My first trip back to Spain to see Laurie since 2018 (technically, Portugal that trip). I stayed in La Losa for a while, then Laurie and I headed up to Logrono in La Rioja and Hondarribia in Basque Country.
Wednesday, August 16
We took Luna to the vet’s house in La Losa where she would stay while we were gone. Luna seemed very happy to be at this house with a big yard, another dog, two small children, and a dog-loving vet. She was a very happy pup as she raced around with the other dog. The vet said she would soon be joined by a third dog who would also be staying for a few days. Puppy heaven!
We took a little longer than I hoped to finish chores around the house, get packed and load the car, but no matter really. I texted our apartment host, Maite, and said we’d be about an hour late, arriving between 4-5pm.
It was about a four-hour drive to Logrono, once we figured out which route to take – Google’s suggestions kept changing, I suppose as traffic changed. Before we got going, we took some time to figure out how to stream Rhiannon Giddens from my phone to Laurie’s car. It involved connecting by Bluetooth to Laurie’s player – the cord only did power for some reason. I was happy to get it working though I’m not sure exactly what did the trick. We are anticipating Rhiannon’s new album on August 18 so it was a useful thing to be able to play it though the car’s speakers.
The ride proceeded fairly well though Laurie’s car was not really built for highway speeds and Laurie herself clearly wasn’t feeling well. The combination of antibiotics, probiotics and ibuprofen were still doing a number on her stomach and her head. She slept intermittently and moaned frequently. After a couple of hours the car’s air conditioning stopped being effective and I eventually insisted we stop at a highway service area to cool down.
We went into the restaurant area and encountered a long line for the cafeteria. This was definitely not fast food. I eventually found I could grab a Diet Coke and an Iberico ham sandwich which was good enough for me. Laurie had a Diet Coke. After a short break we got back in the car and thankfully the air conditioning decided to work a bit better. I guess everyone needed the break.
We followed the Google directions directly to the apartment at Avenida Espana, 12, and found Maite waiting outside. We went through a little Keystone Kops routine of trying to park the car – first I successfully parked it in a garage driveway, Maite told us to get out of the driveway and double park while we unloaded, then she decided maybe we could fit into a tiny spot on the curb. I tried unsuccessfully then Maite tried and did only slightly better. We put on the blinkers and took some stuff up to the apartment; fortunately the road wasn’t very busy and we didn’t get a ticket or hassle. After getting most things upstairs, we left Laurie at the apartment while Maite and I drove a few blocks away to find some free parking on the street.
When we got back to the apartment, Maite checked us in and went over a bunch of information about Logrono, La Rioja, and the apartment itself. She was very helpful, speaking mostly in Spanish to Laurie while I tried to follow along. Laurie nodded but was not well tuned in to much of Maite’s spiel. Maite started going into Rioja towns and spoke highly of Laguardia, Briones and El Ciego, as she had in her notes. We mentioned that we were going to Haro and she sniffed that Haro was an ugly city. That isn’t what we’d heard, but we would learn soon enough with our tours over the next couple of days. Probably the people in Haro say that Logrono is the ugly one.
Once Maite left, Laurie locked herself in one of the bathrooms – it turned out she wasn’t strong enough to open the door latch – I rescued her and she retreated to a nap. I sat for a while to orient myself and cool off, then decided to shop at Lidl for some wine, a piece of bread and some coffee and milk for Laurie.
Close to 8pm we ventured out into Logrono. We walked about 15 minutes into the old town, first to the Cathedral. I found some information online that said it would be open until 8:45pm but it looked mighty closed, though to be fair we didn’t go all the way around. As we walked toward the cathedral we could see in the distance a bank of marine layer clouds crawling over the top of the Cantabrian Mountains just north of the city. It looked just like the marine layer when it crawls into San Francisco, an indication of the cooler, wetter weather in Basque Country.
I suggested to Laurie we follow Maite’s suggestion to cross the river and walk along the park on the other side before plunging into the Calle Laurel pinxto/tapas area. We walked a couple of desolate blocks to the river and crossed the Iron Bridge when Laurie decided it was a bridge too far. She went back to the Cathedral to wait for me. I walked a few blocks along the river and crossed back on a pedestrian bridge. I had to hunt around a bit in the old town but eventually found Calle Laurel, a tight little street jammed with tapas bars. I reconnected with Laurie at the Cathedral and we walked back to Calle Laurel together but she was not interested in getting food.
I decided to try a “complaint”, a little sandwich, at Las Quejas. Mine was ham and cheese with pimiento peppers. Tasty enough. And a glass of Lopez de Haro red. Total damage under Eu 5. Laurie headed home. I found another place around the corner, Bar Jarandilla, with gildas, boquerones and calamari with a Coto Mayor rosado. Total hit Eu15 but half of it was the calamari which came fresh out of a freezer bag into the fryer. But it was filling. As I went down the street, I found another place with better looking calamari, but too late for me.
I could have lingered in Calle Laurel but decided to head home and have a nightcap of more wine there. After all, we have an early start tomorrow. I watched a little tennis then went to bed around 1am.
