After my sister and I spent a week
in Granada by ourselves while our parents were hiking in the Pyrenees, we took
an overnight bus to reunite with them in San Sebastian, part of the Basque
Country in the north of Spain. I was particularly excited for this because I’d
heard from everyone I’ve talked to how beautiful the north is, how different it
is from Andalusia, and how great the food is there. I was certainly not
disappointed.
We
arrived after a 12-hour bus ride, which somehow felt two hours long since I
managed to sleep most of the way. Something about moving vehicles makes me pass
out almost immediately. When I finally awoke we were driving through lush green
countryside, which in Eastern Andalusia simply doesn’t exist. It reminded me so
much of West Marin that I felt like our 12-hour journey had actually been a
flight back to California.
As
my parents had not yet arrived from the mountains, Katie and I checked into the
hotel and then headed straight to the beach, which was absolutely picturesque.
Perfect sand, shallow turquoise water, and beautiful surrounding hills. San
Sebastian is situated around a cove, so the water is really calm and warmer
than the actual Atlantic. After spending some nice time tanning and swimming we
went off in search of pinchos, the
Basque version of Tapas. Pinchos are renowned for being some of the best
cuisine in the world (here I’m quoting Anthony Bourdain yet again), and
although I’ll say they’re no burrito, there is something thrilling in the fact
that you walk into any bar and there are at least twenty different varieties of
bite-sized plates laid out before your eyes, ready for you to point at and eat
immediately. I felt like a child in a candy store, only instead of sugary
treats I was surrounded by lots of exotic fish and meat that looked
questionable but tasted great.
The
next day the whole family went on a walk to a hill overlooking the entire city.
Then Katie and I decided to cut the hike short and return to the beach, because
once you get a taste of heaven it’s hard to do much else. We got so lucky with
the weather while we were there—normally it rains a lot in the north, but we
were blessed with 80 degree sunshine, perfect for swimming. I’ll wrap up the
San Sebastian part now, since in reality we did little more than eat, sleep,
and swim, which I’m starting to realize is my idea of a perfect vacation.
The
next day we drove an hour west to Bilbao, still part of Basque Country. While
the rest of my family spent hours in the Guggenheim Museum, I walked all around
the town, exploring the old parts of the city and a grassy park perched on a
hill overlooking everything. As the museum is really the attraction of this
city, there’s not too much to relay about Bilbao, except that it had a feeling
I really liked—industrial but on the upswing.
We
spent that night, as well as the next two nights, in a tiny little village in
the province of Cantabria, called Santillana del Mar. This is, according to the
not-so-trustworthy Lonely Planet guide, “the most picturesque village in
Spain.” The authors weren’t far from the mark this time, as Santillana is a
beautifully preserved medieval village complete with rolling hills and grazing
livestock in the background. There were about twenty shops and restaurants in
the whole place, so needless to say the time we spent there was very relaxing.
On the first day we visited the nearby Altamira and Castillo caves with some of
the first discovered cave paintings in Spain. In the latter we actually got to
go deep inside the original cave and see the sketches first-hand, and the
Spanish guide talked about a word a minute and made me feel really great about
my level of comprehension. Actually my parents even understood about 85% of
what he said and they’ve never even taken a Spanish lesson.
The most shocking part of the whole
experience was not seeing 30,000+ year-old art, but rather the fact that my
Stanford-educated father proceeded to ask the guide (after we had already been
on the tour for half an hour): “Hay paleolíticos aquí?” (Literally: are there
paleolithics here?) What he meant to ask was if Paleolithic humans came that
far back into the cave, as we were very deep in, but the language barrier
presented such problems that even the guide looked at my dad like he had severe
mental issues. I, in turn, swiftly melted into the group of other tourists and
pretended I was in no way associated, as I was expecting the guide to say any
minute, “Um, who do you think
we’ve been talking about for the better part of an hour? Have you been missing
the entire concept that these paintings were made by really really old people?
Or did you mean, are there Paleolithic people here at this very moment? Yes, in fact, at the end of the tour we get to meet
the very artists themselves!” My poor dad, as if he didn’t take enough brutal
jokes from my sister and I on the duration of the trip, he now appears in my
blog. But it’s my duty to report my favorite memories from my year abroad, and
also all brilliant people are allowed an occasional slip—especially if they’re
making it in Spanish. Love ya daddy!
That
afternoon, as though suffering sufficient humiliation was not brutal enough, we
all went to Santillana’s only attraction: the torture museum. It’s an odd
paradox that this seemed to be one of the first times we all truly meshed well
as a family on the trip; maybe the presence of skull-crushing devices, human
melting pots and body-spearing poles made us realize how fortunate we all were
to have each other. We soon realized, however, that this torture museum was no
joke, and the light mood in which we entered was very quickly erased, to the
point where the paella I had for lunch was not sitting so well with me after
reading the last of 100 descriptions of torture. What is wrong with the human
race? In the first place we inflict torture. In the second we establish museums
devoted to torture, and in the third place we then pay to see them.
The adorable town of Santillana del Mar
The
next day Katie and I opted to skip the grueling mountain trek that my parents
headed off to, and we caught a bus to the beach instead. After the water of San
Sebastian I was dying for more, and Cantabria’s beaches didn’t disappoint. If
Santa Barbara’s beaches were anything like northern Spain’s, I would surely have
gone swimming more than twice in my 2 years there.
The
last day of the trip we drove to Segovia, which has the most famous Roman
aqueduct in all of Spain. It truly was a sight, and even though there’s not too
much going on in that sleepy city, I’ll say that it was one of my favorite
places I’ve been to in Spain because of the ancient structure. We had a last
family dinner in the Plaza Mayor and then got ready to head our separate ways
in the morning.
Although
my heart will always lie with Andalusia, the north of Spain is absolutely
beautiful and I’m so glad I got the chance to see it. The second half of the
trip was overall really great, as I think the initial bumps of traveling with
my family after 9 months of independence wore off a bit. I truly am so grateful
that they came to visit me, even if I have a bit too sarcastic way of
expressing it on my blog! Also it was so great to see my sister for 3 weeks and
get along with her in a way that I would have never thought possible in our
middle-school and high-school days. It only took 10 years of rocky adolescence
for us to treat each other humanely again!!
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