Spanish speaking countries appear to have something against the Lovgrens. After 15 months of travel, we have been extremely fortunate to not have too many mishaps along the way. Of course, there was the Peru fiasco (See our Cuzco blog if you missed that debacle). Now, northern Spain can be added to the list. Luckily, although I thought Jimmy was dying at one point, neither of us ever felt nearly as terrible as in Peru. We just had to hold onto the wonderful moments of our travels a bit harder when things didn’t quite seem to be going our way. But, we know we are super lucky for this opportunity and have to embrace the downs with the ups. We have also been asked by friends for more stories of when things go wrong for the complete picture of nomadic living, so, here you go… the highlights and lowlights of our cursed road trip.
SALAMANCA
We started in Salamanca, Spain and enjoyed two days here with the only incident being a frustrating drive through the winding, narrow old town streets to find our hotel. Jimmy almost drove the car down a couple stairs, but we luckily found our hotel at the edge of the square in the nick of time. Our hotel may have been difficult to find, but we were right next to one of the highlights of the city, the cathedral.
Although the cathedral was built from 1513 to 1733 and is a blend of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture, an astronaut made it on the façade during the last renovations in 1993.
Salamanca is a beautiful college town. Our afternoons were spent wandering the sandstone streets and soaking in the gorgeous architecture.
The cathedral is even more spectacular at night, and with our perfect hotel location, we got to enjoy the view every evening as we strolled out for our tapas crawl.
Traditionally, tapas are a small bite of food that you are given at a bar when you order a drink. The word “tapas” is derived from the Spanish word tapar “to cover”. The original tapas were simple pieces of bread given to patrons to cover their drink to avoid fruit flies diving in. Then, some innkeepers started putting small pieces of meat like chorizo or jamón (ham) on top of the bread, and the practice grew from there.
Now-a-days, every town in Spain does tapas a bit differently, so you never quite know what to expect. At the first busy bar, I pushed my way up through the crowd and ordered us a couple drinks in SPANISH and managed to walk away to Jimmy’s surprise with two free tapas of my choice. I really am trying to improve my Spanish, so I was doing all the ordering. Jimmy didn’t believe me when I told him I’d be back with drinks and tapas. We were pumped that they were following the Granada style of free tapas with an order of an alcoholic beverage. Wine and beer are so cheap there that we were able to have a meal plus four rounds of drinks for about $20. Even better, we got our pick from the line-up of tapas on the bar, which wasn’t the case the last time we visited Spain and were given something random for free.
Our tapas crawl is one of our favorite memories from Salamanca, but with all the craziness and people at the busy bars, we were unable to get any good pictures to capture the moment. The bars and tapas are already starting to blur together, but I remember eating some good, cheap food and crushing some tinto de veranos, a Spanish red wine cocktail with lemonade. The main square was a beautiful background for our nightly tapas crawls.
After Salamanca, the trip was supposed to just keep getting better. However, just a few miles outside of Salamanca, our car started to sputter. Crap! Seriously! We had big plans for the day including a stop to see some awesome sights in Segovia and five hours of driving to get us to the Cantabrian region of northern Spain. Well, that quickly went out the window as the car had other plans.
We were fortunate to be able to sputter our way to the edge of a small town instead of being stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Oh, look. This town is actually kinda cool.
We made it to a town called Ávila known for its intact medieval walls in Romanesque style. We were told by the car rental company that a tow truck and a taxi would be there in 45 minutes. We were pumped that it wasn’t too long of a wait, but that didn’t give us time to explore the cute city in lieu of our planned Segovia stop. We were hungry for lunch, so I sprinted into town frantically looking for sandwiches or something to take back to Jimmy who was waiting with the car. A totally sweaty mess, I got back to the car with some food right around the supposed 45 min time when we should be picked up. But, of course, the tow truck and taxi didn’t actually show up for 2 hours!! Here we were just outside a cute town full of restaurants, cafes, cobbled squares, Gothic churches, and medieval walls to explore, but we were stuck sitting in our hot car being attacked by killer bees. So frustrating!
Trying to look on the bright side, I did score some treats during my frantic run through town to make us feel better. The local specialty is a gooey pastry called Yemas de Santa Teresa made from egg yolks, syrup, lemon, and cinnamon. After sulking over some pastries and hiding in the car from killer bees, the tow truck finally came.
Bye, bye piece of $#!+ Fiat Panda! Unfortunately, we still had to drive 1.5 hours in the wrong direction to the Madrid airport to get a new rental car. The rental company wouldn’t even give us an upgrade or discount for our troubles. So, that pretty much blew up the day. No Segovia, and poor Jimmy had even more hours of driving in another tiny car to get us to our next destination.
CANTABRIA
We spent 3 days at a lovely posada in rural Cantabria.
Luckily, after the rough car-fiasco day, we were able to relax in a beautiful setting and visit a few nearby historic towns.