Thursday, August 17
I woke early with the realization that I’m much more comfortable in city life than country life. Laurie is clearly opposite. I like being able to walk to a wide variety of shops and foods, regardless of the density of people around. Logrono is not a very pretty city at first glance, but it’s got lots of good food and wine, for sure. I kept my windows open to let in some cool night air – and it was cool and quite comfortable. I was amazed how quiet the neighborhood of densely packed apartments was at night. Everyone’s windows were open so there was an incentive for everyone to be relatively quiet. The same is true in the countryside, I suppose, but the dogs and other animals haven’t got the message.
We met our guide, Alfredo Selas, outside our apartment for our tour. Alfredo had been recommended by Laurie’s friend Mary Ellen who had a great tour with him several years prior. He had officially retired since Covid but responded to our emails and agreed to work up an itinerary on our behalf. Dozens of emails later, we had a full day planned with visits to three wineries and a lunch lined up in Laguardia.
Alfredo’s Volkswagen Jetta was clean, roomy and cool. We had a 30-minute drive to our first stop, a vineyard in the middle of nowhere in Rioja Alavesa, a pretty spot near an ancient wine stomping spot. There was also a little stone guard station where they used to post people to guard against theft.
Our first winery was Bodegas Hermanos Pecina where we tasted five wines: a white, rose, Crianza, Reserva and Grand Reserve. The woman running the private tasting was warm and funny, very good at her job. We ended up buying a white, rose and 3 of the Reservas. The tasting ended up being gratis. Good deal for us and her, I think.
We stopped by the Baigorri winery, an architecturally very distinctive modern structure that supports slightly less distinctive wines. Alfredo didn’t really want to stop there but I had asked to see it and we had a few minutes to kill before our next appointment. So we took a bunch of photos outside and then went inside to have a look around. The building has seven stories set into the hillside, giving it the distinct vibe of a James Bond villain’s underground lair. The glass cupola on top was an open exhibit space, available for your wedding or other events. I went ahead and tasted a couple of their wines; they were fine but not as good as the Pecina ones.
Our second official winery was Amaren where we got more of a tour of the cellars. The wines there were very good too but we bought only two bottles of their Reserva. I knew I couldn’t take them home so these were contributions to Laurie’s cellar.
Our lunch was at Restaurante Sugar in Laguardia. I had some really good grilled lamb chops and a scallops in puff pastry appetizer which was tasty. Laurie had a pair of starters, one a salad and I’m not sure what else. It was all very good but the wine was having its cumulative effect.
After lunch, Alfredo showed us around Laguardia, a very lovely old hill town. It would have been even lovelier if it weren’t 90-something degrees. It seemed like a movie set where no one lived. No doubt it would get busier in the late afternoon and evening but we were happy to keep the walk short and retreat into Alfredo’s air conditioned car.
I had asked Alfredo if we could see Bodegas Ysios, another winery with distinctive architecture. He pointed it out in the distance, just down the hill from our Laguardia parking lot. This was as close as we got. Probably just as well — we didn’t need any more wine.
Our last stop was at Bodegas Murua where we were given a short tour and tasting from the owner. Very impressive wines and an impressive family art collection (no photos, please). We enjoyed the tasting and bought a couple more bottles.
There was one more sight on our itinerary, a quick driveby of the Frank Gehry designed hotel that is part of the Marques de Riscal winery in Elciego. Alfredo convinced us it was just a tourist trap. Mostly it looked like an alien spaceship accidentally landed in a small Spanish village.
Alfredo dropped us back home, we said our goodbyes, paid him then stumbled back to our rooms and slept for several hours. Truth be told, it was only through the photos that I was able to reconstruct the tour. As we went along the day became a hazy one of which neither Laurie or I could remember all the details. Still, I’m glad we took a guided tour — we definitely went to wineries we would not have visited and drank a better selection of wines. Alfredo was an informative and capable guide and a trained sommelier to boot. I’m grateful he took a day from his retirement to work with us.
We awoke around 9pm — I was convinced it was the next morning. We decided we didn’t need dinner really but went over to Lidl to pick up some bread, chorizo, yogurt and fruit for the next couple of days. I had bread, chorizo and cheese for a light meal and watched a bit of women’s World Cup and tennis before officially retiring for the evening.
Friday, August 18
We woke in time to get going by 9am, surprisingly little worse for wear from the previous day’s indulgences. Laurie had one Rioja winery she wanted to visit when we were doing our trip planning: Bodegas Muga, which had been her go-to Spanish wine since being introduced to it by Michael Greenwald years before. The winery had a daily tour in English at 10am which we reserved several weeks in advance.
We got to Haro and the Muga winery just at 10am as the English tour was starting with about a dozen people. We got a thorough tour of the Muga facilities seeing all the intricate steps to making wine including the cooperage where they make oak barrels on site, one of the few Spanish wineries to do so. The massive oak barrels where the grapes get started were impressive.
