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.