Santillana del Mar
San Vicente de la Barquera
The coolest thing that we got to see was the breathtaking El Soplao caves. A huge cavern that was once used for mining that has an amazing collection of stalactites, stalagmites, and other geological wonders. Par for the course, the first day we showed up, the tickets were already sold out, so we had to drive all the way back the next day. In addition, we couldn’t take any pictures inside, so you just have to believe that we saw something really special there. Here is a picture of the train heading into the mine.
A close second place to the caves, we did get some great pictures at Picos de Europa, one of Spain’s most popular national parks with the steepest mountain peaks in Spain just 15 miles from the ocean. We took the Fuente Dé cable car for some breathtaking mountaintop views.
We had plans that day to also visit a cute little mountain town as well as a seaside town for dinner. However, on our drive through one of the mountain passes, we all of a sudden came to a complete stop. Mind you, this is just one day removed from spending 12+ hrs stuck in the car. Traffic did not move an inch, and after a few minutes, we noticed people getting out of their cars in front of us. Oh, this can’t be good! Finally, we saw a cop riding around on a motorcycle, so we flagged him down to ask what was going on. One of the final stages of La Vuelta a España, a professional cycling race, was finishing in the town ahead. No traffic would be allowed through for a few hours!!! The cop also informed us that there is no way to go around as this was the only way through the mountains. Whelp…again, we tried to make the most of it. The cop said we could leave our cars and walk into town. After a long hike past tons of cars and all the buses for the cycling teams, we got to town just in time to see a few cyclists pass by and grab a beer.
Just like that, the race was over, so we had to hike all the way back to our car for fear of it sitting in the middle of the road with traffic moving. Of course, even after we hiked all the way back, the traffic barely moved for the next hour as we had to wait for the buses, etc. to clear out the way. Poor Jimmy was stuck with another long day of frustrating driving conditions.
No worries though as we had the part of our trip that I was most looking forward to up next…San Sebastián. We had 3 days to relax in a beautiful beach town and eat amazing Basque food.
BASQUE COUNTRY
Although Jimmy wasn’t looking forward to more driving, the coastal drive from Cantabria to San Sebastián was beautiful with sparkling blue waters splashing up against the jagged coastline.
Up to this point, the cuisine had been somewhat mediocre and not what we expected after falling in love with Spanish food during our southern Spain vacation a couple years ago. But, the moment we crossed into Basque country, all that changed.
We pulled over for lunch in a small city called Guernica, most known for the horrific bombing in the 1930s and subsequent Pablo Picasso painting of the same name. We strolled down one of the pedestrian streets looking for a good foodie spot, and as Jimmy was getting money from the ATM, I followed a crowd of locals into a nearby little bar. Locals know best, right? At 2pm on a weekday, the place was packed with people drinking wine and munching on pintxos. (Tapas in Basque are called pintxos) We surveyed the pintxo selection on the bar and joined in on the fun.
We paired our pintxos with a glass of Txakoli, a local white wine that is light, crisp, slightly sparkling, and pairs well with everything. The pintxos were quite tasty, and we loved the Txakoli. Impressed with our first random stop, we thought it would be fun to make lunch a little bar crawl and check out another local hangout on the street. The next one had an even better selection of pintxos. One was actually a mini version of my favorite dish from the last time we visited Spain, bacalau pil-pil. Oh, yes, it was just as good as I remembered and fun as a bite-sized portion on a piece of bread.
Bacalau pil-pil, shown on the top plate in the above picture, has an amazing “gravy” made from garlic, olive oil, and the fish drippings. With our lunch surprise and great views of the Bay of Biscay, we thought our luck was changing….until we got to San Sebastián….and the rain came….and pretty much didn’t stop until we packed up the car to head out of town.
Our dreams of lying out on the beach and enjoying sundowners with beautiful views of one of the most picturesque Spanish cities were dashed. We couldn’t believe how cold and windy it was even when the rain did let up for a moment one day.
But, being grateful for all opportunities and looking on the bright side, we still got to eat!! And Basque cuisine totally lived up to the hype as some of the best cuisine in Europe. As evidence from our random stops in Guernica, even little hole-in-the-wall places serve up quality cuisine. Unlike Salamanca, the pintxos are not free with your drinks, and can actually be quite pricey, but they are totally worth every penny. Walking into the bars and seeing the wide selection of pintxos covering the counters was a unique experience.
We did multiple meals as pintxo bar crawls during our stay, and every place was memorable. Our first night had two of the best experiences…Bar Borda-Berri and Bar Zeruko, which specialize in hot pintxos made fresh-to-order.
At Bar Borda-Berri, we had a tender, melt-in-your-mouth beef cheek in a red wine sauce, risotto with wild mushrooms, and a fancy duck breast. How are these pintxos!?!? The competition in San Sebastián to make the best pintxos has definitely inspired the chefs to create small dishes that are not the stereotypical definition that a pintxo must be on a piece of bread and/or skewered.