Even more impressive were the many thousands of barrels stored in multiple cool underground rooms where the wine aged for several years. There was an involved process of monitoring and shifting some of the wines from barrel to barrel over time that I didn’t fully grasp but that’s clearly part of the art and skill of wine making.
The cooperage was pretty cool. I’m still not sure how they bend the wood to make the barrels. I managed not to take any photos, however. They use specific oak trees from France and the U.S., each with their own characteristics. The wood itself has to age for years before they can use it for barrels. Wine making is a really a long term commitment.
We didn’t really see much of bottling other than putting the finished product into a shipping bin.
The tasting was a little bit anticlimactic: one white and two reds. I could detect a tiny difference between the reds — but only by taste. The nose and color were the same to me, despite our guide’s precise descriptions.
We enjoyed meeting the other tour mates, two students from Norway living in the Netherlands and a Dutch couple living in Bristol. We could have had a fine time chatting longer but the Muga people kicked us out of the bar. Laurie ended up buying on bottle of Rose. I offered to buy Laurie a bottle of the premium Torre Muga but she declined, saying it was too expensive (it wasn’t included in our tasting). Her loss.
We tried to make sense of the sculpture outside the Muga building without much luck. We thought maybe it was Bacchus in various modes, though it could have just been a drunk man who fell off his horse, leaving his naked child and drunken wife behind. Further research indicates “The sculptural ensemble consists of a man pulling a horse (farmer’s effort), a woman with grapes in hand (the land where the vineyards are cultivated) and a child with a glass already full of wine.” So we were close with our second guess.
We tried to check out another winery in the Barrio Estacion, the railway/transport hub in Haro that houses at least six major wineries, but after walking a bit in the heat and not finding the one we wanted, we realized we didn’t want another tasting anyway so we headed back to the car.
We drove into the heart of the city of Haro and confirmed that there wasn’t much to it…but Logrono is not appreciably prettier, no matter what our apartment host says.
We drove to the very impressive Vivanco Wine Museum. We got our tickets, downloaded the English audio guide, and we’re on our way shortly after noon. Three hours later we were about halfway through the exhaustive look at the history and process of wine making. We took a break for lunch at the museum cafe. I got a little Iberico ham sandwich and ended up eating more than half of Laurie’s mixed salad with tuna.
We finally finished the museum tour after 5pm. It was much longer and more thorough than I thought it would be, down to the unnecessary collection of thousands of corkscrews. Still, the building was very modern, impressive and, most importantly, air conditioned.
We tried driving through the hill town of Briones adjacent to the museum but were thwarted by a road under construction two-thirds of the way to the top. Oh well. The hill towns are lovely and interesting but not really meant to drive through. They’re for walking, langorously, en route to a glass of something in the plaza mayor.
We drove back to Logrono, getting gas once we figured out how the pump worked at the completely unattended station. We were saved by another motorist who showed us Laurie had paid for a different pump.
We rested a bit at the apartment then went to Calle San Juan area for dinner. I liked the ambience better than Calle Laurel: a little less crowded and less touristy. We stopped at the Michelin rated Tastavin where I got a little anchovy toasty thing with a white wine and then a very delicious tempura shrimp and fish (cod?) skewer. I could have stayed there for quite a while trying other things. Instead, we ventured further down the street trying to find something that appealed to Laurie but nothing did. After walking some but not all of the street she decided to bail out and head home. I gladly proceeded to search the street.
I stopped at Umm and had a couple of Gilda’s and an interesting pair of chicken dumplings in a so-called curry sauce. It was not an altogether successful bit of fusion and barely spicy but I enjoyed it anyway.
I wandered back up the street to try a little egg covered ham toast thing I saw earlier. The bar, Samaray, also featured calamari so I got a bocata de calamar, a tiny po’ boy. Both were good and filling.
I considered eating more — there were several other tempting bars — but decided that I’d had enough. The total damage for the evening was under Eu 30 which felt quite reasonable to me. I’d be happy to come back to Calle San Juan.
Saturday, August 19
With the temperature topping 100 degrees in Logrono this day, we decided to call an audible. Rather than head south toward the monasteries or walk the water path in Matute, I persuaded Laurie that we should try going north over the Cantabrian Mountains into the Basque Highlands. I found a reference to a cheese “museum” in Idiazabal and we made that our destination, a 90-minute drive.
The road was highway for about 30 minutes then we veered off on country roads to head over the mountains. It was a pretty drive but the landscape was still dry and dusty until we got to the very top. We passed through a short tunnel and came out upon a vast green valley, like entering Shangri-La. Unfortunately there was no place to pull over to take pictures. Instead, the road plunged into a series of tight turns and hairpins. I was grateful there was no one immediately behind me but there was nowhere to stop to enjoy the views or the refreshingly cooler air.
Eventually we approached the valley floor, passing farmhouses and tiny villages that looked more like Switzerland than Spain, with lots of green trees and bright flowers poking out of flower boxes in every window.
