Leaving Iberia

Today is our last day in Spain and on the Iberian peninsula. We have loved it! Although the weather has been more wintery than we expected, it has still been glorious. What a beautiful region of the world! What lovely people - we've yet to see anyone have "road rage" or otherwise get angry. And what food we've eaten! We would love to come back to see Spain and Portugal at their best with the sun out, temperatures warm and breezes gentle.

For the last week, since leaving Portugal, we have been in three cities, Santiago de Compostela, Santillana del Mar, and now San Sebastian ("Donostia" in the Basque language). All three are in northern Spain and we traveled from west to east for our visit.

Santiago is known as the city of pilgrims. St. James the apostle (Santiago) is buried there. Pilgrims from all over the world come to the church to pray in front of the small casket that holds his bones. We saw one man, young-ish in age, with a backpack and walking stick on a street near the cathedral looking so tired and limping. The pilgrims walk at least the last 50 miles; some walk from France and other parts of Europe. We saw police on the plaza in front of the cathedral and were advised that they were there to guard against terrorism since this is the third holiest place for Christians, after Rome and Jerusalem.

Besides the religious aspects of the city, there is a wonderful city market with fresh foods of all kinds, animal and vegetable. It was a lot like Pike Place in Seattle except that there was only food, no crafts etc for sale. It was so fun to walk down the aisles - so many colors, smells, sounds!

We took an afternoon and drove to the Atlantic coast from there - only about 45 minutes. We found a lovely beach in a small town and walked up and down it in the sun. Galicia, the name of this region of Spain, is a lot like the Pacific NW in the way it looks and in the amount of rainfall it gets.

After leaving Santiago, we had a long drive to Santillana del Mar. It is a small town with a walled old town where we stayed in a hotel whose building was constructed in the 1500s. This little town has the famous Altamira Caves right next to it and the Picos de Europa not far away. The cave has wall paintings done 18,000 years ago! After it was discovered about 100 years ago, so many visitors came that the environment was being altered and the images were degrading. The authorities had an exact replica made, down to the painting techniques used, and that is what we can visit now. There is a wonderful museum on the site; one could easily spend an entire day visiting. The Picos de Europa is a national park with high (8,000 ft.) mountains and lots of evergreens. We drove through on a road that stayed at a low elevation since there was snow higher up. We were very much reminded of home!

We are now in Basque country, in San Sebastian. It is very near the French border. This is a city of 180,000 people, most of whom can speak both Spanish and the Basque language, Euskara. San Sebastian is known as the city with the best food in Spain and we have been sampling! We had a delicious modern Basque dinner one night and this afternoon we had the Basque equivalent of tapas - pintxos - which is pronounced "peen - chos". Very good! Yesterday we drove to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. It is an amazing structure, much known for its architecture. There happened to be an exhibit on Frank Lloyd Wright, which was interesting especially since I had read the book "Loving Frank".

Tomorrow we leave for Bordeaux, France, where we will stay overnight and then fly to London on Wednesday. We'll spend four nights there before we pick up another rental car and begin to see the English small towns and countryside that we have heard and read so much about! First though, some photos of Spain to close this chapter.

Photos from the top: Pintxos ready for choosing, the view across the bay in San Sebastian, Picos de Europa view, the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, one of the stalls and its vendor in Santiago.