We knew we would miss our family and friends moving away from home for a year. However we did not realize how much we would miss certain celebrations and the rituals we have had. We have celebrated the 4th of July in Kenwood by going to our "local Kenwood parade" then either BBQ'ing at our place or meeting friends to BBQ at theirs followed by watching the Sonoma fireworks.
We also did not realize how much we would miss this celebration. We are proud to be Americans and we are proud of our history, with a number of exceptions, like what we did to the Native Americans and slavery to name a few.
However it has been weird being away during this crazy election year. We have been in Spain for the English "Brexit" vote to leave the EU. There is an interesting article in the Atlantic about the Psychology of voting to leave the EU. It's very relevant to us given our political situation. We have also been in Spain for their 2016 General Election. "No party had secured a majority in their 2015 election, resulting in the most fragmented parliament since 1977. Ensuing negotiations failed to produce a stable governing coalition, paving the way for a repeat election on June 26th. The political deadlock marked the firs time that a Spanish election has been triggered due to the failure in the government formation process"
All this to say the politics all over the world are changing drastically!
In any case we hosted a 4th of July party at our place for 8 of us total. Our 2 best friend here Jorge and his wife Fernni from Ecuador. Two of their friends visiting from Miami, Florida but one is from Ecuador the other Nicaragua. Plus two other friends from Venezuela. For the most part they are in Spain and Florida to escape the political, financial and safety situations in their home countries. It was our Pan-American 4th of July Celebration.
We made and served traditional 4th of July food...potato salad, cole slaw, watermelon, hot dogs, hamburgers and all the fixings real ketchup, mustard, Jalapeno peppers, pickles, potato chips. It's hard to believe but real ketchup was the hardest food to find. It was a pleasure to have people to celebrate with on our holiday. Of course it was "Spanish" we invited them to come over at 9:00pm one couple didn't arrive until about 10:00pm we ate dinner around 11:00 pm. We even served something like angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream.
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| I cooked the burgers on the small grill I bought for our deck |
Wednesday, July 6th Today we flew on Vueling Airlines from Valencia to Bilbao. We are taking a 9 night/10 day "vacation" to escape the heat. Of course, we timed it so I could go "back" to Pamplona for San Fermin, the Running of the Bulls!
Given our arrival time into Bilbao we were going to miss the opening ceremony called Chupianazo. Check out this YouTube video of what we missed. As you can imagine I was bummed and Beth was pleased we missed it!!!!! That type of crowd is not her cup of tea or can of cerveza.
Since we knew we were going to miss the Chupianzo we decided that we would drive to Guernica. "Many around the globe have heard about Guernica thanks in large part to Pablo Picasso's famous piece of art "Guernica".
'The bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937 was an aerial bombing during the Spanish Civil War. It was carried out at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government by its allies, Nazi German Luftwaffe's Condor Legion and the Fascist Italian Aviazone Legionaria, under the code name Operation Rugen." 'the bombing is considered one of the first raids on a defenseless civilian population by a modern air force"
It was Francisco Franco who sent for the German bombers to flatten Guernica. However 60 years later, almost to the day, German admitted guilt, surprisingly Spain has never admitted any guilt about Guernica. Before we walked around town we ate lunch...now I'm not one for taking pictures of my meals but I had to take this one!
Baby squids in black ink, not exactly what I thought I ordered but interesting. We visited the Guernica Peace Museum. "It is a museum to remember, a museum for the future" They ask the questions of "What is peace? What happened in Gernika in 1937? What is the current situation of peace in the world?" We found it quite engaging and informative.
We also visited the Biscayan Assembly House and the Guernica Tree
"This Biscayan Assembly House is where the Lord of Biscay and Basque politicians have met to decide the fate of the Basque people. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, it was common for the leaders of various communities to come together under a tree to create laws and make agreements. The Guernica Tree is one such tree. It was beneath its branches where the Lords of Biscay swore to respect the Biscayan liberties and where they established a set of laws known as "fueros," that granted the Basques autonomous rule. The fueros were granted by every Lord of Biscay and eventually the King of Castile until the end of the 19th century when the Carlist Wars began. For these reasons, the Guernica Tree had become a symbol of Basque identity and worked as a catalyst for the Basque independence movement."