Bar Zeruko specializes in fancy, molecular gastronomy from an award-winning chef. Here, the hot pintxos that are made fresh-to-order are the best. I fell in love with their bacalhau dish called hoguera, which has even surpassed the bacalhau pil-pil in my mind.
A piece of cod is served on a smoking hearth to be gently cooked for a few seconds and then placed on top of a piece of bread with some magical green sauce. Of course, since the theme of this blog is our debacles, I have to mention the fiasco that ensued at this bar. Obviously famous, the bar is packed with people and hot. I was trying to push my way to the bar to place our order and practice my Spanish. Jimmy started to not feel well and told me he was going outside. I thought he told me to continue with the order. He actually told me not to order him anything. Well, after several minutes, I had a beer, a wine, and 2 steaming hot platters of bacalhau with nowhere to go and only two hands.
People were pushing me to get to the bar, and I couldn’t see Jimmy anywhere. I frantically put the two bacalhau dishes on a small side table next to some guy, who at first gave me a dirty look for taking his space and told me his wife was sitting there, but then after he saw my pathetic face told me he would watch my food for a second. I ran outside with the wine and beer in my hands to look for Jimmy. Where the heck did he go!?!? Is he sick in a corner somewhere? Did he have another unexplainable allergic reaction? Oh crap, I set the drinks on a different table and asked another guy to watch them (all the while praying he didn’t have roofies) as I went back to move the bacalhau from the other guy’s table. I ran back to where I left the bacalhau and explained to the man and his wife that I lost my husband, but I would eat the food and get out of their way as quickly as I can. I scarfed down the first piece of bacalhau. Dang…that was delicious! But, is my husband dying somewhere? These were expensive, and I need to eat them. Crap, I started to stuff the second one down my face with the husband and wife staring at me, and at this point, trying to calm me down. And then, in strolls Jimmy with a smile and a beer. What!?!?
Supposedly, after he went outside, he started to feel better, and since I was taking so long at the bar for the order, he went into the quieter neighboring bar to eat a couple pintxos and grab a beer. Ugh! Luckily, the other couple laughed along with us, and we ended up talking to them for quite some time and enjoyed the rest of the evening. After eating my first 1.5 bacalhau frantically, I rewarded myself with another one. Even then, I couldn’t leave San Sebastián without coming back on our last day to have it again. This time, we also tried their smoked eel pintxo. Also, unbelievably delicious!!
The other pintxos bar that we have to mention is called Bar Bergara. This casual spot has many awards for their original, visually stunning pintxos. Just like Bar Zeruko, the hot pintxos are the best. Our favorite was the “Itxaso”, which was a tart filled with monkfish and seafood cream (pictured on the left bottom and top right corner of the plate below).
Two other favorites were the crispy pastry filled with foie gras topped with port braised grapes and the “Udaberri” with creamed crayfish.
During our three days of rain, we were mostly hanging out in our Airbnb if not out eating, but one day, we noticed that the rain had stopped and the sun was coming out. Quick! Up to one of the viewpoints to see Jesus and the beautiful landscape! The sun stayed out just long enough for us to get a couple pictures.
And we finally made it to Jesus (which, if you recall from the disastrous Cusco blog, we did not make it to Jesus before the rain came).
Of course, the moment after we snapped the picture with Jesus, the rain set back in. We trudged our way back down the mountain and through town in hopes of finding a bar to jump into to get out of the rain and grab a drink. However, we found a complete disaster waiting for us. Young teenagers were completely running amok. Supposedly, an annual crew race ends in a big celebration here. The problem is that parents leave at noon, and then the kids destroy the city. I don’t understand how the city allows this to happen every year. There were drunk teens puking all over the streets and leaving garbage everywhere. We couldn’t believe it. We decided just to head back to our Airbnb, but before we could get there, some punk kid kicked a full glass of beer that had been set on the ground and it splattered all over me. He didn’t even apologize and just laughed it off with his friends. So, my San Sebastián image was tainted just a wee bit. But, the food….just remember the glorious food!
After a somewhat disappointing stay in San Sebastián, our northern Spain road trip was coming to a close. Unfortunately, we had a long day of driving to get to Barcelona. To kick us in the rear end, the drive had a toll booth every few miles, and we were shocked as the amount we were paying kept going up. First, 1 euro, then 3, then 9, then 20!! Then, of course, we got stuck in a traffic jam just outside of Barcelona. Late, dark, and hangry…this was not what we needed. We sat for over an hour and just crept along. The ultimate kicker…the back-up was due to another toll, and this time, it was 30 euro! We spent over 50 euro just in tolls to get from San Sebastián to Barcelona. What a great way to end our not-so-epic road trip of northern Spain.
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