We made our way to Idiazabal and located the cheese interpretation and tasting center hiding in an apartment building. It was 1:45 and we knew they closed for lunch at 2:00 but we poked our heads in anyway to confirm they’d reopen at 3:30pm and to ask about a place for lunch. The very nice lady at the desk kicked into English and offered to stay open a little while to show us through. It was an abbreviated tour but she waived the normal Eu3.40 fee.
We saw an introductory film with English subtitles that explained the cheese making process. The lady then walked us through the exhibit, explaining more, answering questions and offered us a cheese tasting.
I learned the sad but important relationship between lamb chops and cheese, as well as the phrase “leading lambs to the slaughter”. The lambs are born in November, taken from their mother ewes after two months so the ewes continue to produce milk for 3-4 more months. Hence cheese. They get a month to rest, then are encouraged (forced) to get pregnant again in summer so the cycle repeats. Sheep herding is an ancient, pastoral, productive, sometimes beautiful but sometimes brutal business.
Idiazabal cheese is made from two distinct breeds of Basque sheep, Latxa and Carranzana, both very specific to this Basque highland region and jealously guarded. Idiazabal wool is not worth much of anything other than insulation but the cheese is excellent, especially the smoked variety which comes out smoother and less grainy than its natural version.
Well dosed with cheese knowledge in about 20 minutes, we thanked our host/guide and ventured to the nearby restaurant she recommended, the only place open in town.
The Restaurante Pilarrenea was tucked behind a house behind a park. We hardly would have found it on our own. We were shown to a shaded table and shared a very nice lunch: a large local salad with cheese, walnuts, apple, tomatoes and other goodies, followed by a roast chicken plate with good fries. Laurie finally ate her fair share of the meal and there was plenty left for me.
There were several cheese shops listed in Idiazabal but they were all closed. In fact, the town seemed mostly deserted on this Saturday afternoon. The one cheese-related place that was open, the J. Aranburu dairy store turned out to be a small factory with two ladies busily packing cheese into vacuum sealed packages. One of them stopped to briskly offer us a taste of their cheeses: natural, lightly smoked and deeply smoked, as well as a sort of cream cheese and blue cheese. We bought a wedge of the natural, lightly smoked and a jar of blue. The woman let us take a few quick pictures of the factory then it was back to work.
I’d thought about visiting a natural park for a short walk but it was already past 4pm and Laurie started snoozing as soon as we got in the car. So I started to drive back, this time climbing on a different set of tiny and quite beautiful roads, perfect for biking and fun for driving as long as no other cars were coming, reminiscent of the Tour de France routes we drove in the Pyrenees in 2012, for about half an hour before catching a highway for the rest of the ride to Logrono. This time we went the western route skirting Vitoria-Gasteiz and Haro.
It was nearly 100 degrees in Logrono but our apartment was tolerable with the shades pulled and the fans on. We rested for a bit then debated what to do about dinner. Laurie decided to stay in with another of her potatoes. I headed back out to Calle San Juan. This time I took a different route, following some other walkers past the bus station I hadn’t seen and then found a series of pedestrian streets that took me to old town, a much more pleasant walk than the Google-recommended main thoroughfare.
I vowed to be more selective and get only one tapa/pinxtos per place. I started at La Cueva de Floren with a large toothpick of four grilled mushrooms topped with a shrimp and doused with garlic and olive oil, along with a glass of white wine. Several places seemed to specialize in this mushroom creation and it was quite delicious.
I wandered down the street and found another place I’d seen the day before specializing in spicy baby clams (coquinas), La Tasquina. I ordered the dish and a beer and was delighted with the bowl of tiny seashells swimming in garlic, oil and a few slices of seriously hot peppers. I needed another beer and a basket of bread but I took my time and polished them off.
Temporarily sated, I went to the main square and got a table with a nice view of the Cathedral, ordered a glass of wine and whiled away a long time watching the people of all ages pass by. I felt rather accomplished at adjusting to the Spanish lifestyle and timetable. As it passed 11pm I decided I definitely had enough food and slowly headed back down the pedestrian streets toward our apartment.
I watched the tail end of a rerun of the meaningless World Cup third place game — congratulations Sweden but you could have let Australia win a medal — which drove Laurie to bed. I followed not long after.
Sunday, August 20
We got ourselves up in time to get packed and clean the apartment to a suitable level. Laurie’s level of suitability was a little higher than my own, but so be it. We were aiming to be gone by 10:30 but it ended up being 11am by the time we actually got everything downstairs and locked the doors. Maite, our host, anxiously queried when we would be gone and then came promptly at 11am anyway, in time to chat with Laurie while I fetched the car. We said final goodbyes and thanks and headed on our way.
Laurie had made the point multiple times that she was not eager to go to Bilbao because Bilbao Festival Week was underway. She imagined huge crowds and traffic. I was reasonably sure we could have got into town, parked and seen the Guggenheim for a few hours but she made it sound like that would be nearly impossible. As it was, we had done more than our share of driving the previous few days so I was content to head straight to Hondarribia, especially since it promised to be considerably cooler than La Rioja. We checked with our Hondarribia host, Derko, who said it would be OK if we arrived at 1:30 rather than 4pm. So off we went.
