empuriabrava

after winding our way through the mountains, we made an endrun for the ocean to meet up with a friend of diana's from school. after spending a couple hours hanging out on the beach, we decided to call bill and see if he was around. luckily he was and he was on a jobsite. we went to meet him and he was in the middle of one of the most frustrating job situations we have ever seen. he is working on a private house called "villa nurbs" which is meant to indicate the calculus based system that gave the house its form. the idea is mildly interesting, but the project is a total clusterfuck. the principle architect appears to be totally incompetent and the client visits the site everyday, making changes. essentially, all designing is done onsite, which leads to constant delays and everyone wants to quit. luckily bill is only a summer intern, so he is done now. although it was not under the best of circumstances, it was nice to see some friendly faces.

camping!

On our way through the pyrennes, we ended up camping for a night along a lake in the foothills. Seeing that we had no tent, the people at the lodge (who were extremely nice) borrowed us a tent. the problem was that this tent was a military edition circa 1910. the tent had three poles and no instructional logic at all. it is hard to explain how weird the final setup ended up looking, it looked fragile but never collapsed on us. the people who ran the lodge were incredibly nice and we had some beers and watched waterworld in spanish. it wasn't any better...

broto!

on our way through the pyrennes (on the smallest possible road through the mountains) we stopped in broto, a town at the bottom of a winding descent and seemingly perpetually on siesta. we grabbed some jamon, sausage and bread to eat lunch next to a clear mountain stream that went through the middle of town. after eating with our feet in the cold, cold water, we happened upon another stream and followed it upstream to find, yes, a waterfall. not only a mountain waterfall (with weird, euro-style via ferrata happening in the background), but a mountain waterfall made for swimming. yes, it did rule, just in case you were wondering. this was most likely the best roadtrip lunch break i've ever had...

playa laga: or cheating death

this is the beach where i was nearly transported into the beyond while changing clothes in the parking lot. not a bad place to shuffle off this mortal coil...

san sebastian pics

san sebastian

after leaving ondarroa (to no small grumbling on my part) we headed towards san sebastian, made it there relatively quickly, parked the car and started looking for hotels. the prospects were discouraging at first, seeing as everything was "completo" or absurdly expensive for not so nice accomadations, we decided to just walk along the beach out to the sculpture "comb of the winds" by eduardo chillida, which is an amazing sculpture actually built on site into the rocks in the ocean. in addition to the sculptures, the plaza has "blow holes" built into it. it is hard to describe, but the plaza is built on the edge of the ocean so that the waves can enter in underneath a part of the plaza and the resulting wind is compressed into a few holes which come up in the walkway of the plaza...(ok tag team action...diana here)...and this forced a huge rush of air straight upwards...(think marilyn monroe standing over the ventilation grate in seven year itch except about 20x more powerful)...the kids who would discover it were just amazed. i don't think i've ever seen anything man made...so perfectly combined with its site... i myself was quick to be charmed by san sebastian...i have a weakness for the basque, and the food there was amazing. we walked along the beach, did some semi-hikes half way up the mountain overlooking the city where eric found some bouldering problems which he attempted in sandals.

later that night we parked on the beach next to the moneo building where there was a free jazz festival...well, at least the part we saw on the beach was free, we saw dr. john sing about new orleans to a bunch of spanish people who probably had no idea what he was saying, on that night we were the unwilling witnesses to some very bad "euro-dancing". i love free music...especially on a beach in spain...with your belly full of pinchos. alas...too many people love san sebastian...and we could not stay for long...but one day we shall return.

parting with ondarroa

pretty.

leaving bilbao

leaving the charming little 'burg of bilbao was difficult, but alas, we had much of spain to see. with no specific itinerary besides going through Gernika, the subject of Picasso's painting of the same name which dealt with Gernika being the first city to suffer saturation bombing in the second world war by the germans, via a deal between franco and hitler in which he offered up this basque city for destruction. small wonder the basques do not want to be part of spain... the city itself does not bear the traces of this horrific event, save for a tile rendition of Gernica and plaques throughout the city which show what actually remained after the bombing. we got our first ticket in gernika, which a friendly clochard helped us pay, only six euros.
after leaving gernika we drove through the beautiful basque countryside, winding along small mountain roads and reveling in the ridiculous amount of bikers that we saw attacking the hills. each road in basque country has a bike map on the side of the road that gives difficulty ratings to each potential route. gotta love the basques and their bikes.
after a short summer storm we ended up in the quaint city of ondarroa, which is not quite a tourist town, yet has two beaches right in the middle of town. we happened upon an amazing little hostel that was cheap, had great views of the ocean, was right on the beach, had amazing and cheap food AND had wireless. the building also used to house an organization dedicated to the advancement of the basque language, euskati, which is a strange, non indo-european language that no one knows where it came from. lots of x's, z's and k's. go figure. needless to say it was difficult to leave. we spent three peaceful days lounging on the beach, reading and catching up on internet time. but we were getting restless and san sebastian was on the horizon, thus we said goodbye to our little home on the beach.