Venturing out of Bilbao

This weekend was filled with lots of traveling!

On Friday, my host family took a little daytime excursion to their casita (small home) in Escalera de los Montones - a small town in Burgos, which is the province over from Vizkaya (where Bilbao is). It was only an hour drive, so we left after breakfast and arrived around 11. Their house is essentially at the base of a bunch of mountains, and the view is breathtaking. Upon arriving, we stopped along the winding, narrow road on the mountain's edge (eek!) and hiked up some stairs to a fantastic lookout point. I took way too many pictures to be socially acceptable, but I couldn't help it. What is it about the mountains that captivate us without failure, whether its the first time we've seen them or the thousandth?

After returning back to the house, we continued to walk all around the village of Espinosas. It's very small and quaint - I think we walked the entire perimeter during our hour-long stroll. It's an incredibly rural area, but there are ancient buildings scattered all throughout the town (again, too many pictures). Some are crumbling, some are quite lavish - most were from the 15th century but some dated back to the 11th!! I thought it was pretty neat, but didn't really stop to consider just how ancient these buildings were until much later. It wasn't until the car ride home when it suddenly dawned on me that the buildings of which I casually snapped pictures are literally some of the oldest standing structures I've ever seen in my life - there simply isn't ANYthing that old in our teen-aged country. Weird to think about. The US is so young!

The nicest part about the entire trip, aside from the beauty of the mountains, was the little things about small towns that I haven't encountered in a while. Without the hint of a sound from a single car, plane, or television in the house next door, I experienced silence like I haven't been able to for quite some time. It was a nice refreshment from the traffic and bustling in Bilbao (though clearly I love Bilbao) and in some ways was like a little taste of home, though the terrain certainly beats the flat redundancy of Illinois! :)

Next up...San Sebastian.

On Saturday, some classmates and I took the bus to San Sebastian, another Basque capital (different province) about an hour and a half away. Every bit of sunshine that we had on Friday was sucked from the sky, and all day it was nothing but clouds and spitting drizzle. Didn't matter a bit - San Sebastian is absolutely gorgeous, rain or shine. We spent all day wandering around, enjoying the antique, charming city (and its food!) just as much as the beautiful natural landscape. I had my first Spanish tapa, which is a small, appetizer-sized meal portion. Here, every bar is full of tapas platters. People just grab a plate, take what they want, and pay when they're done enjoying their samplings with a glass of wine or coffee. Yum!

The fixture of San Sebastian is La Concha, a concave beach nestled between Mount Ulia to the east and Mount Andarra to the west. There is a switchback trail up Mt. Ulia, and from the top, we had an amazing view of the entire city and beaches. There's also an old castle up there that we had some fun exploring! Although the weather was terrible, it was kind of nice to enjoy the city with few tourists around. That being said, I'm definitely returning in the spring when the sky is blue and the water is warm!


Still waiting for my camera cord to arrive, but here's what google image search had to say about San Sebastian...