We arrived in Hondarribia (aka Fuentarrabia in Basque if you’re having trouble looking it up) to find a busy little tourist/beach town with a lot of Sunday afternoon traffic. We crawled through the Marina or Fishermen’s area of town where the main cluster of restaurants and our apartment were located. We found our apartment at Zuloaga Kalea, 7, right on the main drag, but no parking. We were a few minutes before 1:30 so we made a loop through town and found no spaces anywhere. Eventually I pulled into a handicapped spot just in front of our apartment and waited for our host to show up. Pretty soon, a woman arrived who I was pretty sure was not Derko, and she showed us up the one flight to our apartment. She helped us unload the car, gave us the keys and a very quick walk through the apartment, pointed out a little guide written mostly in English, and was on her way…a very different experience from dealing with Maite in Logrono.
Our host did not offer much guidance about finding parking, basically telling us to be patient. Laurie and I circled the marina district once more, found one spot that seemed good but we discovered it was for one hour only, then decided to head to the nearest parking lot identified by Google, right near the harbor. As we suspected, it was full, but we slowly trolled around until we found someone leaving. We took their spot then tried to figure out the automated parking ticket system. It seemed to offer parking for up to 10 hours, but once we figured that out and got a ticket it was good for nearly 24 hours. It turned out that you only had to pay in the lot from 8am to 10pm – the other 14 hours were free. A good deal, I guess, but it would have been nice if someone had explained it to us.
With the car parked, most of our stuff in the apartment, and being sometime after 2pm, we decided we might as well eat. One of the first places we saw, nearly across the street from the apartment, was La Hermandad de Pescadores, one of the best reviewed places (#3) in town. We wandered in and were eventually led to a table by a busy but not very friendly waitress. We stumbled our way through the menu; Laurie quickly decided she wanted grilled langostinos but I had a harder time making a choice. I checked out reviews online to try to figure out what was recommended which pointed me toward the monkfish, or rape in Spanish. That’s what we ordered, along with an asparagus salad to start and french fires or papas fritas which Laurie had seen circulating in the restaurant and looked good. We also got a split of white wine – I didn’t try to negotiate Laurie into a full bottle but that’s really what I wanted and we could have easily finished a full bottle, but never mind. If I’d taken a little more time with the reviews it was really the seafood soup that seems to be the star at this restaurant but I’m not sure I would have wanted soup at that point. I belatedly noticed the white beans with clams dish that looked really good but that would have to wait for another time.
Our dishes came and were delicious. I helped Laurie get her langostinos out of the shell – she has a hard time maneuvering with just one hand. My monkfish was quite large even though we’d asked for the smaller portion. The fish was quite meaty, almost like a steak, with slices of garlic on top and nice olive oil drenching the fish and some potatoes…to go along with the french fries which were also mighty good.
After lunch, which was sometime after 4pm, we went to the apartment, unpacked and had a little rest. I was ready to go before Laurie so I started exploring Hondarribia on my own. I scoped out the pedestrian street behind our apartment which was the main drag for restaurants and bars. It seemed to always have a buzzing throng of tourists, locals and families (but I didn’t take pictures…not sure why).
I noticed a group of maybe 10-year-old girls in soccer uniforms all in line for an ice cream shop and figured later that may have been the one indication I saw that Spain had just won the Women’s World Cup a couple of hours earlier. The game took place while we were driving and the post-game coverage was still on TV when we got to the apartment. The players and the TV announcers seemed very excited and I watched a few highlights but there were no indications of support for the team in the streets of Logrono or Hondarribia while we were there. Except maybe for ice cream.
I went harborside and snapped a few scenic shots. Hondarribia offered a lot of interesting views.
From the marina or fishermen’s district, I headed into the old town quarter of Hondarribia. I hadn’t realized how distinct this area behind the mostly still-standing medieval walls was from the rest of the town. It was well-preserved with narrow cobbled streets and cute Basque houses painted brightly with flowers in many windows. It seemed like turning every corner offered a new surprise or charming sight worth admiring. I made my way up to the castle, now a top-flight (and expensive) parador in the main Arma Square.
There was a professional stage set up for a show that night in the square. I stopped in the convenient tourist office to ask what was going on. The ladies helpfully explained it would be a folk festival featuring an Italian singer, Maria Moramarco, followed by a group, Mediterranean Voices. It was the last night of the three-day Bidasoa Festival (now in its 22nd year) and the show would be free starting at 8pm. They gave me the website which I forwarded to Laurie. They also gave me an English brochure which helpfully described the Hondarribia old town and environs.
I continued wandering around the old town for a bit before connecting with Laurie who also wanted to see the area. We explored together for a while before the show. I wandered for a bit on my own along the walls of the city while Laurie stayed in a shaded area. Every few meters offered interesting views down a street or neighborhood.
