Back in the Basque Country

I´m in Bilbao of the Basque lands in Northern Spain after going through Segovia and Burgos. Segovia is famous for an Roman aqueduct that cuts throught the heart of the city and a cathedral that sits ontop of all hill surrounded by the old city and a castle. A pretty place with plenty of tourists making day trips from Madrid like me.

Burgos is also famous for a huge and beautiful Gothic catherdral where the Spanish hero, El Cid is buried inside the church in a simple red marble grave. Burgos is also an important stop over in the ancient pilgrimage route of the 750 km Camino de Santiago that travels across to Northern Spain to Santigo de Compostela. The route is marked with yellow arrows and what looks like to me, a yellow clam. There is even a hostal just for these pilgrims. If you remember when I mentioned how empty Madrid was, I think some of them are in Burgos as I had a very hard time finding a place to stay. I settled for ¨Hostal Gracias¨ which only had one bathroom for twenty people. Trust me, if you were the lucky one who got to use it for the morning pee, you were very ¨thankful¨.

I decided to go to Bilbao thinking it was described as just an industry city that doesn´t get too many tourists. It´s got the impressive Guggenheim Museum (Well worth the steep entrance fee. The titanium, glass and concrete building itself is a work of modern art, shaped to represent ships and fishes.)and what I thought easy accomodations. I ended up smack at the start of the Aste Nadusia, a very, very big feastival that runs for eight days. Throughout the whole city there are stages with live music and performance shows, the red, white and green Basque flags hanging across streets, fireworks going off and plenty of food and beer. Essentially a huge street party that is even bigger than than the one in Madrid. Great, except all the accomdations are ¨completo¨. Yes, another two hour wander. I must of asked every pension in the city and found one that charged triple its rate. Time to check out the noise and crowd...