Some pictures of the beautiful Assembly Hall and incredible stained glass ceiling!
After this excellent visit to Guernica we drove to Pamplona checked into our hotel, had dinner and watched the World Cup!
Thursday, July 7th - today is the first day of San Fermin and the Running of the Bulls! It was 36 years ago today that I first ran with the bulls. Ernest Hemingway made Pamplona and the Running of the Bulls famous in his book the Sun Also Rises.
I had intended to run, however everyone we mentioned it to in Valencia told me not to run. They said their were too many people running, they are all drunk, hungover, tired from not sleeping and or on drugs. From my experience I knew where I would start and how I would run it. However with SO many Spanish people encouraging me NOT to run and after looking at some previous years YouTube videos I understood. It's not the bulls that are generally the problem it's the people running....so I decided not to run.
What we did instead is we bought tickets to sit in the Plaza de Toros de Pamplona, the Pamplona Bull ring. The stadium holds 19,720 people, is the third largest in the world and was built in 1922. It was about 3/4's filled on this first day of San Fermin.
Here are some of our photos of the ring. There was even a marriage proposal in the ring after the run!
These are a couple of videos I took of the big screen in the bullring. The first one, before the run, shows the names and weights of the bulls. My video of the run was to large to load so I've posted the second, of the run, from YouTube.
After the run today, we went back to our hotel. It was very hot today so we decided to take a drive and go for a swim at a near by reservoir. Beth enjoying the water!
After of wonderful, refreshing swim we went to Puente la Reina, "the crossroads of the ways", is a medieval town where the two main routes on the Pilgrim's Way to Santiago de Compostela converge. The Kingdom of Navarre as this region is called is very beautiful.
We finished off the day by going to what may be the best fireworks we have ever seen. Those of you who know Beth, know that she LOVES her fireworks shows. But the experience was a bit overwhelming, as their were what seemed like a million people crowded into a very small space to watch them, enjoy them!
Friday, July 8th - today we paid to utilize a balcony directly on the Running of the bulls. The local's open up their homes, for a price, to allow numerous people to watch the run from their balconies. In the home we where in their must have been 5 different balconies on the run, as it was on the corner of Calle Mercaderes and Calle de la Estafeta. We were on the Calle de la Estafeta side, it is basically the straight away before the last slight left turn into the bull ring. Check out this map of the route. This is our "ticket" to get in. BTW we had to arrive between 6:50am to 7:00am as they start to close the street to everyone except runners
Some of the photos we took from the balcony.
As you can see their a TONS of people running. The local's thanking the men with the long sticks who run near the bulls to try and keep them running towards the bull ring. However on this day one lone bull turned around and started to run back from where he came.....danger!
More to come from this week however, I want to post what I have now. I had completed the entire week's post a few days ago. I tried to delete just one image and I lost my entire post...no where to be found not in history, no drafts, could not undo, nada, nothing, nunca...I had to take a long walk to get over my frustration!
If you did not think or realize how dangerous this is check out this link!
We enjoyed some of the best churrios we have ever eaten!
We hung around a bit today and saw on the the many different events during San Fermin. This was the Comparsa of Giants and Big Heads. "They are four enormous pairs, each is a king and queen, and they are about 12 feet in height. The represent the "four parts of the world": Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. (It seems that they didn't know Oceania)"
After the Running of the Bulls and this parade on - Friday, July 8th, we drove to our next stop, Hondarribia "Walled City". We booked our first Paradores hotel. The Paradoes were founded by Alfonso XIII of Spain as a means to promote tourism in Spain, with the first hotel opening in 1928. This is a little about their 85 year history. This state-run business has been profitable. The hotels are often located in adapted castles, palaces, fortresses, convents, monasteries and other historic buildings. When we made the reservation we did not know we would be staying in the Castle of Charles V. It was incredible.
The first image is of the entrance, the second is inside where we would eat breakfast every day and the third photo is of the deck off the back of the Castle where enjoyed wine and water, potato chips and olives! The last one is just outside our castle looking down towards the harbor.