We got seats at the show around 7:30 and I snagged a beer from the bar on the square. Maria Moramarco appeared with three accompanists, a guitarist, a clarinet/woodwind player and a percussionist/mandolin player. They embarked on an hour of Italian folk songs, some fast, some slow. Maria’s voice was pleasant enough for me but Laurie was not feeling great and was not enchanted. She bailed out after 20 minutes or so to head back to the apartment. I elected to stay for the full performance of both groups. Maria’s hour-long set was decent enough but I was more interested in seeing and hearing the Mediterranean Voices group.
Shortly after 9pm, the core Mediterranean Voices group of five men and one woman came out. There were two guitarists, one man on oud, one with a big fretless lute or mandolin, and two percussionists including the woman who also sang. This group demonstrated more interesting instrumental chops and variety. After a while, the man with the oud, who I think was Armenian or maybe Syrian, proved he had a remarkable voice and was a dynamic performer, if not a little over the top ostentatious. Later, Maria and her three musicians joined for a 10-piece ensemble which I guess was Mediterranean Voices at full force. The show picked up with some rousing pieces that mixed instrumental and vocal prowess in multiple languages and styles. It was really quite good and most of the crowd boisterously clapped along, some even danced.
The show lasted until 10:30, after which I came back to the marina district to find some food. I was surprised to find that most of the bars and restaurants were closed for food service, though drinks could still be had and there were a lot of people still at the tables. I tried several places and finally found one that had a few straggling sandwiches and things. I got something similar to a burrito roll up and a small ham and cheese tapa to go with a txokoli wine. The bartender gave it to me and then promptly closed the bar. I ate my food outside and was surprised to find the whole pedestrian street scene shutting down shortly after 11pm. I thought that was prime time in Spain. But then again, since our apartment was directly over this busy area, I guess it was just as well that it got quiet earlier than later.
I made it to the room around 11:30 to find Laurie ready for bed. It turns out she had gotten lost coming home from the concert three hours earlier and had spent quite a while wandering around Hondarribia on her own. She was not delighted.
I was able to wind down with part of the replay of the Spain win in the World Cup, so I saw some of the excitement before heading to bed.
Monday, August 21
This was nominally our day to go to San Sebastian but I had made the call the evening before (and Laurie readily concurred) that we’d done enough driving over the previous few days. I was perfectly happy to take a day to explore Hondarribia more thoroughly, especially since I’d had a successful few hours the evening before. Hondarribia was, I felt, like a small-scale, lower-rent San Sebastian. It had miles of waterfront walkways, lots of restaurants and bars, and a cool, inviting climate. The people, shops and restaurants were not as elegant or sophisticated as in San Sebastian, but it seemed more my speed.
Laurie wasn’t feeling great and decided to start the morning sleeping in the apartment. I went exploring around 10am, shortly after getting some whole grain bread from a nice little bakery for my cheese and chorizo breakfast. I was intent on finding a shady spot with a view so I could work on my journal and read my book. I walked toward the sea and the northern marina and found a nice row of shady evergreens with benches underneath, right on the riverside. I was quite happy there for a couple of hours.
Eventually I needed to get up and move around. I walked further toward the sea, past the marina and a sports park where there were more people playing padel than tennis. Padel is played on a pickleball-size court surrounded by plexiglass walls which let you play off a bounce, sort of like squash. Europe doesn’t need pickleball; padel already seems to have spread as an easier alternative to tennis. I circumnavigated the marina, enjoying the sign for an English language learning center.
I got to the expansive beach by about 1:30pm and decided to walk out the stone jetty as far as I could go. I knew I had to get back to the car by 2pm in order to feed the parking meter but felt I could get it done. By this time, Laurie texted to ask where to meet so I suggested we meet at the car. I snapped my photos quickly then started trekking back to the parking lot.
It took me a bit longer than I expected, nearly 30 minutes, but I found Laurie waiting by the car. She was able to get a new parking permit after getting a hint from one of the meter maids about how we could stay in the same spot (buy your ticket from a different kiosk).
We considered our options for lunch and agreed to try Yola Berri just below our apartment. The waiter there had been nice to Laurie the night before, giving her some ice even though they were low. We waited quite a long time for service at our outside table, but we had nowhere else to be. Eventually we received our orders. Laurie got a chicken and tomato sandwich that turned out to be huge – easily half a baguette. I helped her cut it into something more manageable but she only got through less than half of it. I spotted a tomato and tuna salad on the menu that appealed to me but I was worried it wouldn’t be enough so I ordered a fried calamari appetizer figuring Laurie might help a bit with it. My salad turned out to be a huge plate of nice looking tomatoes and onions with a mound of tuna in the middle. The calamari were decent and at least not out of a bag as I’d had in Logrono. Laurie didn’t end up having any calamari so I worked my way through it and part of my salad. When we were full, I went up to our apartment to get plates so we could bring home the leftovers which went into the fridge for later.
As is the local (and Laurie’s) custom, we stayed in the apartment for a couple of hours taking a siesta of sorts. Laurie napped while I found some tennis on TV: a replay of Coco Gauff’s win at Cincinnati.
