Northlands

Another semana blanca success story. Last week Joseca and I went to the north of Spain for a few days to have a look about. I shall now represent this voyage pictorally, through these pictures:

Day 1: We flew to Santander. We both agreed that Santander can best be described as "agradable" or "pleasant." We did see a really awesome jazz show and ate some excellent chorizo a la sidra.

Santander jazz.

The next day in Santander we picked up our rental car, which we promptly dubbed EL CISNE GRIS in reference to my amazing cinematographical (yay English!) insights on the movie El Cisne Negro, aka Black Swan.

Champion.

Then we headed west following the coast. We stopped in Santillana del Mar (quaint and rustic), Llanes (entire city under construction but with a really pretty coastal grassy area), Cangas de Onís (beautiful town with a cool Roman bridge) and then headed to Las Arenas de Cabrales in the Picos de Europa mountain range to spend the night. Las Arenas was really beautiful, really small, and really calm. The hotel and hotel owner also seemed really creepy, but just turned out to be eccentric.

Árboles de amor in Llanes. The branches grow together!
Insert  your own metaphor here.

Llanes.

Old sidra bottles in Cangas. Sidra is aerated before serving either through a bottle
like this or by holding the bottle up by your head and pouring. Makes a mess.

The next day we drove to Bilbao via Panes (bought very necessary umbrellas from a man who assured us they were quality, not like the "crap they sell in the mercadillo"), and Laredo (Joseca hates this town, it was pretty but rained in our faces about 97 percent of the time we were there. Plus there were delicious steak restaurants everywhere but we couldn't afford it. Wet and steakless.)

Bilbao was surprisingly different than I expected. I heard the north was almost always rainy and gray, but Bilbao seemed to brighten up the grayness by painting their buildings vibrant colors and having enough cool architecture and building and culture for a city three times its size.

We stayed in a hostel decorated in the insane-asylum-chic school of decor. It looked like a crime scene. But it was cheap, had a hot shower and the door locked. That's all I ask for.

Panes church shows the typical building style in the north:
stone, gray, green, and wet.

Guggenheim Bilbao and the famous spider statue by Louise Bourgeois entitled "Mama."
Must suck to be that guy's mom.

Bilbao waterfront. There are prettier ones, but I don't have photos.

After a night of pintxos (Northern Spain's tapas) we drove to San Sebastian. Along the way we stopped in Mundaka (stunning fishing and surfing village) and Gernika (of Picasso fame.)

Gernika's 1937 bombing by German and Italian air forces was a major attack in the Spanish civil war and inspired Picasso's famous painting. Gernika is also referred to as the spiritual homeland of Basque independence. In the past the Basque assembly was held in Gernika under the town's huge oak trees. The tree is now a symbol of Basque independence.

Mundaka.

Mundaka.

Gernika's famous oak tree.

Basque independence propaganda in Gernika.

San Sebastian was my favorite place on the trip. We stayed for two nights in a hostel right off the main square that used to be a plaza de toros. We ate. We drank. We ambled. We went to Hondarribia and then came back because there is not much there. The city is very pretty, it has your standard stone and moss and rain look to it but with the bonus of the Sea of Cantabria slamming against the coast and shooting water up towards the sky.

The pintxos in San Sebastian were amazing. Pintxos seem to me to be a similar concept to tapas in the fact that they are small portions of awesome food that you eat with drinks, but all other Spanish people deny that they are similar. They are different. In a bar the cold pintxos are normally put out buffet style on the bar, and there is a menu of hot pintxos written somewhere. You go to the bar, order your drink, then the bartender hands you a plate, which you fill with whatever strikes your fancy. When you have all your things you show him the plate, he marks down what you had, and then you order anything hot you want. It's a fantastic business strategy, because if anyone sets out delicious food and hands me an empty plate, they are coming out of that situation winning. In San Sebastian I tried eels, a traditional Basque food, though now they are made of "sea things" not real eels, because they are overfished. We also ate tuna, chorizo, mango, foie, squid, cod, quail eggs, tortilla, and a lot of other things.

Our hostel in San Sebastian.

PINTXOS!

Time to head back to Malaga.

The last day we made an epic return journey to Malaga. The north, as everyone says, is indeed very different from the south. The food, the weather, the accent, the cities, the buildings, the people, it's almost like being in a different country. If you have the chance to get to Northern Spain, go. And bring an empty plate.