:

Our hotel was that last red building.  We also walked down to the fishing port with the warehouses for fish:

This is a town you can fall in love with and want to come again and again…but we would rather not, too far away…So we left driving up North on the same road by the sea till we saw Zumaia:

We stopped by the entrance to the city to see the House-museum of a Basque prominent painter Ignacio Zuloaga, but it was closed, so just some pics from outside of his house:

Speaking about Basques – they have their own language Euskera and their own different names of cities and places. But even their names in Spanish sound and look different – the letter combinations like “itz” or “oa” as well as the last letters “X, Y, Z of the alphabet are met in their words quite often. And also speaking about Basques  – their waiters seemed to us rather unpleasant. This was area in our trip were they openly showed how they hate taht we don’t speak Spanish and how they “don’t care”  -they would never look directly to your face. just somewhere through your head to the spaces behind…and never cared whether we stayed or left for the service for unbearably slow…Women waiters – a completely different story. They were nice as everywhere in Spain.  Draw your own conclusions, I can’t give a sexist advice .

Here are some pictures from Deba & Ondarroa – another coastal towns:

The maps usually don’t show a road from Ondarroa to Lekeitio. but there is one, on the sea shore. a very narrow one. it was worth driving it for the views and the first sight of Lekeitio from the high coast cliff that the road came from:

We found a space to park in the center on the street and walked to the port area to search for some “menu dia”. That took us a while. Lots of places, all crowded and very unfriendly. After seeing the boats and the Cathedral:

We found a nice restaurant further from the sea and closer to where we parked:

A magnolia tree was blooming if front of it:

After leaving Lekeitio we already turned inland and drove for a long time, through the gray granite mountains. pretty high rocks over high passes till we reached Vitoria – Gazteiz – the Basque capital. Walked there a little, but not too much, same narrow medieval streets, same churches…

Except that their streets go parallel in co-centric ovals. But…we couldn’t  find their central square. And afterwards we had a big problem driving out of the city – the road out was kind of hidden…as it often happened to us over there …So we drove till we reached Alfaro, already in the dark where there was a suitable hotel and pretty close to another place of interest for tomorrow  -Corella.

We found a pretty good guest house on the road to Pamplona from the south. The evening was very rainy so we just rested and saved energy for tomorrows adventures. So on March 9th we visited Pamplona – which I knew about as a city of San Fermin festival in July and a bull race they have in the middle of the old town every day during that festival. I would never go there in July . But now in March it was interesting to see one more Spanish capital with lots of history. They have good maps, but it is still very hard to figure out the best way in and out of the city. We parked in an underground parking in the center, and walked to the very center. Some nice houses onthe way:

Some squares with their hero figures:

But I was mostly impressed by Plaza del Castillo:

Then we went along Estafeta – the street where bulls run during St. Fermin festival:

They even run by the City Hall which is considered one of the most beautiful buildings in Pamplona:

And then we visited a museum, right on top of the corral where they keep the bulls before they let them loose:

The museum had lots of paintings, sculptures and the church on the right:

Here is one of the ancient mosaics exposed there:

And that is all from Pamplona. there are lots of other churches and buildings  worth visiting, but we started feeling already too overchurched. Plus, everything in Pamplona is not for a fee  – the parking, the churches. etc. Unlike other towns we visited. And when you have seen so much – so why bother. They also have a big 5 angled Ciudadela – the Citadel – but the books wrote that the gardens on it are especially beautiful when flowers are in bloom. This time it was too early in spring. So we went back to our car and had a rather hard time finding our way out of the city onto a highway towards the Basque country, towards the  Atlantic.

The green slopes and white houses by the highway looked very cozy:

The first stop on the Atlantic shore, more precisely – on the Golf of Biscay, was Hondarribia, pretty close to San Sebastian:

There was no problem to park by its well lifter center, as always, but we had to climb up, again…

Till we reached a square, a fortress with parador in it:

and some beautiful viewpoints:

From there we tried to get to San Sebastian, we got there, drove through the center hectically looking for a place to park – not on the streets, which were over packed with cars and people – but some parking garage or something like that.We couldn’t…the whole city left me an impression of a grandeur and somehow reminded Moscow or St. Petersburg in Russia, too big to enjoy, too busy. With a bridge of that Russian type, decorated with sculptures.  I didn’t even manage to take a picture-  we couldn’t stop even for a moment…So what was left for us – to drive away and seek some beautiful views elswhere on the coast, up a little North:

Here is a view from far away towards San Sebastian. The coastal road is good, it was very pleasant to drive there and feel the sea so close. We passed a couple of towns on the way until we came to Getaria, there  we found where to park and went for a walk towards the old town – and guess what – there was a hotel right on the corner, facing the sea, and the price wasn’t killing and everything was so right, the name of it Itxas Gain:

So we got a room there:

brought our stuff and had a nice walk in the 3 medieval parallel streets of Getaria:

It was very strange with their geology – our room in the hotel was on the 2nd floor, not high from that street level. But very high from the other street level and from the sea level on th eother side of it:

This is the view we could see not directly from the room – because there was an inner garden going form our room to the edge of the cliff where the owners arranged a safe observation deck with tables, chairs, pants, palms and even a little lawn to lay in the sun:

This path leads to the observation deck from our room…It was wonderful. I can’t say more…