A few more photo's of the interior of our castle, one is their meeting rooms, imagine having a meeting in this room. The other some of the banners hanging around the castle.
The old part of town has stone-paved streets and walls surrounding it, including houses with coats of armor. The prehistoric archaeological sites discovered on and around Mount Jaizkibel indicate that the Hondarribia has been populated for over 5,000 years. These are images of the old town of Hondarribia.
On our first night in Hondarribia we heard about a local Jai-Alai match. I knew of Jai-Alai because being raised in Hollywood, Florida is was a very popular sport in Miami. I always thought it was brought to America from Cuba, but I am wrong. Jai-Alai is the Worlds Fastest game and it originated right here in Basque country.
We enjoyed walking the match. We were even told, by a man how sat next to us and spoke English, that one player was the current World Champion, it is a very fast game.
Saturday, July 9th - today we walked around the city and then on our walk to the beach I wanted to check out the famous San Pedro street and the highly recommended Pintxos (pinchos) bars. "The main drag of Hondaarribia's Marina district, Calle San Pedro is quaint pedestrian-only strip flaanked by typical fisherman's houses, with facades painted bright green or blus, and wooden balconies cheerfully decorated with flower boxes"
Our first stop was the Sardara Bar. We learned that the way "to do" pintxos is to order one or two pintxos and a drink, per bar, by watching what the locals are ordering. Then move to the next pintxos bar and repeat! For me, the choice of shrimp, calamari, squid, clams or any other shellfish was awesome, let along having a beer at each bar...to say the least I was in a bit of heaven. Our next stop was Gran Bar Sol, amazing!
After a "few" we made our way to the beach....a perfect way to relax and enjoy ourselves.
Tonight for dinner we walked, 5 minutes to incredible restaurant called Alameda. Outside of Japan Spain has the most Michelin star restaurants per capita. On this list you will see two of the Michelin star restaurants we ate at. Alameda and when we were in San Sebastion Zuberoa.
Alameda was out of this world. First they brought out the amuse-bouche - a single bite size hors'd'oeuvre. I had never been a big fan of foie gras. But a chocolate covered foie gras Bon-Bon blew me away. Also included in the amuse-bouche was a chilled organic tomato, bloody Mary bath with basil soup....oh my. I then had the Lobster salad with some lettuce and arugula and bit of guacamole
For my main course Lamb Shank
Amazing food, fantastic ambience, excellent service, inexpensive bottle of wine....the sommelier was so excited that I wanted a "spicy, peppery" wine. He told us in the 7 years he worked at Alameda he has only served this type of wine 3 times! We loved it
Sunday, July 10th - we left our castle and drove into France, which happened to be just across the river. However we drove to the town of St. Jean-de-Pied-Port. "It is the capital of the historical Basque province of Lower Navarre, which is only about 5 miles away from the Spanish boarded. The town is famous for being one of the traditional starting points of the Way of St. James (the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela). It is located on the Roncevaux Pass at the base of the Pyrenean Mountains and the name "Pied-de-Port" actually means "foot pass""
(leaving our castle for the day)
The two photos above are of the St. Jean Pied-de-Port Citadel. The first one lists the date work began on the Citadel 1628.
On our drive back to Hondarribia, Beth read about a cute little town in France called Espelette. The tourism guide says this "If you could only visit one village in the interior of the French Basque Country, it would have to be Espelette. Its picture perfect streets are lined with traditional Basque houses, many of which feature Espelette's number one export, the Piment d'Espelette (Espelette pepper). These drying peppers proudly dangle from the lines that are attached to the facades of the houses, creating the symbol of the entire village" Their red peppers are designated as Appellation d' Origine Controlee "which translates as "controlled designation of origin". It is the French certification granted to certain French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters and other agricultural products. It is based on the concept of terroir! They use the peppers in Bayonne ham or as they call in France Jambon!
We thought is was a cute little town, however it was full of tourists, like us! I am sure it's great place to visit during the off season. We did however make a few purchases....not peppers, but Beth got a couple of dish towels and we bought a few French cheeses and some French Jambon. Which was perfect as we had a bed dinner this evening in our castle as we watched France lose to Portugal in the 2016 Euro Cup.
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