Holiday in the Pyrenees

It has been a couple of weeks since I returned from my holiday in the Pyrenees and I still haven't gotten around to writing about it. Unfortunately I came down with a nasty cold/sinus infection that is just starting to subside in the last few days, and I haven't really had energy for much since then.

Anyway, we did spend the last two weeks of August in the Pyrenees, a beautiful stretch of mountains straddling Spain and France, with a funny little country called Andorra in the middle. It was quite an adventure - we flew into Barcelona and picked up our rental car with just two nights booked in a hotel and almost two weeks to fill. There are quite a few places to mention, so I will do them in separate entries.

A few overarching comments though - Spain is booming! Almost every little town we passed through in Spain had cranes building more and more hotels, vacation homes, etc. It was a bit strange, but considering the number of tourists, I guess not surprising. I did get a sinking feeling that maybe they are going a bit too fast too soon, but hopefully not. I was pretty impressed with the construction too - they are building a lot of neat stone covered buildings that kind of blend into the older stuff, and it looks like really good quality - not like those slapped up condos that seem to be so prevalent in the US. France, well not so much. The smaller towns we drove through in France seemed to be more desolate and sparse of restaurants and accomodations - and driving through France one evening was the only time we had difficulty finding a place to stay.

Also, we saw almost no Americans on this trip and hardly any English speakers, until we got to Bilbao. We did meet a Scottish couple in Andorra who seemed to be doing a similar trip to ours, but for the most part the tourists were Spanish or French families. There were many times where it was almost impossible to communicate - in the nicest hotels they spoke good English, but for the most part I had to stumble out my few words of Spanish or French. Even though I studied French in high school, I think I did much better speaking Spanish - I was getting fairly confident towards the end of the trip. But it was quite different from most of my recent travels, when you can usually get by with English (or at least pointing). In Spain you can't even get food at McDonalds in English. Although it was challenging, I did enjoy the vacation from Americans and English. It made for a very different experience.

Funny though, even with the lack of Americans, American culture certainly pervades even these areas. From American shops to pop songs to Nike shirts and trainers- it is everywhere. Even at the festival in Bilbao, a very Basque event, there was American music blaring all the time.

Another challenge was food. Dining was certainly a challenge for us during the entire trip. Most of the time we had breakfast included with our rooms, so at least that was one meal taken care of, but it was really hard to adjust to eating other than that. Not only was there a communication barrier, there were the odd eating times. Restaurants don't really open for lunch until after 1 or 2 p.m. or so, and people don't eat dinner, especially in Spain, til 9 p.m. or later. Once we got to the Basque country, it was just hard to find restaurants in general, and when we found them, they were closed or full. There were these places where you could go and get snacks and sandwiches, which were fine in the early evening before they got too crowded, but later they were full of people smoking with their cigarretes hanging over the food - which tends to not make it so appetizing. I have always enjoyed Basque food and culture, especially growing up in Nevada with all the Basque restuarants, so I was disappointed. Embarassingly we ate at McDonalds a few times - though I have to say, McDonalds did taste much better there - not sure if it was because we were desperate or their quality was better - maybe a bit of both. Bilbao in particular is known for its fine restaurants, so I hope I get to go back there someday without 100,000 people in town for a festival, so we would have a chance at getting in to try some local dining. We did have a few excellent meals though and we certainly didn't starve.

And then, there was the driving. Lots of it and at times quite scary. One time in particular, going around a tight curve with a big truck coming at us, I thought we were dead for sure. I had to pull closer to the mountain on the tiny shoulder to avoid it. There was one point in the trip where my right arm and shoulder just gave up and demanded to be rested. It could have been much worse though - one thing they have done is build a number of different tunnels, one 7 miles or so long, that cut through the mountains and spit you out on the other side. Without that and what definitely looked like brand new roads in a few places, it might have been a much more grueling trip. Because of insurance, I was the only one who could drive the car - ironically when we turned it in it turned out they had put it on the wrong credit card - so thankfully I did not get hit by the truck or anything else during the trip.

All the pictures are here, and I will continue blogging on about some of the more interesting places we saw during our trip.