In the evening, around 7pm or so, we ventured out to see more of Hondarribia. We went back to the old town, stopping again at the information center in Arma Square to get some more English brochures. It was a good thing we got there because the office closed as soon as we stepped out the door. We started walking but the windy old town streets were too chilly for Laurie. We decided to walk back to the riverside and ambled slowly toward the marina district again for dinner. I would have liked to return to La Hermandad de Pescadores for that nice white beans with clams dish but it was closed on Mondays.
Laurie and I scoped out a number of bars and restaurants in the pedestrian area but could not find an open table to get a drink. We couldn’t even figure out the protocol of waiting for one until we were given the small clue of standing in a straggly line that haphazardly formed outside. We stood in one bar’s line for a while even though all we really wanted at that point was a drink and someplace to sit and drink it. On top of that, the pintxos behind glass on the various bar counters were not very appealing, mostly mounds of various oily concoctions on toast. It seemed like most people were ordering specific tapas from menus…which was not how I thought pintxos were supposed to work. That’s not what I’d seen in San Sebastian or even Logrono.
We eventually gave up hope and headed back to the apartment. I decided to check on getting a reservation at Kupela, another well-rated restaurant just across the street from our apartment. We were surprised to see it was mostly empty and they were happy to seat us…and provide English menus. I found a different clam dish, this one with a green Basque sauce. Laurie ordered a mixed salad with shrimp. I decided to get a bottle of txakoli, the Basque white wine, because it seemed like this was my one chance to get it properly chilled and poured. Laurie had a small glass and I finished the rest. Laurie was not pleased with my drinking habits, but so be it.
The meal was decent but not great. My dish was a meager number of clams which looked lonely in a large bowl of pleasant but undistinguished light green sauce. The accompanying bread helped soak up the sauce. Laurie’s salad was dressed in a bright red vinaigrette which was too sweet for her taste, but she ate about half of it and I polished off the rest. It made for a pleasant enough evening after our difficulties with the bar scene.
Laurie headed off to bed; she decided if she didn’t feel better in the morning she should take a Covid test. Rest seemed the best thing for her. I decided to give the bars one more shot but had no better luck finding a table or even a good place to stand. Before long I gave up and had a glass of wine back in the room. I felt very much like an outsider which is not the way you want to feel in a touristy town. Oh well.
Tuesday, August 22
Laurie woke up feeling especially congested, hoarse and achy. I went with her to the pharmacy, also conveniently located just below our apartment – could we have been more centrally located? She was able to get a test and had a long discussion with the pharmacist. I waited outside and could only see her nodding enthusiastically as he went on and on. When she came out she said she hadn’t understood what he was talking about and didn’t offer any medicines, not even cough syrup which she asked for.
We went over to the cafe to get her some coffee and a croissant from the bakery next door (once I understood that she wanted a croissant). She was definitely not doing well. I suggested that we could cut this last day short and head home. She agreed that probably made sense. We got back to the apartment and administered the Covid test. Fortunately she tested negative for both Covid and Influenza, but her stomach started to upset her and she got visible chills and shakes. She started throwing up in a small pan when she wasn’t lying down trying to rest.
Laurie sent me out to get an emergency bowl for the drive home, a thermometer and some paracetamol. The best I could find for a bowl was a plastic wash bucket and I grabbed some paper towels just in case.
When I got back, Laurie was asleep and it seemed best to let her get some rest. I started packing my things and getting the apartment cleaned up. She rested until about 1pm then sent me out to get my own lunch. There was a long line at La Hermandad de Pescadores so I passed on my last chance to get the beans and clams dish that had caught my eye. I didn’t really want the dish at that point, anyway, but if I ever decide to make it, it looked something like this. I scoped out a few of the tapas bars but nothing really called to me. I ended up feeding the parking meter for the car to give us a few more hours and retreated to the room to polish off some bread and cheese for lunch. I stopped in another grocery store and got some Diet Cokes and found a better, smaller glass bowl with a plastic lid as an emergency bucket for the road.
Laurie roused herself around 2:30 and we got ourselves out the door around 3:30pm for the nearly 5-hour drive home.
We stayed pretty much on course and on time for the ride home. We made one quick stop for gas and a later one for a sandwich for me. There were no medical dramas from Laurie, for which we were both grateful. We made it back to the apartment a little before 9pm and were able to go fetch Luna. Laurie and I did some quick harvesting of many ripe vegetables and had a nice little dinner of chili topped with fresh tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc. paired with chips and a fresh salsa. Not bad at all.
Laurie felt good enough to stay up for some TV. We discussed many options but could find nothing fairly short that we both wanted to watch. I ended up suggesting the Black Mirror episode San Junipero. Laurie sat through it, dozing sporadically, but didn’t love it. She decided that she’d seen it before, maybe. Soon enough, it was time for bed for everyone and we tried to sleep through the warm 30C/86F evening.
Wednesday, August 23
Laurie seemed to feel better in the morning as she did her gardening and walked Luna. I hung out inside and tried to stay cool. We took some time trying to get a taxi lined up for me to get to the Segovia train station by 7am the next morning but complications ensued. Laurie decided to get some help from the couple that were housesitting for Maggie and were more readily bilingual, but they were not available until later in the afternoon.
We decided it was too hot to stay in the apartment all day, much less cook any lunch, so we opted for an outing to La Granja. We walked through the town with Luna, who was exceptionally well behaved. I had been to La Granja once before, back in August 2016, my first visit to Segovia but thought that it was mainly the palace. I didn’t realize there was so much of a town or so many restaurant choices. This day, there was a music concert in one of the streets that didn’t seem half bad but it was too crowded for Laurie or Luna. We ended up finding a decent place with seats open under a shady umbrella, possibly Restaurante las Cuevas de Don Diego but I’m not completely sure. I had a tasty bowl of judion de la Granja or large white beans cooked with pork and then a helping of cuchifritos, a local dish of fried cochinillo baby pork bits, basically a way to use up leftover roast suckling pig, the specialty dish of Segovia. The fried pork served with french fries was a true bar food, deliciously unhealthy. Laurie countered with a Greek salad.
We walked off a bit of the lunch in La Granja’s front garden in the shade of many wonderful century old trees. Luna couldn’t help luxuriating in the grass even though she wasn’t supposed to.
We headed back to Laurie’s apartment for a siesta, then in the afternoon went over to Maggie’s to discuss my travel plight with the housesitting friends who were very nice but whose names I immediately forgot. After much discussion, multiple complicated contingency plans and several phone calls, we hit upon the solution of me taking a slightly later train. That way the lone taxi driver from the neighboring town would be able to take me. Problem solved, finally.
Laurie and I took Luna for an extended walk then wandered over to the La Losa bar for a relaxing drink. It was close to 9pm before we got back to Laurie’s and embarked on fixing dinner, an Asian mashup of leftover noodles with marinated pork and veggies. We headed to bed by midnight for we set our alarms for 6am in the morning.
Thursday, August 24
The taxi driver arrived at 6:30am which was when we wanted him to catch the early train in the first place, but no matter. The car was nice and the Eu33 drive to the train station was easy. So was catching the 7:22am train which got me to Chamartin station in Madrid. I eschewed the option of taking another train to the airport and a transfer bus to Terminal 1, opting instead for a taxi which cost another Eu30 but seemed worth it. In all, the two taxis cost 5 times as much as the train ride, but they all worked to get me to the airport in plenty of time.
I killed several hours at the airport listening to podcasts. The plane loaded up and actually departed 10 minutes early. We arrived at Dulles about 30 minutes early. I had anticipated it might take 45-60 minutes to get through customs, so Barb was just leaving the house when I landed. As it happened, it took us 30 minutes to deplane and take the antique Dulles people mover to immigration, but with Global Entry and no bags, I breezed through the rest. I waited for Barb to arrive which she eventually did.
Barb was due to attend a DC office happy hour in Silver Spring at Denizen’s Brewing Company so I dropped her off there. I went to have my own dinner, opting for J. Hollinger’s Waterman’s Chophouse, a place I’ve wanted to try. I got a happy hour gin and tonic to go with $1 oysters, followed by steak frites. Not bad. I was done by 6:30, though and had to wait a couple more hours to drag Barb away from her happy hour in order to drive home. I was able to stay awake a while longer before collapsing in bed.
It was nice getting away to see Laurie and Spain once again, though to be honest, this journey had more than its share of difficulties. Trying to coordinate the visit with the timing of Maggie’s family travels and the Philadelphia friends proved a challenge though we did get a few nice hours together at the expense of several days of fluctuating schedules. We rolled with it and it all worked out more or less satisfactorily, I guess.
The trip to Rioja was interesting. The wine tour with Alfredo was more indulgent than it was informative, but I’m glad we did it – it was a more efficient way to see lots of Rioja highlights and better wines than we would have on our own. The visit to Muga and the wine museum were somewhat redundant on the heels of the tour, but enjoyable. The heat in Rioja and the apartment were problems. The town of Logrono was not as inviting as I’d hoped but I did enjoy the tapas bars a lot more than Laurie did.
Laurie’s various ailments prevented her from enjoying large portions of the travels, which was too bad for her but didn’t slow me down a whole lot. I felt bad that she didn’t feel good, but I was still able to get out and explore some of the places and foods I wanted.
I was glad I didn’t invest a whole lot of effort in researching Hondarribia and environs. It was fun to discover things as they came. The weather in Basque country was much more appealing which made everything more tolerable. Our improvised side trip to Idiazabal and the Basque Highlands was pretty fun and an interesting if overlong drive.Hondarribia was an interesting little town though it was starting to wear thin on the third day. I’m sorry we didn’t get to Bilbao, the Guggenheim, San Sebastian or into France, but they can all wait for some other journey, perhaps with Allie at some point.
Barb seemed to survive her two weeks on her own. Nothing calamitous occurred, thankfully. She and Manny got into a groove of multiple feedings that we’re going to have to take some time to change. By the end of the two weeks away I was ready to get home and back into my own well-worn ruts. And that, after all, is a big part of what vacations are for.
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